Avenge Thy Brother

Chapter 1: Disastrous Moment

"Give me an example."

He closed his eyes for a second before slowly stating, "Many lonely nights ahead. Nights like this bring me dread." He reopened his eyes and said, "They'd say stuff like that. Sometimes it would rhyme like the one I just repeated and sometimes it just didn't make any sense."

The moment he said those rhyming phrases, I froze up. My mind immediately went back to the night Tommy woke up from his coma and then died mere seconds later. Every time I heard the words night or nights, I thought about Tommy because it was his final word. Thinking of Tommy put my mind on another track and I found myself wanting to know more about why the fraternity chose him. What made them go after Tommy?

"Wesley, I know this might have nothing to do with what we're talking about in this moment, but I need to know. Why Tommy? Why did you target my best friend? Of all the black gay men at Calhoun University at that time, why Tommy?"

He smirked immediately and replied, "He should've never began digging into the disappearances of those missing men. Calvin saw that shit and we did what we had to do. The way I see it, Tommy put himself in our crosshairs."

"You bastard."

"Oh, come on. I know you're not getting upset about that after all these years. Cameron, that shit is just as dead as Tommy."

"You shut the fuck up!"

"Had your friend not gotten himself into that shit, he would be alive today. We had no idea he was with that basketball player until you got caught up in the shit, too. Maybe we would've gotten Tommy by coincidence but most likely, we wouldn't have."

"Bullshit. I'm not buying any of this."

"Quite frankly, I don't give a fuck what you want to believe or not believe. It is irrelevant at this point. If you want any chance at shutting down the entire network then you better listen to what I have to say."

"So far, you haven't told me shit other than I can't trust anyone at the bureau."

"The trail has gone cold, hasn't it?" When I didn't answer, he shook his head and folded his arms before saying, "It's gone cold because you've obviously spooked one of the moles in your department. I suggest you keep quiet until you can find a way into the network. You have all of my men in custody, the ones that are alive anyway. Talk to them because they may know things that I don't about his men."

"I feel like you're still deceiving me about Tommy. I'm warning you, Wesley, don't push me to do something I can't take back. Because once I leave this room without a deal, that's it." I stared into his eyes and asked him again, "Why Tommy?"

He lounged back in his chair and looked down at the table for a while without saying anything. Finally, after a lengthy period of silence, he looked back into my eyes and told me, "We did kill Tommy to silence him about the fraternity's secret but that was after we'd already been given orders to kill him. Calvin wasn't the head of the school paper when we got the order to kill Tommy because we got that order when Tommy was a freshman."

His revelation made my heart stop for a second. I kept myself together as I asked him, "Why?"

"Cameron, I need you to listen to me. I know this sounds crazy but I guess it has to be said in order for you to cut me the deal." He took a deep breath and revealed, "Even before I was working at Calhoun University, I was coordinating the killings after my brother's suicide. I was working with the network and they had their eyes set on Tommy before he arrived on campus. To you, Tommy was your best friend since childhood. But to them, he was an enormous threat."