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  “Now, where was I?” Fatima dipped her head down in his lap.

  When Fatima took Ashanti into her mouth, he felt his toes curl in his boots. He wanted to tell her to stop for fear that someone would see what she was doing, but he couldn’t find the words. For as experienced as Ashanti was at war, he was a novice at love. She played with the head of his dick with her tongue for a few seconds before closing her lips around it. Ashanti closed his eyes and put his head back while Fatima handled her business.

  Ashanti was in his own little world while Fatima serviced him. The biggest grin was plastered across his face as he thought about what he was going to do to her. In the middle of his pleasure trip, Ashanti was suddenly overcome with an eerie feeling. His eyes snapped open, and he took stock of his surroundings. They were in the Hunt’s Point section of the Bronx.

  “Dude, what the fuck are you doing? Why didn’t you just take the highway?” Ashanti asked the cab driver, who was chatting away on his cell phone in a language that Ashanti couldn’t understand. It sounded like French.

  “The highway coming up through Manhattan is too crowded at about this time. I’m taking a shortcut through the Bronx, and I’ll jump on Eighty-Seven a little further up so we can beat some of the congestion. No worries, my friend,” the driver assured him, and he closed the plastic partition between the front of the cab and the back. He then went back to talking on his phone.

  Ashanti tried to relax and go back to enjoying his oral pleasure, but he couldn’t. Something didn’t feel right in his gut. One thing Animal had always taught him was to trust his gut. The cab stopped at a red light in a desolated area. A van pulled up alongside them. On the side of the van was painted “First Church of Jesus Christ,” but the cat in the passenger’s seat of the van didn’t look like he’d ever seen the inside of a church. He glanced over at Ashanti but didn’t let his eyes linger. Something about the kid seemed familiar, but Ashanti couldn’t place him. Before he could twirl the mystery any further in his mind, the side door of the van slid open, and all hell broke loose.

  • • •

  Ty sat behind the wheel of the long van, drumming his gloved fingers on the steering wheel. The van was so beat to hell he was surprised he was able to get it to start. It was a clunker that he’d stolen from the parking lot of a church. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was big enough to carry his cargo: five shooters armed to the teeth with automatic weapons. He wasn’t hunting some street punk; Ashanti was a certified killer, and he wasn’t taking any unnecessary chances.

  “There that nigga go right there,” No-Good said. He was an older cat who used to get money with King James, until the night Ashanti whipped him out over Fatima and banished him from the hood. Since then, he had been working for Ty and his crew in Brooklyn.

  “You sure?” Ty asked, watching the young man milling around with King James’s soldiers. A pretty light-skinned girl came out of the building and handed him some of the bags she was carrying. He had never actually seen Ashanti, but from his reputation, he’d expected him to be bigger.

  “Hell, yeah, I’m sure. I’ll never forget that face,” No-Good said, thinking back on his ass-whipping. The fact that he was going to be able to pay Ashanti and Fatima back at the same time made him so excited he could hardly contain himself.

  “Well, if you remember his face, then nine times outta ten, he remembers yours, too. Get your ass in the back, and let one of the other niggaz ride shotgun,” Ty ordered.

  “A’ight, but don’t forget to let me get mine off when it’s time to kill him,” No-Good said, and he climbed into the back of the van, letting one of the shooters take the passenger’s seat. Ty watched Ashanti and Fatima get into the taxi and pull off, before setting out behind them.

  The whole time they trailed the cab, Ty was on his phone talking to someone. He had switched to a French dialect, so No-Good had no idea what he was saying, and he was uncomfortable with it.

  “What’s up with all that foreigner shit? Speak English in here, dawg,” No-Good said.

  “Shut up so I can hear,” Ty said over his shoulder, and went back to his conversation. What no one but him knew was that Ashanti’s cab driver was Ty’s cousin. Ty had promised him some money if he helped set the couple up. What his cousin didn’t know was that he would be dead, too, before Ty made good on that promise. No unnecessary chances. “We gonna take him at the light,” he told the shooters.

  The sounds of guns being cocked and loaded resonated through the hull of the van.

  “Yeah, I’m ready to put a hole in this lil’ nigga,” No-Good said anxiously. He had one hand on the van door and the other on an MP5. His fingers twitched nervously, and he was ready to spring. As soon as he felt the van come to a stop, he snatched the door open and let it rock.

  • • •

  Ashanti moved less than a second before the first slugs ripped through the cab. He threw himself on top of Fatima to shield her from the spray of glass and bullets. When the second wave came and tore through the front of the cab, the driver had finally gotten the memo that he’d been double-crossed and peeled off.

  The cabbie sped through the streets, trying to escape his larcenous cousin and his pals, weaving in and out of traffic. There weren’t many cars on the street, so it ended up a race between the cab and the van. The van gained on the cab, bumping it and trying to run it off the road. No-Good let go with the MP5 again, this time tearing through the front of the cab and the cabbie. The car swerved, slammed into a parked truck, and flipped over twice before it finally came to rest, right-side up, a few yards down. The van pulled up next to it, and the men filed out.

  Ashanti lay on the floor of the backseat, dazed and in tremendous pain. Fatima was crushed beneath him, her face cut and starting to bruise. They were both covered in blood, and Ashanti was so pumped full of adrenaline that he couldn’t tell if she was shot or he was. As he was pushing himself up, the door to the cab came open. When Ashanti looked up, he was confronted by a face that he had thought he’d never see again, especially on the winning side of a gun.

  “Remember me, lil’ nigga?” No-Good spat. He leveled the MP5 with Ashanti’s face. “I’m gonna enjoy capping the both of y’all.”

  “Not on my watch, muthafucka,” Fatima said, startling both of them. She was lying on her back, under Ashanti, with the .357 pointed up at No-Good. His mouth dropped open in wide-eyed shock, and Fatima promptly put a bullet in it. The top of No-Good’s head shot off like a Roman candle.

  Seeing No-Good fall sent the shooters into action. They began spraying the cab, riddling it with bullets. Glass and sparks flew everywhere, and the car caught on fire. Ashanti pushed Fatima out the open door and crawled out behind her, just as the car went up in flames. Fatima fired through the flames at their attackers, laying cover fire for her and Ashanti’s escape.

  “We gotta move.” Ashanti grabbed her by the hand, and the two of them made a mad dash toward an abandoned warehouse. The couple ducked and dodged down the walkway that led to the warehouse entrance, trying their best not to get shot. Ashanti pulled at the door and found it secured by a heavy chain and a padlock. “Shit, we can’t get in.”

  Fatima shot the lock off. “Now we can.” She pulled him inside the darkened warehouse.

  Ty and his men approached the warehouse entrance with caution. The fact that Ashanti was hurt and cornered made him that much more dangerous. Before they entered, he had some last-minute instructions for his crew. “I’ll go around back while Dave, Chess, and Will go in the front to flush him out.” He pointed to each man respectively. “Paulie, you cover the door,” he told the last man, who was also the youngest.

  “Ty, why I gotta stay out here while them niggaz see all the action?” Paulie asked. It was clear that he wasn’t happy about being left behind.

  “Because I said so, muthafucka!” Ty snapped. “There’s too much paper riding on this lil’ nigga’s death for me to risk letting him get away. You guard this damn door and put a hole in any muthafucka who tr
ies to come in or out unless it’s me! That goes for the rest of y’all niggaz, too.” Ty turned to the trio. “I want this nigga dead at all costs! Tonight Ashanti draws his last breath!”

  SEVENTEEN

  “I’M SURE GLAD I DIDN’T hold my breath waiting for you to keep your word,” Porsha said when she opened the door to her apartment. She was wearing an oversized New York Knicks nightgown.

  “My fault,” Zo said in a hoarse voice. He knew he’d be in for an argument when he showed up at Porsha’s place hours after he was supposed to pick her up, but he didn’t have it in him, not after the night he’d had.

  “Fucking right it is.” Porsha stepped back so he could enter. When Zo was inside, she closed the door and started right in. “Zo, you know this shit with you putting me on hold for your friends is getting old, right?”

  “I said my fault,” Zo repeated over his shoulder, walking into the living room. Frankie was sitting on the couch, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, watching television. She flashed him a dirty look, but her face softened when she got a good look at him.

  “Oh, my God, what happened to you?” Frankie asked, noticing the dirt and soot on his clothes. Normally, Zo was always fresh and clean, even when he was dressed in his hood gear, but at that moment, he looked like he’d just crawled out of the gutter.

  “It’s a long story,” Zo said, flopping onto the La-Z-Boy chair. He fished a half-smoked blunt out of his pocket and lit it. “Y’all got any liquor up in here? I need a drink bad as a muthafucka right now.”

  “I think there’s some Henny in the kitchen. Let me go check.” Frankie got up and went into the kitchen.

  “Zo, baby, are you OK?” Porsha asked, checking him over. She felt bad about going in on him, not noticing something was clearly wrong.

  “Not really,” Zo said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Shorty died tonight.”

  “What Shorty, the little guy who’s always hanging around King James?” Frankie was coming out of the kitchen with a half-empty bottle of Hennessy, a can of Red Bull, and three empty plastic cups.

  “Yeah,” Zo replied.

  “Wow, wasn’t he only like thirteen?” Frankie asked, pouring Hennessy into each of their glasses and popping the tab on the can of Red Bull.

  “He would’ve been fourteen in a few months.” Zo threw the whole glass of Hennessy back without waiting for Frankie to add the Red Bull. He’d barely swallowed the liquor before he grabbed the bottle and poured himself some more. He downed that cup, too, before giving Frankie and Porsha the short version of what had happened.

  “That is so fucked up,” Porsha said with tears in her eyes. In her mind, she could hear the trump-mouthed little boy pressing her to be his girlfriend like he always did whenever he saw her around the hood.

  “The whole hood is twisted behind this shit,” Zo said in a solemn voice. “I think this was the first time I ever saw King cry. He feels horrible about it.”

  “He should, since it was his fault that Shorty died,” Porsha said.

  “Porsha, you can’t put that on King. All he ever did was try to look out for Shorty. He never put him in harm’s way,” Zo said, defending his friend.

  “He put him in harm’s way when he started letting him hang around y’all instead of forcing him to go to school,” Porsha shot back. “It’s a dangerous game y’all are playing out there.”

  “And you telling me this like I don’t know? I’m in the thick of it, remember?” Zo said, a little sharper than he’d intended. The look on Porsha’s face said she felt it, too. Zo-Pound was lurking beneath the surface. “Porsha,” he said, calming himself. “What happened to Shorty was random. It could’ve happened to any one of us who tried to start that truck. It’s just fucked up it had to be him. I know it’s easy to blame King, but it was just as much any of our faults as it was his, because we kept the lil’ nigga around so much.” He was emotional.

  Porsha sat on his lap and stroked his cheek. She could feel the tension drain from him. “Alonzo, I’m sorry if I sounded judgmental, I’m just upset. I keep seeing these kids killed in the streets over bullshit, and it breaks me down every time. I just wish kids had more positive role models in the hood.”

  “Happy hunting, because those are scarce these days,” Zo told her. “When kids like Shorty get of age and start looking around for that love they missed out on because their daddies left, who do you think they’re gonna look to? Niggaz like us. Ain’t no doctors or lawyers in the jungle, ma, only savages and survivors.”

  “Call me old-fashioned, but I’m one of those people who don’t believe what you come from is what will define you. People can change . . . you changed.”

  “And look at me now.” Zo motioned to his filthy clothes.

  “Yeah, I almost forgot you were a mess.” Porsha got off his lap and brushed off her nightgown. “I’m gonna go and run you a bath. I want you out of those clothes and in the tub in five minutes, in that order!” Porsha sashayed to the bathroom.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Zo called after her.

  Frankie waited until she heard the water running before she spoke. “I know this ain’t necessarily the best time, after what happened, but I need to holla at you, Zo-Pound.”

  “Talk to me, Frankie Angels.”

  “First, I wanted to tell you face-to-face, thanks for doing me that solid with the bread. That shit literally saved my life.”

  “No doubt, ma. I told you I was gonna get that flipped and right back to you before you even missed it,” Zo said.

  “Yeah, about that . . .”

  “What about it? I know you probably expected a little more, but I told you shit got slow with the beef cooking.”

  “Zo, where did this money really come from?” Frankie asked him flat out.

  Zo seemed to be shocked by the question, but he recovered quickly. “I told you, it came from—”

  “Alonzo,” Frankie said, addressing him by his government name, “I’ve known you since when you first started working in that supermarket. We got too much history not to keep it one hundred with each other.

  “Frankie, I been through too much tonight to try and figure out your riddles. If you’ve got something to say, spit it out.

  “Did you kill the man who took my money?”

  The weed and alcohol magically vanished from Zo’s system, and he was now quite sober. “Why would you ask me something like that?”

  “Don’t answer a question with a question, Zo. You heard me. I tell you that someone stole from me, and a few weeks later, the thief turns up dead and you hand me a bag of money. Alonzo, I ain’t flew here, I grew here. I’m just trying to see if I should be worried about being picked up on an accessory-to-murder charge.”

  Zo leaned in close enough to her that she could see clearly into his eyes. Until that moment, she had never realized how dark they were. With a friendly smile, he patted her on the cheek. “You worry too much, Frankie Angels.”

  “What’s all this?” Porsha came back into the living room. She was carrying fresh towels and washcloths.

  “Certainly not what it looks like.” Zo got up from the La-Z-Boy and headed toward the bathroom. As he passed, he kissed Porsha on the nose and patted her ass.

  Porsha stood there for a while, looking at Frankie suspiciously. “Let me find out,” she said half-jokingly, and turned to follow Zo into the bathroom. Frankie was her girl, but she wouldn’t hesitate to jump on her ass if she came sniffing too close to what Porsha had laid claim to.

  EIGHTEEN

  ZO STRIPPED HIS CLOTHES OFF and slid into the hot water. At first, it burned, but after a few moments, his body adjusted to the temperature. Porsha came in behind him and closed the door. She was carrying the ashtray with the last bit of the blunt in it. She set the ashtray on the table and passed Zo the weed clip. Grabbing the lighter off the edge of the sink, she lit the weed for her man.

  “This is just what I needed.” Zo exhaled the smoke, while fanning his hands through the bubbles in the tub. He held one of the bubbles
in the palm of his hand and blew it gently into the air.

  “Don’t I always know what you need?” Porsha popped the bubble.

  “Indeed you do, love.”

  “So what’s up with what I need?” Porsha slipped her hand into the water and tugged at Zo’s dick. He stiffened at her touch.

  “You know I like it when you do that,” Zo told her, taking another toke of the blunt. He tried to pass it to Porsha, but she declined.

  “I’ll get with the weed in a minute. Right now, I’m looking for a different kind of high.” Porsha stood and pulled the Knicks nightgown over her head, exposing her nude body. Just above her pelvic area was a tattoo Zo hadn’t seen before, so she had to have just gotten it. It was two .357s curved to look like a heart. “You like?” she asked, noticing Zo checking out the tattoo.

  “It’s beautiful, just like the rest of you.” Zo sat up and ran his hand over the tattoo and down her leg. He left a trail of watery fingerprints in his wake.

  “I can’t be that beautiful if you keep putting me on the back burner, now, can I?” Porsha covered herself with her hands.

  “Baby, don’t act like that.” Zo reached for her, but she moved back.

  “You control shit on the streets, but in this castle, I am the queen,” she told him. Porsha stepped into the tub one foot at a time. She hovered in front of Zo in all her glory. “How beautiful is your queen, Alonzo?”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Zo said, looking up at her as if he was in a trance.

  “Then prove it to me.” Porsha slipped her hand gently behind his head. Slowly, she began pushing Zo’s face toward her pussy, and he didn’t resist. She let out a low hiss when Zo’s tongue made contact with her box. “How does it taste, baby?”

  “Like candy,” Zo muttered, before going back to his vaginal exploration.

  Porsha placed one leg on the side of the tub so that Zo could get a better angle and drove her pelvis into his face. When she came, her legs shook, and she feared that she might fall, but Zo’s powerful grip on her waist steadied her while he continued to lap at her. Porsha found herself in the throes of pleasure and felt like she could hover there forever, but Zo had other ideas.