by K'wan
Domo hit the Garden State Parkway and started driving south. He didn’t have a particular destination, he just felt like he needed to keep moving. Focusing on the road was the only thing keeping him from being swallowed by the feeling paranoia that had been eating at him all night. Vita and the others pulling a no-show was unsettling to say the least. He’d hit her phone twice more since he arrived back to New Jersey, getting the voice mail both times. A part of Domo told him to leave it alone, and count his blessings that he’d avoided whatever may or may not have been waiting for him inside that warehouse, but something about it wasn’t sitting right with him. He needed answers and she was the best person to give them to him.
Since he’d first gotten down with them Vita had been the one who planned the capers and she was a stickler for details, so it was impossible for her to have sent him the wrong address by accident. That so why the ruse? Was foul play in the works, or had something happened? As he thought on it deeper she had been acting strange lately. Initially he thought her behavior had been attributed to the loss of Diamonds, but he sensed there was something more to it … something she wasn’t saying and it had been nagging at him.
About an hour after his last call to Vita, Buda started blowing his phone up and sending him texts. “Where the fuck are you?” was the gist of most of the messages. He started to call him back but decided against it. Partially because he wasn’t sure where his relationship with the crew currently stood, but also in part that he wasn’t sure if he was ready to hear whatever Buda had to say. What if something had happened to Vita because he hadn’t been there to watch their backs? Domo felt like a sucker for the thought. For all he knew Vita could’ve been trying to lure him to his death and he was more concerned about her than himself. Good pussy could screw a man’s mind up worse than drugs.
By the time Domo tired of driving up and down the Parkway it was nearly daybreak, and he had burned up an entire tank of gas. He’d contemplated grabbing himself a hotel room for the night rather than face his mother, but he reasoned that putting it off would only delay the inevitable. It was time to face the music so he headed home. As Domo stepped through the small white gate in front of his apartment unit, he felt the hairs on his arm stand up. He looked up and down the street and didn’t see anyone. His foot had just touched the steps of his front porch when he heard movement on the side of the house. Drawing his gun, he moved cautiously to investigate. It was then that he saw someone shambling towards him from the shadows of his backyard.
“Blood, you picked the wrong house to rob,” Domo hissed, chambering a round into his pistol. The figure ignored the threat and kept advancing. Domo’s finger tightened on his trigger, but he paused when Vita stepped into view. She looked worn and was limping, with a gun dangling from her hand. “V, don’t make me do something stupid out here. Drop your strap!” He aimed the pistol at her head.
Vita let out what he could only assume was a chuckle, before tossing her gun to the ground. “Chill out, pretty boy. I’ve been shot once tonight and it’s overrated,” she said before collapsing into his arms.
* * *
Diamonds found himself in a world of pain. Blue and Tariq had been beating the hell out of him for most of the night. Every time he felt like he was going to die, they would stop to let him wallow in his pain until they got their second winds, before starting in again. It was as Blue had promised, his death wouldn’t be painless nor quick. One of his eyes was closed and his jaw felt like it was hanging off the hinges, but he was beyond the point of pain. He just wanted it to be over.
“This sure is a tough son of a bitch, huh Blue?” Tariq said as they drug Diamonds up the stairs and out into the morning air. They stopped sort of the railing overlooking the water near the foot of the statue.
“Tougher than I expected,” Blue agreed, as he knelt at Diamonds’ feet and began wrapping a length of chain around them. “He’d have made a better recruit than fish food, but that ain’t our call.”
“Think we should work him over a little more before we dump him?” Tariq asked anxiously.
“Nah, man. I think he’s suffered enough. Let’s just get this over with,” Blue told him. He and Diamonds were on two different sides of the battle lines, but in his short time knowing him he had come to respect the bandit king. Most men would’ve folded within the first day or so of what they had put him through, but Diamonds had endured it for a week and never once broke.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Tariq propped Diamonds against the safety rail overlooking the ocean below. It was at least a twenty-foot drop. “Say, what do you think will kill him first, hitting the rocks or being dragged away by the current?” he joked.
“Stop being a dick and help me get him over,” Blue told him. They were just about to dump Diamonds into the bay when they heard footsteps crunching on the gravel behind them. “Show yourself!” Blue ordered.
“Easy fellas, it’s just me.” Minister appeared from the shadows with his hands held high.
“Man, you almost got plugged creeping up on us like that.” Blue holstered his gun. “I thought you went into the city with Slim and Rolling?”
“I was supposed to, but me and this brother have some unfinished business.” Minister nodded at Diamonds. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not at all.” Blue stepped back. “But if you plan on working him over for a time then it’ll be on you to get rid of the body. We’re ready to punch out.”
“Disposing of bodies is my specialty.” Minister smiled and turned his attention to Diamonds.
“So, you come to get your pound of flesh too, yeah?” Diamonds mustered a smile. If he was going to die he’d rather it had been at the hands of an honorable man like Minister rather than Slim’s two shit-head goons.
“Nah, man. I lack the cruel streak shared by my comrades. I’ll make this quick.” Minster drew his gun and placed it to Diamonds’ forehead. “Can I ask you something?”
“Seeing how you the one with the gun, I don’t see why not,” Diamonds replied.
“Your boy you were telling me about, Rasul, do you think you’ll see him in the afterlife?”
Diamonds weighed the question. “I strongly doubt it. Rasul was a good dude at heart, but me not so much. I think we’ll be moving in two different directions on that stairway to eternity.”
“Man, you gonna handle your business or keep asking dumb ass questions?” Tariq snapped. He was ready to be rid of Diamonds once and for all. In response to his question Minister turned his gun on Tariq and shot him once in the head.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Blue asked in shock.
“Hopefully, the right thing,” Minister said before putting two bullets into Blue.
ALSO BY K’WAN
Street Dreams
Hoodlum
Hood Rat
Still Hood
Gutter
Section 8
Welfare Wifeys
Eviction Notice
Diamonds and Pearl
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K’WAN is a multiple literary award winner and bestselling author of more than twenty titles, which include: Gangsta, Road Dawgz, Street Dreams, Hoodlum, Eve, Hood Rat, Blow, Still Hood, Gutter, Section 8, From Harlem with Love, The Leak, Welfare Wifeys, Eviction Notice, Love & Gunplay, Animal, The Life & Times of Slim Goodie, Purple Reign, Little Nikki Grind, Animal II, The Fix, Black Lotus, First & Fifteenth, Ghetto Bastard, Animal 3, The Fix 2, The Fix 3, Animal 4, and Diamonds and Pearl. K’wan is also the author of several dark fantasy novels written under a pseudonym.
K’wan currently resides in New Jersey, where he is working on his next novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Prologue
Part I: Born on the Bayou
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Part II: The House of the Rising Sun
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Part III: Saints & Sinners
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Part IV: Red Rain
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Also by K’wan
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE DIAMOND EMPIRE. Copyright © 2017 by K’wan. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Lesley Worrell
Cover photographs: woman © Anastasiia Kazakova/Shutterstock.com; diamond texture © Jag Cz/Shutterstock.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-10263-8 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-10264-5 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250102645
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First Edition: October 2017
