by Nikki Rashan
Her eyes were bright with joy and triumph as I stared at her with so much rage and pent-up anger that I shook from head to toe. The smile slowly began to fade from her face. For the first time since I’d entered her house I smiled a toothy ear-to-ear “Joker crushes the Batman” kind of smile.
“Yes, what about the snake?” she asked quietly, tilting her head to the side in question.
“I am the snake!” I hissed back at her, before firing two shots center mass. They dotted her chest like snake eyes, the silencer doing its job perfectly. Tia screamed in terror and I tried to feel bad for her but I couldn’t find it in me. Carlos and Jin ran inside just as I shot Chief Reid once in the forehead.
“Nigga, I told you she was gonna kill some-damn-body if you left her evil ass alone,” Jin whispered super loud from the doorway.
Carlos quickly put his boy in check. “Shut up, Jin.” He grabbed me by my shoulders. “Tajah, look at me. Are you okay?”
Smiling, I pulled my daddy’s medallion from underneath my hoodie and picked up Lorenzo’s briefcase. “I’m good now. The Law of Talion is my operation and things are about to be real fuckin’ different. I need a list of every member, ally, and all of our assets. Tia, you are my sister and everything but you are practically a stranger to me. You’ve seen what I’d do to my own mother. So, whose team are you on? You too, Shoni.” They looked up from my mother’s side; tears were streaming down her and Shoni’s faces. They were both sniffling loudly, and puffy eyed they responded in unison, “Yours.”
“Carlos, I’m going to need a king to help me reorganize this secret ball of shit society back into what it should be. Would you do me the honor?”
He puffed out his chest and gave me a huge, bright smile before pulling me in for a long, deep kiss. You’d have thought I’d just asked him to marry me and we weren’t standing there surrounded by three dead bodies.
“Wait,” Jin said, sliding his hand in between our bodies, separating us. “Why everybody getting jobs in this secret thing except for me? Can I be a secretary? I’ll answer the secret society lines and shit. I ain’t too proud to answer phones and fax secret society messages. Do y’all fax messages? Matter of fact, you think your momma have any other thick-hipped chocolate childrens we need to go rescue because I’m feeling kind of left out. Can I have a kiss too?”
He needed to be the house comedian was what he needed to do.
“Damn, Jin, listen, you are an honorary member. Your first job is to shut up and help dispose of these bodies.” I bit my lip to keep from smiling as I addressed him.
“You got a sword? Ain’t I supposed to get knighted or tapped on the shoulder or something like that? You can’t just say the words and that’s it. There has to be some kind of ritual.”
I looked at him sternly. “How about I’ve got this pistol, and I’m going to tap this trigger a couple times in your honor if you don’t let me get back to kissin’ my man.”
He saluted me or something close to it, and walked over to Tia and Shoni. I stared up at Carlos, amazed that with my momma and Manny officially gone life seemed so much clearer again.
“You know, I don’t think Alicia is going to come back after this,” I told Carlos.
“That’s fine,” he replied, looking down at the briefcase in my hand and then around at my momma’s house before whispering in my ear, “Not that it mattered but Alicia was kind of broke anyway. I’d stay Tajah if I were you too. Besides, she’s the one I’ve always been in love with.”
Our lips met to the soundtrack of Shoni knocking Jin upside the head and cursing him out for touching or looking at something on her body or booty. I was a little too preoccupied to pay attention to the fine details. Yes, our lives were definitely going to be interesting from this moment forward.
Urban Books, LLC
97 N18th Street
Wyandanch, NY 11798
Sugar on the Side Copyright © 2013 Nikki Rashan Queen Con Copyright © 2013 Ni’chelle Genovese
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: 978-1-6016-2394-2
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.
Submit Wholesale Orders to:
Kensington Publishing Corp.
C/O Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Attention: Order Processing
405 Murray Hill Parkway
East Rutherford, NJ 07073-2316
Phone: 1-800-526-0275
Fax: 1-800-227-9604
