“You think you know who did this?” I ask, because I need to say something to break the tension between us.
“If you don’t know who is responsible for this shit then your case is already fucked.”
He moves past me, but I jump to block his path. “Where were you tonight?”
He stops and glares. “Out.”
Smart ass. I cross my arms and make it clear that I’m not budging until he answers my questions.
“My brother and I weren’t here when this shit went down. Trust me. There would have been a different result had we been here.”
“That wasn’t my question,” I say. “Where were you?” When it looks like he’s not going to answer my question, I continue. “You’re going to have to forgive me for my insistence because the last I heard, you were dead.” I unfold my arms so that I can reach out and touch his shoulder. When my finger touches flesh, I add, “No. You’re clearly not a ghost.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he says, his hard expression unchanging.
“Where were you?” I insist.
“Tonight I was at work. I own a funeral home not too far from here. Besides that, I’ve been back for a couple of months. As you can tell by my face, I was in a serious car accident. I don’t remember much about the details of the accident, but I was fortunate to survive.”
“Yeah. The whole city saw it play out on the evening news. You were believed to be in the same car as Terrell Carver.”
A muscle twitches along the side of his face. “Like I said, I don’t remember much.”
“Yeah. I caught that.” Our gazes lock for a few uncomfortable seconds before I try to discern any features that we may share from our father. So far, all I can tell is that he has one hell of a poker face.
“Hawkins!” The chief shouts across the yard like she was raised in a barn.
“Looks like you’re needed inside.” Mason smirks. “Don’t let me keep you from doing your job.”
I clench my jaw tight to keep from saying shit that I’d probably regret later. “We’ll find Ms. Washington, and in the interim, you should make a point to come visit me downtown. There are a lot of questions I have pertaining to this and other cases. Say for example, Officer Melanie Johnson’s case.”
A second muscle pulses on the opposite side of his face.
“Hawkins!”
I ignore the chief. “Tomorrow—any time after lunch.”
He rakes his gaze over me again. “Fine. I’ll see if I can squeeze you into my schedule.”
Triumphant, I wink and backpedal my way toward the house.
Mason looks as if he’s growling inside of his head.
Don’t think we are starting off on the right foot. I spin around and then jog into the house, where Chief Brown greets me.
“I’m glad that you can finally join us.”
“I was interviewing one of the residents.”
She frowns as if she doesn’t know who I’m talking about.
“Mason Car . . . Lewis.” I thrust my thumb over my shoulder. “He said that he lives here.” They look clueless so I fill them in. “He said that his girlfriend, Willow Washington, is missing.”
“Ms. Washington is the name on the deed to the house. I wasn’t aware that someone else lived here.” The chief marches back to the front door as all hell breaks out between angry Vice Lords and the police.
12
Mack
“Shit is really about to hit the fan now,” I tell my girl Romil.
Judging by the way Romil is twitching and pacing, she’s thinking the same damn thing. “What the fuck are we going to do?” she asks every other minute, like clockwork.
Each time her voice gets a little louder.
“Shhhh.” I look around. “Keep your voice down.”
Romil ain’t hearing me though. She’s geeked as fuck. “This shit is all on us.”
A couple of heads in the crowd turn in our direction and I snatch Romil by the arm and pull her aside.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” Romil shouts.
I smack her hard across the face.
When her head snaps back, a few gasps from the crowd let me know that we’ve drawn the kind of attention I wanted to avoid. “What the fuck are y’all looking at?” I stare down a few eyeballs until they look the other way. Afterward, I address Romil, who’s holding her cheek like a child on the brink of tears.
“Are you good now?” I ask.
She flinches when I step closer.
“Calm down. I’m not going to hit you again, but we have to stay calm.”
“Hey! Isn’t that the new captain of police?” someone asks from behind me.
I turn toward an attractive woman in painted-on black jeans, blue top, and a black leather jacket as she marches her way through a swarm of news cameras.
“She’s smaller than she looks on TV,” Romil comments.
“Nah. Nah. That’s the police chief.”
“Somebody needs to tell her that she’s wearing the wrong damn colors on this side of town,” Lola, a Flower who lives next door to Tombstone and his father, Nookie, comments.
“Fat Ace!” someone shouts, and the crowd lurches forward.
Romil and I remain rooted where we stand as we watch Fat Ace and his younger brother, Profit, attempt to bum-rush their way into Lucifer’s house.
“Lucifer!” Fat Ace shouts as police officers line up to form an impenetrable wall to block him.
“Get your hands off of me, muthafucka! Lucifer!” Fat Ace’s roar makes goose bumps pimple my arms.
He races over and climbs into the back of the ambulance where they’ve taken Ta’Shara. I have no doubts that he wants to hear what happened to Lucifer from her mouth.
The punk-ass EMTs grab a cop to help get Fat Ace out of the back of the ambulance. Soon Fat Ace and Profit climb out. Fat Ace is pulled aside by the new captain of police and they stay huddled up for a moment. However, minutes after she goes into the house, the cops keep giving him shit and a fight breaks out between cops and Vice Lords. The surviving soldiers jump into the mix to show that they have our leader’s back.
The cops are not prepared for the chaos. A full-out brawl ensues. News reporters and cameramen rush forward to get the melee captured on tape.
Shit gets crazier when the rest of the crowd then attacks a few of the camera crew. One muthafucka’s camera gets snatched off his shoulder and is smashed to the ground and stomped on.
The cameraman finds his inner thug and launches his own attack.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The only real thing to happen next is the sound of gunfire.
Pow! Pow! Pow!
I leap back and snatch Romil with me.
The police are taking a calculated risk firing up in the air with this crowd. It’s not like they’re the only ones with weapons out here.
When I see one cop clock a Flower right in her face, I drop Romil’s arm. “Fuck it! Let’s go!”
We spring forward and join the mayhem.
13
Ta’Shara
Profit. I want Profit.
Not until the paramedics slam the ambulance’s door do I realize how scared I am. The adrenaline that I’ve been running on all night has waned. All that’s left banging around inside of me is fear and ghosts. LeShelle’s bloodcurdling screams echo in my head. I recall the smell of burning flesh and crackling hair. I’m never going to get these images out of my head. Ever.
Fat tears roll as LeShelle’s screams grow louder and then transform into a high-pitched cackle. It’s as if the bitch is laughing at me from beyond the grave. A chill comes over me. Soon after, I’m freezing and the air rushing through this oxygen mask is coming in too fast and strong.
How much longer will it be before we get to the hospital? It doesn’t seem as if we’re going all that fast. The seconds tick by like minutes and the minutes like hours. I’ll bleed out by the time we get to the hospital. I can’t die. Not like this.
The idea of being another stati
stic of the city’s street violence fills me with disappointment. After everything—to fall victim of the life that I told myself I would never be a part of is pathetic.
My tears quicken as every mistake I’ve made in the past two years replays in my head. The fervent wish to go back and do everything all over balloons in my heart, even as I know that I’m wishing for the impossible.
The ambulance’s back doors fly open, disorienting me as people hustle and bustle around. They keep talking and asking questions that I can’t comprehend.
But then they shout for me to nod if I understand what they are saying. I nod even though I don’t understand them, because I want the shouting to stop.
Next, I’m bathed in a bright white light. Needles are stuck in me, my eyelids are lifted and a ballpoint flashlight blinds me. There’s an argument about which surgery room is available. A man says something about giving me something to relax me, but instead of asking whether I understand, something ice-cold is injected into my veins.
LeShelle’s screams and cackles fade away and the chill disappears. Actually, I feel . . . good. Damn good.
I smack my lips because I swear I can taste Profit’s spearmint kisses on my lips. I can feel his strong arms wrapped around me . . .
“Shhh. You don’t want us to wake your parents,” Profit whispered as he daddy-long-strokes in between my legs.
We were back in my pink princess room at the Douglases’. As he did most nights, Profit had climbed up the lattice and through my window. We loved making love under my foster parents’ noses.
Our love was still young. Innocent—or naïve.
No one in either of our warring families knew that we were dating yet. No one had been killed. We foolishly believed that we could continue our love on the down low. Ignorance truly was bliss.
This was the moment that I wished would last forever . . .
14
Lucifer
Déjà vu.
It’s the second time in six months that I’ve awakened in an upside down SUV with the heavy stench of gasoline burning my nose. The word pain is too mild a word to describe what my body is enduring, and it’s impossible to block the shit out of my mind and do what I know must be done: Get the hell out of here. I twist my head this way and that way, sending a wave of broken glass cascading out of my hair.
Beside me, Python’s ugly ass is knocked the hell out. He’s also sporting a huge gash on his forehead, where blood streams and then drips all over my leg. At the sight of that foul shit, I struggle to move my leg. I don’t care that they seize and cramp. I don’t want this muthafucka touching me.
When I’m able to get my leg free, I look for the gun I snatched from Python and used to blow the back of the driver’s head off. To my surprise, I’m still holding it. Why can’t I feel my hand? I stare at my right arm as if it’s a foreign appendage. The shit is swelling up right before my eyes.
“Ugh . . .” King Isaac’s woeful moan from the front seat steals my attention.
I have to get the fuck out of here. I look around to the windowless door and crawl toward it, when my inner gangster demands I take care of business first. I aim at Python’s head despite my swollen hand. Ain’t nobody going to miss this muthafucka, least of all my ass. I tap the trigger.
Click
What the fuck? I tap it again.
Click. Click.
The muthafucka is empty.
Click. Click. Click.
Python’s eyes fly open.
Oh shit. I drop the gun, turn, and bolt for the window. I only get the upper part of my body through the door before Python’s gorilla hands wrap around my ankle. No! No!
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” With a hard yank, I’m pulled a few inches back into the car, but I use my other foot to stomp the shit out of him. The shit is just as painful for me is it is for him, considering my feet are bare. However, I get a few good kicks in at his already cracked head, and he loses his grip on my foot. That’s all I need to jet back out of the missing window.
“Fuck!” Python thunders.
I don’t dare look back. My survival instincts are on full blast as I tumble onto soft, damp earth. Apparently the vehicle has tumbled down into a thickly wooded area.
“Hey, that bitch is escaping,” a voice shouts.
I can only guess that it is more of King Isaac’s minions. When shots ring out, I duck and dodge but keep hustling through the woods while expecting a bullet to hit and finish me off. As soon as the gunfire starts, it stops. My curiosity is too strong for me to resist a glance over my shoulder. I see nothing and no one. I’ve disappeared out of their line of fire.
An overwhelming rush of relief causes me to stumble, and before I know it my knees hit the ground. Don’t stop. The voice in my head is so loud that I’m convinced that another person is shouting in my ear. I’m back on my feet in no time. Running like my life depends on it because—my life and my child’s life really do depend on it.
As the woods get thicker and darker, the ground becomes a blanket of sharp rocks, broken tree branches, and other sharp objects. I slow down and tell myself that I don’t think that King Isaac or his goons are following me.
No. Don’t stop. This time the voice isn’t as strong or as powerful. My gait slows down even more.
Don’t stop.
I move above a light jog.
Don’t stop.
A fast walk.
Don’t stop.
A slow walk—until I find myself leaning my weight against a tree. “I just need a couple of seconds to catch my breath,” I tell myself. However, the deep breaths bring my attention back to the pain radiating throughout my body. That’s when I feel more blood trickling down my leg.
My baby. Head bowed, I drop down onto my knees. I can’t explain it, but an overpowering sense of loss overwhelms me. I don’t know how I know, but I just know that little Mason Junior couldn’t have survived this hellish night—and it’s my fault. If I had not been out avenging my brother’s, Bishop, death like a madwoman against Shariffa’s raggedy crew, she would never have ended up in my bedroom tonight, set on murdering me. Had I not been in the condition I was in, maybe I’d have been able to take Python and Isaac out when they came crashing through my door. I think about Ta’Shara lying in that pool of blood. She saved my life; that wisp of a girl. I never thought her more than a nuisance and maybe a bit of a pain in the neck. She never belonged in our world, but was dragged in kicking and screaming the night her sister had her gang raped.
I felt nothing when Ta’Shara landed in the mental hospital. But I took out her attackers solely because those same men were also responsible for putting Profit in the hospital with seventeen bullets in his chest. I had to make it clear to the Gangster Disciples that they couldn’t come after the Vice Lords’ prince and get away with it. When Profit first brought Ta’Shara home to Ruby Cove, she looked and behaved like an abandoned puppy that Profit found on the side of the road. That is until the kiss. I still don’t know where the fuck that shit came from, but Profit kissed me and his girl saw it. Her change toward me was a complete one-eighty. It was the first time that I saw her potential to be a real Vice Lord Flower. Then I was the one who needed saving and she was right there. I feel shitty for how I treated the girl—and now she’s dead. If I survive this night, no doubt Profit will blame me. How could he not? I blame me.
I sigh. The pain in my lower abdomen eases, but my fear for my child remains intact.
A howl whines through the woods. My head snaps up as I guess the direction that it’s coming from.
A twig snaps.
My heart leaps but I climb to my feet. Leaves rustle and the night air dips several degrees. You need a weapon. I glance around, looking for something—anything to arm myself with, but all I see are branches that are either too large to pick up and wield or too small. Even the rocks are either embedded in earth or are sharp pebbles that wouldn’t do much damage to a fly, let alone cause any sort of damage to a potential predator.
Crouched, I strain my eyes into the dark woods, waiting to see what will appear to attack and finish the job that King Isaac and Python failed to do.
The leaves rustle louder. The temperature plunges lower. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand up straight. No matter what happens, I tell myself, I’ll meet death like a soldier. Minutes passes and I remain tense and prepared for anything.
The rustling grows even louder—closer.
When a small head rounds a large tree in my direct line of vision, I’m shocked—and then disappointed. Why disappointed? I ask myself. My best answer is that I may have been eager for the torturous night to end. The small four-legged animal isn’t the ferocious beast that I had expected, but the thin, malnourished dog sizes me up. My best guess is that it’s a yellow Labrador, but I’m not sure. I’ve never been too keen on dogs and don’t know one breed from another. One thing for sure, he’s more afraid of me than I am of him.
Relief floods out my disappointment, and once again I’m back on my knees, not to cry or even pray, but to laugh. I’ve gone mad.
This also must’ve relaxed the dog a great deal because his pink, stinky tongue licks the side of my face as the laughter bubbles out of me.
Then the pain returns, stealing my breath and my laughter.
The dog steps back, watches. When I moan he howls as if in solidarity. My contractions intensify and it isn’t too long before I’m sweaty and shivering in the cool night breeze and then prepare for the worst.
15
Cleo
Club Diesel
Tonight is a big night, but unfortunately I’ve fucked up every lead-in to every song through both sets on stage. However, I manage to pull it all together for a strong finish. As I walk offstage, I apologize to the band. They all give me the pull your shit together stare before marching backstage.
I wish I could—but it’s been nearly two weeks since anybody has seen my ex-fiancé-slash-business-manager, Kalief. We’re officially over, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve cut emotional ties. Yes, he’s a dog that loves pussy way too fucking much. Yes, he has lied, cheated, and stolen from me more times than I care to count, but our love story is . . . complicated.
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