Kiss the Ring (3 page)

“You better,” he said in a cold voice, cutting his serious eyes up from loading the machine to lock on the youngest member of their crew.

Nelson nodded, shifting his eyes away from Bas while he gathered up the pile and jammed everything into a huge
garbage bag. It was clear as day that Bas's approval meant a lot to him.

“And you did a'ight for your one and only ride,” Bas said, his cool eyes warming as he came over to stand before the last person in the garage.

“One and only is right,” said a male voice, as the black jumpsuit was unzipped to reveal a shapely body that was pure curves in a black form-fitting catsuit. Solid. Thick. Undeniably female. With a smile, she pulled off the ski mask and the hands-free voice changer she wore, and reached up to stroke the side of his square and handsome face. “A dare is a dare. I told you I could handle that shit,” she said.

Bas smiled and eased one strong arm around her waist to pull her body close before bending his head a bit to taste her mouth. His hand dipped down to slap and then squeeze one of her plush ass cheeks as his tongue flickered against the tip of hers. “Don't start something you
know
you not ready to finish, Queen.”

The other men all groaned in annoyance.

“I wish y'all would just fuck already,” one of them said.

Bas chuckled before giving her another slap on the ass, then moved back across the small space to place rubber bands around the money. “Twelve lousy grand,” he said, tossing the money back into the bag.

He never split up the take from the bank. He used money from his own stash that had already been laundered to make sure the chances of the stolen cash being traced back to them were lessened. He was most definitely the leader and the brains of the Make Money Crew, and everyone in the group respected that and played their own positions well.

Bas held the duffel in one hand and locked the cabinet
with the other as everyone filed out of the garage by the side door leading directly into the church's basement, where the kitchen had been housed. Queen slowed her steps and glanced back over her shoulder just as Bas snorted a bump of coke from the side of his hand. His sniffs echoed loudly in the quiet just before he cleared his throat.

She turned and rushed from the kitchen and then down the hall to where dimly lit steps led up to the vestibule of the sanctuary. No part of her enjoyed being in his presence when he was high. Over the last couple of months she'd watched him go from cool, calm, and collected to a short-tempered, not-to-be-slept-on ninja after just a line of that shit. Protect your neck and keep your back knife-free if he dared to do two. Thank God he was just on the recreational level.

She looked around at the abandoned space, which retained hints of its former beauty in the aged woodwork. Twenty years ago the church had been vibrant and beautiful. Now it was just a shell of its former self surrounded by waist-high weeds and bushes, the stained glass windows covered by boards and the gleam of the cherry wood dulled by dust and neglect.

The hangout of a band of thieves and bank robbers.

She still couldn't believe she had convinced Bas to let her go along with them on the robbery. She had been scared shitless the entire time but it had been important to gain their trust. Plus she felt like she needed to see it all go down. She needed to learn more about the people she'd moved among for the last two months. Details about them were vital. Important. Necessary as hell.

She looked through the diamond-shaped window panes on the wooden doors leading into the sanctuary. Her catshaped
eyes rested on each person. Nelson stretched out on the front pew. Hammer lounging in the pulpit on his cell phone. Red was doing sit-ups on the floor in front of the leaning collection table.

Her gaze shifted as the door behind the pulpit, leading directly back down a set of stairs to the office in the basement, opened. Bas walked through it carrying stacks of money in his hand, each held together with a rubber band. He had swapped the cash for the money he kept in the office in a huge locked safe for which only he had both the key and the combination.

She looked on with squinted eyes as he tossed each wad to the men. She looked from one to the other over and over again, feeling the heat of hatred burn her stomach until she could retch. Bas, Hammer, Nelson, and Red. Bas. Hammer. Nelson. Red.

She made a fist so tight that her nails pinched the flesh of her palm. Her hatred for them nearly choked her. One of them had killed her teenage son and left him for dead in the streets. She was going to find out which one and then she was going to take pleasure in killing him.
Eye for an eye
.

“Queen, you a better bitch than me.”

Naeema forced her body to remain relaxed even as she turned to smile at Vivica, Red's girlfriend and her bridge into the crew. There were many times she had to remind herself that these motherfuckers knew her as Queen. For them, Naeema—the mother of Brandon Mack—didn't exist. “It was a'ight,” she said, shrugging her shoulder as she took in the slender light-skinned beauty with wide-set eyes and full lips.

Vivica played with her hot-pink cornrows that reached
the top of her ass in the shorts she wore. “I'll spend the money but fuck putting myself in the line of fire to get it,” she said, walking past Naeema to open one of the double doors.

Bitch, if you had anything to do with killing my son, you're already in the line of fire.

“Queen, you coming?” Vivica asked, looking back over her shoulder.

Naeema followed the other woman into the sanctuary, very aware that she was living among a den of thieves and a murderer that she was hell-bent on fleshing out.

2

N
aeema gathered her bag as the driver of the green cab made the right on Eastern Parkway in Newark. She climbed from the back of the taxi and closed the door. She barely had time to take a step forward before the African cabbie pulled off up the street. She scratched at the synthetic bob wig on her head as she looked up and down the length of the street that sloped downward like a slide. The street was made up of one-family homes that had once belonged to Jewish business owners before the great exodus of white folks out of Newark back in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Whether the house was still living up to its former glory or took a turn for the worse all depended on whether the owner—or the tenants—gave a fuck about curb appeal.

Naeema eyed one of the two brick houses flanking her home. Freshly painted shutters, shiny brass house numbers, and cute mailbox adorned the front brick façade. The metal railings had a shiny black coat without a single peel. The landscaping behind the wrought iron fence was on point.

She shifted her eyes to the other brick home. It was the exact opposite, like an image in a weird mirror that flipped shit. Thing was, Naeema was in no position to play pot to the black kettle.

Biting her full bottom lip, she squinted against the afternoon sun as she stepped up on the curb and eyed her happy home. The windows of the second floor and attic were still boarded and one of the ones on the first floor was cracked and held together with tape. Some bricks were missing in spots with large red letters on it for whatever gang had decided to tag the once-abandoned building. The falling fence served no real purpose and the stack of old newspapers on the porch was an eyesore and a fire hazard. She never had signed up for a subscription to the
Star Ledger
but the papers came like clockwork and she wasn't turning down shit that was free.

“I am dead-ass wrong for this shit,” she mumbled before she hitched her tote up higher on her shoulder and bent over to pick up the fence gate that was damn near hanging to the ground.

Twice she tried to prop it against the rusted fence. Twice she failed. Twice she swore.

“Fuck it,” she said almost wearily, letting it fall back to hang near the ground before she stepped over it in her black wedge sneakers to jog up the stairs and unlock the front door.

Rolling her eyes, she lifted the door up by the knob and shoved hard against it with her shoulder to dislodge it from the frame. She'd hired a bootleg carpenter—with more brag on his skill than actual skills—and the door had been his one and only project when he couldn't even put
that
motherfucker on straight.

Doing the same trick to close and lock it, Naeema kicked off her sneakers and dropped her tote onto the floor before she snatched off the short black wig to rub her slender
fingers and long stiletto-shaped nails over her closely shaven head. For a second, she stood there in the large living room with its faded wallpaper, scratched hardwood floors, and decrepit fireplace. She could close her eyes and almost picture the days she'd spent growing up there.

The house once belonged to her grandfather and now it was hers.

She was the owner of a home that had seen better days, and although she cared that it still looked like the abandoned and battered shithole it became after her grandfather's death, she didn't have the money to fix it up the way it deserved. The way he would want.

But it's mine . . . what's left of this raggedy motherfucker anyway.

The brick colonial had been her home since the day her grandfather had had to choose whether to let her go into the foster care system or raise her. A drunk driver took her mother away and her father was never there. That left her grandfather to grieve the death of his daughter and raise his eleven-year-old grandchild, who was filled with grief and anger and lack of understanding.

As soon as she hit her teens she took his age for granted. She had a love for hanging out in the streets—she'd inherited it from her father—and she'd let it lead her to sneaking out of the house at night or running away for days to discover parties, weed, and dicks—and not in that order. The years between thirteen and fifteen were a messy-ass blur.

Just fucking wild and reckless.

There were plenty of women who came in and out of his life to help, but Willie Cole had done the work of raising a little girl. He cooked. He cleaned. He shopped. He talked.
He listened. He did his best to do her hair. He made sure she went to school. He took care of her. He loved her. He was
there
. He didn't deserve the nights he stayed up looking for her or waited for her to come home safe. Naeema paused in her steps as an ache radiated across her body from missing the only stable person in her life.

The pain was a mix of longing and grief and guilt. Lots of guilt.

Pushing away her thoughts with the release of a heavy breath, she reached behind her back to unzip her catsuit before pulling it from her curvaceous body to eventually kick it onto the pile of dirty clothes stacking up in front of the brick fireplace. She was using the living room as her bedroom until she could afford to replace the glass broken out of the bedroom windows by the rocks of bored children. The 1920s colonial had three floors, five bedrooms, three full baths, a semifinished basement, and even an old garage, but her entire existence was limited to the first floor. There were two clear paths from the living room to the bathroom on the left and then the living room to the kitchen at the rear of the house.

Back and fucking forth like she was trapped in a cage or fish bowl.

Still, she was blessed to have a roof over her head, a pot to piss in, and the window to throw it out of. There was a time when she hadn't. Her grandfather's death left her with her own life choice at fifteen: be pushed into the foster care system or run.

She ran like hell and lived pillar to post. She didn't want to remember some of the shit she did—the things she compromised—to have a place to sleep for a night. Lying.
Stealing. Conning. Overlooking some dude's uglies—face, body, or attitude—so he'd buy a motel room long enough for him to bust a nut and for her to enjoy its comfort until the front desk staff called at checkout.

She had been like Malcolm X. By
any
motherfucking means necessary.

Over the last year since she'd moved in, she was able to sweep and scrub the floor of every room clean and empty it of whatever sad remnants of drug abuse or homelessness had been left behind by transients or junkies after her grandfather's death. But it was obvious the house was in serious need of some tender loving care. She felt lucky it was still standing and not burned to a crisp by the fire used to heat crack or cold bodies.

It was home.

Walking past the metal full-size bed in the center of the room, her eyes locked on her reflection in the mirror. Nothing about her spoke to being a mother to a teenage child and far less to being of an age to outlive him. She was tall like her grandfather and curvy like her mother. Since she was thirteen her profile had been a letter
S
—all ass and breasts. It drew the eye of many a young horny boy and far too many grown men.

“They'll run right through a pretty girl like you,” her grandfather said one night as he sat in her bedroom, surprising her as she climbed back through the window she'd snuck out of hours before. “And it's always you pretty ones looking for some man to tell you what you should be able to see for yourself in the mirror. And by the time you really take a good hard look at yourself life and a string of lyin'-ass men done fucked you over and left nothin' but hard times on your
face. Keep fallin' for the okey-doke, Naeema, and you gon' regret that bullshit for sure.”