FREDDY PRINCE | CH. 11
Chapter Eleven
After a long day of work, Freddy was finally ready to go home for the night. It was around midnight when Mo gave him the heads-up about Kalani being enraged about something. She barged her way into the lobby like a madwoman and was on her way upstairs to him. Mo couldn’t say what Kalani was mad at, but she figured whatever it was had to be something important.
When Kalani made it to the top floor, Freddy was already waiting for her at the elevator door. He was eager to know what was going on, though he felt he already knew another one of those demons Fantasia summoned was on its way to him.
“You knew!”
Kalani lashed out as soon as she saw him.
“You knew all this time! You watched my father dump my mother’s body like she was trash, and you never said anything!”
She slapped and punched at him, trying to claw his eyes out, it seemed. But Freddy didn’t retaliate. He felt like he earned it.
“Kalani, stop! Listen. Let me explain.”
He tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear him. All she could hear was the sound of her own voice, drowning in sorrow, anger, and pain. She couldn’t believe she trusted Freddy. The guy who got praised for being such a great humanitarian, a great friend, and a loving member of the community. But after what she saw on those video files, she saw him as a fraud.
Kalani slid to the floor and cried. It was all she could do. When she saw Freddy on video watching everything her father did that night, she felt betrayed by him. She thought that if he had gone forward and told the police what he saw, her mother's case might’ve gotten solved a long time ago.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked. “Even if it wasn’t what it looked like, why wouldn’t you say anything?”
He was stuck. Something inside wanted him to tell her the truth; he wanted to tell her the truth, but the mayor. Mack. His career. All of those things played a factor in what could affect him for the rest of his life.
“Look,” he said, lifting Kalani to her feet. “I should've said something. I should’ve told you a long time ago what I saw that night.”
He thought about Mack and his threats. Montgomery and the NDA too. Freddy wasn’t an easy kill or a man who ran from danger, but he didn’t want to go back to his old way of life. He wanted to make a genuine change and stick to it.
“I didn’t know what I saw that night,” Freddy said, feeling chills all over his body. “At the time, I thought it was a bad fucking dream, or Montgomery was getting rid of some mothafucka who fucked with his campaign or something. I didn’t know it could’ve been Naomi until the news hit. When he came to my office the next day with some macho-looking mothafucka offering me money and handing me this NDA to sign, I knew something wasn’t right. I just didn’t know what. I still don’t know what.”
Kalani stared at him, trying to find a reason to blame him. She wanted every single person who had anything to do with what happened to her mother to pay, but she couldn’t find a reason to hate Freddy. He was a genuine man who got caught up in the devil's work.
“My mother knew who killed your mom,” Kalani said.
Freddy’s eyes fluttered after her words. They were words that nearly crippled him as he tried to digest what she said.
“What did you say?” he asked, his voice almost a whisper.
“I got some video footage from a woman who worked with my mom. She held onto it all these years because she was afraid the same thing would happen to her if she said what she knew. Someone who works with my dad killed your mom. My mom found out about it and was gonna go to the police. Unfortunately, she was silenced before she made it.”
Nothing Kalani said made sense to Freddy in the heat of the moment. Everything felt like a blur to him. He was lost about why anyone from the mayor's office would want to kill his mom, but then he remembered all the work and research she did on Montgomery.
“Who?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Kalani finally stood on her feet again.
“Your mom was gonna expose my dad, but about what? I saw a clip of them going back and forth about something that looked heated. When she left his office that night, it was the last time she was seen alive.”
Freddy thought long and hard about what his mother could’ve possibly known and how he could find out what it was. But the more he thought about Montgomery, the angrier he got. Fantasia was right. All that time he spent giving Montgomery the benefit of the doubt, believing his mother had lost her life at the hands of the police, and his sister was right.
“I’ma kill that mothafucka.”
Freddy charged toward a framed painting on his wall and flipped it forward to expose a safe. He grabbed a gun and a burner phone, tucked the gun in his waistband, and took off to another room in his office.
Kalani stood speechless. Paranoid even. She was nervous about what he would do and who he would go after, but during all her worrying, she realized something about Freddy she would’ve never guessed. He wasn’t as innocent as he looked in the public eye.
“Freddy, what are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t just go off killing people.”
“Why not? Your father did.”
“You said it yourself; you don’t know that his hands are dirty for sure. It could’ve been anyone.”
“Then I’ma find out whose hands are dirty and wipe them clean. Let’s go. I got business to handle.”
His eyes were cold, and his tone was even colder. Kalani felt a chill in her spine as they rode the elevator down to the lobby. She was afraid to even look at him for fear that he would snap and turn on her. Though she understood his anger and pain, she didn’t want him to do anything to get himself in trouble. Or worse.
“Do you know where your dad is now?” he asked as they stepped off the elevator.
“I’m not sure I wanna tell you that, to be honest,” she said. “I still have work to do on my mom's case, and I can’t do that if he’s dead.”
Freddy stopped in his tracks and glared at her. He didn’t think about her mother. He didn’t think about the consequences of his actions either. The only thing on his mind was to find the mayor and lay him down.
“Look,” Kalani said. “I know you’re upset, but you have to think before you act. My dad is a decorated Marine; a trained killer. And so is Mack. Do you really think they’re not watching their surroundings? You can’t just barge in on either of them. Besides, I think Mack might have something to do with this too, and the only way we can find out the truth is to keep them alive.”
As much as Freddy wanted to say fuck that and do what his first mind told him to do, Kalani was right. He needed to think before he made a move that could end everything he had going for himself.
“Fine,” he said. “How are we supposed to go about getting the answers?”
Kalani stood quietly. She didn’t know how they would make either her dad or Mack tell the truth, or where they could find the truth. She had to find a weak link in their connection somewhere and break it.
“You know Shonnie, right?” she asked.
Freddy frowned. He forgot all about his last interaction with Shonnie. It was before Kalani knew he hid information about her mother, but since it was out in the open, he felt secure enough to speak about it.
“Yeah. What about her?” he asked.
“Well, she’s been having an affair with my dad for a long time now. Maybe we can break her. She seems to be the weakest link here. Maybe she knows something.”
“The Weakest link?” Freddy chuckled. “I can tell you right now, Shonnie is nowhere near weak. She’s probably the most scandalous of them all.”
While they stood in the middle of his lobby contemplating their next move, a masked man circled the building looking for a way in. They were both too wrapped up in trying to think of a plan to notice until the loud crashing of glass and gunfire sent them running for cover.
“This way!”
Freddy grabbed Kalani by the arm and pulled her behind him. With their heads low and hearts racing, he pulled her into the nearest hallway and ran for cover.
“Who the fuck is that!?”
He shouted over the gunfire that followed them.
“I don’t know!” Kalani screamed. “What are we gonna do?”
They made it to the back of the building before the gunman saw which way they went. In a room staged as a conference room, Freddy locked the doors and immediately raced for the closet.
“Get over here,” he ordered Kalani. “Take this.”
He handed her the gun from his waistband while he hurried to open another safe. That safe was a lot bigger and stocked with more artillery than Kalani had ever seen in person.
“What the hell?” she whispered.
He removed a large assault rifle and quickly tossed two more like it into a duffle bag. He also tossed in a couple of handguns and extra ammo.
“Let’s move,” he said, making his way to a back door in the conference room. “Follow me out this door and keep your eyes open. If you see anybody who ain’t me, shoot them.”
Kalani’s heart pounded so hard she could feel the drum in the pit of her stomach. She was scared for her life. Her father taught her how to use a gun when she was a child, but the fear of an unknown assailant firing at her made her forget all of her techniques.
When they made it out of the building, Freddy clutched his rifle in one hand and Kalani’s hand in the other. He didn’t think twice about protecting her. His main focus was to get them both to safety and find out who the fuck was shooting at them.
“There he is!”
Kalani saw the masked man coming from the building just as they made it to Freddy’s car. His first thought was to raise his rifle and fire back at the man who tried to kill them, but he didn’t want to risk their lives any more than they already had that night.
“Get in,” he ordered. “Hurry up.”
The gunman raced toward them with his rifle pointed in their direction. He wasn’t firing, but the closer he got, the more Freddy thought he might start again. Luckily for them, they were able to get in the car and pull out of the parking lot before he was able to.
“What the fuck just happened?” Kalani asked, her hands resting over her heart. “Oh my God, I think I’m about to pass out. Holy shit.”
Freddy’s mind was overloaded. He couldn’t imagine who the gunman could’ve been until he thought about Shonnie. She threatened him the last time they spoke, so he figured it was someone she sent. Then again, he didn’t want to believe she was actually ruthless enough to try to kill him.
“Do you have any idea who that was? Did your dad have that white man follow you here?”
“I don’t know.”
Kalani panted, trying to catch her breath.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen Mack at all. It could have been him. But why?”
Her mind was racing too. She tried to remember any details she could from what little she saw of the man shooting at them, but there wasn’t much she could think of.
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