The Versace League (5 page)

             
“Hey baby-” Yamin said looking up at her. A crooked smile formed on his face followed by damn near a bucket full of vomit. All the liquor he’d tossed back flew out of his mouth and landed on Jessica’s clothes and shoes.

             
Jessica jumped back and looked down at the bile that soaked through her clothing. She scrunched her nose up in disgust and hurried out of the office to clean herself up.

             
“Damn! Manny!” Emmanuel called out again. “Fuck it!”

             
Emmanuel squatted down using all of the strength he had to lift Yamin from the floor. He was only 5’8 and weighed a little over one-hundred and fifty pounds, he was a midget compared to Yamin, but for his man he would do his best.

As he carried Yamin out of the office he saw Manny standing near the front door carefully surveying the package that was sitting on the floor. It was the same packaging that they’d seen the carrier deliver in Jamaica.

             
“Yo, help me get Ya up the stairs. This nigga is dead fucking weight right now.”

             
“A’ight, a’ight,” Manny said, and ran over to assist his cousin. The two of them carried Yamin up the stairs and into the bathroom where they laid him across the floor. They each looked to each other unsure who was gonna take the next step.

             
“Nigga, I’m not finna take his clothes off. You do it,” Emmanuel threw his hands up and stepped back.

             
“Fuck you! I’m not doing that shit either,” Manny protested and shook his head. “Shit, we can just put him in the tub with his clothes on.”

             
“What? What kinda stupid bullshit is that?” Emmanuel asked.

             
“I’m just saying-aye, wifey!” Manny called out. “Forgot about Jessica. Tell her to get her ass up here and bathe her husband.”

             
Jessica entered the bathroom with a worried expression on her face. She’d changed into a wife beater and a pair of terry cloth Bermuda shorts.

The time away from Yamin had given her plenty of time to think about the past year and a half. After their honeymoon had been interrupted with bad news, death, and lies, she didn’t know what to think. All the good in their relationship outweighed the bad, but she didn’t know if the good had been real.

             
“Yes?” Jessica questioned as she looked at her husband laid out helplessly across the floor.

             
“Need you to put him in the shower,” Manny said pointing at the shower.

             
“Okay, but I’m gonna need help getting him inside of it.”

             
Emmanuel and Manny looked at each other waiting to see who was gonna volunteer. They hadn’t thought about the fact that even after Jessica undressed him, someone was still gonna need to help him into the shower. As Jessica began to remove Yamin’s clothing, Emmanuel took off running out of the bathroom leaving Manny to do the job. Manny shook his head and let out a huge sigh.

             
Once Jessica had fully undressed Yamin, she turned the faucet on and allowed a stream of hot water to fill the tub. She grabbed a hold of Yamin’s legs and assisted Manny with getting him inside the water. Yamin let out a few grunts and rested his head against the tub. The water became tinted with blood from the cut in his hand.

             
“Just holler when you need me to help you get him out,” Manny said before exiting the bathroom.

             
Jessica turned the water off, grabbed a towel, and soaked it in the water. She grabbed Yamin’s Axe body wash and squirted a quarter sized amount onto the towel. Rubbing the towel together, she lathered up the soap and began to wash every inch of his body. She kind of felt bad seeing him like this, since she purposely didn’t call or even think to come by to check on him. If it had not been for Manny and Emmanuel demanding that she come to open the door for them, she didn’t know how long she would’ve gone without checking on her husband.

             
She was pissed. Yamin had been deceiving her the whole time they’d been together and she couldn’t help but wonder if she could love him the same. She knew that Yamin had hard ways, but she’d assumed that he was just pretending like most men. Even the gun charge that he picked up when he was 18 years old hadn’t led her to believe that he was this big time gangster. True, she knew that Yamin had been hiding something, but she never expected him to be the big time boss of a crime organization.

             
She had been to his car wash, his real estate company, and even saw the layout for a car lot that he was in the process of having done. There was no reason to believe that any of those places had been fronts. Their home was of a normal size, the cars that Yamin drove were nothing fancy, so there wasn’t much to suggest that he was living a life of crime. She never thought that it was anything other than a woman.

             
“Baby?” Yamin said, startling Jessica. She had been in deep thought wondering what kind of person Yamin really was. The whole time she had been at Donica’s she attempted to get information out of her, but Donica had no idea of what The Versace League was. She had always assumed that Cortez was a drug dealer and made his money off of hustling and Cortez had never told her anything differently.

Jessica wanted to know how far Aasir and Cortez’s involvement went in The Versace League if any. Yamin’s description had been brief in Jamaica only hinting at the fact that robbing banks was something of the past. For some reason she actually believed that she would find some information on Google when she typed it in the search, but of course only designer suits and bags popped up.

             
“Yo, get this nigga out of here! Get whatever information you can out of him and if he don’t cooperate, murk his ass!”
Those words had played through Jessica’s head over and over again. She found herself questioning whether or not Yamin had killed anyone before or were Manny and Emmanuel the only ones that got their hands dirty.

             
What about all those nights he would sneak out? Was he possibly killing someone then?
Jessica shuddered at the mere possibility that she’d been sleeping next to a killing crime boss.

             
“Baby?” Yamin called out again. He grabbed her hand and opened one eye to look at her.

             
“Yea?” Jessica answered, as she pushed him forward in the tub and began to wash his back.

             
“What you thinking about?”

             
“Nothing.”

             
“Don’t lie to me. I know you and you only get quiet like that when you’re in deep thought. What’s on your mind?”

             
“You mean lie to you, like you’ve been lying to me all of this time?” Jessica stated tensely.

             
Yamin huffed and sat back in the tub relaxing his head. He knew that he shouldn’t have deceived Jessica for so long, but there was no way he could let her know about The Versace League. The League had too many secrets and was responsible for too many lives to let anybody know about it. Now that she was his wife, he would only fill her in on what he did and that was it, but nothing too specific.

             
“I lied to you, but my feelings for you have never been a lie. I married you because I love you, all of that is real. I couldn’t tell you about my lifestyle because I am accountable for too many people. I know too many secrets and too many people know my secrets, that’s not just information that I can give out to anybody.”

             
“But I am your wife Yamin! I was your girlfriend and then your fiancé. You don’t think you should have told me before you decided to walk down that aisle with me?” Jessica tossed the towel in the water and stood to her feet. She felt so hurt and angry. She dried her hands on her shorts and began to pace the bathroom floor.

             
“I couldn’t tell you before then, because-you’re a lawyer, you know how shit go,” Yamin sat forward in the tub and shut his eyes tightly. A bout of nausea hit him and he held his head down to allow it to pass. He couldn’t believe he allowed himself to get so fucked up.

Jessica laughed wickedly. “So, did you marry me because you knew that if I ever found out the truth about what you did that I could never testify against you in court or was it because you wanted free legal services? Do you really love me Yamin or am I just a scheme in your
list
of schemes?”

“Man, I’m not about to argue with you. Hand me a towel so I can get out this damn tub-please,” Yamin placed his hands on the side of the tub and stood to his feet. He was dizzy, his stomach was turning flips, and he was still sad about Cort, he just couldn’t stop thinking about him.

“You forced me into this life Yamin! How is that fair to me? You didn’t even give me a choice!”

“Well, I’m giving you a choice now. You can either stay or you can leave. Whatever you do make the decision quietly.”

“Excuse me? Make the decision quietly! It’s that easy for you, Yamin? Is it that easy for you to just tell me that I can stay or leave? Do you really care about me?”

“I told you that I did! What else do you want me to say to you?” Yamin roared, his voice bouncing off the walls. “It’s not the time to discuss this shit, okay? My niece is still missing and the muthafucka that took her and killed Cort is still out there!”

“Oh, now it’s not the time to discuss it. You asked me what I was thinking and when I tell you, you tell me it’s not the time to discuss it. Well I wanna discuss it now. This is my life you’re playing with. My life Yamin!”

Yamin stepped out of the tub and walked over to grab a towel. He wrapped it around the lower half of his body and moved to where Jessica stood. He stopped directly in front of her and stared into her eyes. She was so beautiful to him. Her cocoa brown skin, brown eyes, and full succulent lips is what attracted him to her.

“I got more important things to worry about right now. Like I said, the choice is yours.”

With that Yamin exited the bathroom and left Jessica to her thoughts. She silently weighed her options thinking back to when she had been a little girl living in the projects on the East Side of Dallas. It had only been her mom and her little brother Marcus at the time and things were hard. Her mother was a cashier by day and an alcoholic by night. She would drink herself into misery and then take her anger out on her kids. She didn’t know who had it worse, Marcus or her.

Her mother physically abused her, while Marcus on the other hand had been sexually abused. The two of them suffered for years until their apartment caught on fire leaving their mother trapped in her bedroom to burn to death. Jessica was sixteen when it happened and Marcus was just turning fifteen. The Fire Marshall concluded that it was arson and that someone was responsible for the death.

             
At the end of the investigation Marcus had been arrested and tossed into jail. Jessica had always felt that her brother was innocent and tried convincing the police of that, but no one would listen to her. It was then she knew that she would become a criminal defense attorney. She had her brother to thank for her motivation and for giving her the drive to do something with her life. It had been a hard journey, but Jessica fought tooth and nail to get her law degree.

She loved her husband, but she didn’t know if she wanted to put one hundred percent faith into him. She would be choosing love and a criminal lifestyle over a life that she worked so hard to achieve.

             
How often do you find the love of your life?
Jessica questioned herself. She took in a deep breath and exited the bathroom. The bedroom was empty but she could hear some sort of commotion going on downstairs. She left out of the bedroom and slowly went down the stairs.

             
Mommy! Mommy, help me!

             
Jessica could hear the sounds of a little girl’s voice as she made her way to the last step. She turned to the right and stepped inside of her living room. Immediately tears ran down her face as she spotted little Ashley on the screen, with her hands and feet tied to a tiny wooden chair.

             
I want my mommy! Please sir I will be good.

             
“Oh God,” Jessica cried out.

             
“Round everybody up for a meet up,” Yamin said to Emmanuel and Manny. Neither of them moved and kept their eyes fixed on the screen. Seeing little Ashley tied down and begging to be freed stirred up a lot of emotions in the both of them.

             
“NOW!” Yamin bellowed. He threw the remote at the entertainment system causing the TV screen to crack and the video to turn black. He looked down at the note that was balled up in his hand and damn near bit a hole into his bottom lip as he read the words again.

             
You took what’s mine so I take what’s yours. You started this and now I will finish it. 
The note read. The same person that sent him a video and note while on his honeymoon had sent him another one. It was obvious that they were fucking with him. Yamin cringed at the thought of something happening to his niece. He balled the note up in his hand and tightly shut his eyes. He couldn’t allow something to happen to Ashley too.