Honor

The gun dipped down for a second and I saw the kid poke his head out. He looked so young, so untried, that I couldn’t imagine him being the one that was behind all the things that had been happening at the club. I couldn’t fathom that he was the one that might very well give my devil hell. I couldn’t sit there and do nothing while the man I loved had a gun pointed at him. All this time I was determined to be by his side and that included when he was facing something that might end it all for both of us.

“You have no idea what he put us through.” The kid sounded like he was going to cry.

I saw Nassir nod his head and looked down at the buzzing phone in my lap. I knew that Chuck was making his way around the back of the club and the cops were on their way. Chuck had heard the gunshots from inside. I crept around the fender and poked my head around the side. Both Nassir and the kid turned to look at me, and before I could say anything, Nassir took a step closer to the end of the gun so that now, if the kid did pull the trigger, there was nowhere for the bullet to go but right into the center of his chest.

“I do know and it isn’t right. You didn’t deserve it.”

The kid snarled something low and furious as Nassir lifted his hands up and away from his chest. The kid slowly moved to exit the van, the gun only inches from the center of Nassir’s chest. It was almost touching him. The kid wiped his free hand over his mouth and his eyes started to dart around the parking lot.

“He was always an asshole. He liked to use his fists on all of us. He drank too much, cheated on my mom, and there was never any money, but he was gone most of the time, so we just sort of weathered the storm when he was home.”

I heard Nassir heave a sigh and I rose to my feet so that I was standing behind him. “Please don’t do this.” There was a quiver in my voice but my heart made me sound stronger than I was feeling. I touched my face, surprised to find a steady stream of silent tears running across my cheeks.

Nassir spared me a hard glance over his shoulder and turned back around to focus all his attention on the armed teenager. “Until I got my hands on the old man and you were trapped in a house with him.” Nassir sounded resigned and regretful. His words were heavy and his posture was repentant. He was actually sorry for what had happened to the kid because of his actions, even if they had been done to save me.

“I could take the beatings because eventually I got big enough to fight back. The filth, and the abuse, meant nothing because all along the worst thing he was doing was touching my sisters. He couldn’t go out after you crippled him, wouldn’t leave the house because of his fucked-up face, so instead of being his kids, my sisters became his new targets. Their childhood, their innocence, was stolen because of you. At first I thought I could just ruin your business, make you mad, and force you to spend all your precious money, but then I realized it wasn’t enough. You had to pay like we did. You should have your life, your future, taken away just like my sisters did.”

Nassir made another noise low in his throat and I saw him wave his hand. A slight movement caught my eye and I saw Chuck and a couple of the other security staff creeping around the side of the building with their own guns drawn.

“I understand why you feel that way, I really do, but if you kill me, if you pull that trigger, you are making a choice that you can’t unmake. You are doing exactly what your old man set you up to do. You are acting like nothing more than the monster I started to build all those years ago.”

He reached out his hand to grab the kid’s shoulder, and when the young man jerked away, I wasn’t the only witness to the scene that gasped. Nassir was playing a dangerous game and he was going to lose everything if the kid didn’t choose to play along. I was scared of losing him and my heart broke as he tried so desperately to make this troubled young man see that even in hell there were options. No matter where you were or what your future looked like, your life was a product of the choices you made. That was why I needed to be able to give the people here in the Point the chance to make better lives for themelves. Every action had a consequence and sometimes it was the consequences that could kill you.

“You have the opportunity to make your shitty life into something better. Go get your sisters out of the system and give them a better life, the life they always deserved. Worry about saving them and yourself instead of ruining something that’s already been broken and repaired too many times to count. Put the gun down and make the choice to be something better than I am, to be better than what your old man tried to beat into you.”

The gun wobbled a little and I thought my devil did his thing and bargained with his greatest asset—his life—and won. I tried to exhale a breath that felt like it was stuck in my throat, and I saw Chuck creeping closer and closer. His gaze was shifting between where I was still crouched behind the SUV and where Nassir stood with the young man on the other side.

“How am I supposed to be anything other than this?!” The kid’s voice rose and I heard panic and something wild in it. “I didn’t finish high school. I have no money, no job, and my family is in pieces. In this place, being a man makes you weak, but being a monster makes you a legend.”

He was going to pull the trigger. I saw it at the same time Chuck did because I screamed Nassir’s name and scrambled to my feet so I could launch myself across the front seats of the SUV to try to grab ahold of him. There was no way I was going to make it in time. The gun was too close to his chest and the kid had already made up his mind.

The first blast made me deaf and had Nassir wilting to the ground as soon as it sounded. I wasn’t fast enough to get him before he hit the asphalt. The rapid blasts that followed had the kid’s body jerking in a morbid dance in front of my eyes as bullets tore into him, making the gun fall out of his hand. He collapsed on the ground across from his victim.