by Mike Sanders
CHAPTER TWO
Girl, don’t you know these bitches tried me last night,” Justice spoke candidly into her Bluetooth earpiece. She was sitting on the sofa in her spacious living room talking to her best friend, Sapphire.
“Who was it this time?” Sapphire’s voice blared in her ear.
“That Amazon bitch, Precious and her lil’ sidekick, Virgin,” Justice replied while reducing the volume. “Bitches aiming at my pedestal . . .” She paused for a moment because her other lined beeped. She checked her phone and saw Toni’s number. Since Toni was running the club tonight, Justice decided she should take the call because it may have been about something important. “Lemme call you back in a minute. That’s Toni.”
“Okay, but make sure you call me back so we can plan your trip. My mama is so lookin’ forward to seeing you and I am too. Girl, it’s been like forever.”
Sapphire’s mother had recently been hospitalized because of her cancer recurring and her health was slowly deteriorating by the day. Justice had promised Sapphire she would come to visit for a week or two while her mother was incapacitated.
“I know, right. Tell your mama I said hey and I’ll see y’all soon. Luh you, girl.”
“Luh you too, sis.”
Justice clicked over and listened as Toni spoke. After a few minutes into the conversation, Justice realized the call wasn’t about anything important. She scowled as Toni let the latest gossip fall from her lips with rapid speed. “Giiiirl, you ain’t gonna believe what happened at the salon today . . .”
For the next five minutes Justice was held hostage by Toni’s gossip and fruitless information. She tried several times to end the conversation, but to no avail. Toni didn’t get the hints. Finally, frustration overwhelmed Justice. “Is everything okay at the club?” She cut Toni off.
“Everything is fine, I got this,” Toni stated with confidence.
Justice sucked her teeth and shook her head as if she were standing before Toni. If anything, she knew that Precious and Virgin were up to some fuckery and Toni was too passive to check their asses if need be. She contemplated on going to the club to check on things for herself but tonight she was just too tired to do so.
“Good. But listen, I gotta go. Call me if you need me. Only if you need me.” Justice put emphasis on her words to drive her point home.
“Oh, okay boss lady. I’ll holla at’cha later. Enjoy your night off.”
“I’m trying to,” Justice replied with the greatest amount of sarcasm. Then the call ended.
Justice sat on the sofa and looked around her home. Her residence was on the ground floor of a large turn-of-the century home in the southeast section of Hinsdale that had been transformed into a series of quaint condominiums. A nice fireplace with a large Victorian-style mantle dominated the living room. Bookshelves filled one wall. Every urban novel ever published resided on those shelves. She was an eclectic reader, if her collection of literature was any indication.
She rose from the sofa and went to the window to look out at the night. Ever since she had moved back home from North Carolina, Justice had become a person of the night. Her daylight hours were few and she often utilized those hours for sleeping. For some reason, the darkness seemed powerfully soothing to her, like a gentle cascade of warm water on a brutally freezing night.
She walked into her spacious bedroom and sat on the large Renaissance bed. She picked up a frame from her nightstand with a photo of her mother in it. As she observed her mom’s full-blooded Filipino features in the photo, she put the picture down and then glanced into the mirror and noticed how much she resembled her. Only Justice was darker and more voluptuous. She was beautiful, intelligent, and now legally successful. There was no reason for her to be single—yet she was. Suddenly she felt a sense of loneliness wash over her.
Justice thought briefly about a quote she had recently read in a book of poetry by her favorite poet, Shakim. The quote read: “To find riches is a beggar’s dream, but to find LOVE is the dream of kings!” Like any ordinary woman, Justice too longed for love and happiness. But those two aspects of life just didn’t seem to exist in her world anymore. While pondering over Shakim’s quote, wet clusters began forming in her eyes. As she lay back and closed her eyes, her mind once again journeyed back two years to the last man she had given her heart to, and the events that caused her to flee Charlotte, North Carolina.
Justice and her brother, Monk had the perfect set up. She’d scope out the potential victims, using her female wit to get information she needed and used just about any way to get it. She targeted ballers, athletes, entertainers and other rambunctious niggas that didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut—the more they blinged, the harder she went after them.
After getting the pertinent information that she needed, she’d help Monk, along with his boys, D. C. and Cross set up the victims and then the four of them would split the dough. She made enough dough doing that for years without having to have a regular job—hell, she was a boss.
The only regret that Justice had was introducing Sapphire to the game. Justice loved Sapphire with all of her heart and she treated her as if she were a little sister. Sapphire was the type of woman who was impressionable—had low self-esteem and always made a bad choice with men. Justice had put her on with her first chance to run game and things ended up going sour because the women who Monk, D. C. and Cross tried to rob remembered that Justice and Sapphire were the ones who rang the doorbell.
Meanwhile, Justice and Monk had been accused of participating in the robbery of her ex-boyfriend, Carlos, a major drug dealer in Charlotte. Because of Justice and Monk’s treacherous ways, their MO’s fit perfectly with the crime they were accused of. Although they were innocent, Justice couldn’t get Carlos to listen to reason. Therefore, Monk and Carlos had gone to war and Justice was forced into hiding. In the crossfire, Sapphire was brutally beaten and left for dead and barely lived to survive the ordeal. It was then when J. T. entered Justice’s life. He came along like a breath of fresh air and whisked her away from the streets and the madness that came along with it.
Justice let her guard down and ended up falling in love with J. T. She thought she had finally met her knight in shining platinum, until one day she unveiled an ugly truth! By sheer coincidence, Justice discovered that J. T. had actually been the one who robbed Carlos! Not only had he participated, he had also been the mastermind behind the whole scheme. He even knew that Carlos blamed Justice and Monk for the stick-up. After putting together the pieces of that crazy puzzle Justice realized that she had been sleeping with the enemy the entire time!
Subsequently, Justice planned her revenge and carried it out to the letter. When it was all said and done, eleven bullet holes decorated J. T.’s torso and Justice was the one who held the smoking gun. She cleaned out J. T.’s large safe and fled the vicinity. She and Monk were supposed to meet up after J. T.’s murder so they could go back home to Chicago and start a new life far away from the streets of Charlotte.
Unfortunately, Monk was murdered in Rock Hill, South Carolina, only fifteen minutes outside of Charlotte, on the same day they were supposed to have left. Monk’s murder went unsolved, but Justice was pretty sure she knew who had been responsible for his death. That Dominican drug dealing bitch named Tan who they had robbed shortly before his demise. Justice made a vow to make that bitch suffer the same way her brother had. Even if Tan hadn’t actually committed the murder herself, Justice was sure that she had her hands in it because she was the last person Monk had been with when Justice last spoke with him on that fateful day. Either way, Justice knew that Tan would have to pay!
On that same day, Justice found out that she had carried J. T.’s child, which she wasted no time aborting.
Justice arrived back in Chicago with a trunk full of money, an urn full of ashes, and a heart full of despair. Once back in the Windy City was when she was paid a visit by her estranged father, Tyson. After having a long-needed heart to heart talk, Justice learned that her
father had sired a son out-of-wedlock shortly after she had been born. When Tyson told her who his son was, Justice suffered a minor breakdown. That long-lost sibling had been none other than J. T.! The man she fell in love with, the man whose seed she’d carried, and the man whose life she had taken had been her own brother!
Justice wiped her wet eyes and shook the thoughts of her past as she continued to lay upon the large bed in the fetal position. She briefly thought about Carlos and remembered the many phone calls and text messages he had sent her after he found out the truth about the robbery. He begged and pleaded for her to try to understand his position, but his apologies went unanswered. He even paid Sapphire’s hospital bills and gave her fifty thousand dollars for getting caught up in the tangled web that had been woven.
Deep down, Justice actually understood that the whole ordeal had been one big ass deadly misunderstanding. She also knew how Carlos’s temper was and she couldn’t have expected him to handle the situation any other way. Part of her wanted to kill him for putting her through all of the trauma she had gone through while running from his hitmen. Nevertheless, another part of her wanted to thank him. If she had never endured that drama, she would not have gone back to Chicago and found herself.
Her upcoming trip back to Charlotte caused an internal debate on whether or not she would see Carlos while she was there. He already knew she was coming because of Sapphire and her big mouth, but he didn’t know exactly when she would arrive. Justice decided she would cross that bridge when she came to it.
Dwelling on her past brought Red, J. T.’s cousin and crime partner to mind. Red was the only one who could have made the connection between her and what had happened to J. T. Last she had heard, Red had been picked up by the Feds. Out of all the places on earth, he had been arrested in Chicago. Apparently, he had followed her there after she had killed J. T.
Justice rolled over and picked up a picture of her and Sapphire that had been taken a few years earlier at Club Prevue in Charlotte. She appeared youthful and so full of life in the photo. Looking away from the picture and into her mirrored reflection, gave her the impression that someone had double-tapped the fast forward button on her life. She was still undeniably beautiful, but if one were to look deeply enough into her eyes they would see her entire story. A smile can masquerade at all times. However, the eyes? They never lie!
“I need a break!” she huffed as she had difficulty thinking about the last time she had time off. When she couldn’t think of an answer, she decided a vacation was definitely needed and her trip back to Charlotte would serve as just that.
She concluded that she would deal with Virgin and Precious as soon as she returned from Charlotte, but for the time being she decided to let sleeping dogs lie. However, it was without a doubt they were definitely going to be dealt with.
CHAPTER THREE
It was a little after 6 P.M. and the evening sun was shining bright enough to blind the naked eye. An old school two-door Chevy, gleaming like a beacon in an empty desert was parked in the empty lot of Mama Jeannie’s Restaurant. The candy-painted box Chevy sitting on twenty-six inch Ashanti rims looked like something straight from a showroom floor. Crystal clear windows and a snow-white leather interior complemented its ice-blue exterior. Its two occupants sat silently; relishing the effects of the weed they had just finished smoking. “. . . I think I’m Big Meech—Larry Hoover—Whippin’ work—Hallelujah!” They nodded their heads in unison to Rick Ross as he spit that raw shit on the CD they were listening to. They had the AC blasting, yet the heat from the beaming sun was still almost unbearable.
“Yo, I ain’t know this shit was pink,” Supreme nonchalantly commented as he glanced out the window, observing the funny-colored building. The long, thick dreads he had grown for the past few years made him look like a wild islander. He exhaled a thick cloud of Black & Mild smoke from the passenger’s side before offering the cigar to Carlos.
Carlos looked across 62nd Street at the five-story building that Preme was referring to. He declined the cigar and responded, “Yeah, they hidin’ plenty niggas off in that joint.” This was the notorious Dade County Jail, home to some of the most vicious criminals in Miami and the surrounding Metro-Dade area. This was only one of several county jails in Miami.
“How much was that nigga’s bond?” Preme asked as he toyed with the long, wood-carved walking cane with the gumball-sized ruby embedded in the handle. Ever since Monk had shot him two years earlier, Preme had walked with a limp and he used the custom-made walking cane to help him get around.
“Priceless,” Carlos answered and left it at that.
They fixed their eyes on the entrance to the jail’s intake area as two Hispanic men exited. One older, one younger. It was apparent that the younger man had just been released from custody because he toted a black trash bag, which was presumably full of his personal property. As soon as the young man stepped on the curb near the street, he turned and threw up gang signs toward the top floors of the jail. The older man pulled him along as if he were pissed.
The two occupants of the Chevy turned their attention away from the Hispanic men because they were not whom they expected to see. Minutes later, Preme nodded toward the intake area again and stated, “There our boy go.”
Carlos looked across the street at the man exiting the building wearing Lucky Brand jean shorts, a beige T-shirt and Air Jordan sneakers. “’Bout damn time they let my man, Dave up outta there.”
Dave had added thirty pounds of muscle to his five-foot-six frame and was a far cry from the skinny nineteen year old that Carlos had first put on years earlier. Dave had just turned twenty-one a week earlier in the county jail and hadn’t even had his first legal drink yet. His clean-shaven head gleamed in the bright Miami evening sun while he raised his hand to his forehead as a makeshift visor to block the glare of the scorching sun. He looked about as if he were searching for someone.
Carlos saw that Dave had not noticed them, so he stepped out of the Chevy and raised both arms so Dave could see him. Preme wasn’t too far behind as he limped to the driver’s side where Carlos stood. “What up, nigga!” Carlos yelled across the street.
Spotting his boss across the street standing near the tricked out Chevy, Dave let a broad smile splay across his face. I knew my nigga wasn’t gonna leave me in that bitch, Dave thought as he waited for a break in traffic before crossing the main street. He walked up to Carlos and was greeted with a pound and a brotherly hug. Preme greeted him the same way.
“What up, nigga? You good?” Carlos asked his partner as he opened the driver’s side door and pushed the seat forward so Dave could have room to get in.
“Hell nah, I ain’t good! A nigga was up in that shit for two months. You know these niggas down here don’t like niggas from outta town,” Dave complained while climbing into the rear seat.
Carlos let him vent a bit before responding, “You know I was waiting for your bond to get cut. What a nigga look like posting a seven-figure bond?” Once Dave was in, Carlos pushed the seat back and climbed back under the wheel.
Dave responded to Carlos’s comment, “True dat. But all dat shit coulda been avoided.” He settled into the soft leather, relieved to be out of that hellhole.
Carlos pulled out of the restaurant parking lot and turned right on 62nd Street heading toward the highway. As if he had forgotten to mention it, Carlos turned down the stereo and told Dave, “Oh, by the way, I gotta make a stop before we head back up the road.” He handed Dave the blunt, which had sat in the ashtray and Dave took it.
“Y’all some crazy ass niggas, comin’ to pick a nigga up from jail smelling like a pound of weed.” Dave laughed. “Go ‘head and make your stop, it ain’t like I got shit to do,” he stated. But what he really wanted to do was to get on I-95 North so they could make it back to Charlotte, North Carolina. He was homesick as hell! He had only been locked up for a little over eight weeks, but to him it felt like eight years. He was in dire need of a shit, shave, bath, and a home-co
oked meal. Not to mention the birthday pussy that had been waiting for him. The thought of fucking his girl for the first time in over two months had him hyped.
Carlos glanced back at Dave “By the way, happy belated birthday my nigga. I wish we had time to take yo’ barely legal ass to King of Diamond but we gotta hit that slab as soon as possible. All good though because we gonna get it in when we get back to the Q.C.”
“Yeah, happy birthday, nigga” Preme chimed in.
“Hell yeah, we gonna get it in. Nigga, you already know. After I fuck my bitch, we goin’ straight to Onyx!” Dave replied
Both Preme and Carlos laughed. “That’s what’s up” Carlos replied.
“Who Donk?” Dave asked as if he were just noticing the car they were riding in, “I like this shit right here.” He ran his hand along the leather of the empty seat next to him. Preme handed Dave a lighter and Dave fired up the weed. As he exhaled his first cloud of smoke in weeks, he almost coughed up a lung and passed the weed back up front.
“You aiight?” Carlos asked, taking the weed from Dave’s fingers.
“Yeah, I’m good. You know a nigga ain’t smoked nothin’ in a minute.” He was still coughing with tears in his eyes.
Preme and Carlos laughed at him again. Carlos said, “You asked whose whip this is? It’s mine. Big Rob ‘posed to be puttin’ a box in it for me. We need another stash, ya’ dig. Matter of fact, that’s where we gotta stop at. I gotta holla at him before we dip.” Carlos was referring to his man who owned a stereo installation shop, which also doubled as a spot for installing stash boxes in vehicles.
“If that van y’all had a nigga drivin’ was boxed up, a nigga wouldn’t be in this situation,” Dave mumbled under his breath, but both Carlos and Preme heard him.
Carlos and Preme exchanged inquisitive glances before Carlos looked into the rearview mirror at Dave. He stated, “Yeah, you right, but I felt like you’d be okay for a one day trip. It was a fuck up, but we gonna make it right.”
