Praise for A Hustler’s Promise: Some Promises Won’t be Broken
This was a highly entertaining and quick read. It flowed very well and kept my attention. I highly recommend this book! - Cheryl, Black Diamond Book Reviews
A Hustler's Promise has all the elements of contemporary fiction and urban romance. - Crystalsteeler (Amazon Review)
Love, action, and intrigue--this book has it! - A.K Taylor, author of Neiko’s Five Land Adventure
A Hustler’s Promise II: Promises Kept
By Jackie Chanel
Copyright 2012 Jackie Chanel
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Copyright
Acknowledgements
About the Author
“I believe that everything that you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that's bad, I'm going to suffer from it. But in my mind, I believe what I'm doing is right. So I feel like I'm going to heaven.”
Tupac Amaru Shakur
Chapter 1
Jaicyn Jones stared out the bay window in the master bedroom of her dream house and sighed.
Despite the low temperature, the sun was shining brightly through the clouds. Even after spending three winters in Atlanta, she still hadn’t gotten used to the sky being so bright in the winter. Winters in Washington Heights were always cold and dreary.
She ran her hand along the window sill and touched the designer pillows that were only to be used as window decorations. There were many “look but don’t touch” decorations in her house. She’d gone a little overboard but at the time, she didn’t care. She was decorating her house the way she wanted to, with her boyfriend’s approval of course.
My house, she thought to herself and smiled.
Gone was the rundown townhouse in Washington Heights. She never had to go back there again. She wasn’t fifteen and trying to survive the cold hard streets of anymore. No more tiny apartment in the West End of Atlanta either. She had her very own house in a suburban community in Stone Mountain! Rayshawn had come through for her once again.
“Jaicyn!” she heard her boyfriend, Rayshawn, call her name from downstairs. His impatient tone made her lose her focus. She tightened the sash on her Coach trench coat and walked out of the master suite.
“I said I was coming!” she yelled back. “It’s my birthday! Stop rushing me!”
“I don’t care,” Rayshawn said as she tip-toed down the stairs in a pair of red bottoms with four and a half-inch heels.
“Jay-Jay,” Rayshawn groaned. “We’re on our way to the storage unit, not some damn fashion show. Go change.”
“Relax babe, I have sneakers in my bag.”
No matter what her man said, Jaicyn wasn’t changing. She’d spent hours in the salon getting her hair cut, styled, and highlighted and even more hours in Lenox Mall picking out the perfect pair of Louboutins and her birthday outfit. Her birthday only came once a year.
“Go get in the car,” Rayshawn grumbled.
Jaicyn wondered why he was so uptight. They’d made the trip to the storage unit plenty of times. There was nothing exceedingly special about today. Same shipment, same driver, same routine. Yet, her man was more tense over a drop off than she’d ever seen him.
When she, her two sisters, and Rayshawn moved to Atlanta three years ago, Jaicyn had no idea that life could be so good in the South. Atlanta was the perfect place for her and Rayshawn to set up shop and make a ton of money for themselves and the leader of Washington Height’s notorious drug crew, Andre “King” Carter.
At least in theory.
Washington Heights was a rough place but it was nothing compared to a city the size of Atlanta, Georgia. Rayshawn had spent six months in Atlanta helping King set up his piece of the drug empire. When they came back to Washington Heights everything in the “A” was fine.
Neither Jaicyn nor Rayshawn suspected that the real reason that Little Man wanted to come home had nothing to do with his baby-mama or his kids. The Atlanta dealers wanted him out. He had no choice but to haul ass back to Washington Heights.
Little Man was soft. Rayshawn and Jaicyn were sent to Atlanta because they could do everything that Little Man wasn’t cut out to do. If they didn’t know how to do anything else, they knew how to sell drugs and make money. They ran the tightest crew in Washington Heights. The Atlanta dealers wouldn’t have a clue what hit them when the Prince and Princess rolled through the town and took over.
At least that was Jaicyn’s thought when King proposed them moving to Atlanta.
As she fidgeted in the driver’s seat of her brand new Dodge Charger, Jaicyn thought back to the first rough months in Atlanta. The memories of shootouts and fights sent a shiver through her body. She clutched her Coach bag and felt the cool steel of her nine millimeter Glock. The coolness eased the memory. Her Glock had been her best friend when Rayshawn put her in charge of two of the four crews he and King had assembled.
No man likes to take orders from a woman, especially not a brassy and tough chick like Jaicyn. They had their girlfriends, sisters, and baby-mamas ambush her on the streets, in clubs, even once in the parking lot of Costco. With no one to help her and Rayshawn across town handling his own set of problems, Jaicyn had no choice but to fight and Jaicyn Jones had long stopped fighting fair after being shot at in Washington Heights.
When Rayshawn got word that Jaicyn’s life was in danger – of course she wasn’t the one who told him – he wanted to yank her off the streets and keep her hot tempered ass in the house. Atlanta chicks weren’t afraid of her like the girls were back home. Neither were the guys.
Jaicyn’s reputation for being a “take no shit” kind of boss in Washington Heights hadn’t followed her down south. No one knew she had held a girl at gunpoint and pressed her for information. The dealers in Atlanta didn’t care that she was the mastermind behind the sneak attack that had left two drug dealers floating in Lake Erie.
She and Rayshawn were the new kids on the block, no matter who had sent them. They had to earn the respect that they thought they deserved. Little Man wasn’t prepared for it. He thought King’s reputation would be enough. Jaicyn was the only one who knew that she’d have to show the city of Atlanta who was boss, just like she had in Washington Heights. So she fought, with her fists when necessary, and with her gun when her lethal right hook wasn’t enough.
Rayshawn tapped on her window interrupting her thoughts. “What’s wrong?”
Jaicyn shook her head. “Nothing. I just want to get this over with. I don’t want to spend my birthday making drop offs.”
“Don’t snap at me,” Rayshawn grunted. “I told him not to come until tomorrow.” He got into his own car and the engine purred to life.
Jaicyn leaned forward and turned up the new Jay-Z CD that was playing and took her Blackberry out of her purse and immediately began texting her crew. If she had to spend the morning of her birthday meeting with them, they’d damn well better be waiting for her to show up. She backed out of the driveway after hitting send and followed Rayshawn’s Audi out of their cul de sac.
****
Rain was beginning to sprinkle Jaicyn’s windshield as she sat inside the warm car waiting for Rayshawn to finish unloading ten plastic storages bins from the U-Haul truck and store them safely inside their climate controlled storage unit. She tried to help him but then it started raining. Jaicyn didn’t care how many hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of drugs were in those bins. She wasn’t getting her hair wet.
Jaicyn and Rayshawn’s re-up came directly from Cesar every two months like clockwork; one hundred kilos of raw uncut cocaine to be distributed as necessary. She and her man protected each shipment with their lives.
She powered on her iPa
d and pulled up the security software. From anywhere in the world, she and Rayshawn could monitor the security cameras in their house, the storage unit, and each of their stash houses.
Technology was a beautiful thing.
She checked in on her stash house. Her crew leader, Rock, and two others were doing exactly as she’d ordered, waiting for her and clueless that their boss was looking right at them and monitoring their every move.
It had taken almost a full year before the three tough guys that Jaicyn was watching on her screen had given her the respect she demanded. Rock was the worst but Jaicyn understood why. Before she came along, he was the man in Atlanta. He ran a solid crew and was making money on his own. When King had approached Rock about coming on board with the promise of tripling his profits, Rock had been under the impression that King was sending a crew to work for him.
Then Jaicyn and Rayshawn came to town and Rayshawn immediately put his girlfriend in charge of Rock and his crew of dealers in the West End. The entire five man crew went rogue as soon as Jaicyn tried to take over. They acted as if she didn’t even exist and when she tried to rein them in, they called in their girlfriends.
“Rayshawn, I have a plan,” is what she said when Rayshawn tried to take her crew away from her and put her in charge of the money again.
That was the last thing she’d wanted. She spent enough years working for Rayshawn. In her own mind, she was as much as a boss as he was and she refused to back down. Instead she hit the streets herself. Armed with the best dope Atlanta had ever seen, she hustled on street corners night and day until Rock and his boys had to take notice.
She was taking money out of their pockets; no one wanted the stepped on shit that they were selling when they could cop primo dope from her. One by one, the dealers fell back in line with her and she welcomed them with open arms. Now they all were making money and she wasn’t out on corners slinging product.
Now she was finally getting the respect that she’d commanded in Washington Heights.
Jaicyn looked up from her iPad just in time to see Rayshawn motioning for her to roll down her window.
“What?” she yelled.
“Stop bullshittin’ and come get your shit. I’m not packing your bags too!”
Leaving the car running, Jaicyn sprinted into the storage unit under the cover of the largest umbrella she could find in her trunk. Rayshawn tossed two black nylon gym bags at her feet and popped the lid on one of the bins. Jaicyn opened another and started packing kilos of cocaine into her bags.
“Just take five,” Rayshawn said.
“I know,” she muttered.
They did this at least once a week but Rayshawn always said the same thing. Her crew could sell more than five kilos in a week but Jaicyn refused to let Rayshawn know that. She always knew that she could outsell him but whenever she did, their relationship took a hit. She wanted to keep the peace so she resisted the urge and restricted her people to five kilos a week.
When the bags were tucked safely into their trunks and the unit secured, Rayshawn met Jaicyn at her car and kissed her goodbye.
“Don’t be gone too long,” he said. “It is your birthday.”
“Be safe,” she said and rolled up the window. The two black cars pulled out of the parking lot and went in opposite directions towards the city.
Jaicyn rode down I-75 blasting her music and singing along with the Jay-Z CD. Things had changed drastically in the last three years. She had changed. She had to or else her relationship wasn’t going to last.
She and Rayshawn had left Washington Heights knowing what King expected from them. He wanted to expand and make more money. What they did in Atlanta was important to a lot of people back home, at least that was what Rayshawn lectured her about at least once a week.
But the hours they spent working in different parts of Atlanta took a toll on their relationship. They argued a lot. Jaicyn shuddered, remembering the argument that had almost lost her the man she loved for good. When Rayshawn accused her of being more focused on impressing King with how much money she could make instead of making their relationship work, Jaicyn thought it was over.
Technically it was.
Rayshawn had moved out of their apartment and left her. For months he treated her like she was just another one of his employees. He’d done that before but this time it was different…much different. He didn’t look at her the same. He didn’t smile when she walked into his drug house in College Park. He didn’t text or call her.
It broke her heart because she never thought that there would be a day when Rayshawn didn’t love her anymore. He’d taught her a hard lesson and she didn’t know if she was ever going to get him back. It wasn’t Rayshawn, Autumn, Sandy, or King who made her see how wrong she was. It was her baby sister.
Bobbie hated the fact that Rayshawn had left and she had every right to blame Jaicyn. She was the one who reminded Jaicyn that she and Rayshawn were supposed to be a team. They were supposed to be a family and that Jaicyn was doing an awful job of being a team player. She literally accused her sister of thinking she should be at the top of the pyramid when she and Rayshawn were supposed to be the strong ones on the bottom.
Jaicyn instantly regretted putting Rickie and Bobbie on a competition cheerleading squad after hearing that, but she understood the analogy. Leave it to a ten year old to put her entire mindset into perspective with a simple cheerleading reference.
It wasn’t her place to compete with Rayshawn. They came to Atlanta together, to expand King’s organization. He’d done everything right. He even gave her control over half of his crew so she wouldn’t feel like she worked for him and she’d taken advantage of it.
It wasn’t easy getting him back, not as easy as it had been when she came home from Job Corps. Especially when she had to look him in his face and admit that she’d messed up. But Rayshawn was more important to her than anything. She wanted him more than she wanted money or her own crew. If she couldn’t have him, she didn’t want any of it.
Those months that they spent apart had changed Jaicyn and everybody saw it. Her own father told her that he liked the “new Jaicyn”, the more cooperative, “everything doesn’t have to be my way or the highway” Jaicyn. Still, no one changes overnight and Jaicyn still considered herself to be a work in progress. The best part was that Rayshawn, even though he still called her selfish and stubborn sometimes, took her back.
Three years later, they worked together and she found other things to occupy her time. Her interest in selling dope was waning so it was easy to let Rayshawn take the reins. Three years later, their relationship was stronger than it ever was before and she was extra careful about not messing it up again. Nothing was worth losing her man.
Nothing.
****
The rain had stopped by the time Jaicyn pulled in front of her main stash house. She took her umbrella with her just in case. She didn’t have time to go back to the salon before her party…the party that her sisters and Rayshawn had tried to keep a secret from her. She’d pretend to act surprised when she came home but she figured out what they were up to months ago.
“Why are you so dressed up?” Rock asked when she walked through the door of the small house and tossed her umbrella on the floor.
Rock, Craig, and Gary were sitting in the living room. They’d just finished a blunt. The weed smell still lingered in the air.
“You better not have been smoking my shit,” Jaicyn said. “And my clothes are none of your business.” She looked around the scarcely furnished room. “Where are the girls?”
“They’re on the way,” Gary answered. “Kayla’s car wouldn’t start so they had to take the bus.”
Jaicyn laughed. How the three girls Rock hired to cook his dope got to the house didn’t matter to her. One day of cooking dope for Rock paid enough to buy a new car. If Kayla was too stupid to figure that out instead of driving around Atlanta in a Honda with a bad engine, that was her problem.
“Well, your stuff is in th
e car,” Jaicyn said. “I’d stay and chill with you but I have shit to do. It’s my birthday.”
Craig laughed. “We know. You’ve been talking about it for a week. You don’t want to have a birthday blunt with us?”
“Seriously, that’s all you can manage? A birthday blunt? As much as I pay you, y’all should be throwin’ me a party at Crucial or something.”
“We don’t party with the boss, remember?” Craig reminded her. “Rayshawn’s rules, ya know.”
Jaicyn remembered her man’s rules…all of them. He was right though. No matter how long they’d been selling dope for her, this crew wasn’t made up of close friends like she’d had back home. And Rayshawn’s first rule was “trust no one”.
On her birthday, she wished she was back home with a crew that she trusted with her life and could party with. Johnny, Taylor, and Joy were her best friends and she missed them. If they had come to Atlanta with her, they wouldn’t be doing drug business on her birthday. They’d hit the hottest club for a huge birthday bash.
She couldn’t and wouldn’t hang out with this crew. She only trusted them enough to sell drugs for her and that was stretching it. These were the same guys who wanted her dead three years ago. Money made people see things differently and they were making a lot of money. Their relationship was strictly business and would continue to be that way until Rayshawn or King said otherwise.
With all of her real friends in Washington Heights, Jaicyn tried to think of who would be at the party tonight. Of course Dayshawn would be there. He lived in the city. Her girls from Caliente would probably show up.
Caliente was the result of Rayshawn’s second rule; have a legit source of income. The best advice King had passed on to Rayshawn and Jaicyn was to filter all of their money through businesses to avoid the suspicion of the IRS. Rayshawn owned the storage facility and moving company they used. He gave her a choice. It was either utilize her real estate license and get a real job or open a business. Jaicyn chose to open a business. Caliente was Jaicyn’s upscale clothing boutique in Buckhead.
A Hustler's Promise 2 Promises Kept Page 1