Zero Degrees Part 3: Miss Murderess Read online

  Zero Degrees 3

  Nika Michelle

  Leo Sullivan

  Copyright 2014 Nika Michelle and Leo Sullivan

  Edited by Nika Michelle

  Published by Sullivan Productions LLC

  www.leolsullivan.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written consent from both the author and publisher Sullivan Productions LLC, except brief quotes used in reviews, interviews or magazines.

  This is a work of fiction. It is not meant to depict, portray or represent any particular real person. All the characters, incidents and dialogue in this written work are the product of the author’s imagination and are not to be considered as real. Any references or similarities to actual events, entities, real people living or dead, or to real locations are intended for the sole purpose of giving this novel a sense of reality. Any similarities with other names, characters, entities, places, people or incidents are entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  ZERO

  The cool, misty breeze from the ocean wasn’t even enough to calm me. My skin was feverish and my adrenaline was pumping overtime. There was no way in hell I was letting that bitch get away alive again. She had crossed me and mine after I allowed her to be a part of my life. Nobody would ever get that close to me again.

  When you let muthafuckas into your heart

  that gave them an unfair advantage over you. My new motto was fuck friends. I didn’t have room for any new ones in my life and my emotions were null and void. In other words, love didn’t live here anymore and I chose to keep it that way.

  As she ran across the deep, wet sand

  rain drops drenched my hair until it curled into ringlets. I didn’t rush to go after her. A woman’s intuition never lied and hers had let her know minutes ago that I was on her ass. The thrill of the chase was driving me. Her death wouldn’t be easy. I would make her suffer as I had. That back stabbing, conniving bitch was going to pay for what she had done to me, Buff and Zeus. Her disloyalty would cost her her life and that shit wasn’t going to be a piece of cake for her ass. Hell no. I was going to draw her death out just like she did our bullshit ass fraud of a friendship.

  The day that fake ass bitch lied about being down for me was the day she died in my eyes. She had plotted, but karma was a bitch. She was destined to get hers and I couldn’t wait to deliver. All of the money she got in those robberies wasn’t worth a fraction of the pain she was going to endure at my hands.

  Shit, I was going to enjoy killing her more than any other murder I’d committed. It was going to be even more ecstatic than any orgasm Zeus could ever create and damn I missed that shit like hell.

  I smiled as I watched her flee. She was

  scared and that was the only way for her to be at the moment.

  “Peaches!!” I yelled out into the dark night.

  The sound of my voice echoed across the empty beach.

  “I’m gonna kill you, you cry bitch! Believe that!!” I taunted.

  At that point I had lost sight of her, but that

  didn’t mean a thing. I knew for a fact that she wasn’t far away. The silence was deafening as I pulled a rolled blunt from behind my ear. I lit it, took a pull and inhaled deeply. The rush from the cannabis put me in a zone and calmed me down just enough to calculate my steps. I wanted to hurry up and kill Peaches, but something told me to take the time to enjoy it.

  Chapter 1

  ZEUS

  “I gotta make a run man,” I told Buff as I passed him and that bitch Yo Yo sitting on the sofa in the den.

  He nodded and old girl gave me a look like she had won or something. I had no clue what happened to Peaches, nor did I give a damn. I just didn’t want him fucking with that thot. She was always trying to push her girl Lexie off on me, but I wasn’t going there with that thirsty ass bitch.

  “Yo’ Zeus, Lex said when you goin’ call her,” the chicken head blurted out.

  I didn’t say a word as I opened the door and slammed it behind me when I made my exit. Fuck Lexie. I had fucked her a few times before I went to see Ze for the first time. After a while Lexie didn’t interest me anymore. Not that she ever really did, but at first I thought her head was amazing. When Ze touched down and put it on me it was over for Lex and any other bitch for that matter. None of them were worth losing her, but somehow I had still lost her.

  I didn’t think she was dead though. It was no way she could be gone. She was my soul mate and if she was not alive anymore I would know. Shit, I would’ve been able to feel it, but I didn’t. As I got in my black Benz I thought about the morning she disappeared. We had made love all night and fell asleep butt naked and sweaty. When I woke up and found the note letting me know that she was at her mom’s I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t know what had happened until that damn cop Greyson came to tell me.

  “We found Zeaira mother’s body inside her home. Zeaira’s car was there, but she was nowhere to be found. We’re investigating the murder and Zeaira’s been filed as a missing person. As of right now we have no evidence that she is a victim of foul play. If you have any information that will help us with the investigation please let me know,” he had informed me.

  I could remember the moment when I opened my front door and saw him standing there. My first thought was how dare that faggot show up on my porch like he hadn’t tried to set me and my brother up. I was ready to pull the rachet out and put some metal in his fucking skull.

  I nodded. “I don’t know of anybody who would want to hurt Ze or her mother.” My heart had sank, but I had to hide that shit. Of course my first thought was the assassination of the Gutierrez brothers. My mission was to kill everything to get my woman back, but the restaurant was gone and I had no idea how to find the rest of them. Donreco’s body had also been found and we had lost our connection to the Gutierrez Cartel.

  “I’m gonna find you baby,” I said out loud as I glanced at a picture of the two of us that sat on my dash. We had took it on the day she got out of juvie. Damn I missed my woman, but I had to focus. It was business for the moment and I had to get my head back in the game.

  Time had passed and the plan was still for me to get out of the drug business for good. The lick in Miami had put us on another level in the streets and after the situation with Ze the hustle felt like a relief. My affair was with the streets and not another woman. I could pour my despair on the niggas who tried to cross me and suddenly that street shit was a welcome distraction.

  Without Ze I really had no desire to give it up so fast. When I found her things would be different. I would have a reason to give it all up. It would be for her, but she had to give up killing. That part of her was sexy as hell at first, but I knew we both had to give up those guilty pleasures if we wanted to make it. I loved her and didn’t want to risk our future together. Until then it was back to the grind for me.

  * * *

  It looked like a gray dilapidated warehouse on the outside, but the inside was where we did our dirty work. The structure was once a meat packing facility and the purpose it had now was not much different. It still had its share of dead, decayed carcasses inside. Today would be no different. When I got inside my niggas Marco and Dirt were waiting for me.

  “Where the hell Buff at?” Dirt asked. He was a tall, lanky dark skinned dude with empty, sunken eyes that seemed out of place on his face.

  “He’s handling some business for me. What’s up though?
What’s going on?” I couldn’t tell them that my bro, my right hand man, was not the man he used to be. The sudden unexplained absence of the love of his life had the opposite effect on him than the shit with Ze had on me. Instead of using it to fight harder he seemed to be so out of it. The situation with Ze didn’t help him either because he and Teena both thought she was dead. Until he got his head straight I tended to leave him out of certain shit if I could. I hadn’t given up on him. It was just something missing and I was waiting for it to come back.

  Marco spoke up. He was a built, brown skinned Dominican nigga with cornrows. “We found that mufucka Raymundo, but he ain’t talkin’.”

  “What the fuck ya’ll waitin’ for? Where that nigga at?” I asked. My adrenaline was pumping because he was our only connection to those Cuban fucks in Miami. I knew that they knew what happened to my woman and I wasn’t stopping until I found her. It had taken months for us to find him. I had used all of the Intel I had to find someone connected to the infamous crime family. Raymundo was one of their few North Carolina connections for the trafficking of their product. He was also Cuban, but was not a direct descendant of the Gutierrez family.

  He had been chained to a pole that extended from the ceiling to the floor. I could tell that Marco and Dirt had been torturing him because of the blood and dark bruises that covered his battered body. There was also a pile of vomit on the floor in front of him, but it still wasn’t making him talk.

  “Raymundo. I know you’re wondering who the fuck we are and shit. Remove the duct tape from his mouth Dirt,” I instructed. He did as I said and then punched the man in the face.

  “That wasn’t necessary nigga. Step back and let me handle this,” I said as I walked closer to him. The stench of his musty body odor and bodily fluids mixed with throw up was foul as hell, but I had smelled worse.

  “Would you prefer Ray or Mundo?” I asked like I really gave a fuck. Trying my best to get something out of him was my only option for the moment. That nigga was the only lead I had. It had took too long to find him and I knew that connections to the Gutierrez Cartel would be far and few between. There was no way I was fucking that shit up. I needed him alive because he was of no use to me dead. If he made me kill him I would, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to until after I got the information I needed.

  “Mundo and it don’t matter what you do to me.” His Cuban accent wasn’t strong, but there was a hint of it evident in his voice. “It’s nothing compared to what they will do to me if I tell you anything. I ain’t stupid either. If I tell you what you want you’ll just kill me after, so go ahead and get it over with.”

  Torturing him wasn’t helping. Basically he was telling me that those mufuckas were just as scary if not scarier than we were. It didn’t matter what I did to him, he knew that death would be inevitable. Shit, I had nothing left to threaten him with, so I had to bargain.

  I looked at Dirt and Marco and motioned with my head for them to leave the room. They walked out and I cleared my throat. “Do you have a family Ray?” I asked.

  He looked at me defiantly and didn’t say a word. “Just kill me.” he said again. I had other plans.

  “I don’t want to kill you. Just answer the question.”

  He looked up at me. “Why, so you can use them to threaten me?”

  I lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “You want to hit this?” I asked leaning over so he could hold it between his lips. As he inhaled his face seemed to relax. The next pull he took created a long ash and in no time the cigarette was nothing but a burning filter. He finally let it drop and I knew that smoke break may have loosened him up at least a little.

  “I wasn’t planning to hurt your family Ray. Maybe you’ll understand me if I put it this way. You must have a special woman in your life who means a lot to you,” I said trying to level with the man. He looked like he was at least in his mid-twenties or early thirties, so I knew he could relate.

  Despite what he had just gone through his eyes lit up, so he had to be thinking about her. He didn’t say anything though.

  “I love someone just like you love her. I’m a straight up gutter nigga who ain’t never give a shit about anything before she came into my life. I don’t know where she is right now, but I have reason to believe that the Gutierrez Cartel knows. If someone had hurt the woman that you’re thinking about right now what would you do to them?” I asked.

  He looked me dead in my eyes. “I’d kill

  them.”

  “We’re a lot more alike than you may think

  Ray, because that’s exactly what I plan to do. I can’t do that if you’re dead, so here’s what I’m going to do. Forgive my niggas for whooping your ass. It was business, not personal at all. You’re going to help me get to the Gutierrez Cartel, so I can get my woman back. I don’t know how much money you make with them mufuckas and that shit don’t matter. I’ll triple what you make with them in a month off top and after that you’ll never have to worry about money again. I’m going to let you go, but I will be watching you. I know how to contact you, so don’t worry. I’ve done my homework. I already know about Armina and your two daughters Tila and Marie. I’m sure the extra money will come in handy. I didn’t plan on it, but if you fuck me Mundo…I’ll kill them.” With that said I patted him on the shoulder before I walked toward the exit.

  I didn’t know if I could really trust

  Raymundo, but he could trust that even if I lost my life there would still be a hit out on his wife and kids. The thought of him crossing me was an obvious circumstance that could come to play, but what choices did I have. I had to find Ze and bring her home where she belonged and I didn’t see it happening without him. A nigga was desperate and the measures that I had just planned to take showed just how much. Shit, I loved that woman to death and I would lay down my life to find her. That was my word and my word was bond.

  Chapter 2

  ZERO

  “Zero! Zero!” A voice in the distance called

  out interrupting my sleep. “It’s four a.m.!!!

  Your alarm’s been going off for thirty minutes! ” I sat up and yawned absent mindedly feeling for the 9.mm under my pillow.

  “Damn, I thought I had finally found that bitch.” That shit had just been a dream. Fuck! It had seemed so real. I was dreaming about Peaches again and then torn from my sleep by Black yelling for me to get up. Hell, it felt like I had just dozed off. My body was sore and I had bruises everywhere. I was tired as fuck. I didn’t sign up for that shit!

  I threw the covers back over my head and muttered for him to kick rocks.

  “Get up. You need to continue the rigors of discipline that comes with long grueling hours of training. You’re going to need it.” He sounded all hyped up as he stood over me.

  As usual he was dressed in a green military outfit with his sable black, shiny skin. He had a serious scowl on his face; anxious to work out and work the hell out of my ass. He had become my worst nightmare, however I had to admit that I had grown fond of him. He had taught me so much. Our only problem was the fact that I was not a morning person. Especially not a four am go running in the cold in the morning person and that was where we clashed, a lot!

  The past few months had been nothing short of torment, maybe worse. Each day there was a new twist to the madness of training he forced upon my body. If I wasn’t running up a mountain in the early morning cold, I was in a swimming pool exercising. We also spent countless hours on the firing range with a variety of assault weapons. I enjoyed that. What I didn’t enjoy was when he would time me with a stop watch while I took the weapons apart and then put them back together. The only thing was he would blindfold me for some dumb ass reason. Then there were the days we’d spar fight in the bone chilling cold. I felt like a human punching bag at times. He would punch me like a man, in what is known as the art of Jujitsu. That’s weaponless fighting that requires a lot of skills and endurance, as well as a high tolerance for pain. You had to be quick on your feet, agile as a cat and
have the ability to skillfully use both hands while you fight. I caught on to Jujitsu quickly because to me it was nothing other than a form of ghetto fighting that was similar to what I used to do in juvie.

  Black taught me how to fight with my elbows and knees. I knew how to use them like lethal weapons to knock a bitch out cold, or even kill. In Jujitsu everything moved smooth and fluid like water and I was one with the rhythm. Everything was methodical, measured and precise to execute the most powerful impact with efficiency. It employed holds, and throws and painful paralyzing blows to subdue, or kill a person instantly.

  I thought Jujitsu was the shit and there were a few times I even put Black on his ass when we sparred. He taught me the pressure points that I could grab on my opponent’s body, causing extreme pain. I was also taught how to efficiently use a variety of weapons, including guns and knives.

  Black said that I was a natural. The only problem was I wasn’t a morning person, so Black would do mean things to arouse me out of bed. It could be anything from dousing me with cold water to applying a painful hold to my forehead by just using his two fingers.

  That morning was like every other morning. It was cold in the shack we were staying in deep in the mountains of Alaska. I really enjoyed the comfort of my bed and my much needed sleep.

  “What!” I snapped as I cuddled underneath the cover prepared for one of his morning attacks to get me out of bed.

  “It’s time for your training exercise,” he said sternly. As he took a step toward me the wooden floor boards cracked under the weight of his feet. I was balled up nestled in the comfort of two wool blankets and a tattered sheet. I was also prepared for his daily ritual; the assault on my body if I didn’t respond to his command to get up. Only this day would be different.

  “Ze, this is my last time telling you to get up.”

  Threat!

  “Not today. It’s Wednesday. My fucking whole body is sore from running that fucking mountain all day yesterday, then sparring with you,” I spat as I stirred under the blanket, careful to listen to the floorboards to measure his movement.