by Anna J.
The Double Cross
Anna J
www.urbanbooks.net
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also by
Acknowledgments
Selah Gordon - When Digging A Ditch
Selah - 365 Days Ago
Chase - Get It, Got It, Gone
Selah - The Thrill of the Chase
Vicerean Gray - That’s My Best Friend
Sajdah - Get In Where You Fit In
Chase - Double the Pleasure
Selah - Almost Mrs. Warren
Sajdah - Ready, Set, Go
Selah - Sister, Sister
Chase - It’s What You Asked For
Selah - Getting Fed Up
Skye Moore - Just Can’t Act Right
Selah - Flash Back Friday
Selah - Enough Is Enough
Chase Antoine Warren II
Sajdah - Desperate Calls
Chase - The Rise to the Top
Vice - Because I’m A Good Friend
Chase - The Informer
Chase - The End of The Road
Selah - Fast Forward Eye Opener
Sajdah - Your Man Is My Man Too
Chase - They Always Think It’s A Game
Selah - Life With Chase
Vice - Shade Comes In All Shades
Skye - Now or Never
Chase - Let Me Explain
Selah - #TeamChase
Epilogue
Vice - When Play Time is Over
The End . . . kind of . . .
For Discussion
Teaser chapter
Urban Books, LLC
300 Farmingdale Road, N.Y.-Route 109
Farmingdale, NY 11735
The Double Cross Copyright © 2020 Anna J
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-6455-6011-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-64556-026-5
eISBN 10: 1-64556-026-0
This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.
Distributed by Kensington Publishing Corp.
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Also by Anna J
Novels
Exposed: When Good Wives Go Bad
My Woman His Wife 3: Playing for Keeps
Hell’s Diva 2: Mecca’s Return
Hell’s Diva: Mecca’s Mission
Snow White: A Survival Story
My Little Secret
Get Money Chicks
The Aftermath
My Woman His Wife
Anthologies
Full Figured 15
Full Figured 4
Bedroom Chronicles
The Cat House
Flexin’ and Sexin’: Sexy Street Tales Vol 1
Fantasy
Fetish
Morning Noon and Night: Can’t Get Enough
Stories to Excite You: Ménage Quad
Independent Projects
Lies Told in the Bedroom
Motives 1&2
Erotic Snapshots Volumes 1-6
Acknowledgments
Father God, I thank you for this opportunity. Sometimes when we are blessed with so many talents, we have no idea what to do with it. Oftentimes we take advantage of it, thinking it will always be here. They say if you don’t use it, you lose it. I’m witness that you can use it and still lose it. I don’t deserve it, but you just keep giving me chances to shine. You keep preparing this table before my enemies. You keep giving me one creative idea after the next to execute without trouble. I am a firm believer that no matter how many weapons are formed against me, they can’t touch me because of you.
Carl Weber, thanks for holding a seat for me in the Urban Books family. You asked me years ago why I stopped writing, and what I was waiting on, but I didn’t have a real reason.... Still don’t. Just know that I’m back like I never left, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do what I love again. Not many people get signed to a major publishing house, walk away, and get to go back. Thanks for the blessing. I had a lot of false starts, but being able to go back home was well worth the effort.
N’Tyse . . . girl! When I say you showing all the way out in these streets! When I first contacted Diane Rembert about a short story opportunity she posted on FB, she asked me was I interested in representation instead. I was nervous because of things that happened in the past, and my trust wasn’t all the way there because of those experiences, but I decided to just do it. Y’all are phenomenal! I really can’t thank you enough for orchestrating my come back. You, Diane, and the entire team are lit! You listened to my intent, heard my concerns, and fulfilled our vision flawlessly. I look forward to all the BGM we will create together.
Who has the best wife in the world? I do! Dynita, I have no clue how you put up with me. I’m either writing, baking, crafting, working, in school, working some more . . . and you are supportive through all of it. My mind NEVER rests, and you never hesitate to get me whatever I need to see my vision through. I’m happy you were chosen for me. I don’t think anyone else would be able to do it so effortlessly.
I also have the best sister in the world! Tiff, you been rocking with me since book one and before that. I appreciate you, but you already know this. I always tell everyone how dope you are. Thanks for always supporting my whims, even though it takes me forever to make my mind up sometimes.
Marlaka and Tanya . . . got this book done, y’all! You both listened to me ramble about the story line and gave me ideas on what should happen along the way. I just met y’all a year ago and had no idea I would love y’all like I do. Thanks for everything. Y’all are stuck with me for eight hours a day, five days a week, and even after work and on the weekends periodically. You deserve all the blessings you have coming for dealing with my craziness!
Readers, you ever just have to sit down for a minute and get your life together? At one point in my writing career, I thought I would always have a story to tell. Who knew a seven-year hiatus would come into play? (Last novel, Exposed: When Good Wives Go Bad, dropped in 2013.) I’m thankful to be back. Y’all never gave up on me, always asking me when my next book was coming out. Even when “they” tried to dog me out. It was so many hurdles, and for a while, I thought it would never happen, but the way that prayer is set up . . . just saying. It hit different when you let HIM work his magic. I hope this read is up to your standards. I thank you for your continued support. And as always, be sure to spread the word!
~Anna J
Friendship is designed to test your patience and gives
you the super power to detect bullshit. . . .
Get ready for the ride.
Selah Gordon
When Digging A Ditch
“Dig just a little more. We don’t want the body to surface for any reason. I don’t feel like sitting in jail because of this man’s foolishness.” I instructed my friends to dig deep as we worked on our makeshift grave for my boyfriend’s body. We didn’t need any mishaps.
I never thought the day would come when I would really have to body this dude. I’d threatened to kill him many times, but for it to come to fruition was mind blowing. We loved each other. I mean really loved each other. That Jada Pinkett and Will Smith kind of love. That Aja and
Fatin/Surrender to Love kind of love. That no-matter-what-you-do-I’ll-never-leave-you love. I still loved him, and I would always love him, even though I had to let him go. Wait . . . that last line was a complete lie. You definitely couldn’t do whatever you wanted to me and expect to get away with it. I still loved him, but that wouldn’t last much longer. I felt like when I met Chase, I had finally found the one I was going to spend the rest of my days with. We were going to have beautiful babies, the crib with the picket fence, matching cars, pool out back . . . all that and more like a Philly Offset and Cardi B. Why did he have to go and mess up a good thing? Why did he betray me?
Our story was right out of a fairy tale. Girl meets thug, thug sees she’s the shit, girl puts it on him, thug wifes her up, the end. We were like glue, the two of us. When people saw him, they knew I wasn’t far behind, and vice versa. A couple that partied together stayed together, and we were always on the scene as a unit. Everybody knew he was my man and I was his girl, but you always have one person who thinks they’re a damn superhero and wants to mess up a good thing. Sometimes it’s the closest person to you, and they have to get dealt with accordingly no matter the relation—the one who knows all your secrets because you have to tell somebody some of the shit you did. It’s not right, keeping all that mess bottled up inside. It causes constipation. Sometimes they’re right on the scene when the tea spills, and hopefully, you can trust them enough to wipe that shit up and keep it moving without telling all that missed it how it really went down. Adjust your sister’s crown without telling everyone on Facebook it was crooked. When they’re close, it makes it a little harder, but not impossible. All is fair in love, and having me fucked up about my man, no one is off limits.
Now, I’ll just go ahead and admit it to clear the air before we go any further because I need you to know how serious this shit is. Killing Chase was not an accident. Not in the slightest, and definitely on purpose. That was a straight shot to the dome at point blank range that landed square in the center of his forehead. I warned him numerous times that I would kill him before seeing him with another bitch. I guess he thought I was playing. Sharing my dick unknowingly and unwillingly was not a joking matter, and not to be taken lightly. Some shit just ain’t funny.
The bitch had hers coming, too. Let’s not get that fact fucked up. She was currently tied up unconscious in a basement not too far from where we were located. I was still trying to decide what I was going to do with her, and if I was going to spare her life. If I should spare her life. I wasn’t convinced at the moment that she deserved to live, but I was open to discussing it with her if she could make some sort of sense of this mess. She was one of the close ones that blindsided me with deceit. The least I could do was hear her out, right? I’d leave it up to her on whether she lived to tell the story or died trying to convince me to believe a lie. Ultimately, the choice was hers.
That was a rare occurrence, sparing one’s life in a life or death situation. It was not something that happened on a day-to-day basis. You could run the risk of them eventually spilling the beans, and we simply couldn’t have that. People can’t hold water without having to piss, so holding a secret was out of the question. Guilt made you do strange things. This one was close to my heart, though, and it hurt me what I might have to do to her. I was okay with living with guilt, though. I’d been doing it for years, but that’s a story for another time. I wore guilt like a great pair of Spanx under a skintight dress. I kept shit tucked nice and tight. Right now, the most important thing was finishing the task at hand. We were losing darkness, and this type of matter definitely didn’t need to see the light of day.
“I think we’re good now. He won’t be found for a while. You wiped him down good, right?” Skye, my home girl since pre-K, questioned as she climbed out of the hole, then reached back to pull me up. This was true friendship with us. She rode harder for me than I did for myself when it came to my well-being, and I knew for sure when things started looking crazy to me that she had been peeped it long before I had, but was giving me time to see for myself before we busted a move. Hell, initially this crazy fool was ready to go dig a hole in the cemetery to ensure he was never found. That’s how you know the love is real. That’s how I knew she would never be one to betray me in any fashion. That’s how I knew that I would need her support until the very end, and there was no question in my mind that I had it hands down, one hundred percent.
Mount Moriah Cemetery had been closed to the public for years. The only time people went there was to visit loved ones previously buried on the grounds prior to closing and to upkeep the land, which was mostly done by prisoners or people serving some type of community service order. There wasn’t a chance that someone would catch us digging at night, but the police rotation was heavy on Cobb’s Creek, especially on a Friday, and I didn’t want to chance it. I also had to remind her that it was against the law. I mean, so was burying a body in the back yard of an abandoned house in the bottom of West Philly, but we were less likely to get caught this way. Hood shit gets done in the hood where even if someone saw it, they didn’t see it. They weren’t about to say a damn thing out of fear of being next on the hit list. We were good right where we were.
“He’s clean as a whistle,” Vice answered as I reached back to get her out of the same hole. We were ride or die as a clique and known to not be the ones to play with on any occasion—a truth we’d had to prove on more than one occasion, unfortunately. It was a shame some had to learn the hard way. “My hands are going to smell like bleach for a week,” she complained as she inspected her manicure. She was the extra prissy one of the group, but she wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty when the time came for it. No pun intended. I could dig it, though. A gel fill-in with the works cost upwards of $150 at Luxxe Nail Salon and Spa, so I already knew if anything as little as a rhinestone was missing, her next shop trip was on me—and thanks to Chase, I definitely had the money to cover it.
No more words were needed. We simultaneously gloved our hands, turned, and went for the body first wrapped in a sheet, and then in industrial sized black trash bags (to prevent leakage) to deposit into the earth. You’d be surprised how quickly a body starts to break down and decompose in the heat of the summer, and his body was already starting to smell because we had to hide him for a few days before coming to dig. I tried not to think about his rotting body sitting in my trunk, probably filling with worms as we speak. It didn’t have to be this way.
Damn it, Chase! Why did you do this to us?
We respectfully handled his carcass as we half pulled, half carried him from the trunk to the hole, gently lowering him in enough so that it wouldn’t be too far of a drop, and then letting him go on the count of three. He hit the soft dirt with a small thud, and a tear dropped from my eye as we dropped in three black roses. It didn’t have to be this way, but he really made me do it. Just thinking about it made me want to jump in behind him and stomp him down two more feet. We were set up to live the best life ever, and now this.
Now wasn’t the time to show weakness, though, so I wiped my tears, smudging dirt on my face in the process, and grabbed a shovel to help cover the body quickly before someone caught our black asses back there. Each pile of dirt that hit his body sounded like it echoed throughout the entire neighborhood, and I started to sweat a little as paranoia set in. There was no way to explain away a pile of dirt, a dead body, and shovels at this time of night. This would surely have us locked in the clink if we got caught, and no one had time for that. Once we were done, we packed the dirt down as neatly as possible, spreading the over-spill carefully across the rest of the yard so that it lay flat, and removed all physical evidence that we brought with us. As we walked out from behind the house, Skye used a broom to sweep away our footprints until we got to the concrete. We didn’t want any trace of our ever stepping foot on this property, and we surely weren’t waiting for rain or some other element to hide it for us. Clearly, this wasn’t our first time at the rodeo, and we knew how to c
over our tracks. I’d watched way too much Crime TV to get caught on an amateur move. The first thing they looked for was boot tracks.
We removed our shoes and jumpsuits when we got to the car parked at the end of the alleyway, depositing them into a trash bag that would be burned in the furnace once we got back to the projects later in the day. Tasker Homes was a popular dumping ground to hide your filth, and no one would say a word. It was also important to not have all the evidence in one place. If you’re hiding a body down the bottom, you get rid of the shovels in Germantown, the clothing in South Philly, and the shoes in Clifton Heights. The cops would have to go on a wild goose chase for real to connect our shit that easily. Everything was burned to a crisp, and the ashes were let loose in the wind. Catch me if you can; I’m faster than the gingerbread man.
I had been casing this house for a minute once I realized Chase had to be dealt with accordingly. It was located in the bottom of West Philly (around that 38th and Haverford area near Olive Street, or what others may know as The Evil O), so Chase’s body probably wasn’t the only one rotting there. This neighborhood was known for never finding the missing that were plastered on the news and telephone poles daily. There were always people outside 24/7/365, but if asked any questions, they were all like Stevie Wonder to the bullshit. Nobody saw a damn thing.
When folks around these parts got rid of a body, they really got rid of it. It wasn’t uncommon for a body to be crushed with a few cars at a dump on Essington Ave. or dumped in the river by Bartram’s Garden. Just as long as you did your dirt in silence, no one questioned it. Ever. Unless, of course, they wanted to be next on a milk carton. If, by chance, your body was found, that wasn’t a mistake. That was a clear warning for the family to back the fuck off. Ten times out of ten they listened. Besides, all they really wanted was closure, right? That’s all any of us ever wants, and even then that’s not enough.