Saint's Sacrament - Sins of the Father (16 page)

Xenia sat on the bed and buried her face in her hands. She’d opened up a can of crap and wished she’d never popped the lid. The whole job was becoming a nightmare
, but Saint was right about one thing: The man would never participate in such deviant behavior without a motiviation.

“
Someone like him
never
falls in line,” Saint continued his rant. “… and I
knew
he was going to call you. It is just that the timing is fucked up.” His voice softened once more as a sorrowful expression took over, tempering his features. “Because I was trying to have sex with you again, after you caught your breath ’nd all, but now he has assured that won’t happen tonight.”

I cannot believe this man.
That’s all he thinks about…and at a time like this!

She seethed, but a part of her was slightly amused.

“Of course he called. He called to tattle tale, because he wanted to start some shit here at home, use you as a shield for his punk ass. I anticipated this. Let me find out some more shit, here?!” Like a super case of bi-polar, his warm tone disappeared as he grew angry again in a millisecond, raving, pointing his finger in her direction, as if she were on trial in a court of law. “Let me find out he is back to his old tricks.” He raised an eyebrow, paired it with a smug expression, as he sauntered past her and re-entered the closet.

“I’m not telling you shit
else about this, Saint. I see how you react when I do...again, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have been upset,” she called out, “… but that was the wrong way to handle it.” Xenia shook her head in disbelief, but deep down, she had to have known Saint would not keep his word to leave Sinclair alone; he simply couldn’t abide by such a request.

“He knows no other way
, Xenia.” She heard him open a dresser drawer and close it. “People like him can’t be treated nicely and you don’t have to tell me shit, your body does the talking!” Saint called out, then re-entered the bedroom with his shoes on.

I give the hell up…

Xenia sighed and yawned, leaned back on the bed. She no longer cared about the phone call from Sinclair. She just wanted to curl up under the sheets, and get a few hours of shuteye before the baby was up.

I may as well take a shower first though
. That will save me time later.

“Where are you going at this time of night?”
She rubbed her eyes, fighting sleep as she sat up.

“You said you wanted some of that New York cheesecake with the cherries earlier today.” he responded, as if it was a given.

“Saint, it is two in the damn morning. Get your ass in the bed.” She laughed as she stood to go into the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower. Look, don’t talk to Sinclair again,” she said calmly. “I’m serious. Word travels fast and you don’t want to make tabloid news about bullying some producer.”

“Nah,
I need some fresh air anyway. I’m pissed that I had a gray hair and—”

“Silver...it was silver, Saint.”

“Silver, gray, white, mother-of-pearl, I don’t give a fuck! It grew out of my damned scalp. I need to see someone about this, a professional.”

“
Yes, a therapist for the vain and arrogantly impaired. Boy, please! You better buy some ‘Just For Men’ and keep it movin’.” she cackled. “And anyway, one or two hairs isn’t even worth all of that. I’ve had premature gray hair for a year now, most likely due to being married to
you
,” she teased. “You just never knew because I dye it. It’s on my temples.” She pointed proudly at the notorious spot.

“Oh, I knew,” he
said, laughing, “but I just let you think it was your little secret. Anyway, everyone else can get old ’cept me. Those are the rules.” He slid his wallet into his pocket.

“Saint,” Xenia said seriously as she glared at him from the bathroom door.

“Yeah, baby?” he said, avoiding eye contact.

“Seriously, please don’t do that again.
You’ve made your point now, so just leave it be.”

“I won’t need to
, baby. Those were merely words. And you just hope he takes heed because, uh,” Saint smirked as he casually grabbed his keys off the dresser, “next time, there will be no talking, Xenia, just action. You have my word.”

And with that, he disappeared out of the bedroom, on the hunt for her
delicious guilty pleasure, but left a taste of worry in her mouth...

~***~

“Yo! We need to talk.” Saint gripped the black steering wheel of his Expedition as he leisurely took each corner. Jagger’s groggy voice came through the speaker in the car, and soon his image was displayed on a small screen inside the ebony console. Saint glanced down and watched the powerhouse of a man stretch and yawn, the sheets behind him in a heap of a mess.

“Why
are you so tired?” Saint grinned, all-knowing. “I thought we were hooking up after work. Doesn’t look like you have much energy.

Jagger
peered at him through his iPhone, smirking. He ran a large hand over his face and slumped, his oversized black T-shirt hanging loosely to one side. He tugged at it, pushed it over his head and threw it toward the bottom of the bed.

“Is she still there?” Saint asked in a whisper, as if modesty was his forte
and of utmost importance.

“If she was, you blew it…
just called me out.” Jagger laughed as he stood and stumbled to the kitchen, phone in hand.

“She left about a hour a
go,” he added as he set his phone down on the tortoiseshell granite island counter behind him, and stood in front of his refrigerator, the door hanging open while he yawned once again. The big man grabbed the container of orange juice and chugged it.

“So, when are the four of us going out again?
I like to double-date with you and Traci.” Saint sat at the red light observing several small school children as they spanned the suburban street with a feeble crossing guard as their guide.

“Not on your life! Never agai
n, Saint,” Jagger barked as he slammed the refrigerator door and opened a tall kitchen cabinet, exposing assorted dishware.

“Why?!” Saint tried to stifle his laugh, knowing full well what the issue was. He’d tried not only to be
Jagger’s matchmaker, but ask questions that Jagger felt unbelievably embarrassed about. Xenia had hit his knee several times under the table, but he continued, simply trying to break the ice. Jagger’s reddened face and death glare summed up the rest of the evening.

“You know damn well why, Saint
.” He poured milk over his Kellogg’s Rice Krispies cereal into a large blue bowl. “Asking me about my stint in prison. What the fuck, man!”

“It was just a joke!” Saint cackled. “You were sitting there all stiff, I thought I’d
inject a little action.” Saint sniffed and leaned back in a pimp posture, catching his free hand under his nose, and extending his leg farther out to push on the gas. “It was just a segue, you knew I’d clean it up and explain you were only there to speak to that inmate class while in the Marines.”

“But you let it go a
nd on, having fun at my expense. You had my girlfriend thinking I’d done hard time in the pen. Traci didn’t know whether you were kidding or not and then asked me twice that night if you were just trying to cover up the truth once you saw my reaction. Thanks, man! Thanks a hell of a lot!” Jagger grinned as he stabbed his cereal with a big silver spoon, and placed his tattooed arms on the two-seater kitchen table.

Saint
ran a hand over his neck, surmising he may have gone too far, but it was all in good fun. Traci and Jagger had been dating for a while, they were official—but they were quiet, dancing around one another like school children, and he wanted to see some fire. He knew it wasn’t his place, but he wanted his friend happy, and though he appeared to be, he knew their relationship had the potential to be so much more.

“So, what was the best part of prison?” Saint teased, bringing
Jagger back into the fold of his twisted sense of humor.

“Not funny.
” Jagger took another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

“Okay, seriously, when you visited, tell me one
of the craziest things you saw.” Saint was intrigued. He lived off of stories like this. He managed to always compartmentalize them, and use bits and pieces for a later date, even if it was only for a joke.

“I’m not telling you. Y
ou’ll just turn it into something stupid.”

“Aw, come on, man! I tell you what, you tell me a prison story and I’ll trea
t you to lunch tomorrow. I have too many meetings today.”

“It better not be fast food
. I want the good shit, the fifty dollar lunches!” Jagger said around a mouthful of cereal.

“You are killin’ me...trying to make me go broke feeding your big
David and Goliath ass.”

“Take it or leave it. Why’d you wanna know anyway?”

“Actually, it is because of that case Lawrence told me about. Due to Clarence and Jason’s good investigation skills, that fucker is in prison now.” Saint reflected on the case that made his blood boil. A man walked into a restaurant and shot a black woman and her husband, killing them both.  He hoped the man got the chair, but it was doubtful. The state of Florida wasn’t exactly known for giving a damn about the ill treatment of people of color it seemed as of late. “I’d like to visit him in prison and mess with him a bit. Though I know that’s out of the question.”

“Why didn’t you just say that at the beginning?”

“Because I like fuckin’ with you...”

“Fair enough. Okay, here is the story
: this is how the inmates make a home-made pussy.”

“Ha! This
gotta be good!” Saint cracked up as he drew closer to his office. “Oh, before I forget, when will you be in today? I need to talk to you about that Huerna Foundation project. I think they need added security down there. Maybe some of your retired friends can take a look.”

“Oh, okay, sure. I can make some calls. W
ell, what they do is take a paper cup, and two of those little yellow sponges, right? You know, the kinds our moms always had in the kitchen. They put the sponges in the cup on each side then cover it all with a latex glove. Then they put like lotion or hair grease in it. Then, well...they fuck it.”

Saint burst out laughing. “Hey, where there’s a will there’s a way!” he finally choked out
through gasps for air. “Gotta do what you gotta do. So it’s basically like a boot-leg pocket pussy?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“Times are hard.”

“I gu
ess they use whatever the can.” Jagger tilted the bowl toward his mouth and devoured the left-over milk in loud slurps.

“How’d you know about this? You been fuckin’ those Brite sponges, haven’t you,
Jagger? Before Traci was on the scene, you been messin’ around with SpongeBob’s ol’ lady!” Saint cackled, amused at his own joke.

“See what I mean?”
Jagger shook his head and grinned. “This is why I can’t tell you things like this. On a serious note, I don’t see how sponge fucking can help you with anything, but that is what came to mind when you asked me.”

“I don’t see how either, but it was entertaining nevertheless.
”

“You are the one that was running from the police, not me
,” Jagger teased.

“True. And I’ve seen my share of precincts, too. Most of my homeboys I grew up with have been inside
and I was arrested before when I was sixteen. Ironically, that time it was for something I really didn’t do. They let me go, but I was accustomed to things like that happening. It didn’t scare me straight like it should have.”

“Yeah, the teenage years. Mine were kinda crazy, too. So the trouble you were in…do you believe it was unfair?”

“Collectively, I and the guys from my neighborhood got treated suspiciously just by the way that we looked. Some of it was our fault, some of it wasn’t, but it happened nevertheless. Sometimes we did loiter, steal and do other shit we had no business doing. Other times, we were just harassed for being minorities. Hey, I’m getting ready to pull up in here, so I’ll let you go. See ya in a bit,” Saint said as he saw the top of their building in the near distance.

Saint pulled into his parking spot and looked up at the screen.
Jagger stood from his table and saluted. “You got it, Boss. See you soon.”

The screen went static then black...

As Saint entered the building, he thought about his friend, long and hard.

Jagger was still guarded but the man was trying, so he had to give him props for that. It had been a long, scary road for the guy. It took everything in his power to get that level. He wasn’t afraid of flying grenades, enemy ambushes, derelict Angel Children on killing rampages or of much anything else, but when it came to women, and love in particular, Jagger transformed into a frightened newborn bunny rabbit. People who’d had their hearts crushed had a tendency to experience that.

In all of that time, Saint and Jagger had had the opportunity to get to know one another, up close and personal. This was just one of the many reasons he trusted the man with all that was in him, and wasn’t mad when Jagger officially beat his ass to teach him a lesson, to help him in his future endeavors. They’d shared so much, and Saint could now honestly say he was one of his closest friends. Saint didn’t call many people friends. He knew a lot of people, had thousands of associates, but true friends were hard to come by. Jagger had risked his life to help protect his newborn daughter; he’d sacrificed himself, taking out half of the problem without a blink of an eye—a true soldier. Jagger was a man’s man, all brawn that covered a sensitive heart. He was a proverbial teddy bear—built like a brick wall with piercing, all-knowing light blue eyes that paled against his creamy tan complexion, the intriguing combination of an Italian father and Native Indian mother. His childhood had been hellacious—and in that he was a different breed than Saint. Regardless of Saint’s trauma as a youngster, he knew his parents cared for him, especially his mother. Jagger, on the other hand, spent most of his time shielding his brothers and mother from violent physical abuse, extreme alcohol indulgence and verbal altercations that would make the most liberal minded person’s skin crawl.

The man’s story was a tale of survival of the fittest. He was destined for greatness, to be a leader. Jagger had very strict ideas, however, about right and wrong. Saint suspected it was mostly due to his traumatic upbringing. Instead of falling into a life of crime, Jagger did the opposite. He found comfort in discipline, threw himself over the altar of justice as a sacrificial lamb. But he had to do something with all of that rage...all of that pent up energy, all of that seething, scorching emotion that boiled just under his cool reserve. The man was a time-bomb, and he knew it...so, he did what he did best. Got a gun and blew some shit up. He was often the lone survivor of area raids in Iraq and Afghanistan, coming forth from a dust cloud with shrapnel lying all about and with nothing more than a scratch or two to show for it. He was resilient, and for his unique attitude, he attracted people’s curiosity. Yet what was first seen as admirable, actions of a true hero of the military elite, was now considered plain weird...

How was this man surviving such brutal attacks?

Then the paranoia began. Is he doing something to cause this? “Jagger has nine lives and magic powers!” some had teased him. He was thrust into the most dangerous of assignments and proved himself, coming out victorious every time.

Decorated with Combat Action ribbons, Global War on Terrorism and Marine Corp Expeditions medals, and a host of other accolades, acknowledgements and recognitions, he was the epitome of what it meant to be a man who fought for his country. Nevertheless, it still never quite satisfied his complete need for justice. It was a never-ending thirst and no matter how much enemy blood was spilled, he remained forever parched. Saint knew all about that now. His father, Lawrence and even Raphael, made it clear to him that this was his lot in life. He was designed to right wrongs, and angels oftentimes got ugly—their children would be no different. All of the hoopla about angels being peaceful was bullshit. They were an army, designed to protect mankind by any means necessary. The Angel of Death and the Angel of Mercy were constantly having children—each one special to them, hand-picked through various bloodlines, yet, all of them were related through their very special gifts.

Jagger knew wondrous things, incredible things that Saint was only just becoming aware of. The man was a skilled artist at what he did, steady, focused and well-trained. Saint still was in awe of him, at the way he’d taken the mole down, the memory infiltration, the lack of fear... He respected the man from the depths of his heart, for taking a spot behind him, especially since he, too, was an Alpha. That had to be terribly hard to do. Jagger didn’t answer to anyone, and no one bossed him around. But he, too, had a healthy respect for Saint, understanding that Saint was rough around the edges, but his power was astounding and there had to be a reason why he was blessed with such a gift.

Lawrence, being the peacemaker, had brought it all together, and both men were grateful to him for creating the close-knit bunch. He was the glue, the one to break up fights and potential disagreements, the one with all of the knowledge about their people. He was an old soul and a beautiful person who Saint was certain felt ragged after interrupting his and Jagger’s many spats. Jagger and Saint would still exchange words from time to time but that was to be expected. They had strong personalities and had trouble controlling themselves on occasion. Lawrence was disciplined in his outward displays. Saint wanted to learn that—to figure out how he did it—but soon gave up when he realized it was just not in him to be like Lawrence. He envied the peace that Lawrence had within, and he envied how Jagger loved the man. They’d known each other so long and depended on each other. Saint sometimes thought about how his life would’ve been different had he met them sooner. It would have saved him quite a bit of heartache. But, everything happens for a reason, and there is a season of understanding in life, and now that he was in the know, he felt truly blessed…