“You hear that, Cleo? Your double homicide didn’t work. My guys will wake up soon. But you won’t,” Mick said as he shot Cleo with a hail of bullets. He shot her long after she was dead. He emptied every one of his rounds into her. He would have still been shooting if he had the smoke.
And Cleo was out. She was dead.
Then Mick dropped his gun to his side, and looked at Ricardo. At the young man he was certain every DNA test would prove was his son. “Call 911,” he said to whomever was listening.
Teddy wasn’t about to. Ricardo might be his half-brother, but so what? He helped her kill their capos at that cabin. What he looked like calling 911 for him? Let him rot in hell as far as Teddy was concerned.
But Monk wasn’t Teddy, and they didn’t call him Monk for no reason. He did as Mick ordered, and called for help.
EPILOGUE
A hospital was the last place Mick and Roz wanted to visit, but they showed up anyway.
They made their way to the seventh floor, down a long corridor, and ultimately into Room 783 where Ricardo DeSouza was laid up still recovering.
It had been six weeks since that night in that house on Bluebond Road and this was Mick’s first visit. What Roz loved most about it was the fact that she didn’t have to ask him to do it the way she had to force him to spend more time with his emotionally neglected children when she first met him. She was praying he would come to that conclusion himself and do the right thing.
But Mick wasn’t so sure if it was the “right” thing to do. That joker killed his capos. Doing his mother’s bidding, he nearly killed Mick and Roz and Duke and Nikki too. All because she was rejected. All because she couldn’t have what she wanted. All because he had turned her out.
And that was the part Mick had to own.
And that was why he decided to pay his son a visit.
A policeman was guarding the door. Ricardo was going straight into custody after he recovered from what Hammer Reese said were nine gunshot wounds. “Six gunshots here. Nine gunshots there. You and your son must have some thick-ass blood,” Hammer said to Mick. “You two can take a licking and keep on ticking!”
And when Mick opened the door after he and Roz were allowed inside,taking itwas the exact thing on Mick’s mind. Hetook whatever they threw his way. And so did his son. That much Mick could respect. The rest he could not.
Ricardo was sitting upright in his bed. It was Roz’s first time seeing him in person and she was struck by how young he looked. She knew he was in his twenties, but he looked as if he could be fifteen. And he looked like Duke in so many ways to Roz. She saw Mick in him too.
She remembered how Mick said Cleo spoke about that young man the night she died, and how she said she hated him because he reminded her of Mick, and used him his whole life to get what she wanted. That had to be horrifying for him.
But Mick was right. It was difficult to feel sorry for a killer.
“Hello Ricardo,” Mick said as they walked up to his bedside.
“Hello sir.” Ricardo was staring unblinkingly at them, as if he was waiting for them to lash out at him like his mother had to have lashed out at him the night he rescued her from that cabin and took her to his house.
But when there was no lashing out, they could tell Ricardo had a few questions. And he wasn’t shy about asking them. “Why did y’all come see me?”
“Because you’re my son,” Mick said.
Ricardo stared at him. “That’s the only reason?”
Mick nodded.“Yes.”
Ricardo continued to stare at him. “All my life I was taught to hate you. I was told all those horrific things you did to my mama, and how much you used and abused her. But all the while she was the one using and abusing me. And I didn’t even know it.”
“When did you realize it?” Roz asked him.
He smiled a smile that wasn’t meant to be joyful. Then he shook his head. “When she was pumping nine bullets into me,”he said, and Roz’s heart dropped. “When the first bullet struck, I looked up at her as if it couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. But by bullet number three or four, all thatcouldn’t beshit was over. It was true. She hated my guts.”
“Were you the one who beat her up?” Roz asked him.
“That’s what the cops asked me too. But no ma’am. I never did anything to my mother but worship the ground she walked on.”
“They already determined those were self-inflicted wounds,” Mick said. “She was a sick bitch.”
Ricardo nodded. “I know that now. Nobody could tell me that then. Although many people tried.” Then he looked at Mick. “Could I ask you a question?”
