Boss Bitch Swag

by Cynthia White

  “Boss, I loved you.” I spilled my heart out as I aimed his 9mm at his chest and prepared to spill his guts. “But what you did to me is unforgivable.” I cocked the hammer and closed my eyes. “Goodbye.” I pulled the trigger.

  Either time was standing still, or nothing was happening. I opened my eyes just in time to see the frantic look on Boss’ face. His yellow piss had saturated the beautiful white rug beneath him, and we looked at each other and both realized what had happened at the exact same time: the gun jammed. Neither one of us were prepared to back down. He wanted to live, and I wanted his ass dead - the only question was: which one of us wanted his life more?

  Chapter 38

  Boss

  Meesha died in my arms. It happened so fucking fast. She was there one minute and dead the next. We struggled for my 9mm, but I never wanted to shoot her; I loved her.

  When the gun went off in that split second, I wanted it to be me. She deserved for it to be me. A nigga never got shit right. Me and Meesh were like night and day. She tried her best to help me, but you can’t save a wild-ass nigga that don’t want to be saved. Now she was dead. My wife tried to offer me a lifeline - and I shot her in the heart...how the fuck was I going to explain that to my kids?

  “Meesh!” I fell to my knees beside my wife as she lay on the bathroom floor, bleeding heavily from her chest. “Meesha! Come on now, Meesh!” My mind began to process what my heart already knew: I could yell at her and shake her all I wanted to...she was gone.

  “Baby, I’m so sorry.” I brought her lifeless head up to my chest. “What the fuck happened? What did I do? What the fuck just happened?”

  I was losing my mind. Meesha was the only woman I ever really loved. It wasn’t like the puppy dog shit I had for Jazz or the infatuation I had with Kitty; I loved Meesha in a way that scared the shit out of a nigga like me. I married her. I couldn’t stand the thought of another nigga ever touching her, so I put a ring on her finger - and I never regretted it. She was good for me when I let her be, but I was like poison to her, and the infection just kept getting deeper and deeper. Once I got inside her body, I wouldn’t let go. She tried to fight me off. She fought with everything she had, and when that wasn’t enough - she finally gave in; I won.

  My wife was dead in my arms from a bullet fired by my gun while it was in my hands. I was a real fucking winner, and my prize was a life without the one person who could have made it meaningful...I would have been better off dead.

  My daughters stood on the other side of the bathroom door, screaming and crying for Mommy and Daddy, but I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. If I opened that door, they would have been traumatized for life. It was the only right thing I think I ever did for them. I should’ve let Meesha leave with them when she tried, but I had to have things the way I wanted them. Fuck everybody else; I had to be in charge...I had to be Boss. I didn’t even remember who Malcolm Clark was anymore. I got so caught up in believing my own bullshit that I didn’t even know what was real and what was legend. But I was about to find out. Boss was about to see firsthand that all the drugs, all the booze, all the crimes, all murders, and all the affairs weren’t going to go unpunished. My day had come – and losing Meesha was just the start of my downfall.

  I called 911, for all the good that did me. Meesha was already gone. So was the baby. It was too early. My son wasn’t ready to be separated from his mother, so they went together. I was immediately arrested and charged with the murder of my wife and unborn child. Even worse: the law wasn’t hearing that self-defense bullshit. I was a career drug dealer with plenty of arrests on a rap sheet that went back damn near twenty years...they wanted to nail me bad - and they did.

  Meesha’s moms got custody of the girls while I got busy serving a life sentence. There was no parole in my future, and no future in the days I had left. I thought about Meesh all the time; her face haunted my nightmares every night as I tossed and turned in a pool of my own sweat. I lost a lot of people I cared about, but to actually be responsible for one’s death was traumatic. I knew I was never going to forgive myself. Meesha was the love of my life. I wanted to give her everything she wanted, but I couldn’t see that all she really wanted was me. She didn’t give a fuck about the money. She never even drove all the cars; as long as I was breathing and the girls were healthy, Meesh was content. That should’ve been more than enough for me, but it wasn’t. I was a greedy nigga. I had to live the Boss life. I always wanted more, more money, more women, more anything than I could ever possibly acquire – and that addiction led me to a dark place that felt too permanent to brush off. My drug was power. I didn’t shoot it or snort it, but I was no better than any other addict on the block. I was no better than Yuk – and admitting that was truly like admitting defeat. I didn’t give a fuck anymore; I didn’t see the point. What did I have left to believe in?

  Prison life was a big-ass adjustment for me. I stayed in trouble from day one. Another inmate recognized me from the news and started referring to me as the nigga with AIDS who killed his bitch. I ended up breakin’ his nose and jaw and knocking out six of his front teeth. Most of my first year was spent in solitary confinement. They thought I was a threat when I was really just a dead man walking. My insides were rotten. I didn’t give a fuck about being cut off from the other prisoners; they didn’t mean shit to me. I was cut off from my kids; that’s what hurt. Living everyday knowing that I killed my wife was what burned my flesh at night. The prison doctor gave me an HIV test, but it came back negative. I didn’t care. Everybody around me thought that I was some big, exciting mystery, and they all wanted to solve me. I just wanted to be left the fuck alone. My dark thoughts and recurring nightmares were all the company I could stand.

  That day started out fucked up. This bitch-ass CO name Leon was on a power trip - and lucky me, I was the nigga he wanted to trip with. I didn’t have shit to lose. My life meant nothing to me anymore, but I underestimated how much it still meant to somebody else.

  “So you the nigga everybody refers to as ‘Boss,’ huh?” Leon stood in front of me like he was sizing me up. “You don’t look like no fuckin’ boss.” He attempted to berate me. “Nigga, what the fuck you run?” His big ass bucked at me like we were two bears in the wild. “Not my prison.”

  He was one of those: the muthafucka made forty grand a year and thought he was some kind of a Don. I guess the prison was his palace. If he thought I had any interest in running that dingy muthafucka, he was barking up the wrong tree. Boss was gone, and Malcolm Clark didn’t have any desire to argue with a power-hungry buffoon who had no fucking idea what was really going on under his nose. He was too arrogant to see clearly. I knew how that felt...I, too, had once suffered with the same affliction.

  “Why don’t you turn yo big ass around and go try to intimidate some other nigga?” Malcolm Clark had no desire to argue with the clown, but he wasn’t about to be punked by him either. “Whatever you got goin’ on up in this bitch ain’t got shit to do with me.”

  “Now, nigga, that’s where ya wrong.” A sinister smirk quickly spread across his already creepy-ass face. “This has everything to do with you.” He put the key into the lock that opened the door of my cell, then an even bigger nigga appeared at his side. The six-foot-four-inch, three hundred pound stranger was there to kill me; I didn’t need officer smart-ass to tell me that. The door opened with a loud, grinding squeak, then my would-be murderer began to move towards me. He was covered in jailhouse tats and smelled like a combination of do-do weed and bootleg liquor.

  “Nigga, Ren sends his condolences.” The large stranger dropped a very familiar name. “He was sorry to hear about yo wife.” Biggie chuckled.

  I didn’t see a damn thing funny. Meesha’s life wasn’t a joke, and neither was her death. I didn’t know what Ren had to do with it, and I really didn’t give a fuck. There was a time when I would’ve done anything for that nigga, but that time was long gone. Childish friendships were a thing of the past; the present was all that mattered - and in
my present I found myself unarmed, dodging swipes from a monster equipped with a shank he proudly created with his own two hands. It was my life or his – and I was either going to kill this big, ignorant muthafucka or go out fighting...

  Chapter 39

  Ren

  I was only thirteen when I had my first sexual experience, and I was only fifteen when I found out I was HIV positive. My first piece of pussy did me in. She was a sexy older bitch with smooth dark skin, cold black hair, and matching cold black eyes. They called her Coco. She was a prostitute; she was also my homeboy’s mother. It only took Mama Clark three minutes to take me where I needed to go. I thought I was in love, but she was just a hoe. She loved any nigga with forty bucks in his pocket. Tuesday was my day. I’d give her two twenties, and she’d suck my dick until I begged her to stop. The bitch was a beast. She had what I called the three Fs: she was fine, she was fun, and she was freaky as a muthafucka. She was also sick and didn’t even know it. The night she found out, she killed herself and took her secret with her to the grave - and I never would’ve known if I didn’t start to get sick myself.

  Two years after Coco’s death, I was admitted to Children’s Hospital with a nasty case of the flu - only it wasn’t really the flu. My mother didn’t believe the doctor when she gave us the news. She had no clue I was fucking; that’s not really something a boy shares with his mother. Moms slapped the dog shit out of me when I told her that I got the disease from a prostitute. Boss’ mother was the only woman I’d ever been with, but she was a filthy, trifling whore. She took my money, and in return she gave me a disease I couldn’t get rid of. Somebody had to pay for that, and since the bitch was already dead, I decided that her son - the nigga that called his self my friend - would settle her debt...I was going to take away his whole entire life the same way his hoe ass mama took away mine.

  Jazz was my first strike. I tried to fuck the bitch, but she was so stuck on Boss she couldn’t see straight. So I had to rape her. That could have been the end, but she didn’t get sick. I left town for a little while to regroup - but even though my mission was on pause, I didn’t forget about it. My need for revenge was what motivated me.

  I took my meds every day. I ate right. I even started working out. I knew one day my time would come, and I wanted to be prepared for anything. I fell back and waited patiently for the perfect moment – and that’s when I found out about Meesha. My little cousin Derrick had known her for years, and he was my in. First, I paid a dope fiend named Yuk to dispose of her younger brother; that hurt her, so it also hurt Boss. For a while, I was satisfied with that. Then I drove down 21st Street one night and saw that nigga laughing it up with some bitch I’d never seen before; that nigga was telling jokes while I was struggling to survive – and his wife was about to pay out the ass for those jokes.

  I paid my broke-ass cousin Derrick five Gs to get Meesha to Elite that night, then slip a Mickey into her drink. Once it started to take effect, his mission was to get her back to my truck. He came through. When I had her alone in my Excursion, I kissed her. I fondled her. Then, once my dick got hard enough, I raped her; the next day, she didn’t remember a thing. When she found out her status, she instantly suspected Boss; apparently, the bitch was faithful to that hoe-ass nigga. When I heard what happened, I damn near came all over myself. I couldn’t have planned that shit any better. Boss’ wife tried to shoot him, but they struggled - and he ended up shooting her instead. The shit was all over the news.

  I let that nigga rot in jail for a while, but then I got bored. My auntie’s boyfriend, Leon, was as crooked as they came; all I had to do was show him the money. He even agreed to provide the jailhouse hit man. The entire thing took less than five minutes, and I got the call when Boss was pronounced dead. I played his life like a chess game; he thought he was controlling the board, but he wasn’t really in control of shit. Boss fell just like any other nigga made of flesh and blood – and so did his bitch.

  About The Author

  CYNTHIA WHITE is the Essence Bestselling Author of Queen and Always A Queen. She's been writing ever since she learned how to hold a pencil - and she wrote her debut novel, Queen, in one week. Cynthia was born and raised in St. Louis. Her father, whom she never met, was African-American, and her mother is half-Irish and half-Indian. Having grown up in a tough neighborhood, she saw many things that no little girl should have to see. Going through the motions for a long time trying to figure out her place in life, Cynthia wasn't sure what God put her on Earth to do. It wasn't until her senior year of high school, when a teacher encouraged her, that she even considered writing as a career.