by Kiki Swinson
Peace,
Todd
I fell to my knees and sobbed. Lady jumped down from her bunk in a panic.
“What? What is it? What did it say?” she asked, frantically snatching the letter from my hand and reading it.
I couldn’t even open my mouth to say a word. After all that I had done to him, Todd still looked out for me in the end. I felt like a piece of shit. All of this and in the end it was me who had come out on the winning side of it all.
Caked Up
DE’NESHA DIAMOND
Prologue
Harlem
Huddled in a darkened table at our favorite bar, Sparks, my lifelong friend and partner-in-crime, Isaiah Kane, drops a bomb on me.
“You lost all of your money?” I repeat, in shock. “Again?”
“I know. I know, Harlem. Don’t lecture me this time. Can you help me or not?”
“I don’t know. How much do you need?”
He swallows. “About ten?”
“Ten thousand?” I sigh in relief. “Sure. I got you on that.” When my boy shakes his head, I tense again.
Isaiah leans forward and whispers. “Ten million.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t come off that much money.”
“What are you talking about? You’re loaded. I know that you got your shit stashed somewhere. You probably haven’t used twenty percent from that big cyber heist we pulled two years back.”
“That’s my retirement money. We’re both supposed to be getting out of the game at thirty-five, remember?”
Isaiah rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah. I remember. My retirement is going to be delayed for a little while longer.” He tilts up his glass of whiskey.
Feeling a sense of panic sink in, I ask, “Who do you owe that much money to?”
Isaiah ignores me for a few seconds to signal to the bartender for another round.
“Isaiah?”
He sighs and cuts me a look. “Kingston West.”
Shit. I grab my glass and drain the whiskey in one gulp. The whole reason that I’m even in this heist business is because my uncle Jonathan Banks inspired me. He and his crew worked for decades for the Guzman Colombian cartel, leading a crime team called The Jackal.
There wasn’t shit Uncle Jonathan, Rawlo, Mishawn, and Tremaine couldn’t jack. They were never caught and never served a single damn day behind bars. If that ain’t some boss shit, I don’t know what is.
In the underground world, my name carried its fair amount of weight and respect—and I extended it to cover my boy Isaiah. At thirty-three, we’ve been in the street game since before we hit double digits—that’s a long fucking time. Unlike my famous uncles, we’re more jacks of all street trade than specialists in just one. We deal. We gun run. We jack. We do whatever it is that needs to be done to stack our paper for our thirty-five-year-and-done plan. As kids we knew that we didn’t want or believe brothahs could be running the streets with a head full of gray hair—mainly because the shit ain’t never been done. There’s always someone younger, faster, stronger, or smarter to enter the game and the fastest way to the top is take out the old guards. And so it goes. A vicious cycle.
My mind shoots back to when Isaiah said that he was going to start working for the notorious crime boss. Isaiah was looking to make some extra money. He’s always looking to make more money, especially since I was agreeing to less and less big heist jobs. There’s no need. I’m thirty-three and I have nearly twenty-five million in cash saved and stashed out of reach of the federal government. My buddy here hasn’t been as smart. Money burns through his hands as fast as he snatches it. I’ve always known about him having a gambling issue, but clearly it’s more of a problem than I’ve ever realized.
“So can you loan me the money or not?” Isaiah asks.
“Loan implies that you can and are capable of paying me back,” I tell him.
Isaiah’s head jerks back as if I’d punched him.
“Oh? It’s like that now?”
I shrug, not wanting to come off that much cash. It would delay my getting out of the game at least another five to seven years.
Isaiah twists up his face. “Get the fuck outta here. I’m gonna pay you back.”
“Can’t do it. Sorry, bruh.”
“Damn! At least I asked you. If I was some real foul nigga, I could’ve just snatched it from you. You ain’t slick. I know where you keep that shit buried—with Grandpa.”
My stomach dropped. “What?”
“But look. We’re boys,” he says like he didn’t just casually hint that he could rob me at any time. “We’re always going to be boys. If the situation was reversed, I would come through for you.”
“But the situation isn’t reversed.” At his awkward laugh, I start my interrogation. “What the hell happened with Kingston?”
Isaiah sucks his teeth and shrugs. “This nigga is tripping because I lost one of his shipments. I told the man that I was jacked, but he ain’t trying to hear that shit. He says if my ass is breathing, not locked down and don’t have something like DEA report in the newspapers that my ass is lying. Can you believe that shit?”
I bob my head. “Of course I believe it. Ain’t nobody going to just take your word on something like that. Plus, why are you running drugs? You’re a thief.”
“Not drugs. Weapons.”
“You lost ten million worth of weapons? How is that even possible?”
“Okay. So I lost a couple of shipments.”
“Oh, my God.” I toss back my second whiskey as soon as the glass hits the table. “Bartender, another round.” I shift my attention back to Isaiah. “Why did you ever agree to work for him?” I ask. “You know Kingston West is bad news.”
Isaiah sighs. “I was in a fix. I owed this cat, Gold Dawg, down in Atlanta some serious cheddar.”
“Gold Dawg? A poker guy?”
“So? Big deal. I recently had a bad streak at the tables. It’s no big deal. Shoot me.”
“I’m not going to shoot you. Kingston West is going to do that—if not worse.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re seriously not going to loan me the money?”
I’m shaking my head before I can even get the words out. “Can’t do that. That’s almost half that I got saved up. I have a one-year-old daughter I got to support. My grandmother is getting older.”
“And you’re trying to impress that new bougie chick that you’re still seeing from that club,” Isaiah tosses in.
“She has nothing to do with this.”
“Uh, huh.”
“When do you have to pay Kingston?”
Isaiah hems and haws, but he finally says, “One week.”
He might as well have thrown a brick at my head.
“Look, if you don’t just want to loan me the money, then maybe you can help me with this one job I have lined up for tomorrow. You can get your hands dirty with your old childhood buddy, can’t you?”
“What kind of job?”
“I have another shipment to deliver down in Memphis. I don’t like doing these runs by myself.”
“So I’m going to hold your hands every time you do a shipment?”
“Damn. You act like I’ve never done shit for you before.”
The more whiskey he tosses back, the hotter he gets.
“Another shipment?” I ask dubiously.
He waves me off. “Hey, it’s easy money.”
“How much?”
“The job pays a million. It’s not all I need, but it’s a substantial down payment. You down?”
I hesitate, for good reason. “Am I even going to get paid for this job?”
Isaiah looks ready to explode.
“Never mind.” I toss up my hands in surrender. “Forget I asked.”
“C’mon. You’re going to do me like that? At the end of the day, we’re still homies, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” The second the bartender sets down my third drink, I snatch that bitch up and drain it as fast as the first two.
> “So you’ll do it?”
“Fine. I’ll ride down with you.”
“Great!”
My cell phone buzzes.
We both glance down as I scoop my phone from out of my pocket and see Johnnie’s name splashed across the screen. “Hold up,” I say, and step back to answer the call. “Hey, princess. What’s up?”
“Me. You still rolling through like you promised?” Johnnie asks in her sexy voice that gets me so hard. “I got everything ready for you.”
“Oh? Is that right?” I glance down at my watch. “Give me about thirty minutes.”
“All right. Don’t be a minute late or I’ll have to put away this homemade pie I got baking for you.”
My grin spreads from ear to ear. Johnnie knows how much I love her homemade blackberry pie. “Twenty-nine minutes,” I promise her and then disconnect the call.
“Humph. Looks like the side piece is tightening the noose,” Isaiah grumbles.
I laugh at his obvious jealousy. “You know that you’re going to have to see someone about that shit. That color of green never looks good on no damn body.”
“Whatever, nigga. You do you and play on the wrong side of the tracks all you want. Don’t come running to me when the shit blows up in your face.”
A muscle twitches from the left side of my face but before I can calm down I bark back, “What the fuck is your problem?”
“Problem?” he says, like my question is out of line. “I ain’t got a problem.”
I eyeball him hard as shit. “No? Could’ve fooled me. Ever since me and Johnnie hooked up, it’s been one cheap shot after another. I don’t remember ever having this much to say about any of the females you dip and dabble with. Clearly, you’re feeling some kind of way about the woman I might marry one day.”
“Marry?” he echoes. “Since when the fuck your ass been thinking about marriage?”
I shrug, amazed that I confessed the shit myself. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been bouncing the idea around in my head for a few minutes.”
Isaiah laughs, but when he sees my ass is dead serious, he sobers up. “Shit. You’re for real.”
“What can I say? Bae got me all up in my feelings and I can’t see me riding out into the sunset without her.”
“Bae, huh?” He snickers. “Does Bae, the New York state attorney’s daughter, know what the fuck it is you really do yet?”
I swallow hard. “Not yet.”
“Have you introduced her to your one-year-old daughter that your last side piece dumped on your nana’s doorsteps?”
“Damn, nigga. What the fuck?”
Isaiah tosses up his hands like his ass ain’t tryna start shit. “I’m just saying—”
“You’re just saying what, bruh?” Heat rushes up my neck.
“I’m saying, as your friend, that maybe you should pump your brakes a little on this one. You up here talking about maybe putting a ring on it and you haven’t even introduced ol’ girl to the real you yet.”
What the fuck am I supposed to say when I’m smacked with the truth?
Sensing that he’s hit a nerve, Isaiah takes another swing at my fantasy of snatching a good girl from the one-percent crowd. “Nigga, you better wake the fuck up and get out while you still can.”
“I don’t remember you talking all that bullshit when you were trying to throw game her way.” I stiffen when I see that same hardness flash across his face again. Anger? Jealousy? What the fuck? That kind of shit ain’t never gone down between us. We’re bruhs from the cradle to the grave. That has always been our motto.
Isaiah smiles and those emotions disappear once again. “Don’t get me wrong. Johnnie Robinson is as fine as they come—and she got the nerve to have a damn good head on her shoulders. But for two gutter rats like ourselves? She definitely falls into the hit it and quit it column. Fuck. You shouldn’t have even given her your real first name, Harlem. Let alone be sitting up here thinking about giving her your real last name in front of some damn preacher.”
“Whatever, man. I’m out.”
“A’ight.” We exchange daps.
“See you in the morning?” he double-checks.
“Bright and early.” I pound him on the back and then head out. “Text me the address.” The whole way toward the door, I can feel my boy’s eyes follow me. But as I climb into my gray Range Rover, I tell myself that I’m fucking tripping. Isaiah ain’t never done anything to me personally to look at him sideways. There have been plenty of times in our past when Isaiah came through for me. He has every right to wave warning flags when I’m talking about big life changes. I’m supposed to do the same shit for him if I see him going down a questionable path.
But is Johnnie a questionable path? Not according to the hard-on I still got since her ass called. Baby girl is my fucking everything since we met at the hot new Brooklyn club, Throb. Every bad bitch in New York rolled through there that night. Brothahs flocked to Johnnie’s ass like flies to the last starving kid in a Third World country. My boy Isaiah picked his lip off the floor first and stepped to her, but she shot his ass down before he got a complete sentence out of his mouth. I play the shit cool: bought her a drink without stepping to her, danced with a girl that had sat right next to her for like three or four songs, and then bought a few other girls drinks that were standing around her. The shit sparked her competitive side and she ended up speaking to me before I made a move to go back on the dance floor with someone else.
From there, she was doing the most to keep my attention. Those Coke-bottle curves and juicy, fat ass kept me in a trance all night. Despite her ass having a body for sin, a brother only had to take one look in her eyes to know the girl had a brain as fat as her ass. Most niggas don’t like intelligent, independent women. Ain’t nobody got time to listen to all that rah-rah about how they don’t need a man for this or for that but then get all thirsty when they want a real dick instead of some battery-operated bullshit. Independent women are more than a headache, but baby girl worked me so good on that dance floor that I was ready to change up my whole damn program.
Now, rolling up on our one-year anniversary, why not think about putting a ring on that ass? In eighteen months, I’ll be thirty-five and getting out of the game anyway. Johnnie don’t ever have to know how I cake up. All that matters is I’ll have enough to take care of her and my daughter for the rest of our lives. I smile all the way to my girl’s crib.
I practically skip my way up to Johnnie’s home forty minutes away in Greenwich, Connecticut. When I enter the house with the key she’d given me, I’m surprised to see the entire place lit with candles—but Johnnie is nowhere in sight.
“Baby, you here?” I call out, smiling.
There’s a slight pause before she shouts, “In the bedroom.”
My smile doubles in size. “Somebody is anxious.” I toe off my shoes at the front door, peel out of my jacket and t-shirt as I tread my way toward the bedroom, following the trail of rose petals.
The second I walk into the bedroom, Johnnie greets me from the center of her California king-sized bed, wearing nothing but a smile. Meeting my gaze from across the moonlit room, she leans back among the red silk sheets while allowing her long ebony legs to fall open east to west. “Hey, baby. I’ve missed you.”
The smile on my face stretches as I watch her walk her fingers down the center of her body and over the black turf of hair covering her pussy.
My dick hardens and tries to Hulk its way out of my jeans.
Smiling, Johnnie dips a finger inside her pussy and twirls it around so I can hear its squishy wetness. “Mmmm,” she moans, grinding her hips. Her free hand lifts to her full breasts so she can squeeze and pinch the nipples.
In a trance, I walk toward the bed, stripping as fast as I can. I nearly lose it, when her fingers ease out only so that she can glaze her pretty, pink clit with her body’s natural honey. Now that she has my ass worked up, she flutters open her eyes and asks me, “Are you hungry, baby?”
“You know it.” I crawl my muscular six-foot-three body onto the bed. My gaze is locked onto my target. There’s nothing sweeter than my baby’s honey-glazed pussy. Nothing. I’m addicted to its touch, taste, and smell; and her ass knows it.
“Come on, baby. Let momma feed you.”
I settle down between her firm thighs, spread those fat lips wider and dive in. Delicious.
“Ooooh, baby,” she groans. Her knees spring around my head while her fingers rake and pull on my hair.
That shit doesn’t stop my flow. I grip her juicy ass while my tongue drills down into her homemade pie like it’s the nectar of life. Smacking and slurping, I’m on a sugar high out of this world.
“Aww, fuck, baby!” Johnnie sighs and pants, trying to catch her breath. “I’m coming!”
She didn’t have to tell me. I can tell by the way her legs tighten and her clit swells to the size of a gumdrop. Seconds later, her legs tremble and she tries to buck her way off my tongue.
“Wait. Wait.”
I ain’t waiting for shit. Johnnie always cries that wait shit when her building orgasm gets too intense. Locking her down with one hand, I slide my thumb in through the back door of her wet ass and watch her whole body bounce up and down. I hang on like a rodeo clown. Her orgasmic screams are reaching octaves only an opera singer can hit—but I keep going, making her shit sensitive. Johnnie redoubles her efforts to shove my head away, but I ain’t going nowhere until I hear my baby pop off at least two more times. Panting and quaking beneath my tongue, Johnnie edges up the bed, tryna get some relief. When her head hits the headboard, one last orgasm detonates and she damn near snatches me bald at the top of my head.