A Kingpin's Obsession: Ajoni's Story

by London Starr

  I walk around King to stand before Shad so he will stop rambling and get to the business at hand. “I’m no one’s old lady. And if I ever come back to Mecca, I’ll take you up on your offer for dinner, been sitting at home too long with my daughter.” I had to start dating somewhere, though I highly doubt if a date with Shad will ever happen—I have no plans to ever come back to Mecca. The people in this city are determined to get me killed.

  Shad’s eyes widen and threaten to pop right out of his head. “Daughter! What stupid motherfucker let you get away?”

  “Nobody,” I say just as King and Raw say it too. I look back at King, wondering what he meant by his ‘nobody’. He glares back at me angrily. Raw shakes his head and laughs out loud. I turn back around, deciding that I really do not want to know what he meant.

  Shad’s gaze flips to King standing behind me. “You know what, it don’t even matter. Let’s get this business done before I put my foot in my mouth, and fuck around and leave without both of them if I leave here at all.”

  “Correct,” King growls low and hoarsely.

  Shad turns around and walks down the side of the Taurus. He aims the car fob at it. The trunk pops up. I follow in his footsteps to the back of the car. He balls up a blue tarp and stuffs it in the corner. I stop beside him. Three black trash bags with knots in the top of them, black nine millimeters with silencers attached, and Kevlar vests lay in the bottom of the trunk.

  I lean over and reach for a gun, with Raw doing the same on my right side. King moves to the far side of the car and grabs his from there, as if he does not want to be anywhere near me. A fresh wave of pain ripples through my chest then up into my throat, clogging it up.

  I swallow the knots it making there before tuning everyone out, to try and recall the lessons of handling weapons that I learned from my father as a child while Seeri was at work.

  I grip the gun tightly in my right hand, lay my trigger finger along the frame of it, and press the magazine release button with my thumb, ejecting the clip into my waiting left palm. After checking to make sure there are at least some bullets in it, I push it back up into the butt of the gun, intending to buy another clip with more bullets from Shad.

  I’m not sure what’s the unwritten rule for how many clips come with a strap bought off the streets, but not having enough bullets could cost me my life in a gunfight. Not knowing if there is one in the chamber could too, so I turn the gun sideways then pull the slide at the top of the gun back towards me with my left hand.

  A round springs from the chamber into the air just like I expected it to. I catch it with my left hand and place it right back in the slot before pushing the slide home and the safety lever to on, and then stuff the gun in my coat pocket.

  I look over at Shad, who is staring at me with wide, stunned eyes. Suddenly, I feel even more on my spine, then glance back at Raw and King, whose eyes are just as round with huge amounts of shock visible in them.

  “What!” I snipe.

  Raw looks down into the trunk and scratches the top of his head. “And I thought you were going to be a liability with that thing.”

  “I wouldn’t have volunteered to go with you two if I didn’t know what I was getting myself into unlike last time.” I cut my eyes at King before looking at Shad again. “Shad, did you bring more clips and how many c-notes you charging for the heat? I only brought five hundred with me, but I wasn’t expecting to be buying a gun either, and can go to the ATM if that’s not enough.”

  “I got it, Ajoni,” King cuts in bad-temperedly.

  “I don’t want you to get it,” I fire back without looking at him.

  “That’s not what you said at the hotel, now is it?”

  I get the feeling he is looking for an argument and trying to make a point if he is bringing up what we did at the hotel.

  “I said I wanted Calen, not for you to get anything, King.”

  “Same thang,” Raw mutters under his breath beside me.

  King moves out of my side vision like lightning, walks up on my backside, then reaches between me and Raw, and grabs me by the lapels of my coat before spinning me around and hauling me face to face with him before I can inhale. I stop breathing altogether, too shocked to protest while he glowers down at me.

  When I feel his breath blow out from his nose into my face in the same manner that I think a dragon’s would, I realize I am in a whole lot of danger, and King’s threat level is over and beyond DEFCON 1. Some of the shock fades, allowing me to move into self-preservation mode. My hand slides into the jacket of my coat before I even remember that the weapon is there—maybe the threat of using it on him will make him back off.

  “The last time I was here King, I didn’t have a gun in my pocket, but I do now, so I advise you to remove your damn hands and keep them to yourself, or I will blow a hole in your chest. Not one more man will hurt me at your warehouse,” I warn.

  Raw reaches between us for King’s hands on my collar.

  “Get back, Raw!” King orders before he can touch him.

  Raw’s hands freeze in midair.

  “Yeah, get back, Raw,” I say calmly. “I don’t want you taking any bullets not meant for you.”

  King’s eyes narrow on my face, cutting into my flesh like daggers.

  “Go ahead, Ajoni. Pull your piece and then the trigger. Putting me out of my misery will be a hell out of a lot better than dealing with the fucking holes already in my chest from not knowing I had a daughter waiting for me on the outside.”

  It hurts even more that King does not recognize that I got stuck with a raw deal too when he got sent up the river, and is taking his anger out of me when I do not deserve all of it—half of it belongs to him. I step into his personal space until we are sharing each other’s carbon dioxide.

  “Let me tell you something, King. Anjuwan isn’t the only one that was waiting for you on the outside, and you’re not the only miserable person out here. And if you had known about our baby, was I supposed to bring her around a bunch of hardened criminals that might want to use her against your ass, because I know you was doing whatever it took to take over that goddamn prison? Or did you think Anjuwan would’ve enjoyed looking at her father through three inches of glass for the first years of her life while not being able to touch him? Maybe you thought sending a letter every week with a snapshot of you in a jailhouse pose would make her feel like she had a father figure in her life while I dealt with her tears when we got home from visiting you.”

  “That would’ve been better than her not knowing me at all,” he snarls quietly.

  “For you maybe, but if you think you’re hurting now. I can make you feel a hell of a lot more pain. I’ve snitched on you once. What’s one more time for old time’s sake? I’ll even send you back to prison for the same charges, aggravated assault since you’re manhandling me now too. Then I’ll wait to see if I’m pregnant again, and keep that baby from you too. You want to live in the past? I can literally keep your ass there, reliving it over and over again. Or you can get your damn hands off my coat and meet your daughter in the morning face to face as planned then move on with your life and start a real family with someone that hasn’t been punched by your boys, manhandled by you, and can deal with your woe-is-me attitude, because I sure as hell cannot. I got my own fucking issues.”

  Raw’s hand rises to the back of his head and rubs it. “Can I add that you’re not supposed to buy a woman a gun, King? They usually end up shooting the one that bought it for them.”

  Shad harrumphs behind me. “That’s an old wives’ tale, Raw.”

  Raw’s eyes swerve to Shad. “And you can’t see why myths are based on fact, Shad? Do you not see where her fucking hand is at?”

  Shad waits a beat before answering, “You got a point, Raw. King, let her go and let her give me something for it. You can make up the difference and keep your damn life, because if she checked her piece without help, she sure as hell can lay your ass down without it. Then after you two do what you have to do
tonight, you can go on that walk at the beach and talk like civilized people. I have never in my life met two people that need to do that more than you two. Plus, I need to get back to the shop. Oh, and you’ll owe me some brown liquor and wings after I tell you where you can find Lea. She’s spreading the word about what she and her boy did at your house. I hate a bragging motherfucker.”

  King’s eyes swivel to Shad. He releases my coat, steps back from me, and crosses his arms over his chest.

  “Spill, Shad.”

  Now the confrontation is over between King and I, I take a deep breath and walk around Shad to get the five hundreds from my purse on the backseat of the Camaro. Suddenly, my nerves go bad, and I start to shake. King is not a man to be fucked with for a reason. He has always had a death wish, and does not mind calling anyone’s bluff that is offering to fulfill it for him, until he gets close enough to use your weapon on you. I was certainly bluffing, and would not have willingly taken him from Anjuwan now or eight years ago if I had known that I was pregnant with her, but I bet King does not know that, and I just gave him one more reason to be angry with me.

  I open the passenger’s side door while Shad fills them in on Lea’s movements and whereabouts. I extract my wallet from my purse, then the money before I toss the wallet back inside my bag. Walking back to give Shad the money is one of the hardest things I ever have had to do since my feet are taking me in the direction of King, but I manage it though it feels like I am taking a walk of shame after the way he just acted toward me and the way I reacted in front of everyone.

  He is always making me respond to him. Maybe I should stop doing that. I just do not know how. Life will be much simpler when I figure that out, if I can.

  When I stop at Shad’s side, he stops talking to take the money, shoving it in a pocket on the side of his right knee. I turn away, wanting to be anywhere but here.

  “Hold up, Ajoni,” he demands before I can get away.

  I turn back around on my heels, making sure to avoid contact with Raw’s and King’s eyes. Shad leans over in the trunk, and grabs a sack with more things in it than the other two and a Kevlar vest off the floor of the trunk before giving it all to me.

  “From Chiness,” he mentions with a smile, like I am supposed to know who the hell that is.

  I mumble, ‘Tell her I said thank you’ then take everything from his hand quickly and beat it towards the warehouse even faster. I cannot get to the door of it fast enough, and feel eyes boring into my back. When I open the door and walk inside the room filled with shadows from dusk arriving, it is like going back in time when life was much simpler. The bed is still here along with the same rumpled sheets and remnants of the candles King had lit and scattered around the floor for my jump in. Everything is as it was when I left here to go home for the last time in Mecca.

  I stand at the door wishing I could go back in time for real, and do things differently before that night ever happened. But who knows where I would be if I did, or Seeri and Anjuwan for that matter? I do not regret my baby girl, and I could be unhappily married with a houseful of bad ass kids after burying my mother that would surely be dead after her habit got the best of her. I never wanted that for myself or Seeri, and maybe, just maybe, everything happened the way it was supposed to. My only regret is that King cannot forgive me for choosing a better life for me and my mother, and his daughter in the end.

  “I’ll learn to deal with my regrets,” I say to the empty room, then step towards the bed and toss the bag on it.

  I strip down to my body shirt and socks then untie the sack and turn it upside down. An extra clip, skullcap, skinny jeans, a tight-fitting sweater jacket with four pockets on each side of the zipper in the middle of it, leather knee boots with a flat heel and a strip of cloth material that matches my sweater perfectly sewn around the top of them drop onto the sheets. I then remember who Chiness is, and laugh out loud as I start to get dressed quickly.

  She is a classy, multicultural booster that used to have silky black hair, wide hips, and gorgeous delicate features inherited from her Cherokee Indian mother and black father. I do not know what Chiness Moonlight looks like now, but she has the ability to be a stylist, and has been expertly relieving the stores of their merchandise for so long that she probably cannot imagine living life any other way.

  I sit down on the bed, then put on the boots that are a half-inch too big for me. As I am zipping them up, the door opens in front me. When King enters with a bag in his hand, I bound off the bed then turn around to gather up my clothes tossed across it, intending to leave before we have another argument. I did not come to Mecca for that either.

  “Ajoni,” he calls as I fling the clothes into the bag. “We need to talk.”

  “No we don’t. Enough has been said already.”

  He steps to the side of me, and my damn hands begin to shake again.

  “On your end maybe, Ajoni. Not mine. I shouldn’t have snatched you up outside but—”

  “King,” I interrupt. “It’s all good. You didn’t hurt me. It’s being a trying day for both of us, and I know how you feel about me now. I got it the first time.”

  “Then listen to what I didn’t say.”

  I figure I owe him that much, and walk to the other side of the bed to face him and put some distance between us. I cannot say for certain that I will not snatch him up and hold on for dear life again. He does not want me to either.

  I look down at the sheets. “Say what you have to, King.”

  “Ajoni, I need you to trust me. It angers the fuck out of me that you don’t, and I am…” he trails off. I decide to make this conversation easier for us both.

  “I hurt you, King. Just be a man and say it.”

  “Damn straight, you hurt me,” he snipes. “And I can’t get over it.”

  I look up into his eyes filled with so much pain. “That’s because you don’t want to.”

  “I have a lot more pain than you know. You hurt me before I found out you had my child when you showed me you had no loyalty to me, not the Kings. You were never going to be an active member of the crew, just my woman. I waited for you for two years before you ever thought about linking up with us. I never wanted you to live that life. The house Lea brought you to has always been for you. I wanted to take care of you, and I had Lea call you after I got out because still I wanted to give you the life that you were meant to live. No other woman ever lived there before your jump in. And no, I had no intentions of giving you an option of being with me, just giving you the life I thought you deserved.”

  I cross my arms over my chest as my eyes begin to burn. Everything he said is in past tense, and there is no fixing it, not if he continues to hold on to and let his pain fester inside of him like a poison. Just by looking into his eyes that are filled with contempt for me and reddening as he speaks, I can see that he is doing exactly that, and we will never get past this.

  “I know there has to be more on your chest than that.” Maybe if he gets it all off, he can move on with his life. Deep inside, King is a good man, and really does deserve to be happy. If he needs to clear the air between us to do that, I will take the hits coming from him one last time, even if it destroys me in the process.

  “And then you told me about Anjuwan. I could’ve gotten past you snitching and choosing your mother over me, but you kept my flesh and blood from me. And now you’re about to do it again.”

  The baby that is not even a baby yet is coming between us, along with everything else that has kept us apart. I was right eight years ago—there is no future for us.

  “You forgot to say you don’t want me anymore because of what I did and am about to do.”

  I am still not sure if I can swallow that pill though, but I will not use the baby that is not a baby yet to fix what is broken between us. Either King can forgive me because he loves me and wants me, or he can let me go.

  He shakes his head. I think he is agreeing that he does not want me anymore, and making my heart fracture down the mi
ddle. I was expecting to be heartbroken before this night was over with, but

  not feel the amount of pain that drops people to their knees. I lock mine before they give out, and then lock down my emotions threatening to run away with me—I am determined to stand tall through this conversation until it is over.

  “King, I never wanted to hurt you. But do you realize that you helped me set everything that happened to us in motion when you decided I would be yours without asking if that was what I wanted too?”

  “But you did want me, Ajoni,” he whispers so softly I am surprised that I heard him at all.

  “I wanted you after the fact, King, but you didn’t care if I did or didn’t want you before that.”

  “I did care, and knew you were meant for me. I just needed you to see it too.”

  I am still meant for him. Now, he just needs to see it.

  “It didn’t ever occur to you that I didn’t want the life you wanted me to have with you back then because you knew that you had a side to you that is almost every girl’s fantasy and would make almost anyone fall in love with you. That is what you did to me, and I was in pain every fucking day while you were away. Not because I helped put you away, but because I and your daughter needed you and you weren’t there for us. Yet, I forgave you for that and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for everything that happened to you after that night, but you put me in the position to have to choose between going to jail and my mother. Well, it looks like I chose right because my child, our child, would’ve been born behind bars if I hadn’t. Would it have made you feel better if she was born there?”

  “No, it wouldn’t, but what happened still happened, and shit is still happening.”

  I lose my cool and yell, “And you’ll never recognize that half of that is your fault will you?”

  “I recognize it, Ajoni, but you’re about to take away our second chance at being a family for Anjuwan.”

  “And I won’t produce another baby just to get it either. As long as you think only about what you want, we’ll never have a chance, and I’m not taking on another shitload of responsibility just so you can be a father from beginning to end.”