by London Starr
I reversed off my side and stood up to my full height, worried I would scare her even more if I reached for her again because that was exactly what I wanted to do. She stood up too, turned to face me, and was angry as hell suddenly.
“I’m going to take care of you, Ajoni,” I said quietly, then pointed to the middle of the bed. “I have some Tylenol for your pain and ice for your jaw, but you don’t have to be scared of me. Look around, sweetheart. This is all for you.”
Her eyes brightened, widened as pure fear filled them, and roamed the room filled with candles lit everywhere on the floor, but I was not who she needed to be afraid of. I just wanted her respect. Then she mumbled under her breath, “I don’t want this.”
Her words made something split wide open in my chest in that moment. The room went out of focus. That was the one and only time I ever wondered if I really had a heart, but I was not giving up on Ajoni because I had failed at my first attempt to romance a woman. I never wanted to before then, and thought all women were like my mother; weak-minded enough to become a crack head that would sell anything not nailed down to support their habit and forget they gave birth. Other women that often offered me ass by the truckload since I was fifteen, over six feet tall and more muscular than normal teenagers, did not help my opinion of them either.
I slept with the women anyway, but was not about to give them what they wanted; a place in my life as a teenager, or grown man. And then one day, Ajoni walked out of her house when she was sixteen and slammed the door behind her while I was sitting outside with the crew. I knew she was coming to get Jonny for Seeri. She then stepped onto the sidewalk, turned towards me, and yelled her daddy’s name while drawing all kinds of attention in skintight jeans broadcasting the sway of her newly formed hips and a white crop top that hugged her small breasts and tiny waist.
Suddenly, she was the spitting image of Seeri when Jonny first brought his wife to Mecca. I swore up and down that Ajoni did not look like that the day before, and no longer saw her as just one of the crew’s daughter that needed to be protected in Mecca. From that moment on, she was mine.
“King!” Ajoni yelled suddenly, making me look up at the two-years older, more beautiful than ever, and very angry version of her standing before me with her hand on her wide hips.
“Okay great, you remember I’m here now,” she sniped with a tiny tremor in her voice and putting up one hell of a brave front.
“What, sweetheart?”I asked and gave her my undivided attention, again.
She frowned. “Don’t call me sweetheart. Take me home now. Your boys just beat my ass so I’m officially a King, but I won’t be working for you. I can’t work for people I don’t trust.”
I cussed under my breath and considered going outside to make Leek’s and X’s nap a permanent one anyway. The shit they just did to her had fucked up my chances for convincing Ajoni that she should be mine willingly, and could trust me to protect her.
“I’m sorry about them hitting you. A man should never put his hand on a woman and I handled that by putting my hands on them. They won’t ever do that to you again. I promise.”
“No they won’t be doing that to me again because, I’m staying the fuck away from all of you after this.”
I could not allow that. “No you’re not, Ajoni. What you’re going to do is take the Tylenol, get jumped in the Kings, and take your place as one of the heads of my family with the street name Queen.”
She froze in place, shocked that she would sit beside me instead of work for me as a lowly street runner. I started walking around the foot of the bed towards her. She began to back away and move up the side of it away from me. If she got anywhere near the door on the other side of the room, I knew she would run for it. I could not let that happen either, so I retraced my steps and went back to the spot I was standing in between the bed and the door. She went back to her spot on the other side of the bed.
“K—King… I— I don’t want you like that,” she stuttered, with her tiny chin wobbling.
“Because you want only Jordan like that, right?” I asked jealously, but knew the answer and hated every time she walked passed him and smiled. I never understood why she wanted a high school senior that thought he was too good to be a banger, street runner, and with her. Most of his friends were into all of that, and everyone on Teamon block knew she had a mad crush on Jordan. Almost every man that knew Ajoni had a mad crush on her.
Most of those men belonged to women that could not check their emotions at their front door before they stepped out of them. It made for good entertainment every time they made the mistake of stepping to Ajoni about their men’s eyes staring at her jeans. I would have handled those females for her too, but Ajoni would already have beat the chicks’ asses down before I could get to her.
Jonny would stand back and let his little girl prove to everyone on the block that she could handle herself. Seeri would hear the commotion outside, stop the fight by calling Ajoni’s name and make her go in the house, then blast Jonny’s ass for standing back watching. Those same females would offer me their swollen asses as soon as the commotion was over, their weave was straight on their heads again, and their man’s backs were turned.
I planned to take Ajoni away from all that, convinced she deserved a better way to live and had a healthy respect for the Blue Kings. My six-bedroom, six-bath house in Mecca County, with a pool and anything else Ajoni wanted, waited for her to make it a home. She would be mine for life and I was not going to let her leave the warehouse until she understood that, then I would take her to her new home two miles away.
“Ajoni, this would be so much easier for you if you just do what I say.”
“No King, this would be so much easier for you if you just stick to being the boss of the Blue Kings and let me choose who I sleep with,” she snapped back.
I knew right then that Jordan fucking Cole was still a problem for me. I could give Ajoni a life so much better than a middle-class kid could that did not live on Teamon and liked to stand on the streets everyday while real men worked it. Jordan had everything he own handed to him on a cubic zirconium platter from his parents. Ajoni was going have to accept that he would not be sharing that shit with her.
“You know Ajoni, I wanted you for my own. But if I can’t have you, I’ll make sure Jordan does not have you either.”
Her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “You’re going to kill me because I don’t want you?”
I would never hurt her, but I would do just about anything to make her mine, even if that meant making her think I would hurt her.
“No, I won’t kill you. I’ll do something even worse.”
Her tiny chest began to heave up and down. I hated to make her terrified of me, but it was the only way to make her fear me more than most people do God, and respect me even more.
“If you don’t let me have you Ajoni, I’ll let the other Kings run through you. Most of them want you just as much as I do.”
She screamed at me, “You’ll let them fucking rape me?”
“Yes,” I answered quickly, then called out, “Raw, you’re next!”
Raw laughed out loud on the other side of the door to the one-room warehouse. She started to cry. It took everything in me just to keep from telling her that Raw likes his lovers with an Adam’s apple. She grabbed for her chest with one hand, as if she could not breathe suddenly, and then held the other hand out as if she was trying to hold something back.
“King, wait. I’ll… I’ll do it.”
I could see her struggle to get the words out of her upturned thick, pink lips, but Ajoni had not said what I needed to hear yet.
“You’ll do what?”
“I’ll sleep with you… only you, King.”
I smiled; Jordan would never get what was meant for me now.
“Do you understand that I am going to be the only one that you sleep with from now on, Ajoni?”
She slowly started to nod her head. The time had finally come to take wha
t was mine.
“Then come to me, Ajoni.”
“King, you’re a goddamn predator,” she spit before moving towards the bed.
I should have known she would have to get in at least one insult before she submitted to me, but when she took that first baby step in my direction trying to make her last moments as a virgin last, the canyon in my chest began to close.
***
CHAPTER Four
King
“Kingsley,” Felicia yells suddenly, getting my attention. I look up. She is standing up with a stack of papers in one hand, a plastic bag with my wallet, keys, and jewelry inside it in the other. She leans to the side and looks behind me. “Hankin, is this fucking criminal deaf?”
He laughs. I am sure she called me quite a few times, but the memories of Ajoni always grip me tightly. I catch hell getting loose every time.
Felicia blows air out her mouth. “You’re free to go but not free, Kingsley. You must report immediately to your parole officer in Mecca with your release paperwork in the morning. Failure to do so will land your ass right back in here for the rest of the time left on your sentence, but I don’t have to tell a career criminal that. Now do I?” she asks dryly, drops the paperwork on the desk, picks up a manila envelope, and opens it up wide for me to see inside.
In the bottom of it is a stack of money. I nod, knowing that it is my money in the bottom but not sure where it came from, yet. The time Hankin has left on this earth depends on its origins.
Felicia slides my paperwork in on top of the money and shoves the envelope and the plastic bag through the opening in the glass. Her eyes begin to drill into mine, sending a subliminal message to keep my fucking mouth shut about her crooked ass and what she just showed me. I smile my response; message received. I then take the envelope and the bag, but none of it is going to help me get home. Mecca is thirty five miles away and I am not walking, not when I have a truck that Lea’s and Nina’s bum asses are supposed to be taking care of along with my house in Mecca County. Looks like I am going to have to bribe one of these motherfuckers to let me make a call after all.
“Come on, Kingsley,” Hankin says behind me while struggling to get to his feet. “Your ride is outside the gate, and it is a long walk from here.”
I start to wonder who is waiting for me and follow him to the next iron door on the other side of the room. The only one in my crew that thinks of shit in advance and should still be behind bars is Raw, unless he is not. I begin to suspect that he is not and also the one that has been looking out for me, and waiting at the gate. Lea is not this damn dependable.
It takes about five minutes to navigate the long corridors and get to the last iron door that leads to the outside and the parking lot. I stop behind Hankin, waiting for him to swipe his badge. Another buzzer goes off over my head here. He steps to the side. The door begins to open.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, Kingsley,” he whispers then turns around and walks away, going back the way he came.
“You can count on that shit, Hankins.”
Fresh air rushes me before I walk through the doorway into the bright sunlight, and past a guard in a control booth. Forty feet away is a ten-foot fence surrounded by barbed wire that is sliding apart as I walk toward it. Standing on the other side of it is a man that looks like a much slimmer version of me, and exactly who I expected it to be leaning against the passenger side of my rundown truck, with a smile on his face.
“LaJavious Rawlings,” I shout, and shake my head when I notice the rims on my truck are gone, but too damn glad to see Raw to care about my whip oddly. I do not make it a habit to attach to people, but he is the first friend and lieutenant I ever made, a pretty boy four years younger than me that looks the same as the last time I saw him, and the only man that I trust like a brother.
I then have to admit that I have missed all my boys. My lieutenants are the only ones that I could count on to watch my back since I met them one by one, and got them all out of some type of fucked up situation as kids on the streets of Mecca. Our struggles to survive broken homes, drug addicts for mothers that did not buy groceries, and sperm donors that cannot spell daddy were the beginning of the Blue Kings.
I lost touch with every one of my lieutenants in the first six months of our incarceration. We all were transferred without warning from the county lock up to different prisons after taking plea deals for aggravated assault on Ajoni to avoid a trial, and being railroaded into two life sentences for rape and kidnapping.
Right then, I realize I have grown attached to my crew over the years and there is only one other person in this world that I would rather see more than them. I will find her if it is the last thing that I do.
Raw steps forward, gives me some dap then leans in to embrace me and pound my back with his fist. I have no fear of his touch. You will never know that he is gay unless he tells you what I have known since he was ten years old, and noticed that he was watching the boys walk by instead of the girls. Not many people outside of the Blue Kings know this. Raw is picky about who he sleeps with, and travels far away from Mecca to keep his secret and street cred unblemished. Since I have slept with most of Mecca, I am not his type and he would not try me up like that anyway. But if I need some work put in, he is the one I call first and can count on the most to get the job done.
He steps back from me and grins. “Get in, nigga. I know your ass don’t have a valid license in that envelope.” Raw is quicker to crack a joke on your ass then bust his guns, but his temper is worse than mine when he is provoked, and he will kill you faster.
He spins on his Timberland boots with a royal blue stripe around the sole to walk around the front of the truck, then looks back at me moving for the passenger side.
“Before you ask, King, I got out two weeks ago. Lea is still living in your house and making use of your shit with Nina Simpson… together. I bunked down in your basement my first night out, after I found out my stupid ass moms let my house get seized by the pigs. She was letting niggas chop up dope in it. They got my cash in the vents too, so I only have what’s in my bank account, but I’ve been staying in a sweet ass hotel in Buckhead on your dime. By the way, your house looks like your truck does and I will let you deal with that. I dug up some of your cash buried in the warehouse’s floor, then started tracking the original Blue Kings down. I left care packages for everyone with guards that I paid off to hold the shit close for y’all and call me when one of you was up for release.”
I nod, understanding that Lea and the other bitch I fucked recreationally are currently taking advantage of my shit without taking care of it, and Raw has to start from the bottom. I am not shocked about that though. What does come as a surprise is the guard that took Raw’s bribe; she seemed to have a deep hatred for criminals.
“So, Felicia is a junkie like almost everybody else, huh? And your dumb ass didn’t listen when I told you to find another spot for you loot.”
Raw chuckles quietly and unlocks the doors. “I didn’t have time to find anything while running the Westside for you. Felicia was glad to take two grand and a package for you after I followed her from here to a trap house in Decatur. That bitch is meaner than a fucking snake and has a coke habit that makes her even meaner, but I had no problems getting her to do what I wanted. So far, you and I are the only ones out. But I have two questions.” I forgot how good Raw’s looks were at convincing women to do things for him though they would never get what they wanted from him.
“What you need to know, Raw?” I ask after we climb inside the truck with cracked white leather seats and fading wood grain trimming.
“First, did you have to gain so much weight?” he asks, then laughs and pulls away from the gate. “You look like a damn tank on steroids and are we going back to business as usual in Mecca even though both of our asses are on parole? All of the Kings’ territory and runners has been taken over by a new cat named Lex, but we don’t have to go back into the dope game. You have so much money buried in that damn floor th
at I started to dig it all up, leave all the Kings thumbing a ride back to Mecca, and hop a damn plane to the closest country that does not have an extradition treaty, and then live like a fat cat.”
I begin to laugh my ass off. Raw would never fuck me over like that, and I was not the only one getting an education while locked down.
“What the hell do you know about an extradition treaty, Raw? How much education did you get behind bars?”
He looks at me sideways and grows serious.
“I can work in a law office as a paralegal if I want to and know enough to become a lawyer. We should have been sent up the river for the shit that happened to Ajoni that night. She is the only reason why we didn’t all ride. She could have pushed for a trial and nobody would have ever seen our asses without a prison fit on again. You left your DNA in her, King. Her hair that Leek pulled out at the root was all over his car and corroborated her story about the struggle that took place after she told him to take her home, which meant he kidnapped her to bring her to you.
I was caught on camera at the gas station buying the same shit they found at the warehouse for her injuries, which made me an accessory. Luckily, there was no dope at the warehouse that night, or they would have seized your shit too. X got exactly what he fucking deserved for putting Ajoni’s ass to sleep after she got there. Slade got caught up because he knew what was happening and did not snitch to the cops.”
It occurs to me that we may have gotten a lesser sentence because Ajoni had mercy on us, and not the DA that has been trying to find dirt on us since he got into office.
“Raw, let me ask you something. You think Ajoni’s the reason why we got less time?”
“I know she’s the reason why. The police reports and sentences are all public record, and the DA was pissed because he could not lock the Blue Kings up and throw away the key.”