Kiss the Ring (20 page)

“Nobody could take his spot,” Bas said, sounding angry.

Naeema's heart was pounding harder than it did when she came. “What did he do to make you mad?” she asked, her eyes calculating as she pressed kisses to the side of his face and massaged his chest.

“Die.”

Naeema froze. “Huh?”

Bas sat up on the edge of the bed. “I first met him when I caught his little bad ass throwing rocks at the windows at the church. I was going to go out there to fuck his little ass up but he stood up to me like he was really ready to get at it with me, you know.”

She took her finger off the trigger and moved to kneel behind him, pressing her breasts against his back as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She looked off at some indiscernible spot as she visualized Bas's words. Her boy was a tough one.
Just like me.

“Just a dumb little kid that didn't even know—or give a fuck—that he was going head up with a crazy motherfucka like me,” Bas said, shaking his head. “I kinda took him under my wing. Wanted to look out for him. He would come around damn near every day fuckin' with us. Wanting to get put on to whatever we was getting into.”

Naeema closed her eyes behind Bas.

“I felt sorry for the little dude,” Bas said, his shoulders getting stiff. “He told me how he didn't even know his
mother or father. That shit was really fucking with him, you know?”

She dropped her head as pain radiated across her chest. She had to release long breaths through pursed lips that she kept as quiet as she could, and she fought not to let one damn tear fall. “It hurt you when he got killed,” she said softly in revelation.

“Still fucks with me sometimes,” he admitted.

“I bet it does,” she said, thinking of her own grief.

It was ironic as hell that one of her prime suspects for the murder of her son was claiming to be in just as much pain as she was about the murder.
Ain't that a bitch?

She felt overwhelmed again, with every shift in her footing. Every end to a road she traveled upon. Every addition or subtraction of a suspect from the list.
I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

Bas stood up and walked with his jeans still around his ankles as he left the bedroom. The sex haze was over and she had to stay on point about why she was so deeply entrenched in Bas's world that she just gave up the goodies to him.

But he claims that he almost offered Brandon protection of sorts.

She got up from the bed and straightened her bra and thong on her curves as her thoughts raced like crazy.

Would his protection be enough to keep Red from killing him?

Naeema had just picked up her pocketbook to put on the safety when she heard the toilet flush. Seconds later the sound of the shower spray echoed.

Was he lying? Because the only thing I know for sure is my son's dead.

“Not much fucking protection,” she muttered under her breath as she rolled over on the bed to reach and open the bedside dresser's top drawer.

“Yo, Queen!”

She looked over her shoulder toward the bathroom when he hollered to her. With a roll of her eyes she searched through the drawer. Nothing but condoms, some receipts that she checked for anything relevant, and a picture of a couple with a small boy; the woman's face was burned out. She recognized the stone house in the background and knew it was Bas and his parents. In the photo his mother was a dark-skinned slender woman with style. Naeema's brows dipped as she lightly rubbed her thumb across the charred film.
Well, damn.

Naeema turned the photo over. “Malcolm and Olivia Jones. 1995,” she read before she put the photo back.

That shit was so disrespectful, especially knowing her life had been taken.

She closed the drawer and pushed her pocketbook on the floor just under the bed.

“Queen!” Bas called again.

The sex session had loosened the glue of her lace-front wig and she shifted it a bit on her head as she left the bedroom.

“Who the fuck are you?”

Naeema looked up to see the woman from the first picture standing in the open doorway with a Louis Vuitton garment bag over her arm and an evil look in her eye.
See, all this bullshit is so motherfucking extra.

Naeema shrugged and sat her still damp ass on their leather sofa and crossed her leg as she used the pointed tip of one nail to clean under the others.

WHAM!

Naeema heard the front door slam closed just as the sound of the shower got louder. Bas's boo was striding across the room just as he stepped into the living room, butt naked and still sudsy and wet from the shower. His eyes went from Naeema straight chilling on the sofa while his boo was coming straight for him with one hand already raised to slap the fuck out of him.

“Don't start nothing you can't finish, Kelly,” Bas warned.

“How could you, Sebastian?” she screeched as she slapped his face.

WHAP.

Sebastian?

Naeema winced as he gripped her around the neck and lifted her up off her feet. It was mad crazy for him to get mad at her for his ass getting caught. And she felt bad for the girl too, but sympathetic chick wasn't the role she was there to play and she didn't want to be a witness to shit just in case he did something to cause the police to be called. “Excuse me,” she said, as she moved past them to walk into the bedroom and pull on her clothes.

“You tried to send me out of town to bring this ghetto trick in our home, Sebastian?”

Hold up. What?

Naeema peeked her head out the door. Bas had her pressed up against the wall with her hands held in one of his. Tears streamed down her eyes. “Don't start nothing with me you can't finish, Kelly,” she said, playing her role even though she could see the pain and betrayal in the woman's eyes.

“Oh, go straight to hell,” Kelly snapped.

Naeema rolled her eyes and walked back into the
bedroom. She sat down on the bed and slipped on her shoes before she pulled her cell phone out of her pocketbook. Using the GPS, she pulled up the address and then the nearest cab company. She was making her request when she heard shit hitting the wall and then something crashing and breaking.
I am tapping out on this bullshit.

Her foot sent the bag of cocaine spiraling across the floor. She walked over to pick it up and then slid it into her purse.
The last thing that fool needs is to get high and hurt that damn girl.

She left the bedroom and acted like she didn't see them sprawled across the couch fighting. Putting their drama behind her, Naeema walked out of the house to wait on the sidewalk for her cab headed back to her side of the city.

• • •

Bzzz . . . Bzzz . . . Bzzz . . .

Naeema didn't bother to pick up her vibrating cell phone. She already knew it was Bas calling. Between him and Vivica, her burner cell phone had been going off all day since she left him and his drama behind.
Handle your handle, bruh . . .

She wasn't ignoring him because she was mad or jealous or hurt. Not at all. But she was glad for him and Vivica to think otherwise.

Naeema tilted her chin up and released a thick stream of smoke through her pursed lips as she lay in the middle of her bed. She didn't know if there was enough cannabis planted in the world to relax and calm her anxiety.

A simple internet search had revealed more about Bas's story than she ever thought she wanted to know.

Not only had his father killed himself but he had murdered his wife as well. Their story had been prominent in the news and the bloody crime scene was one of the reasons the house had sat empty for years.

No wonder Bas's ass is so damn serious
.

But that's not all that dominated her thoughts and fucked up her head space. For months she'd been so sure that Bas was behind Brandon's murder and now that belief was shakier than a motherfucker. To her surprise she welcomed that idea.

Did she have feelings for Bas? And if she did, what did that mean about all of the love she
knew
she had for Tank?

“It's time to bring this undercover shit to an end,” she said, closing her eyes as she shook her head at the shame of it all.

12

N
aeema was at the barber shop sitting in her chair and looking out the window at all the comings and goings of the liquor store next door and trying to ignore the usual loud and rowdy politicking of the shop when she spotted Tank on his motorcycle pulling into the parking lot. She tapped her fingernail against her teeth as she tried to make out his sudden reappearance in her life. Climbing from the chair, she smoothed her hands down her hips in the low-riding skinny jeans she wore with a white shirt tied at the bottom above her belly button and the top buttons left open to expose her smooth cleavage.

She had just exited the shop as he climbed off his Harley looking finer than ever in a V-neck gray tee and gray jeans. Her heart was pounding like crazy and she knew there would never be another man that she loved like she loved him.

He removed his helmet and eyed her from her freshly shaven head down to the hot-pink polish on her toes in her high-heeled sandals. “What are you up to, Naeema?” Tank asked, his voice hard and his stare even harder.

He was pissed.

She froze as she was about to lean in and kiss his smooth cheek. “Well, damn, hello to you too,” she snapped.

“When you start lying to me?” he asked with a frown.

Naeema forced herself not to flinch or look away but she said not one word. He was shitting her.

“You can tell me
anything
. You can ask me for
anything
,” Tank told her as he stepped forward to stand closer to her.

Naeema closed her eyes and released a breath as she let the closeness of his presence wash over her, energize her, and tantalize her. Turn her the fuck on. “Tank—”

He pointed his finger against her chest. “You are my wife, and I don't give a fuck if we never live in the same house again, there is never a time you can't put your burdens on my back for me to carry.”

The thing was, he didn't have to tell her that because she already knew it. If there was nothing else in life she could depend on, she knew that Tank would
always
have her back.

Naeema glanced down the street to break their gaze. “What's this about, Tank?” she asked, looking back at him.

“Your son.”

She felt her breath catch in her chest as she licked her lips and crossed her arms over her ample chest and shifted her stance. Tears welled up and she tried—and failed—to smile through the sadness that washed over her. “I, uhm . . . I didn't . . . I didn't know how to tell you about him,” she admitted, her voice soft as she released the lie and the secret that she had kept from so many people over the years.

Tank reached out to swipe away a tear from her cheek with his thumb.

“I never knew him,” she said, closing her eyes to drift back to a moment she had revisited so many times in the days after learning of his death. “I ain't laid eyes on him since I gave him away.”

“You could have told me, Na,” he insisted.

“Who the fuck wants to tell their husband—who wants you to have a child—that you had one and gave it away and you don't think it's right to have another because you didn't do right by that one,” Naeema said, feeling pain in her chest like her heart was truly breaking. “You don't get do-overs with being a mother, Tank. I had my chance and I fucked it up because I wanted to rip and run.”

“Go get your stuff,” Tank said, turning to climb back onto his Harley. He pulled a spare helmet from the rigid saddlebags on either side of the rear tire and patted the passenger seat. “Come ride wit' me.”

Naeema paused for just a few seconds. She needed to work and make up the money she lost during the two weeks she spent at that hotel waiting on Bas. The money from the robbery was still untouched and she wasn't accepting anything from Tank.

Still, she turned and went inside, grabbing her shades and fake Michael Kors bag. “Tell Derek I had to leave early, but I'll be in tomorrow,” she said to Loc, the second-in-command when Derek was not in the shop.

“Everything a'ight, Naeema?” he asked, his eyes moving past her to Tank awaiting her outside.

She smiled at the older dude with the bald head who resembled a smaller version of Suge Knight. Everyone knew Tank was her husband but they also knew they weren't together anymore. “I'm good,” she said, noticing the sudden quiet in the normally noisy surroundings. All eyes were on them. These fellas were her boys. Her brothas. They were concerned about her being missing in action a lot.

That made her tear up. Sometimes she needed a reminder
that she wasn't as alone as she felt in the world. Turning, she left the shop before she started straight bawling. She made sure her own bike was locked and secured before she pulled the helmet on, pushed her bag into the other saddlebag, and climbed onto the passenger seat behind him. At first she reached behind her to hold the bar running along the top of the backrest, but looking at the wide expanse of Tank's back, she wanted to feel his strength. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his waist.