Page 53 of Alpha Bait

I couldn't believe his stupidity.

"You bastard," Ames roared.

Nothing I said could have changed what happened next.

Ames rushed my brother despite Donnie’s gun pointed directly at his pale face. Donnie may have been acting tough, but putting a bullet through the chest of one Carmichael had proved to be enough. Despite his threats he did nothing to shoot when Ames rushed my brother.

Ames kicked Jamal to the ground easily, having the advantage of the element of surprise. The blows began and I screamed again as he punched my brother's chest and slammed his head into the pavement.

I half expected Rich to do something to help me. To take my side.

Instead, he rushed Donnie, snatching the gun out of his hand and hitting my cousin until he fell to the ground. He landed a swift kick in my cousin's rib cage that caused Donnie to cry out.

"Stop it! Stop it!"

I screamed with futility. There was no getting through to any of them. They had all been lost to the animalistic frenzy of our family disagreement.

My screams proved to be ineffective in prying them apart from each other.

Ames had stepped back, perhaps catching hold of his sense of morality. Rich, on the other hand, was unfettered in his expressions of rage towards my brother. He left Donnie on the ground to pursue an attack on Jamal. I screamed as Rich landed a right hook in his face and continued to beat my brother to a bloodied pulp before my eyes. There was blood. Too much blood.

I screamed at Ames, "do something!"

He seemed just as shocked by Rich's aggression as I was. The men who had once been friends during their boyhood were now sworn enemies and the impact of that had evolved into a magnificent mess.

The ambulances came first. They attempted to get Rich to calm down and to stop him from going too far and taking another life. They managed to pull him off my brother, but Jamal was unconscious. I couldn't bring myself to go to him. If he were dead, I didn't want to see his face. And if he were alive, I still would never forgive him for encouraging my cousin to pull the trigger.

I didn't wish my brother to die, but the violence had numbed me.

Of course Rich was angry. His cousin lay lifeless and pale, nearly as cold as the pavement already thanks to the weather. The paramedics pulled the white sheet over her corpse and lifted her like a broken porcelain doll into the back of an ambulance.

Lifting my brother proved to be an entirely different challenge for them. The paramedics had assigned Ames the task of holding back his brother and then the four of them struggled to lift my hefty brother onto a stretcher to put him in the back of an ambulance.

Once they had him secured, I rushed to the paramedics, telling them that I was his sister. They wouldn't allow me to leave with him, stating that they were waiting for the cops to arrive. Until then, they'd try to get him stable.

As they attempted to get my brother stable in the back of an ambulance we waited for what felt like hours for the cops to finally show up.

Hulking NYPD officers swarmed the park. Two black males and a gunshot were enough to call for what felt like an entire squadron.

Rich sat on the ground, his hands coated in blood and his face seething in anger. Ames decided to handle the cops and he approached them explaining everything that had happened. While Ames spoke to some officers, a couple more came over to me intending to make sense of the bloodied scene that had ended in a life being taken. Possibly two.

We would have a long night ahead of us and the night would stretch even longer when I realized that my mother would eventually have to find out everything that had happened here.

She had forbidden warring amongst us. I didn't know who fired the first shot or who took the first punch. All I knew was that a Holloway had drawn Carmichael blood. Having taken the first life, we were the ones who started this. Discomfort settled in my chest and I could barely listen as the officer asked me to recount details of the night.

I managed to run circles around where I had been prior to arriving at the park. They didn't press too much further about my previous whereabouts as what happened on the scene was dramatic enough to capture the majority of their attention. I watched as they cuffed Donnie and took him to the back of a police car, continuing to question the rest of us as we waited.

I should have known what Ames first move would have been. When I saw the gold Cadillac pulling up to the park I was confused at first. Then I realized: lawyers.

The Carmichael lawyers were legendary throughout the state. Their genius lawyer, the former district attorney, had served to handle the majority of their disputes and it was rare that the Carmichael family entered a dispute in which they lost. The case of my father's stolen technology being the first example of their ruthlessness when it came to the law.

Donnie was screwed. My brother lay in an unconscious heap and Selena had died.

As Ames and I illuminated more of what happened, the cops insisted on arresting Rich as well. Perfect. My secret boyfriend and my cousin were carted off by police cars and the rest of us were told to head down to the station immediately.

None of us staring none of us dared to be defiant.

I took it upon myself to call our lawyers and purposefully avoided calling my mother before I stepped into my town car for the long journey to the nearest precinct.

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