Zya noticed the waitress come back into the room with the drinks. She had a tray and was concentrating on not spilling the seven glasses on top of it. She’s my way out of this room, Zya thought.
Zya waited for the girl to come around the table, and just as she was getting ready to place her drink on the table, Zya leaned over and placed her purse directly in the girl’s path. The waitress stumbled, and her drink flew from her hand onto Zya’s $20,000 silk Prada dress.
“Ohh!” Zya said as she stood up and tried to wipe the drink off of her dress. She knew that she had just ruined her dress, but she would rather destroy that than have Anari destroy her.
“Oh, I am so sorry. I-I tripped. I didn’t mean—” the girl began to explain. The fear in her voice was apparent, and Zya looked up in shock. It was the first time that Zya realized that she was one of the people at the table who were feared.
She looks at me the same way I looked at Anari when I first started serving this table, Zya thought, realizing exactly how far she had moved up the ranks.
“It’s okay. It was a mistake,” Zya said to the girl. She pulled out a roll of money from her purse and handed it to the waitress. “You’re fine. I promise, it’s not a big deal. I just have to go clean myself up.”
Anari watched the entire scene, and her eyes stayed on Zya as she hurried out of the room.
Oh, shit. I got to get rid of this fucking wire, Zya thought as she rushed upstairs and entered the bathroom. She went into one of the stalls and frantically unbuttoned the top of her dress. Her hands were shaking as her fingers struggled to free the buttons. She ripped the wire and the tape from her chest and flushed it down the toilet then quickly redressed and made her way back to the room.
“Fuck just happened? I lost the signal. What the hell? That bitch just took off the fucking wire!” Wade yelled as he hit the dashboard repeatedly.
“Maybe something happened,” Buggy stated.
“Fuck!” Lonnie yelled out of frustration. “I’ll be right here waiting when her ass comes out,” he said. He knew for a fact that Zya had taken off the wire. From what he had heard, Supreme Clientele existed and was contemplating making major moves. He had heard another woman’s voice, but Zya didn’t identify the woman as Anari. He knew that he was going to have to add some fuel to her flame in order for Zya to do what he needed her to do. He picked up the phone and called the precinct.
“Lieutenant Jones. Yeah, this is Wade. Could you look in my desk and pull out the evidence in the Smith case? I didn’t get a chance to check it into the evidence log before my shift ended last night.” He hung up his phone and said, “Bitch better do things my way from here on out, or her ass will be next.” He had just turned in the evidence from Snow’s case, so now all Zya had to save was herself.
“Do you think she will still cooperate now that you just screwed her boyfriend?” Agent Matthews asked.
Wade shrugged his shoulders and replied, “She better, or her ass is next.”
Zya re-entered the room, and Khadafi asked, “Is everything okay?” Zya nodded and relaxed a little bit now that she didn’t have the wire on.
“I know how upset Remy gets when she spills something on one of her outfits,” Khadafi stated lightly, referring to his girlfriend back home.
Zya shook her head and said, “I’m fine. No harm done.”
“Well, then, can we continue this meeting?” Jimmy Ross asked. Zya locked eyes with Anari, and her cold stare sent a shiver down her spine.
“No, not yet,” Anari said as she pulled a small .22 from underneath the table and set in down on top. Every member seated at the table pulled a weapon and placed it in front of them for easy access, while Zya stood up, looking scared and confused.
“What is the purpose of this?” Emilio asked. It was a known rule at the table. If one member pulled their gun then everybody else should follow suit. Shoot first, ask questions later.
“Zya, unbutton your dress,” Anari said calmly.
“What?” Zya asked. I knew she knew. She knows I was wired.
“Open the top of your dress,” she repeated.
All of the men at the table looked on in confusion, but Anari stared Zya down.
“Fine,” Zya said as she did as she was told. She unbuttoned her dress and slid the fabric down off her shoulders until only her bra covered her breasts. Anari’s hardened expression softened as she shook her head from left to right.
“I’m sorry,” she stated loudly. “I’m too cautious sometimes. Please forgive me, Zya. You are a good and dear friend to me. I should have never questioned your loyalty to this table. You would never turn snitch.”
The men at the table laughed lightly, trying to cut through the tension in the room.
Zya stared at Anari and replied, “Its okay. I understand.”
“Jesus, Anari, you think everybody is out to get you,” Jimmy Ross exclaimed in laughter.
“This is a family. No one in this circle would ever betray family,” Mr. Castello stated.
“Please sit down, Zya,” Khadafi said as he placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her to her seat next to Anari.
Anari apologized again for her behavior, and the meeting proceeded. Zya’s nerves were on edge for the rest of the night, but she knew that she had accomplished something.
Anari feels bad for accusing me. She won’t come at me wrong again. She trusts me. I’m not going to chance it, though. I will never wear a wire into one of these meetings again. Lonnie Wade is going to have to come up with another way.
Zya felt badly about double-crossing Anari, but Wade had convinced her that if the shoe was on the other foot, Anari would do the same to her. The only thing that was on her mind was protecting her man. She would get Snow off no matter what the cost, and in the process, she would clear herself from King’s murder as well.
The next thing on her agenda would be to handle Jules and Vita. There was no way she was letting them get away with what they had done. Jules had tried to kill her, and Vita had helped him do it. She knew how Jules got down, and was aware that he was a killer.
I have to get to him before he gets to me. I can’t concentrate on him and Anari at the same time. I have to handle him first, then I can put all my energy into getting Snow off and clearing my name.
Chapter 16
The Monster
Vita sat in Ty’s dope house and held a heroin-filled needle to her arm. She wanted to put the needle down, but she couldn’t fight the urge. She had been clean for two days, but her will power was running thin. She placed the needle to her arm, but stopped just before it punctured her skin.
I’m just like my mother, a dope fiend. If this won’t kill me, the AIDs will. I guess all the trickin’ and sharing needles caught up. She began to cry, I did so much dirt in my life, maybe I deserve to die at an early age. The one person that cared for me, I turned on her for a fix.
Fuck that. The few years of my life I do have left isn’t going to be filled with being a junkie. I am going to fight this and get clean, Vita thought as she tossed the needle across the room, watching as another junkie hurried to the drug and picked it up.
Vita was determined to make the best of what she had left of her life. She was going to go cold turkey and shake the monkey off of her back. She felt her body craving the drug, and excruciating pains shot through her stomach, causing her muscles to tighten up. She crawled into a fetal position while gripping her stomach. The pain was so agonizing, she lost control of her bowels and defecated on herself. She felt so ashamed that she couldn’t control her bodily functions, and she cried in the middle of the floor, praying to God that it would stop, but it never did.
Jules stormed out of the clinic and his heart ached. He had just found out the most awful news of his entire life: He was HIV positive. He had been coughing up blood, and went to the doctor a couple of weeks back to see what was wrong. That day, he went back for the results, and the doctor informed him that he had the incurable monster.
Wh
en the doctor gave Jules the news, his knees buckled and he almost fell. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Jules argued with the doctor and told him it must be a mistake, but the doctor told him he was 99 percent sure. He tried to offer Jules programs for him to attend with others in the same situation. Jules snatched the paper out of the doctor’s hand and furiously exited the office.
How in the fuck did I get this shit? I can’t fuckin’ believe I have HIV. But how? I didn’t get into that faggot shit in jail, and they test you before you go in, and I was negative. I . . . Vita! That bitch gave me this shit. I am about to kill that nasty whore. She’s dead! Jules thought as he jumped in his car and recklessly drove to the dope house where he knew Vita would be. He was enraged, and the only thing he wanted to see was Vita’s blood. She had put his life on a permanent countdown, and he wanted her dead.
Zya knew where Vita would be, and she was parked outside of Black Ty’s dope house. She couldn’t believe that after she let Vita live the first time, she would turn on her again. Vita was the reason that Snow was in jail, and her betrayal had given Wade another tool for blackmail. Zya wanted Vita dead, and she was about to fulfill her own wishes.
She pulled out her pistol and walked into the dope house. When she entered, she saw fiends all around the room, getting high. Even though Black Ty was dead, the show still went on, and his dope house was still poppin’.
Zya scanned around the room, looking for Vita, but didn’t see her. She pulled out a hundred-dollar bill from her bra and held it in the air.
“Whoever can tell me where to find Vita gets this,” Zya said as she held the bill over her head so everyone could see it. Immediately, everyone pointed toward the back room, trying to be the first to inform Zya where their peer was located. Zya tossed the hundred-dollar bill in the air and watched as the fiends scrambled to get it. She stepped over the wrestling dope-heads and headed to the back room with her gun in hand.
Zya stepped into the room and smelled a foul odor and almost gagged. She saw Vita lying in the middle of the floor, balled up, trembling, and clenching her stomach. All of the emotions that Zya had felt for her friend went out of the window. Her bottom lip began to quiver in pure fury, and she walked over to Vita and pressed the gun to her temple.
Zya looked at Vita and barely recognized her. She was not the same person. Zya didn’t even want to say anything to Vita before she killed her. She just wanted to get it over and done with. Zya closed her eyes and prayed for Vita before she ended her life.
Without even looking up, Vita spoke. “Zya, I always loved you. You are my sister, and I know I pulled grimy on you. But that wasn’t me. That was the drug controlling me. Just remember me as the girl who used to be your best friend. Remember, we were like Thelma and Louise. Don’t remember me as this crack head junkie who turned on you. It wasn’t me, Zya. I’m dying of AIDS anyway. It doesn’t matter to me if I go now or later. I just want this shit to be over. I love you, Zy.” Vita closed her eyes and prepared to meet her maker.
Zya’s eyes watered, and against her will, a single tear rolled down her face. It pained her to see Vita like that. Although Vita had turned on her, Zya felt deep in her heart that Vita loved her. She also knew that she loved Vita. They had been best friends since middle school, and Zya’s memories of the good times appeared in her mind. Zya quickly tried to escape the thought, and put her finger on the trigger. This was the second time she had Vita at gunpoint, and she knew that if she didn’t kill her now, it was a possibility that she would have to do it again.
“I love you, Vita,” Zya said.
Vita closed her eyes and braced herself for the blast. But to her surprise, Zya walked out of the room, leaving her there alone to sulk in her own guilt.
Zya walked out of the dope house and decided to let Vita die slowly. She couldn’t bring herself to kill Vita. She is dying of the monster anyway. She has enough demons to battle, Zya thought as she got into her Benz.
Just as she was about to pull off, she saw a car wildly pull onto the dope house’s front lawn. The screeching of the tires was loud and unexpected. Zya focused her attention on who was in the car. She couldn’t see the man clearly until he got out. When he jumped out of the car, he slammed the door forcefully, and that’s when Zya saw who it was—Jules.
Jules carried a big chrome pistol in his right hand as he ran into the house. Zya cocked back her gun and followed Jules into the house without him knowing. When Zya crept through the front door, she saw no sign of Jules. She just saw the junkies scattered out, using their preferred drug.
At that moment, Zya heard a single gunshot come from the back room. “Oh shit, Vita!” Zya said as she rushed to the back. When she opened the door, Jules was standing over Vita’s body with his gun still smoking.
“Vita!” Zya screamed as she saw her friend’s body slumped on the floor. Jules had shot her in the chest, leaving her body lying there, motionless.
Jules heard Zya scream, and quickly turned around and pointed his gun at her. Zya had her gun pointed on him also. They faced off in the middle of the room, both aiming their guns at each other. The last time they were standing face to face, they were deeply in love. Now the only emotion they felt for one another was hatred.
The sight of Zya sent a pain through the pit of Jules’s stomach. She was still as beautiful as he remembered, only now, she was his enemy. She had been disloyal, and it was finally time to make her pay. Jules was the first to speak.
“You grimy-ass bitch. As soon as a nigga was down, you did some snake shit and didn’t hold me down. I knew I couldn’t trust a hood rat.” Hatred seethed off his every word, and as Zya looked in his eyes, she could see that any love that they had once shared was now lost.
“Hood rat? Fuck you, nigga. I am far from a hood rat. I always held you down, no matter what. Who took those out-of-state trips for you, huh? Who helped you get your paper? Who helped you stick-up innocent niggas for your gain? Me, that’s who! You fuckin’ bitch-ass nigga. I held you down from day one!”
“You never held me down. As soon as I got locked up, you killed my baby and started fucking with other niggas. I wanted that baby so bad. All the bad shit I ever did, didn’t matter if I could just bring an innocent life into this world. You took that peace of mind away from me.” Jules began to think about his newly acquired disease. “Now I can never bring another life in this world. I hate you!” Jules said as he clenched his gun even tighter and jabbed it in her direction as he spoke.
“I had the abortion because when I came to the jail to visit you, I saw that trick you had up there visiting you. I guess you forgot to tell me that, huh? You had it set up perfectly. You even had us coming up on different schedules, so we wouldn’t run into each other.
“You already had a baby, so what were you so worried about ours for? You lied to me. I thought you loved me, but I was just a toy to you, your little side chick. Fuck that. I am a queen, and I don’t come second to anyone.”
Jules’s face twisted because he didn’t understand what Zya was talking about. “What the fuck are you talking about? I never had a baby by another girl. You were my only woman. I took care of you, Zya. I loved you.”
“Stop lying, Jules. I saw the bitch with my own eyes,” she yelled. Her voice trembled as she remembered how badly it had hurt when she had seen the other girl visiting him in jail.
Jules lowered his weapon and put his hands on his head as he began to pace back and forth. “Fuck . . . Zya, fuck!” he screamed at her. Tears accumulated in his eyes as he realized what Zya was saying. “You should have asked me about it! We were better than that. You should’ve come to me like a woman and asked. The girl you saw was my cousin, and she was pregnant with my godson. I was telling her about how you were pregnant, and how I was about to have a shorty, and how our kids would grow up together like we did.
“You didn’t stop and think about that, did you? You didn’t even come to ask me. You just assumed. It was my fuckin’ cousin! You took me through all that bu
ll-shit because of something that wasn’t even true.” Jules used to love Zya from the bottom of his heart, and once upon a time, he would’ve taken a bullet for her. Now he wanted to put a bullet through her. He continued as the tears came rolling down. “You couldn’t fuck with any other nigga. You had to go and fuck Snow. You is a ho, and ain’t going to be nothing but a ho.”
Jules saw that Zya was in shock from the news he had just given her. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she processed the information over again in her mind.
He didn’t cheat on me. Oh my God, I killed our baby and he didn’t even do anything. I should have asked him. It was his fuckin’ cousin.
Fuck that. He’s lying! I saw it with my own two eyes. God, please let him be lying. I should have done things differently . . . Please let him be lying. Zya was going crazy, trying to separate the truth from the lies. If Jules was actually being honest, then Zya knew that she was dead wrong. The decisions that she had made began to haunt her as she tried to clear her head.
The fact that the truth had just come out didn’t change the way Jules felt. He had spent years in prison hating Zya for her betrayal, and he was determined to make her pay. He saw that she was deep in thought, and jumped on the opportunity. He hit the gun out of Zya’s hand, and it flew over to the corner. He then struck Zya across the face with his fist. Zya fell onto the ground, and Jules stood above her with his gun pointed to her head. Zya had no weapon and no chance.
A single shot rang out and echoed through the whole house. Zya’s face was full of blood. But not her own blood. It was Jules’s. Vita had scuffled to Zya’s gun and put a bullet through Jules’s head, causing him to die on impact. Jules’s body fell on top of Zya, and she quickly pushed him off of her. Zya looked over at her friend, barely holding up the gun.
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