A Families Betrayal

A Families Betrayal

Monica Owens

Copyright © 2019 Monica Owens

All rights reserved. No part(s) of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form, or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval systems without prior expressed written permission of the author of this book.

Disclosure

This book is a work of fiction! Names, characters, businesses, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

So don’t be thinking it’s about you!!!

Thank you to all my readers, and all my haters!! Kisses!!

ISBNs

ePub: 978-1-5356-1639-3

mobi: 978-1-5356-1640-9

Table of Contents

The Beginning

First Bite

Words from a Coward

The Fresh Start

Summertime

Birthday Morning

Uncle Jack

Revenge

Lennie and Lucifer

The Mindset

Funny-Acting People

Runaway Girls

Time for Action

Time to Put It on the Track

Slutice Goes to Jail

Haters Lurking

A Caterpillar or Butterfly

CHAPTER 1

The Beginning

Love. Most people might say

that family is love, or the personification of love, and that your family are the ones who are supposed to love you more than anyone in the world. Your family should be supportive; they should treat you with kindness, respect, and understanding no matter what. But what if there were some people who thought money, or having money, was the personification of love, and family was frivolous, merciless, worthless, and violent? If you had a family like Marla’s, you would wish you were an orphan, or, better yet, never born.

Marla, who lived in the small town of Mount Vernon, Illinois, was book-smart, street-smart, and a hustler. She had dreams of one day leaving the small town that the local people who lived there called Money Earning Mount Vernon and starting over someplace new where she could just live without any of the negative ways of life she had to learn in order to survive. A lot of the people who lived in Money Earning were into gangs, pimping, selling dope, robbing, stealing, killing, or selling pussy as a way of life. When you grow up in an environment like that, you become a product of your environment if you’re not careful.

Even if you are careful, you still have to deal with people who are mentally unstable, who have a twisted and hopeless state of mind.

Marla was different; she had dreams, wanted more out of life, and knew her smarts could get her out of this hellhole. But if she had to depend on her looks or an occasional bat of her honey-nut-brown eyes to get her out, she wouldn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done. She’d been around women who used their good looks and sex appeal to get what they wanted in life, but she prayed that she would never have to stoop that low. So she constantly prepared herself for the moment the opportunity presented itself; it dictated her every interaction, and she made every move out of calculation.

There was always some bullshit going on in Money Earning; everybody was always in everybody’s business, and when they couldn’t get in your business they would make something up and run with it. Money Earning was so small that everyone knew where everyone who was anyone in the town lived. There was nowhere you could hide, and Marla couldn’t wait until she turned eighteen so she could get the hell out of there, and she was never gonna come back. It was crazy; who wanted to live in a negative place where it seemed damn near everybody was your cousin, auntie, or uncle? This was also a very, very violent place to live, where getting killed over something like a piece of chicken or a cup of Kool-Aid was a reality. One thing that Marla couldn’t understand was how the whole town was related to her. She racked her brain, and for the life of her, could not fathom the complexities of her extensive family tree, clan, tribe, or whatever it was. She could not wrap her mind around the questionable connections of a whole town being related to her family one way or another. How was that possible? When your mother was a whore, what did you expect?

If you were unfortunate enough to live in this town, then you and everyone else you knew who lived there felt like they had something to prove. Being hard was the thing. People had to think that you were tough, so you had to let other people know not to fuck with you, and one of the only ways to do that was by showing people the crazy shit you were capable of doing, either because you feared your life was in danger, or out of pure ignorance. The funny thing about it was that nobody was really from Money Earning, and almost all of the people who lived there were gang members—ex-gang members, but Chi-Town lived by a whole different set of rules, and that was why everyone was running here from Chicago and Chicago Heights—and you had a few people who migrated here from the south. But most of the people who lived in Money Earning were running from their past or some crime they had committed, and they needed a fresh start, a new place to live, where no one knew who they were or what they had done. It was the perfect place to reinvent yourself, hide from enemies, or to disappear after snitching, robbing a connect or catching a body. To be tough again, when deep down in your heart you knew that you were a coward. Everybody here was somebody else in their given place of origin, and their stories never seemed to make sense, add up, or be completely believable. This was Money Earning, though, and everybody knew how things went in Money Earning. It was the place to be for some people, but not for Marla.

Marla lived with her mother, Ella. They stayed in a two-bedroom apartment in a rough area on the west side of town in the projects called Fight Square. Ella was a single mother with eight children, who constantly went to church and would always recite Bible scriptures to let people know that she knew her Bible, with no job, but she kept plenty of money and plenty of men.

Ella was sleeping around with a couple of men around the time she got pregnant with Marla, but she knew who Marla’s father was even though she had slept with more than one man around the time she got pregnant.

Ella’s first child was named Elvis, who turned out to be a con man. His dad, Stan, was about the same age as Ella. They grew up together in the same neighborhood. He didn’t have much at the time, just a job at the local grocery store stocking shelves, but he made an honest living. Back in the 1960s, Ella got pregnant with Elvis while playing spin the bottle with Stan and a few other kids from the neighborhood. Stan would always come around before Elvis was born, but by the time he was born, Ella had run him off. Stan had actually been Ella’s first. She was a virgin prior to having sex with Stan, but he had no idea he was her first because Ella acted like she had been with other men, but she really hadn’t been with anyone but Stan.

He really liked Ella and wanted marry her, but she just didn’t like him so she made up a story and told him that Elvis wasn’t his child, even though she knew that he was. That broke Stan’s heart, so he never came back around her again.

Then her next three children—one girl, Cadence, Marla’s oldest sister, who was very outgoing and witty, and two boys, Lennie, a wannabe pimp who got hooked on drugs, and David, an ex-drug dealer—all had the same dad. His name was Hurtis. Hurtis was a cockstrong geechie from South Carolina, who was a professional prizefighter that would whoop Ella’s ass all the time. I mean he would fuck her up when they were together. He would beat her like she was a nigga, and he would make her strip butt naked and beat her with an extension cord or with his belt on a regular basis. He was one of them insecure-ass niggas. He would always tell Ella how much he loved her after every ass-whooping he gave her. It got to a point that she truly believed that he loved her, and by beating on her almost every day he was expressing the love he had for her. Ella was addicted to him beating on her, just as much as he was addicted to beating on Ella. It was a high that they were both addicted to, and once they got a taste of that high, neither one of them wanted to come down. She would do stupid shit to basically provoke him to beat on her. She would get dressed, put on makeup, and do her hair right before he would get home to make him think she had left the house, but in reality she had no plans to step one foot outside. She was just seeking the love and attention that she did not get at home when she was a child, but she was going about getting it the wrong way. But this was what she had seen the women in her family do. She would do this at least two or three times a week for years, just so he would think she had been out running in the streets and was just returning home, so he would beat her ass every time he thought she was out fucking somebody. There were rumors going around that Ella had slick murdered Hurtis’s ass in cold blood, and that she got away with it too. It was said she didn’t spend a single night in jail.

I told yo slave-blood-looking ass not to leave this muthafucking house. Yo ass been out here cheating on me, Hurtis said as he punched Ella in the face repeatedly. She did her best to dodge the first punch to her face from the jolting combination of blows that he threw, but she couldn’t get out the way quick enough.

So she fell to the ground, instantly balled herself up on the floor, and started screaming. Ain’t nobody cheating on you, who would cheat with me? she said, trying to calm his ass down. I went to your mama’s house and to the store to get milk for the kids. This time she was actually telling the truth. She took the kids to see his mother for a few hours because she had called and asked her to bring them over so she could see them. After Ella and the kids left Hurtis’s mother’s house, they stopped at the store and she grabbed a gallon of milk for the kids.

Look, bitch! I told yo monkey ass not to leave this house, Hurtis said as he threw blows that connected to Ella’s face with every syllable that he said. Slave-blood, you should have waited for me. You know what time it is! Take them damn clothes off! Hurtis said as he stopped hitting her so he could take his belt off.

Ella started to take off her clothes. I’m tired of this shit, Hurtis. You can’t keep beating on me, said Ella.

Hurtis grabbed Ella by her hair.

Let my hair go! I’m not yo child, Hurtis, please let my hair go, said Ella.

Look here now, bitch, I done told you about disrespecting me. You must think yo ass grown? I’m the man of this house and when I tell you to do something, then that’s what you do, said Hurtis.

I’m not doing shit! yelled Ella.

Oh, you gone take this ass whoopin and shut yo ass up, said Hurtis. Hurtis slapped Ella a few more times. You got my dinner ready wit yo slave-blood ass? Quit all that damn crying. You grown, right? said Hurtis.

Yeah, I’m grown, and yo little-dick ass gone stop hitting on me, said Ella.

You like getting these ass-whoopins? said Hurtis.

I’m tired of you making my children think I’m a bad person when it’s you, you’re the bad one, said Ella.

You’re the one out here flirting and fucking other men. You probably sleeping with other women too, said Hurtis.

I’m not fucking nobody. I’m telling you the truth, yelled Ella.

Hurtis was so crazy, he even accused Ella of sleeping with his own mama, and that was the moment when Ella started to fight for her life. This nigga was on the verge of killing her this day and she knew it. Hurtis pulled a .38 snub-nosed out of his waistband from the small of his back, and as he raised the gun to her face, she kneed Hurtis in his nuts. As he toppled over, the gun fell out of his hand, onto the floor, and Ella grabbed it and heard a loud bang! Ella had shot Hurtis.

She didn’t want to shoot him, but she felt as though she didn’t have a choice. All she could think of was that he was going to kill her and the kids this time. So she grabbed the kids and ran out of the house to Hurtis’s mom’s house just around the corner as he lay on the floor bleeding. She was so scared and afraid that she just held Cadence and the two boys in her arms as she rocked back and forth, thinking Hurtis was going to kill her when he got out of the hospital. Little did she know, Hurtis layed there deader than a doorknob.

Back in those days, niggers or coloreds, as they called black people, could kill each other and get away with it, because whites simply didn’t care what the niggers or coloreds did to each other. As long as Hurtis wasn’t a white man, everything was all right. So when Ella shot and killed her husband in self-defense it wasn’t a big deal to them. The sheriff was so happy to get rid of Hurtis, it wasn’t funny. He took Ella down the police station for questioning, and after she told him what happened, Ella wasn’t charged with anything, and the sheriff released her the same night, after he forced Ella to have sex with him.

Hurtis would get drunk and ride around town shooting in the air, shooting at white people. He didn’t care who he was terrorizing. He would terrorize black and white people for no good reason. When he finished terrorizing the townspeople, he would go home and beat the shit out Ella. The sad thing about it was that Ella didn’t want to kill Hurtis. She didn’t want to shoot him. She just wanted him to stop. She didn’t want him to kill her or her kids. For the first time in her life, Ella was truly afraid for her life and for her children’s lives. That was the first time that Hurtis had pulled a gun on Ella, and it turned out to be the last time.

That’s the night that changed everything for Ella. She knew she had to leave, so she decided to move to Money Earning Mount Vernon, IL. She was running from something, just like almost everyone else who lived in Money Earning Mount Vernon. She wanted to put that horrible time in her life behind her. She just wanted to make a fresh start for herself and her children, but she couldn’t. Killing Hurtis was her first taste of blood.

Ella was a fresh new face in Money Earning, and a lot of the men found Ella attractive, which she was. She had beautiful bright skin, juicy-ass lips, deep dimples, and sexy-ass body. She thought that, since Hurtis almost killed her because he thought she was out fucking other men when she wasn’t, any man she would deal with would think the same thing. She also needed money to pay rent and to take care of the kids, so she