We both got up on our knees, and she wiped her wetness off my chest and licked it off her fingers. She reached for my dick with the wet hand and placed her fingers in my mouth with the other. I nibbled on each one and licked in between her fingers.

  Then she pulled my hand down into her bushy forest and circulated it around her flapping wings. She then cocooned it inside her warmness and kissed me. Then she pulled me back and lay down with her legs wide open, her hands behind my back.

  Then she said, “Fuck me.”

  Without hesitation, I pushed my way through her insides, and she yelled out. The porcelain lamps sitting on the nightstands shook as the bed’s headboard bullied the wall with a constant, rhythmic banging. A picture of me and Sade dropped from the wall onto the floor and shattered the glass within the frame.

  “Hold up. Let me get that,” I said, diverting my attention over to where it fell.

  “Uh-uh.” Joi turned my head back to her. “You’re gonna pay attention to this pussy, boy.”

  And I did just that, violating our home, her side of the bed, and most of all her trust in me. I felt an instant connection toward Joi ever since the first day I laid eyes on her. With each drop of perspiration that dripped off my forehead and into Joi’s mouth I started to realize that my feelings for Sade was beginning to drift. Our mouths was wrapped around each other’s so tightly, I could actually feel her resuscitating life back into my sexual drive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SADE

  I could almost feel Mack fucking. All I could do was cry in my top bunk. I had that money now and was going to pull him up out of that bullshit life he was in, but some niggaz just don’t know a good thing when they got it.

  The fucked up part of it all was, here I was facing a murder charge, and all I could think about was him. When a man has your mind so warped that you lose conception of all space and time, that’s when you know your ride has been officially pimped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MACK

  When I finally found out where Sade was, she was standing trial in a Virginia courtroom. It was my first time seeing her since she had left. She sat before the judge next to some local defense lawyer. Her lawyer, who she had never referred to, and I, along with Anton and Joi, sat on the second row of benches away from her. Three weeks of confinement did her a major disservice. She had a bruise under her left eye, and her hair looked like as if it ran off a road into a precipice. Her lips were chapped, and her spirit had been deflated from the head-on collision with fate. And the judge had a solid history of sentencing killers to death row.

  Sade looked back and smiled at me and Ton, until she saw how closely me and Joi was sitting beside each other. She stood up and blurted out, “Who the fuck that bitch?”

  Her lawyer quickly grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back down, but she continued turning her head toward us, tears rolling down her cheeks. Unable to control her anger, she whipped her head around once more as the judge went through her case file.

  “She’s why you ain’t been looking for me? You trifling-ass nigga.”

  Joi squeezed my hand tightly and quickly raised both our hands up toward the ceiling with a smile.

  At the end of the day, y’all, I knew where she’d been all this time. I had called the two Ds who extradited her. I just felt as if she was beginning to crowd my space and trying to stagnate my hustle.

  Never in a million years did I think she was coming down to kill her mother. I wasn’t going to leave her here, but I needed time to get my shit up. I couldn’t do it with her all up in my ass every day, bitching about this, that, and the third.

  There was no way she was getting out of this. Her fingerprints were all over the house. But what really sealed the deal was when a surprise witness was brought in to testify.

  When Glen walked through the double doors of the courtroom and took the stand, Sade shot up from her seat enraged. After he explained his side of the story, it became quite clear that Sade’s intentions were malicious, heartless, greedy, and murderously heinous, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And that very shadow would forever shroud her days of a lifetime sentence without the possibility of parole. She was charged with attempted murder upon Glen. And Glen was handed ten years for being an accessory to the murder, with the possibility of parole in two years for good behavior.

  I watched that bastard smile and wink at Sade, whose reaction to her sentence was silent and unemotional when the judge’s gavel slammed down and solidified it.

  “I’m-a get you out, baby,” I promised her.

  As she was escorted out of the courtroom, she whispered, “Don’t leave me here.”

  Joi commented, “She looking kinda trifling.”

  Glen was surrounded by officers as they secured his hands and ankle bracelets.

  We stared at each other with uncertain familiarity. He stared at Joi the same way. He smiled again as he walked past us three then stopped.

  “You the boy from New York, huh?” he said, still smiling as the officers shoved him along.

  “What you gonna do, man?” Ton asked.

  I wasn’t going to be able to see her until the next morning during visiting hours. “This is some fucked-up shit. I don’t know what I’m going to do, man. I need to go and see her before we leave.”

  We sat at the table across from one another in complete silence for the first five minutes of my visit.

  “You played me, Mack. I don’t even know what to say or think.” She rubbed her eyes swollen from lack of sleep.

  “What you talking, Sade? I didn’t even know where you was at.”

  “Could it maybe because you was sticking your dick where it got no business being stuck? The bitch all out there holding your hand up like y’all just won a relay race or some shit.”

  “It’s not even like that, babe. She’s the work I was telling you about. It’s not just for me, it’s for us.”

  “Bullshit, Mack. I’ve been down here for three weeks, and you left me here to fuck another bitch, then have the audacity bring her here with you?”

  “There should be other shit on your mind besides who I’m fucking in bed at night, Sade. You up in here facing life. Get your mind right. How’d you ever get yourself in this shit anyway? Killing your own mother? When I spoke to you on the phone you said she was all right. Everything was all right. You know you could’ve told me. I would’ve came right down here and scooped you. Why’d you do it?” I softly asked, looking around.

  She angrily replied, “She didn’t love me.”

  “So what? A lot of parents don’t love they kids. Yo, you was out in New York doing just fine with me. Why you come down here and spaz? Now shit is all fucked-up, baby. I’m going to speak with my lawyer, not to be confused with the lawyer you had on retainer that I never knew of. What’s up with that?”

  “Look, Mack, what’s done is done. I’m just sorry I didn’t make sure that asshole was dead when I shot him.”

  “So, with all that being said, how in the fuck do you think I can get you out of this?”

  “You better think of something. Come here,” she said, closely borrowing my ear, “I have some money put away that I want you to use to get me a new attorney. I’m not trying to do life. Fuck that!”

  She whispered into my ear again, and my eyes widened when she told me the amount.

  A female C.O. straightened out her holster. “That’s too close.”

  “That’s right. I got the money,” she boasted. She quietly told me a sequence of numbers to access the dummy account. “You got it?” She looked around.

  “Yep. 4-8-8-7-4-2, right?” I really couldn’t be mad about her not telling me about her hidden agenda. I still had money to get from Stan’s safe in Mount Vernon.

  “Please get me out of here. The money will help get me proper defense for my appeal.”

  “All right.” I stood up.

  “So is that the bitch working for y’all?”

  “Who? Joi? Yeah, that’s her. I promise you, ma, that it’s just strictly business.”

  “I hope so because I had a bad dream that you was fucking someone else.” Sade leaned back into her seat.

  “No,” I quickly said, “never that. We’re going to get you out of here. Well, at the most, a reduced sentence. Trust me, I’m on the job.”

  She stood up, and we hugged. She held on and securely pressed her lips against my cheek. “I love you, Mack. You’re all I have.”

  “That’s too close,” the female officer said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MACK

  It’d been a week since I’d last seen Sade, and a month further into the bond developing between me and Joi, which had reached to the point where I moved her out that apartment and in with me. She was a true go-getter and was strictly about the paper. Me, her, and Ton drove out to Mount Vernon to a small yellow house in a development for the elderly. This would be easy, I thought, in-and-out type shit. I told Ton to keep the car running while I hid behind the bushes.

  Joi, dressed like she was a real estate agent, knocked on the door for directions.

  “Who?” the frail voice responded, clicking and clacking the lock before finally opening the door. Her hair was white and wrapped in a bun, and the cane supporting her light weight shook in her tiny hand.

  As close as I was standing by the door, she never even sensed I was to her immediate left behind her bushes. I wanted to be sure she was alone before just running up in there.

  “Hi. I’m Shirley from Century 21. Listen, my car broke down over there,” Joi said. “I’m waiting for the tow truck now.”

  “Well, come on in, Shirley,” Stan’s grandmother offered. “I don’t get much company ‘round here no more since my grandson passed. He was playing basketball right across the street over there.” She pointed to the driveway of the two-car garage. “He was playing basketball with some friends when a car just zoomed down the block and started shooting.” She shook her head.

  I whispered, “Psst,” to Joi.

  She waved me off with her hand and slowly smiled her way inside the house, leaving the door partially cracked.

  I looked around then quickly darted inside. The old lady startled easily as she spun around and lost her balance, falling on her shoulder. “Oh, Lord, it hurts,” she said crying.

  “Shut the fuck up, bitch, and tell us where the money at,” I said, bending by her side.

  Suddenly her mouth opened wide, along with her eyes, and a foamy pool of saliva began to develop at the back of her throat. She gripped onto my arm and squeezed.

  I jerked my arm away. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I think she having a stroke.”

  “We don’t have the time for this. Give me the key,” I said, holding out my hand for it, “and you stay here with her.”

  “Uh-uh, I’m not standing here while she dying.”

  “Then come on. Where he keep the shit?”

  By the time we finished cleaning out his safe, the old lady was as dead as the beef between Biggie and Pac.

  I stepped over her corpse. “God bless the dead and shit.”

  “Sorry, granny. We all gotta go sometime,” Joi said, lugging a heavy black plastic bag full of money.

  I sent Anton in to get the last load, and it was a done deal.

  We celebrated over White Castle burgers and a bottle of E&J.

  The next morning Joi and me both was trying to conquer the consequences of a morning hangover.

  “We came off, boo,” Joi said standing up naked. “Oh God, my fucking head is banging.”

  The contour of Joi’s back was designed like the road to happiness. It traveled up from the deep, dark depths of the narrow crack in her ass and, like an overheated tongue during intimate passion, softly raced its way up her back. It stopped at the nape of her neck and kissed it with a small, dark beauty mark. A tribal tattoo danced around her waistline.

  She wiggled her hips a bit as she slipped out of her pink silk panties. “I’m going to take a shower.” Then she reached in the drawer for a fresh change of panties and bra.

  “Hold up, baby. Where we going to hide all that money? Can’t put it in the bank.”

  “We’ll think of something. Right now, though, we about to live like stars.”

  I guess I never saw all them dollar signs in her eyes because she always had them damn shades on, but I liked that.

  “No, we can’t do that. We can’t just up and start buying shit out of nowhere. Niggaz is still out there on the street trying to find out who killed Stan. Now how you think it’s going to look when I just start pulling a flashy move out of nowhere? What you think Coke going to think?”

  “Come on, are you serious? I thought you was the man, Mack. Ain’t that what you told me? ‘I got your back. I’m in control.’ Was you fronting?” She pulled a tee shirt over her bare chest. “Is that what it was? You was just acting?”

  “I don’t front.”

  “So don’t be acting like you can’t run the show,” she said and walked into the bathroom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ANTON

  “So here’s where we at,” Cocaine said to me as we sat on a couch in his basement. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “What you talking about now, Coke? I’m off the streets. I’m in the house every day. What I do wrong now?”

  “I was going through the numbers on the houses and keep coming up short. Know anything about that? I mean, you and my brother is the only ones in charge of collections, so tell me something good.”

  “Naw, naw, man”—I held my hands up—“you not putting that shit on me. I ain’t never shorted you or stole shit.”

  “Who said anything about stealing? I didn’t. So if you not taking shit, then you saying it must be my brother?”

  I thought for a moment then cracked a smile. “You fucking with me, ain’t you?”

  Gordy came walking out the back room with his gun out. “Nigga, you was shivering.” Gordy laughed out loud along with Coke. “We was just fooling with you, nigga. Just wanted to see if you was going to say anything you wasn’t supposed to.” Gordy slapped my shoulder.

  “Yeah, you was acting like a little bitch for a second,” Coke said.

  “Y’all niggaz play too much.” I sat on the couch. “I hope this the last time we gotta go through this, man. I’m good, I keep telling you.”

  “Yeah, this the last time. I just really needed to be sure.”

  “And are you really sure this time, man? Because I can’t keep doing this shit here.”

  Cocaine lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you ride with us to Phenomenon tonight?”

  “Naw, I got shit to do, but I’ll be through later on.”

  This time I was packing but was glad I didn’t have to use it. I kill these pigs for OPT, and now they wanna kill me. It’s too late to back out now, I thought as I rode the Southern State Parkway. The red dial of my speedometer pushed ninety-five mph, and the engine heated up and roared. Wind blew in my face and pushed my cheeks back, as I hit one hundred, with no pigs for miles around. I took to the sharp turns in the road like a safety pin on point. I flew under the overpass like a mid-life crisis then swerved into the middle lane. I pulled a Mary J. Blige on them and made love to the road without a limit. I bullied the gas pedal to the floor, and smoke started billowing up in back of my car. So I pulled over and let the pigs catch up with me. These boys was out they jurisdiction. I kept the car running. Six cruisers pulled behind me and beside me. Red and blue sirens painted the night sky’s darkened canvas. Shit. I’m bugging, y’all, right? Here go the jakes on my ass, and I’m sitting up in this bitch talking about the canvas night sky.

  The officer yelled through his horn, “GET OUT THE CAR WITH YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP!”

  The digital signs above the road read DELAYS AHEAD FOR THE NEXT SIX EXITS. I weighed my options as the first arresting officer stuck his hand in my car. I took off with his ass holding on like call waiting.

  I pounded his hands with my fist. “Let go, man.”

  “Stop the car! Stop the car,” he yelled.

  “Let go before I take off on your ass.”

  I could see the back-up cruisers racing up to rescue they people in my rearview. “I warned you,” I said, accelerating the shit out of my baby.

  His arm slipped off the door soon as the dial hit sixty. The nigga dropped and rolled under my back tire. My back tire jumped up, almost causing me to wipe the fuck out. The other cruisers all skidded and swerved around son’s body.

  One cruiser with two officers continued the chase. And as if shit couldn’t get any worse, traffic was beginning to pile up, and the goddamn “whirly bird” was on my ass too, shining the Jesus light on my ass. I’m literally thinking, All this for me?

  Cruisers raced down from the opposite side of traffic, and the others closed in on me from behind. Two D cars from Queens happened to be passing by and joined the party, guns drawn and everything. I knew I was fucked, so I got out and lay face down with my legs crossed and my hands behind my back. I don’t know, man. Next thing I hear was all these feet coming at me. I was drug, swung, zapped, beat, kicked, punched, flung, tossed, had the plunger in my ass, and then read my rights.

  The two detectives walked over to your badly beaten brother and laughed.

  “Ay, how ya doing? Detective Bobby Malone.” He shook hands with one of the officers. “This here’s my partner Jeff Cunningham. We was just passing along and thought you guys might need some assistance.”

  “What are you guys, New York?” The sergeant laughed with another officer.

  “Yeah, so what of it?” he said, looking at me.

  As I looked up at him, he looked at me a little closer. Then he smiled and turned to his partner. “No fucking way,” he said, pacing back and forth. “First, I hit the lotto last night, and now this fucking piece of shit falls right in my lap. Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch.” He lifted up my chin. “Anybody know who this is? Don’t even guess. I’m going to tell you. This is cop-killer, OPT dawg, Anton Mitchell. What it do, homeboy?” He laughed, taking playful shots at my mid-section.