The Last Kings

by C. N. Phillips

  I wanted to punch her, but she was right. It was my mistake.

  Antwan was cracking up.

  “Aye, man, y’all are a trip! I’m going to fuck with y’all later though,” he said and continued walking.

  “Where are you going?” Mocha inquired.

  “I got some business to handle,” he said. “Aye, Sadie?”

  “What’s up?” I asked wondering what on earth he could have to say to me.

  “My man C. J. wants to know what’s up with y’all.”

  “Not a damn thing!” I informed him sternly.

  C. J. was Antwan’s best friend, who Mocha talked me into going out with. Whereas C. J. was sexy as he wanted to be and had a big dick to back it up, after a few dates and him discussing nothing but himself and money, I just couldn’t do it. Also, after our third date, I actually let him come into my dorm so we could get it in. I was disappointed when he couldn’t even last two minutes—and we tried two times! The whole situation made me mad because I didn’t give myself to many people, and when I did, it usually was worth it. I stopped answering his calls after that, and he hadn’t stopped trying to get at me.

  “Damn! It’s like that?” Antwan laughed loudly.

  “Yeah, it’s like that! Tell him when he can last longer than two minutes, his bitch ass still won’t have a chance with me!”

  “All right, I feel you, ma,” he said and gave us two fingers to tell us good-bye.

  “I cannot believe your ass has me out in the cold, and we don’t even have class!” Mocha kept saying the whole way back to our dorm room.

  Once there, she climbed right back into her bed after throwing off her coat and shoes. I sat down on my colorful polka-dot comforter and looked at my best friend.

  “I’m sorry, Mocha; you know I wouldn’t have woke your crazy ass up if I would have remembered we didn’t have class today. That was a waste of both of our time.”

  “Fuck that. Even if we did, you shouldn’t have woke me up. I’m tired of this shit,” she said snuggling back under her covers.

  I knew exactly what she meant. About a week ago, Mocha and I had a discussion after her school trip to Atlanta on the reason why we were in school in the first place. What we wanted to be when we graduated. Neither of us had an answer. We both made good grades, but we both had always hated school. If it hadn’t been for my grandma Rae, we probably would have dropped out at the drop of a dime. We lucked up and got scholarships at the community college where we resided in Detroit. Grandma Rae made us go, and we only stayed because of the fat refund checks we got every semester. Mocha was a math genius, like Ray, and I excelled in English. That night she returned, we talked about using our refund check money to start our own little business. Mocha jokingly made a statement about starting a drug cartel. It was crazy because with all of the knowledge I had about it, I never thought about getting into the game myself. Mainly because every single one of the men my mother dated were hustlers who met sticky endings no matter how much of a boss they were. One of the worst experiences in my life happened due to the game and the life that came with it. After that, I was skeptical about that idea, and it made me worry about Ray every day. However, if it came down to it, though, I know I would be down for the ride.

  “Really, Mocha, I feel you,” I said lying back on my bed. “This shit is getting played out to me too. If I didn’t think Grandma Rae would flip, I would have been gone.”

  “I know. These petty-ass refund checks can’t cover the kind of taste I have. I’m tired of Ray buying all of our shit. One day, he isn’t going to be here, and school isn’t taking me anywhere. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with my life. Right now, I feel as if I’m wasting it taking tests to get a degree that I don’t even want.”

  “We can get jobs,” I said but instantly took it back. I couldn’t picture either of us flipping anyone’s burgers. “Never mind.”

  “Right. The working world ain’t for us,” Mocha agreed, turning to face my bed.

  “Yeah,” I concurred.

  There were a few minutes of silence before Mocha began speaking, a little more quietly that time.

  “So you haven’t talked to Ray at all?”

  “No,” I told her. “I don’t know what’s been up with us lately. I used to talk to him every day.”

  “Yeah, you know what they’re saying, right? About Coopa?”

  I nodded my head. Coopa was the kingpin of Detroit. He usually kept his business tight. From what I heard and saw, he was a man that you didn’t want to cross. He shot first and didn’t ask or answer any questions. He was a good-looking man in his late thirties; light skin with small brown eyes and well respected in the game. He currently was the head of the biggest drug trafficking operation the city of Detroit had ever seen, and his team consisted of all the hustlers in Detroit. Ray was like his right-hand man, which meant that Ray was big. Lately, though, I’d been hearing that some people wanted Coopa’s head on a stick. Something about he had been making some business deals and not holding up his end of the bargain. He thought he was untouchable, and so far, he had been. I just didn’t want Ray in any mess behind Coopa’s messiness.

  “What do you think about it?” Mocha asked me.

  “I mean, what can I say? Ray’s a grown-ass man. I just hope that when Coopa goes down, Ray doesn’t go with him,” I told her.

  “Maybe he’s just waiting for the right time to get out,” Mocha threw out.

  “Naw, Ray loves his life too much. If anything, he would just take over. Then we could finally drop out of this bitch,” I said.

  “What does that mean?” Mocha asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, not really knowing what I was saying.

  “Sadie, are you really thinking about that?” she asked. “I thought we were just playing around with that shit.”

  “That ‘shit’ would be better than just sitting here wasting my life away doing nothing,” I told her.

  “You tripping; you’re trying to be on some crazy shit,” she said.

  “Some C. N. Phillips-type shit,” I said glancing at my bookshelf.

  “OK, Say,” Mocha said, calling me by my nickname. “This isn’t a book! This is real life! Let’s be real for a second. If we start up our own business, it would get shut down before we even took flight! Antwan told me about what Coopa did to those niggas from California. Their bodies were found in Dumpsters. Fuck with that shit if you want to, Sadie, but it’s not smart. What makes it worse is that we’re girls! You know what happens to girls in the game.”

  Mocha’s rant went in one ear and out the other. I wasn’t scared of Coopa. He was just a man who stood behind his army instead of in the front.

  “Whatever, Mocha.” I didn’t feel like arguing with her, especially since she had been the one to even bring it up.

  “For real, Sadie, do you think they would take us seriously?” she asked. “I mean, we don’t know anything about the game to even try to play.”

  “You don’t know shit about the game, Mocha,” I said, and I thought about the question.

  I knew the city was hungry, but I also knew that even though Coopa was running shit, he wasn’t handling business like he should have been. Eventually, Detroit would birth a new king . . . so why not make it a queen?

  “I don’t know, Mocha. Maybe, but only if we were strapped heavy and had a team of loyal ones,” I finally answered.

  Mocha sighed heavily.

  “I’m going to sleep. Your ass is crazy. I can’t believe we are even still having this conversation.”

  I heard her turn over, and I lay facing the ceiling for a few more moments, lost in my own personal thoughts. If I could come up with a way to take the game by storm, I’d do it in a second. I’d grown up around the world of drugs and fast money. The attraction that I had to it was undeniable. It enticed my soul. I was ten when my mother dated her first hustler. My mother always had a new man almost every six months. They gave into all of her lavish wants and always made sure I had everything th
at I needed. My mother wasn’t just your typical beauty; she was drop-dead gorgeous. Her father was part Dominican so her hair flowed almost to her butt. She didn’t believe in the working world, so she played off of her wide hips and plump breasts because it worked for her. We moved around a lot, and in every city, she would date the new “big thing,” until he either got himself killed or incarcerated.

  The longest relationship she had was for two years, and I hated him. His name was Nino, and I was fourteen at the time. I was just coming into my looks and many would often tell me I was beautiful, just like my mother. My mother moved us into his large six-bedroom estate and promised me that “this was it.” Like a fool, I believed her, like I always did. It didn’t take long for the fairy tale to be shattered. Soon my mother began to realize that Nino was an angry and very possessive woman beater. Whenever my mother did anything he didn’t agree with, he would floor her. For a while, my mother put up with it saying that she needed him, and if it wasn’t for him, we would be on the streets. But when Nino started paying inappropriate attention to me, things started to really get out of control. Instead of protecting me like a mother should have, she turned to drugs. The same ones Nino was selling to the crack whores roaming the streets. The first night Nino raped me, he put a gun to my head and told me that if I screamed, he would blow my and my mother’s heads off.

  I had never felt pain like that before in my fourteen years, and I felt lower than dirt. He was large, too large for a young girl’s first time. I remember biting my lip so I wouldn’t scream. My womanhood was stripped from me in thirty minutes and fifteen seconds. I knew that because I’d closed my eyes and counted to mentally evade Nino as he humped my body deeper and deeper into the mattress. No matter how much of a failure my mother was, she was still my mother, and I didn’t want him to hurt her any more than he already had. After that first time, it began happening periodically. I never spoke a word of it to my mother. Whenever she looked at me, her eyes reeked with sadness and pain. I could tell she knew what was happening, and the fact that she didn’t do anything to stop it turned my heart cold. She was too strung out from playing with her nose to help me. She had completely lost her shape, and any beauty once in her face was long gone.

  After some time, Nino actually began using me to make drops and collect his money. I used to take the drugs to school. When my beeper went off, I knew a customer was out front. Not the smartest idea in the books, but I never got caught, so it worked for me. Nino knew how much he would get back so I started to up the prices on my own so that I could make my own profit and give him what he knew he would get. If there was one thing being my mother’s daughter taught me, it was to never depend on a man to take care of me. I saw how far that got her and made a promise to myself that I would never be in that position.

  Nino had a son that lived with his mother, and he flew out often to see him, leaving my mother and me at peace. I remembered the last time he flew out to see him was the day after he had raped me so brutally that I bled all over the sheets. I decided then that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life as his sex slave and flunky, so I snuck into his office. I hoped that I could find something in there to get him caught up, and sure enough, I did. It seemed that Nino, much like Coopa, had been making some bad business moves and owed a few people money. I made a few calls with the numbers I found, and when I was done, all I had to do was play the waiting game. It didn’t happen right away, but I knew it wouldn’t. I had a few more horrible nights when Nino came back, but it was all worth it as soon as I heard the front door being kicked in. At the time, my mother and I were in the kitchen eating our dinner when she heard the door cave in. The first thing she did was grab me and make a dash to the upstairs part of the house.

  “What the fuck, Camara?” Nino screamed at my mother when we burst into the room they shared.

  “They found us,” my mom said in a hurried, hushed tone. “They just kicked in the door. We have to go, now!”

  Nino jumped up, grabbing his gun before running to shut the door behind us. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was terrified. We heard the people under us ransacking the house and knew it would only be a matter of time before they found us.

  “But how did they find me?” Nino asked himself, trying to think of how they found his house.

  I knew his mind was trying to find a solution. His house wasn’t even listed; he had done that as a safety precaution, knowing his head was wanted on a few sticks. His eyes then locked with mine, and I couldn’t help the devilish upward curl that formed on my mouth.

  “It was you!”

  Before he could grab me, the door flung open and shots rang out in the room. I will never forget seeing the shots enter into his body. That was the last sight I saw before my mother grabbed me and we fell back into the tall bookcase. In a matter of seconds, we were through the secret door and in another room. My mother was frantically grabbing already packed suitcases and stacks of money. I had never seen my mom move that fast. I remember hearing the intruders yelling about fucking with “the boss’s” money and how they had trusted Nino with the coke. Instead, he was snorting it with a bitch. There was a window in the room, and my mother told me to climb out of it and use the side railing to slide down to the ground. I heard one final gunshot, and my mother pushed me out of the window. Once we were both on the ground, we ran as fast as we could to her car, and as we drove away from the house, I looked behind me, only to see flames shooting toward the sky as it was being burned to the ground. We drove all the way to Grandma Rae’s house, where she dropped me off, saying she needed to grab a few things. She never came back, and Grandma Rae legally adopted me.

  I guess that’s another reason why Mocha and I were so close. We were both abandoned by our mothers. I never told her the full story. No one knew, not even Ray. Finally, I decided to put my thoughts to the back of my mind and get a few more hours of sleep. I turned the lamp beside my bed off and lay in darkness until I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter 2

  I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing next to my head on my white fluffy pillow. I wasn’t quick to answer it because I was wondering who the hell was calling me.

  “Hello?” My voice sounded groggy when I finally accepted the call.

  “What up!” I’d recognize that deep, suave voice anywhere. The one and only Ray. “I know your ass isn’t still asleep at one o clock?”

  “Don’t ‘what up’ me!” I said suddenly wide awake. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Chill! Get up. I’m about to pull up in five minutes. Tell Mocha to get up too. I know her ass is still passed out if you are.”

  I looked over at Mocha, whose mouth was hanging open. I laughed a little bit.

  “I’m right, huh?”

  “Shut up, Ray. You better have your gloves with you because when I see you, I’m beating your ass. Especially with the shit I’ve been hearing.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m here, come out.”

  I hung up, then proceeded to wake Mocha up.

  “Mocha, get up, Ray’s here.” I shook her arm.

  “Sadie, I am going to fuck you up! This is the second time you’ve fucked up my beauty sleep!” Mocha tried to swat me off of her, but I didn’t let her arm go.

  “Ray’s outside, get up!”

  “I wish you would just leave me aloooone!” she grumbled, putting on her boots and coat.

  “Shut up. I know you don’t want to be cooped up in this small-ass dorm room all day,” I said, trying to hurry and get out to the car.

  Even though I was mad at him, I was excited to see Ray. It had been too long. The money he sent us every week didn’t make up for him being ghost. I’m glad Mocha and I were still dressed from earlier because it didn’t take too long to get out of our dorm.

  “Lock the door behind you,” I told Mocha.

  “Naw, I’m just going to leave it unlocked,” she said sarcastically and locked the door. “Why is he picking us up?”

  “I don’t kn
ow,” I answered honestly going down the one flight of stairs and once again out into the cold air.

  I saw his black Cadillac Escalade parked not too far from the dorm’s entrance and led the way avoiding big piles of snow. His tint was so dark I could barely see inside of the car.

  “What’s up?” Ray grinned at us when we made it to the vehicle.

  “Hey, cousin!” I grinned right on back, getting in the passenger seat. I couldn’t help it. Ray was so handsome, and his smile was contagious.

  He had his long dreads hanging, and I could see his little goatee trying to come in on his chestnut-brown face. He was casual, wearing a Diamond Supply T-shirt and 501 Levi jeans. On his feet he wore his French Blue 13’s. My cousin was fresh even when he wasn’t. His dark brown eyes were identical to mine except his were sharper when looked into. He looked just like our Grandma Rae, which was why my uncle Thomas named him Raymond. He was like the big brother I never had. Ray was tall and had a muscular build. He had women falling at his feet, but he was paying too much attention to his money to take notice. To his enemies, Ray was lethal. He held his temper well, but you definitely didn’t want to get on his bad side.

  “Ray,” Mocha said, hopping into the backseat, “you better take us to get something to eat!”

  Ray gave her the side eye.

  “What were you doing still asleep? It’s the afternoon. No, better question, why the fuck weren’t y’all in class?” He took his eyes off of the road to glance at me.

  “Damn!” I exclaimed. “Feds-ass nigga! We didn’t have class today.” I looked behind me and cocked my head at Mocha. “Check him out, Mo. He’s worried about our schooling, but we haven’t even heard from his ass.”

  “Right!” Mocha cosigned, laughing.

  “Yea, laugh if y’all want to, but don’t try to turn this around on me, Say,” Ray said. “You both know it would fuck with Grandma Rae’s heart if she found out y’all were fucking off in school.”

  “Fuck school! I’m about sick and tired of this shit!” Mocha said in an exasperated tone. “Grandma Rae just might have to be mad at me, because I’m about to throw in the towel after this semester.”