The Versace League (3 page)

             
“Who did this shit? What are they saying?” Yamin asked. He could feel Jessica’s hand against his back and suddenly he turned around and pushed her away. He brought the blazing cigar to his mouth and took in a deep toke. His mind was all over the place from the news he’d just received. Immediately he pushed his self into defense mode while hearing the remainder of the details. This was the first time in a long time that he’d done something pleasurable and relaxing and it was turning out to be a mistake. Yamin’s heart sounded like thunder roaring against his chest. His mouth contorted in anger once he snatched the phone away from his ear.

             
“Yamin, what’s wrong? Oh my God, baby what’s wrong?” Jessica asked. She had never seen him like this before. The tears that lined his face concerned her. Not only did he look hurt, but he also looked angry. His jaw tensed and she watched as his Adam’s apple bulged with each breath that he took. Jessica moved closer to him, wanting to pull him into her arms and offer him the comfort she felt he needed. “Yamin, baby talk to me. What’s going on? I’ve never seen you like this before. You’re starting to shake.”

             
She reached her hands out for him when there was a knock at the door. Jessica grazed her eyes over Yamin before leaving him to get the door. She pulled the door open and a small package was shoved into her hands.

             
“What is this?” she asked the carrier.

             
“For a Mr. Brouard,” he said in his Jamaican accent. He nodded his head, flashed a friendly smile, and walked away. Jessica closed the door and turned around to see Yamin standing directly behind her. He didn’t say anything and only pulled the package out of her hands. He peeled the packaging open and examined the contents: a small note written on a yellow piece of paper and a DVD.

             
You declared war, so there will be a war.
The note read.

             
Yamin’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. He walked over to the entertainment center and placed the DVD in the player. Snatching the remote up, he powered on the television, and pressed play on the DVD player.

             
“Yamin, tell me what’s going on?” Jessica asked anxiously.

             
Yamin stood back and waited for the DVD to start playing. There was a bout of music playing in the background and male voices that he didn’t immediately recognize.

             
“Mane, we been sitting outside this muthafucka’ for hours! Let’s just run up in that bitch and get this shit over with.”

             
“Hell nah boss man said kill the nigga first and then go up in there and get the child. He see us coming you know he gonna bust back. Gotta do this shit right- aye, there that nigga go right there and he got the baby. Kill two birds with one stone.”

             
“Make sure you do this shit right and don’t fuck up!”

             
Yamin watched as Donica’s house came into view and Cortez and Ashley came walking down the sidewalk. The video was really dark but he could tell that it was Cortez, his height and stature said it all; they were all built exactly the same way.

POW!

             
The gun shot resonated like a firecracker, it came so quick, so fast, and was obviously inevitable. Cortez never had a chance. Yamin stared at the video stone faced and without much emotion. He was watching the very murder of his brother and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it.

             
             
POW! POW!

             
“Oh my God!” Jessica gripped her chest and doubled over unable to keep the contents of her stomach down. She now knew what had caused Yamin to cry and she was able to share his pain. Anguish rose within her and she didn’t understand what Cortez could have done to cause this.

             
POW!

             
The final shot illuminated through the television’s speakers that ended Cortez’s life and Yamin watched as Ashley was snatched away and carried off into the night.

             
“Cort. Cortez. Them muthafuckas murked my youngn!” Yamin roared.

More tears poured down his face and he quickly wiped them away. He had never felt so much pain in his life. Cortez was his younger brother, the youngest of four. His mother had three boys and one girl with Yamin being the oldest of them all. He couldn’t believe that someone had taken his baby brother away from him. The pain he felt was indescribable. All he knew was that he felt horrible. He wanted payback for whoever took his brother away and wanted them to feel what he was feeling.

             
Jessica covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head to alleviate the shock she was in. She had grown very fond of Cortez; he was the one person that made her feel so welcomed to Yamin’s family. Whenever Yamin wasn’t around, Cortez had made a point to look out for Jessica and she loved him for that.

             
“Oh my God, baby I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that this has happened,” Jessica cried.

             
“These niggas wanna go to war with me! Do they not know who they’re fucking with?” Yamin questioned. He snatched up his phone and began to angrily type up a text message. “Muthafuckas wanna go to war with the League, they must not know what they’re doing.”

             
“The Leaguge?” Jessica questioned silently. This was the third time she’d heard Yamin reference a League without so much as an explanation of what he’d been talking about. She was utterly lost and couldn’t help but feel once again that Yamin was hiding something.

             
What the hell does he mean by The League? What is this League?
Jessica questioned and began to pace the floor. She tried to inconspicuously watch Yamin and his movements, but was getting nothing. He was firm and practically unreadable.

             
“Yamin, I-” Jessica froze as their hotel room door flew open and two men that she knew very well came storming in. They were pulling on the arm of the carrier that had delivered the package and he wore a very disturbing frown on his face. “Emanuel, Manny, what are you all doing here?”

             
“Sit him down over there!” Yamin instructed.

             
“Yamin, what the hell is going on?” Jessica wanted to know. She strutted over to where he stood and caught a look of disgust that she had never seen in regards to her. She didn’t know what was going on, but could feel the situation escalating.

             
“He claims that he’s just a messenger boy and that he don’t know who the package came from!” Manny stated sternly.

             
“And I say he’s a muthafuckin’ lie boss! Tell me and I’ll shoot his ass right now, Ya!” Emmanuel suggested.

             
Jessica was stunned. She didn’t know what the hell was happening and if all of this was some sort of joke. She knew Emmanuel and Manny, whom were cousins, and as employees of one of Yamin’s many businesses, but couldn’t put together why they had been there. This was supposed to be her and Yamin’s honeymoon, something that was sacred and special between the two of them, and he had brought his homeboys.

             
“Chill the fuck out Emmanuel,” Yamin interjected and nodded towards Jessica. Both Emmanuel and Manny looked over at Jessica as if they were just realizing that she had been in the room. Emmanuel was seemingly pissed that he was forced to stand down because of the elephant in the room. He shook his head and let out a deep breath. He was the eager beaver type and loved to put in work, no matter what it consisted of. He was the kind that didn’t mind getting his hands dirty. He had a get down or lay down type of attitude and enforced it heavily. Anybody that wasn’t family and wasn’t loyal could get it. Now that he’d gotten word of Cortez’s death, he was ready for whatever.

             
Calmly, Yamin walked over to where the carrier was sitting and kneeled down in front of him. He took a puff of the weed and blew a cloud of smoke into the gentlemen’s face. The carrier refused to look at him, and only stared over his shoulder. He took his hand and brought it firmly across the carrier’s face, causing a spray of blood to shoot across the room.

             
Jessica gasped, this was not the Yamin that she knew and felt that maybe she should intervene before he went too far. She rushed over to where Yamin and the carrier were and stood in between the two. She held her hands up in defense in hopes that Yamin would come to his senses. She watched as he contorted his face in anger and stood up to his feet.

             
“Baby, you need to chill out. I know that you’re angry but-”

             
“Yo, get this nigga out of here! Get whatever information you can out of him and if he don’t cooperate, murk his ass!” Yamin ordered, causing Jessica to jump. His stare never strayed away from Jessica’s face as he waited for them to exit the room. He was pissed off, but he had himself to blame for her naivety. Jessica didn’t know the truth about him; she only knew slight details about his background from what he’d told her. Most of it was fabricated, but he had his reasons for lying to her. If she’d known the truth, they wouldn’t be where they were today.

             
“Yamin, what the hell is going on? I’ve never seen you act like this before-I’m so damn confused right now! I admit that sometimes I like when you act a little gangsta, but this-this is not acceptable. You acting like a damn thug right now!”

             
Yamin chuckled, “Acting? This is far from an act, this is what I do, baby.”

             
“What do you mean? What do you mean this is what you do? I don’t like what I’m seeing,” Jessica shook her head hoping that things would start to make sense.

             
“Jessica, Jessica! Don’t play stupid, okay? You’ve been rummaging through my phone for the past year and a half looking for shit. Asking the fellas questions about me, you’ve had me followed, and all kinds of other shit-”

             
“I did all of that because I suspected that you were cheating on me,” Jessica explained. She brought her hands to her head and let out a deep sigh.

             
“And you’ve found no evidence of that, but yet you’re still suspicious about something. You telling me you-you don’t know anything? You this big time criminal attorney and you telling me you don’t know nothing about your husband? Fuck out of here?” Yamin crossed his arms over his chest and stared at Jessica intently. She stepped back and repeatedly blinked her eyes.

             
“What is that supposed to mean? Look-yes I have been checking up on you. The only thing I found was a gun charge from some years ago, after that I stopped looking into your background until I heard you mention this League all the time-or something like that. I didn’t find anything so I went back to thinking you were seeing another woman.”

             
Yamin nodded.

             
“The League. The Versace League, that’s my life,” Yamin said emotionally.

             
“What is The Versace League?” Jessica questioned.

             
“My daddy started The Versace League back in the 80’s when he and his brother were around 29 or 30. Back then niggas was just really digging into that drug shit and getting money, but my dad and uncle had a different perspective. Long story short, they liked Versace, it was classy, it was expensive, and that’s how they wanted to be recognized when people saw them. They gathered a group of individuals that exhibited the same things that they did, not in physical appearance, but in the way they thought. Their mindset, a classy and expensive mind,” Yamin said as he pointed a finger to his right temple.

             
“In 1983, they committed their first bank robbery that ‘til this day is still unsolved, by 1985 they had committed a total of 26 bank robberies that are also unsolved. By 1993, they moved on to bigger and better heists, more complicated and more complex, but with a bigger pay out. They became one of the most sought out underground organizations in the South. In 2009 my father was killed and my uncle was locked up and that’s when I took over. When I became boss, we immediately became one of the most sought out organizations in the U.S.-today we are one of the most sought out in the World.”

             
“You’re a bank robber? I don’t-I don’t understand.”

             
“Nah robbing banks went out of style in the 80’s. I’m on some new shit now, but look I don’t have time to sit here and discuss this with you. Somebody killed my youngn’ and I need to get home and handle whoever did it,” Yamin said so nonchalantly. He walked over to the closet where he and Jessica’s suitcases were and pulled them out.

             
“Yamin, I am an attorney. I can’t be involved in no shit like this! Are you serious right now? How can you deceive me like this for so long?”

             
“Jessica you knew something was going on! You knew I wasn’t a fuckin’ saint when you walked down that aisle with me! No, I wasn’t upfront with you about my life, but that’s because you weren’t privy to that information. Now that you’re my wife, I can tell you everything.”