“He’s fine,” I tell her, bored by her melodramatics. “It’s just a little bee sting.” I gesture to my own chewed off lobe. “Believe me. He’ll live.” For a few more minutes.
“Now move your asses.”
Growling through his pain, Reggie glares like he wants to put paws on me. I laugh in his face and then blow him an air kiss. “You don’t want to look at me like that. It’s turning me on.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Tracee says, shaking her head. “Ta’Shara was right about you.”
My smile melts off of my face as an image of Ta’Shara charging toward me flashes in my head. “DIE, BITCH. DIE!”
Pain rips through my chest as if those damn needles are stabbing me all over again.
“LeShelle,” Kookie hisses and elbows me.
I snap out of my trance and then try to shake the whole thing off.
June Bug and Kane’s heavy footsteps hit the stairs and at the sight of my new goons, the Douglases finally scramble toward their room. That shit kind of hurt my feelings. Am I not scary enough?
I follow them into the room but then I’m thrown off guard when I see Tracee going for something on the nightstand.
“Watch out!” Kookie bumps me out the way just as Tracee spins and fires.
POW!
Kookie falls back.
What the fuck? I return fire and manage to shoot the gun out of Tracee’s hand.
“TRACEE,” Reggie roars and dives for his wife.
June Bug and Kane rush in with chromes cocked and ready to blast.
“DON’T SHOOT,” I order in time before they turn the Douglases into Swiss cheese. There’s not going to be any merciful killings on my watch. I want this shit to go down as slow and painful as possible.
I glance over at Kookie. “You cool?”
A red flower blooms at the side of her blue shirt while she nods bravely. “I’m good,” she pants, leaning against the door.
Reggie pulls his wife into his arms. “What the fuck do you want with us?”
I return my attention to him and smile. “I need you in order to send a message to my snitching sister. Don’t take any of this shit personal.” I flash one last smile and then order June Bug and Kane, “Tie them down to the bed.”
“What?” Reggie looks alarmed as the men come at him.
They scrape for a while. But Reggie is no match for these raw dawgs. After delivering a few body blows, the Douglases are tied down. I even stroll over to the bed and check the rope. “Nice and tight.” I take my gun and slide it down Tracee’s face.
“Pleeaassse. Don’t do this,” she begs. More fat, watery tears roll down her face.
They look so perfect that I can’t help but lean down and lick one up.
“Nice and . . . salty.” I wink. “Delicious.”
I stand up and go and retrieve my and Kookie’s gasoline cans from the hallway. “Do it up,” I tell June Bug and Kane, handing them cans.
They splash that shit everywhere: the curtains, the bed—across the carpet.
“Ohmigod. Ohmigod,”Tracee sobs.
Reggie tries to console her, but he sounds as scared as she is.
Once the gasoline starts burning my nose, I edge back toward the door.
“Please, LeShelle don’t do this. Please don’t.”
“I’m sorry, but I have to. Let’s roll.”
“LeShelle,” Kookie says, slumped onto the floor. “I think I’m going to need some help.”
June Bug steps forward.
“Leave her,” I tell him.
Kookie’s eyes widen. “Wh-what?”
I squat down next to her. “I have a question for you. Why was McGriff doing an unauthorized drug pickup with Python’s connect the night he died?”
“What?” She looks confused. “How would I know?”
I shake my head. “See now. I’m not quite buying that.You wanna know what I think?”
“LeShelle, please—”
“I think that you and McGriff were tryna make moves while Python and I were underground, tryna hustle your way onto the throne.”
“Girl, don’t be silly.” Sweat beads along her hairline. “You know me and McGriff would never do anything like that.”
“That’s just it. I do know you—and I know that you’re the kind of bitch who would stab her own momma in the back if it would get you ahead.”
“LeShelle, don’t do this,” she pants heavily.
I stand back up and shake my head. “You’d think that of all people, you would know that I’m not the bitch to cross.” I glance over at June Bug and Kane. “Let’s go.”
“LeShelle, wait,” Kookie cries out.
“I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL,” Reggie roars at my back.
“I’m sure you will. I’ll be the bitch sitting on the throne.” I toss him one last wink and then head out. Downstairs, I listen to their cries while I take a final look around. “A little gift from me to you,Ta’Shara.”
I light a match.
49
Shariffa
Lynch is on that blue diamond shit tonight and beating my G-spot like it fucking owes his ass some money. Sweat glazes our bodies until we look like a pair of chocolate doughnuts in the center of our king bed. He looks so good that I can’t stop running my tongue over his chest. He’s both salty and bitter at the same time and I can’t get enough.
“Say that shit again, baby,” he growls, grabbing my wrists and pinning them over my head. “Tell me I’m the king.”
The corners of my lips curl upward as I throw my pussy back down on the dick. “You’re the king, baby. All those muthafuckas are going to fall dead at your feet and you’re gonna rule it all.”
“Fuck, yeah!” Lynch’s hips shift into overdrive.
“Ahhhhh, shit.” My nut grows in the center of my clit, so I lock my legs around his waist and prepare for another blastoff. My baby doesn’t disappoint. In the next second, the power of his thrust sends my ass flying to the moon. Even as I’m drifting among the stars, Lynch’s insatiable ass is still drilling. At times like this, a bitch is glad to have backup.
Trigger slides up from behind Lynch and nibbles on his neck. “My turn, your highness.”
Lynch chuckles, releasing my hands and pulling out of my wet drenches. “Bring your fine ass over here.” He grabs her by the hair and jerks her in between us.
Trigger plays her role to the hilt, giggling like a teenager and going with the flow when he plants her face in between my legs.
“Clean my baby up for me,” Lynch orders while repositioning himself behind her onion ass.
Our threesome party is nothing new and we keep the shit to ourselves. I can’t have too many bitches knowing that I allow this shit to go down. Bitches would take it as permission to toss all kinds of miscellaneous pussy at him whenever they came around him. That ain’t what this is. We do what we do, but we do it together. Those are the damn rules and I choose which bitch joins the party. I chose Trigger’s ass because she ain’t sloppy with her shit.We’ve been doing this for a couple of years and not one time has she opened her mouth about this. She even pinch-hitted when I was big as hell with the twins.
Lynch would wear her ass out and then roll over with me. For us, the arrangement is perfect.
“Oh.” I fist the sheets as Trigger’s small tongue dips down for a rim shot.
“Is she hookin’ you up, baby?” Lynch asks, spreading Trigger open and sliding through her back door.
“Oh, yes,” I praise my girl while squeezing my breasts together. While she does her thing, I lock gazes with Lynch.
He grips Trigger’s waist and starts drilling again. Our party goes on for hours.We stop only a couple of times to rehydrate. That’s the problem with those damn blue pills. A bitch got to be ready to put in work.
Sometime after three, we all pass out in several wet pools in the sheets with our limbs entwined. A cell phone rings.
And then another.
And another.
What the fuck? Exhausted,
I pry one eye open and try to find the source of all that ringing only to discover that I’m buried beneath one of Lynch’s musky armpits.
One by one, the ringing stops—only to start up again.
I shove Lynch off of me, waking him up.
“Who in the hell?” Lynch lifts his head and starts looking around.
Trigger is the last to stir.
We scuffle around and I answer the first phone I come across. “Hello?”
“Lynch, man. There’s some disturbing shit down here at Crunk’s Ink. I think you need to get down here, man.”
“Wait. Hold on.” I shove the phone toward Lynch while he’s shoving my phone at me. “Hello,” I try again.
“Girl, Shariffa. Our asses are in fucking trouble,” Shaqorya hisses. “You need to get down here to Crunk’s Ink.”
“Whaaat?” the three of us say at the same time and then glance at each other.
“I mean it, girl. Get your ass down here.” What the fuck is going on?
“All right. I’ll be there in a few minutes,” I tell her while I hear Lynch tell his caller the same thing.
Clearly, something is up. Our scramble to get up and get dressed is like a bad, three-ring circus. We leave the kids with Lynch’s momma and then pile into the chromed-out Range Rover, armed to the teeth. Any shit could be up, so best to be prepared. When we arrive at Crunk’s Ink, there is an army of Grape Street Crips piled outside the door.
Shaqorya and Brika break away from the crowd and rush me and Trigger.
“What the fuck is up?”
Brika shakes her head, looking pale as shit.
Shaqorya grabs my hand like I’m going to need the support. “Girl, you gonna need to prepare yourself for this one. Crunk’s sister came out here when he was a no-show for a family dinner.You ain’t gonna believe what the fuck she found.”
“What? Spit it out.”
“No. This is some shit that you gotta see.”
These silly bitches got the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. “Fine. Damn.” I push past my girls in time to follow Lynch to the door. I’m already suspecting Crunk has been put down, but that can’t be all. These muthafuckas have seen dead bodies before.
The moment I walk through the door, my world is flipped upside down. I take in the scene, but there’s so much blood that I can hardly process it all. Hanging and spinning around from the ceiling fan is Crunk’s head with his dick shoved in his mouth. On the walls, my and each of my girls’ names are written in blood. “Oh, shit.” My gaze then bounces around to see body parts lying everywhere. In the right corner, a pair of legs are propped against the wall, while the feet are sitting in a chair. Arms, torsos, hands—all tossed around like garbage.
“What the fuck?” It’s the sickest shit I’ve ever seen.
While I’m standing there with my mouth hanging open, Trigger taps me on the shoulder and then points up at the ceiling.
I glance up and see the Vice Lords’ five-pointed star and the letter L. There’s no mistaking who left this calling card. “Lucifer.”
50
Momma Peaches
I ’m not going to die in this room, goddamn it. I keep saying this shit, but my doubt is growing stronger every day. There have been times that I was on the brink of begging Alice to put a bullet through my brain. I’ve lost count of how many nights I’ve suffered beatings at her hand, but even that hasn’t defeated me. I’ve tried to think of some MacGyver shit to get me out of here, but I keep falling flat.
I always knew that my sister never forgave me for what happened to her, but I never thought the girl would do no shit like this. I’ve been locked down many times in my life, but this beats all I’ve ever seen.
Currently, I’m on the third day of my hunger strike and my mind is getting a little clearer, but the pain in my belly remains strong. I am drifting to sleep when I hear the sound of an engine. A few seconds later, tires crunch over gravel.
Where is she going? Peeling my swollen eyes open, I’m able to make out that it’s nighttime.The moonlight has managed to filter through the dirty, barred window. I grab my splintered prosthetic leg. It doesn’t fit like it’s supposed to, but it still does the job in getting me over to the window so I can look out. I make out the red taillights as the van pulls away from the house.
Alice rarely leaves the house, and this is the first time she ever left at night.
Frustrated, I grip two of the bars and shake them. To my surprise, one of them snaps off into my hand. I’m so stunned, that I’m stuck staring at it like it’s a foreign object. Finally I look at the ends and see the tips rusted through.
Once the shock is over, I’m filled with a sudden hope and excitement. I pull and tug on the other bars and manage to get two more to snap off. But all that shit dies when I then try to open the window. It’s painted shut and refuses to budge.
“Please, Lord. Please.” I shove my entire weight up on the wooden pane and then howl in pain when my hand slips. I pull back and see three large splinters in the palm of my hand. “Fuck!” I snatch them out of my hand and then glance down at my shackled foot. What the hell am I thinking? I’m not going to be able to get out through the window anyway.
Hit by another wave of hopelessness, I drop to the floor and rest my head against my knee. I’m not going to die in this room. I can’t. I cringe when another painful cramp hits me. I hold my breath until it passes. When it does, I’m dizzy as hell and wonder whether I have the strength to climb back into bed.
Lifting my head, I stare at the twin-size bed. The longer I do, the more it looks like a coffin. “God, if you’re up there, I swear I’ll change my ways if you could do some kind of miracle. I’ll go to church. I’ll stop smoking weed. I’ll even leave all them hot boys alone. Please, just . . . help an old woman out.”
I wait, hoping for some kind of sign to let me know that the Big Man is listening. I hold fast for about twenty minutes. Give up. Alice is never going to let you out of here alive.
That shit floats around my head for a bit while I keep staring at the bed—then it dawns on me that I’m actually staring at the wire bedsprings.
Wire.
“Shit.” I struggle to get off the floor. When I do, I rush to the bed and flip the mattress up to stare at all the coil springs. “God is good.” I get busy pulling and untwisting one of the springs. It’s hard and it takes some time, but I’m finally able to break off a piece to use on the metal bracelet around my good leg. I haven’t seen a lock yet that I can’t pick and less than a minute later, this one is no different.
I smile for the first time in months as I wobble toward to the door. Once I hear the lock disengage, I still hold my breath while I pull it open. Despite my hearing Alice leave, I still creep through the dark basement worried that she’ll jump out of a corner at any second. I feel my way around until I trip over the bottom staircase.
“Keep it together, old girl.You’re going to get out of here.” It’s the first time I believe it. My eyes wet up as I reach out and brace myself against the shaky rail. Hell, it feels like the muthafucka is about to break off in my hands, but I can’t help but rely on it to help pull myself up the stairs.
By the time I reach the top stair, I’m a sweating and cramping mess. I go for the doorknob and then stop before opening it. What if Alice has an accomplice and that muthafucka shoots first and asks question later? I ain’t scared of no fight, but I would prefer to be strapped to have a fighting chance.
Fuck it.
I open the door and cringe when the hinges squeak like it’s hooked up to a sound system.When no bullets start flying, I go ahead and creep into the main house that is just as dark as the basement. I’m hit with a foul odor that has me gagging. Hell, I didn’t think anything could smell worse than I do. Slapping a hand over my mouth, I waste no time getting my creep on tryna find the front door.When I locate it, I hear the sound of tires crunching gravel again.
Shit. She’s back.
I back away from the door as headlights
flood the side windows. I’m not going back down that hole. I can’t. I won’t. Jerking away, I scramble to find a place to hide, but there’s very little furniture in the living room so I rush into the next room, hit something hard and crash onto a wet linoleum floor, snapping my prosthetic leg and busting the other side of my lip.
Pain explodes in every part of my body.
The car engine shuts off.
That awful stench is all over me. My stomach seizes up and I gag over my own tongue. What the fuck is that? I cover my nose with the back of my hand and try to just breathe out of my mouth. I turn to see what I stumbled over, but my eyes must be playing tricks me because it’s a body and . . . is that a knife sticking out of it?
What the fuck?
Two doors slam shut.
How many crazy people are in on this shit? Panicked, I reach over and snatch the knife out of the body and then scoot and wiggle my way back out of the kitchen. I find a nook behind some kind of table and grandfather clock. I have no idea how this shit is about to go down, but I’m feeling my confidence trickle back into my veins with this knife in my hands.
Despite all the crazy-ass bullshit, I still love my sister, but I’ll gut her like a fish in order to end this nightmare. The wait stretches for an eternity and fear mixes in with my confidence.
“C’mon. C’mon. C’mon.” I’m impatient to get this shit over with. If I’m going to die, then I’m going to die, but at least now I ain’t going down without a fight.
“Move, bitch!” Alice yells from outside.
“Please, Alice,” a woman begs. “You don’t want to do this.”
What the hell is going on?
“Oh, I definitely want to do this,” Alice seethes. “You stole my baby and then let my ass rot in jail while you played momma. Where the fuck do you get off?”
What? I lower the knife while I try to wrap my head around what I’m hearing.
“Alice, I’m so sorry. At the time we thought that it was the right thing to do—what was best for Mason. For God’s sake, you put that child in the oven.”
“Liar!”
POW!
I jump and then wait to hear what happened.
Gangsta Divas Page 27
