Pawns & Kings Read online

  Copyright 2016 by D.D. Bridges

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  The characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and used only for fictitious purposes. Any similarity or resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part 1: The King and the Rooks

  Chapter I- D.J.

  Chapter II- Darius

  Chapter III- Natalie

  Chapter IV- Leah

  Chapter V- Darius

  Chapter VI- D.J.

  Chapter VII- Darius

  Chapter VIII- Leah

  Part 2: Game… Set… Match

  Chapter IX- D.J.

  Chapter X- Leah

  Chapter XI- Natalie

  Chapter XII- Darius

  Chapter XIII- Leah

  Part 3: Sacrificial Pawns

  Chapter XIV- Darius

  Chapter XV- D.J.

  Chapter XVI- Darius

  Chapter XVII- Natalie

  Chapter XVIII- Darius

  Chapter XIX- D.J.

  Chapter XX- Darius

  Chapter XXI- Natalie

  Part 4: Check…

  Chapter XXII- Darius

  Chapter XXIII- D.J.

  Chapter XXIV- Darius

  Chapter XXV- D.J.

  Chapter XXVI- Darius

  Chapter XXVII- Leah

  Chapter XXVIII- Darius

  Part 5: The Bishop Takes the Queen

  Chapter XXIX- Natalie

  Chapter XXX- Darius

  Chapter XXXI- Natalie

  Chapter XXXII- Darius

  Chapter XXXIII- D.J.

  Chapter XXXIV- Darius

  Chapter XXXV- Natalie

  The Head That Wears The Crown 2:

  Pawns & Kings

  by D.D. Bridges

  Prologue- Darius

  Sometimes, blood ain’t thicker than water. Hell, my boys had been better brothers to me than the nigga standing in front of me with his gun aimed at my head. We had the same father, the same last name, the same blood running through our veins, but that didn’t matter. My brother had become my enemy. He had always been my enemy, even before the day that he first stepped into my office. I still remember the incensed look that he carried in his eyes that day. It was the same look that he had at this very moment. Pure hatred. Unadulterated rage. All I had done was carry on my father’s legacy, and now I was about to die defending it.

  I foolishly thought that I was beginning to win D.J. over. I thought that he had reneged on his mission to destroy me while we were in Paris. He was right there in the middle of the danger and the chaos with me and my boys. He had even saved Terry’s life. But now he was standing in front of me ready to send me to my grave. What we had in common is what made us brothers, but our differentiating plights was what would always tear us apart. We envied one another. Our father had given him the one thing that I always wanted, and then he gave me what D.J. thought had been promised to him. But D.J. had to understand that we couldn’t change the way that things were. He thought that killing me would solve his problem, and maybe it would, but I couldn’t let that happen.

  “D.J., shoot him or I will,” Allen said, both of his guns pointed at me. He was the one who found my brother and put him up to this. Allen has always been a jealous motherfucker, but I never thought that he would stoop this low. I couldn’t wait for the day when he was finally brought to his knees. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had to get Leah out of there alive, then I would have blown his head off as soon as I saw his ass come walking out of the shadows.

  D.J. put his finger on the trigger. I hated what I was about to do. The last thing I wanted to do was kill my brother, but I had to in order to survive. I pointed my gun at him and put my finger on the trigger.

  Bang!

  The three of us all looked down at our chests, assuming that we had been shot, but no one had been hit. We all looked at each other in confusion.

  “Well, well, gentlemen.”

  I turned my gun in the direction of the voice. Allen and D.J. kept their guns pointed at me but turned their heads to see who was joining the party. From the other side of the room, out of the shadows walked Satan’s son, Mathieu Baptìste. As soon as I saw his face I just knew that his father, Francisco, had to be with him, but he appeared to be alone.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Allen said, taking one of his guns off of me and pointing it at Mathieu. Mathieu had his gun pointed but it wasn’t aimed at anybody in particular. He was dressed in a simple black t-shirt and jeans, but he still looked prestigious and clean cut. He was wearing a sly grin and you could tell that he thought he was the shit. The truth was that he had fooled me pretty good, making me believe that he was working for Benjamin Ziegler. He and Francisco had done a good job of setting Ziegler up and they were responsible for his death.

  “I’m a good friend of Darius,” he said, answering Allen’s question as he stood about ten feet from us.

  “You know good and damn well that we ain’t friends,” I said turning my head to him as I turned my gun back to D.J.

  He chuckled low in his throat, kept his eyes on Allen and said, “He’s right. We’re not friends; more like rivals.”

  “More like enemies, is what you mean,” I said.

  “Whatever! I don’t give a damn how y’all know each other,” Allen said to Mathieu. “Unless you want me to cap you after I cap him, then you better leave right now.”

  “I can’t do that,” Mathieu said. “See, the problem is that my father wants to have the pleasure of killing both of Daniel King’s sons himself. He’s worked too hard for that moment, and he won’t have it taken away from him by the likes of you.” He was now pointing his gun directly at Allen and hitting him with a cold stare.

  Allen dropped the hand that held the gun that was pointed at me. With his other gun still pointed at Mathieu, he took a step toward him. Mathieu didn’t flinch. I think he realized like I had that Allen wasn’t ‘bout that life. He was all talk and I doubted that he had the balls to shoot Mathieu since he hadn’t been able to shoot me.

  “Get the fuck out.. Now,” Allen said with fabricated authority behind his voice.

  Mathieu said, “Make me, motherfucker.”

  Without even hesitating, Allen aimed and pulled the trigger, but his gun jammed. The look on his face gave away that he knew he had fucked up.

  “Uh oh,” Mathieu said tauntingly as he put his finger on the trigger of his gun. Before he could let off a round though, Allen knocked the gun out of his hand. Mathieu reacted by throwing a punch that landed on Allen’s eye. They began to wrestle. Mathieu was trying to get Allen’s other gun out of his hand, and Allen was trying to turn it at an angle in order to shoot him. When I saw Mathieu knock the gun free, I knew that was my chance.

  I lunged at D.J. and wrestled him to the floor. He had been so focused on t
he scuffle that he hadn’t even seen me coming. He dropped his gun and tried to reach for it, but I pushed it away from him, causing it to slide across the room. He threw a punch at me and got me in the jaw. He threw me off of him and then got up and ran toward the gun which was over by the wall. He picked up the gun, but by the time he aimed it at me I was already up on him. I grabbed his wrist and put my other hand on his neck as I slammed him against the wall. He dropped the gun again and I kicked it away. I hit him with a left hook, then threw my right into his ribs. He keeled over in pain. I put my hands on his back then thrust my knee up into his face. He fell to the floor and I saw the blood leaking from his nose, but that didn’t stop me. I got on top of him and punched him repeatedly in his face until he was almost unconscious. Once I knew that he wouldn’t be able to get up for few minutes, I got off of him. Allen and Mathieu were still rolling around wrestling for a gun and I knew that I didn’t have much time to get Leah out of there. I snatched my gun up off of the floor and ran over to Leah.

  “You okay?” I said, kneeling beside her. She anxiously nodded her head as I slid my arms under her so that I could lift her. She wrapped her arm around my neck and then winced in pain as I stood with her in my arms. Without looking back, I began to carry her out of the building, taking the same path that I used to come in. I could still hear the altercation between Allen and Mathieu going on as I made it down the hallway. I kicked open the door that led to the alley. As soon as I walked through it we ran into a large, dark figure.

  “Darius!” a familiar voice said.

  “Mike! What the fuck you doing here?” I said once I realized that it was him. I knew that I sounded angry, but I actually couldn’t have been happier to see him.

  “I saw you when you left the house so I followed you. What the hell happened in there?” he said as we walked down the alley toward the street.

  “D.J. is in there with Allen, and so is Francisco’s son,” I told him.

  “What?!”

  “They came at me with some bullshit and used Leah to trap me.”

  Just then we heard a gunshot from inside the building. I knew that I had gotten Leah out of there just in time. The whole reason that I played it cool while we were inside was because I knew that I couldn’t let a gun-fight break out. If that had happened I knew for sure that Leah would have probably been hit by a stray bullet.

  “What you want me to do, boss?”

  I looked up and down the street and it was obvious that we were alone in this. The place was deserted other than our two cars which were parked on the other side of the street.

  I turned to Mike and said, “Take Leah and get her out of here. I’ll meet you down the street in about ten minutes. I gotta go back in there and finish this.”

  “You sure about that?” he asked as he took Leah from my arms and cradled her in his.

  “I’ll be okay. Ten minutes,” I reiterated before jogging back down the alley.

  I went through the same door and began to creep back down the hallway. I pulled my gun out even though I wasn’t even sure if I was going to use it. I still couldn’t believe that D.J. had teamed up with Allen in order to bring me down. If D.J. knew what was good for him then he would get rid of Allen as soon as possible because that nigga couldn’t be trusted. At the end of the day though, I couldn’t let either one of them stick around if it meant risking my life or the lives of the people that I cared about.

  I crept up to the opening of the room that we had been in before. I peeked around the corner and could see that they were still there. Mathieu was on the floor grimacing in pain as he tried to crawl away from Allen and D.J. I could see blood gushing from his leg so it was obvious that he was the one who had been shot. Allen and D.J. stood there, guns in hand, watching as Mathieu inched across the floor. The man was practically in tears when he finally gave up since it was obvious that he wasn’t strong enough to escape without help. He fell to the floor then rolled over on his back.

  “This shit is all your fault!” Allen barked at D.J. “If you had killed that nigga when I told you to then he wouldn’t have gotten away.”

  “If you wanted Darius dead then you should have shot him yourself,” D.J. replied.

  “That wasn’t the fucking plan!” I was shocked to see that D.J. was allowing Allen to talk to him like that. D.J. may not be a thug, but I had never seen him as a pushover. In spite of that, he was letting Allen straight punk him.

  “Well, let’s go after him,” D.J. said. It was obvious that neither of them knew that I was eavesdropping on their conversation.

  “Nah, fuck that. There’s no time now.” Allen looked at Mathieu who was lying in a puddle of his own blood and looking like he was about to faint. “Kill him.”

  “What?” D.J. said shocked.

  “You gotta prove your worth now,” Allen told him. “Show me that you still down with our plan and put a bullet in this motherfucker right now.”

  D.J. stared Allen down for a few seconds before turning his head to Mathieu. Mathieu glared at him from where he was lying on the floor and didn’t even attempt to beg for his life. He knew what was coming. D.J. slowly raised his gun, aiming it at Mathieu’s chest.

  Bang!

  I stood there stunned as Mathieu’s body went limp. I really didn’t think that D.J. had it in him to kill, but I was wrong. That nigga was cold-hearted.

  “Let’s go,” Allen tapped D.J. and said before they ran out of the room in the same direction that they had come in.

  Part 1

  The King and The Rooks

  Chapter I- D.J.

  I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling, even as I secured my gun at my back in the waist of my jeans. I had never killed anybody before that night. What should it feel like when you kill somebody? I didn’t know, but I had no idea that it would feel like that. Suddenly I felt void and hollow, which was a contradiction to the power and valiance that I felt only moments before when I had my gun aimed at my brother’s head. I had every intention of killing him, but I murdered our common enemy instead. When had I become a man that would kill someone in cold-blood? Somewhere in the midst of all of this craziness and chaos I lost myself and my hatred had taken over. But there was no turning back now. I felt a piece of me die with my first victim, and there was no resurrecting it.

  I followed Allen out of the abandoned building where we left Mathieu’s body. I followed closely behind him and hoped that he wouldn’t notice how shaky I was. I took a few deep breaths, attempting to calm my nerves. We began to make our way down the adjacent street which would lead us to the empty lot where our cars were parked. Walking was a challenge at that moment. I was still woozy from my fight with Darius. That guy packed one hell of a punch. I guess that’s what growing up in the hood will do for you.

  “Damn, man. Look at your nose,” Allen said, looking over at me as we walked side-by-side.

  I touched my nose which still had blood dripping from it. I was pretty sure that it was broken.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “Yeah, right. I can’t believe you let him beat your ass. It’s your fault that he got away,” he ranted.

  “He didn’t beat my ass,” I said bitterly. “Besides, I didn’t see you trying to spar with him.”

  “Because we didn’t come here to fight him. We came to kill him,” he said as we turned a corner. “If you had just stuck to the plan then you’d be the new CEO of Kingdom Enterprises right now.”

  “Yeah, and what would you be?” I asked. I was beginning to question Allen’s motives in this whole situation. Him having an aught against Darius just didn’t make sense to me. Obviously there was something that he was planning to get out of this.

  Allen stopped walking and turned to face me.

  “I know you’re not letting what he said get to you,” he said, pointing his finger in my face. “He’s the enemy, not me. And if you want this thing to work out for you then you better remember that.”

  “Get your finger out my damn face. What the he
ll is wrong with you?” I spat, knocking his hand down.

  “You get your mind right,” he said before we kept walking. We arrived at the empty lot and walked through the open gate. His Audi was parked right beside my 745 BMW.

  “We gotta come up with something else,” he said as we both stood at our driver’s side doors. “He knows that we’re coming for him now, so that just makes things ten times harder.”

  I knew that he was right. The only reason that we chose to expose ourselves now was because we had planned to execute him.

  “What about your girl?” I asked.

  “Who, Leah?” he said with disgust.

  “Yeah. You didn’t have to beat her like that,” I told him.

  “Oh, you gettin’ soft on me now?”

  “Nah, but my dad taught me that you never put your hands on a woman.”

  “Well, your dad’s not here,” he said. “And as far as your half-brother, if he wants to be Captain Save-a-Hoe, then let him be. That doesn’t change anything that we got going on. I’ll let that bitch heal, and then when I need her, I will call her, and she’ll come running.”

  With that, he hopped in his car and started the engine. I wasn’t sure how I felt about everything that happened that night. Yeah, I wanted Darius dead just as much as Allen did, but maybe I was playing the wrong game with the wrong player.

  Shaking my thoughts away, I got in my ride and pushed the start button. My beamer came to life and the sounds of Drake came through the speakers. Allen pulled out of the lot and I pulled out right behind him. I headed straight to my place. I owned a luxury penthouse in Buckhead. I bought it when I was eighteen but had no need for it until now. While I was in Atlanta it was my living quarters, workspace, and hideout. Sometimes the best place to hide was in plain sight.

  I pulled into the garage in the basement and rode the elevator to the top floor. The great thing about this place was that they had top-notch security around the clock. This gave me some peace of mind since I knew that Francisco was on the loose. Once he found out that his son was dead, I was sure that he would do everything in his power to find both me and Darius. But I was already two steps ahead of them. What none of them knew was that I was tracking Darius and Francisco, and I had been doing so since we got back from Paris.