Baby Brother by 50 Cent, Noire

in a pool of blood sent Finesse running. The floor was littered with bodies. Some were moving and moaning, others were still.
    “Farad!” he shouted, slipping in blood as he ran down the aisle. He had stormed down into the cellar room without realizing his twin was down. It was only when Tony went to work on Borne and the torturous screaming began that he’d looked around for his brother.
    Finesse wasn’t letting Tony take it all. That muthafuckah knew to save some of that niggah for him and Farad too. But when he looked for Farad so they could get a piece of Borne’s ass before Tony completely disfigured him, a sinking feeling had slammed into him as he realized his brother was nowhere in sight.
    He’d bounded back upstairs, ignoring the Puerto Rican cat who was watching the door, his eyes scanning the store for Farad.
    He found him lying facedown. The back of his shirt was soaked through with blood, and he wasn’t moving.
    “Farad!”
    Finesse turned his brother over and stared down into his still face. A moan of pain, fear, and rage ripped through him, as he slid his arms beneath his brother’s body and sat him up, then lifted him. He staggered from the store. Feet sliding in blood, banging into display shelves and pumped with adrenaline.
    “I got you, man,” he muttered as Farad’s head lolled on his neck, the full weight of his twin in his arms. Finesse stepped over bodies and crunched shards of glass under his feet, then stood on the sidewalk looking toward Brownsville.
    Brookdale, was all he could think of. I gotta get him to Brookdale . If there was a hospital that was closer, he couldn’t think of it. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The people who lived nearby were smart enough to stay down when gunfire erupted, and Malik’s man had all the cops out getting doughnuts. Farad moaned, and Finesse boosted him up. The warmth of his brother’s blood dampened his clothes, and Finesse looked toward the avenue and braced himself for the long journey ahead.

EPILOGUE
     
    A ntwan paced the floors of Brookdale Hospital, wondering what was taking so long. He glanced at his watch every few minutes, then again at the closed doors at the end of the hall.
    At seven minutes past two the hydraulic doors whooshed and swung outward. A young black nurse appeared, pretty dreadlocks flowing around her heart-shaped face.
    “Hey,” Antwan said, grinning widely.
    “What’s poppin’?” asked the younger man being pushed toward him in the wheelchair.
    The men shook hands briefly, then Antwan reached down and put his arms around Farad and held him close.
    They’d almost lost him. The bullets he took had ripped through his spine, nearly demolishing his intestines on their deadly path through his body.
    Antwan had barely understood what Finesse was telling him when he called from the emergency room. When he realized Farad had been shot, shame immediately overtook him. Instead of watching out for his brothers, he’d become a monster. Invincible. Impenetrable. He’d been so consumed with exacting wrath that he had allowed rage to rule him and put the lives of his brothers in the path of vengeance.
    Farad had endured hours of surgery, and each of his brothers were at his bedside when he opened his eyes.
    “Bad?” he’d asked in a hoarse whisper.
    Antwan had nodded as Finesse touched his twin’s arm and Malik moved closer to his side.
    “You’re paralyzed,” Antwan told him simply, giving it to him all at once without any pretenses. “From the waist down. Could be permanent, might not be. The doctors said it’s day to day. We gotta wait and see.”
    Farad had closed his eyes momentarily, and when he opened them again Antwan saw real strength there.
    “Borne?”
    Kadir made a noise in his throat and Finesse shook his head and answered the question. “Murked. Slumped. Cheese, my niggah. Shredded cheese.”
    “Yeah,” Raheem added, “that kid Rayz gonna get his too. He’s getting sent to Elmira. Tony got a crew of