All Hail the Queen (20 page)

His eyes looked past Naeema. “Tell Mya it's time to come home,” he said, his chest heaving like he ran across the street.
Like he chased someone across the street.

“Mya who?” Naeema asked with an attitude. “Do you know what time it is?”

His face got stiff with anger and his thick brows lowered as he leered down at her. “I saw her run over here.”

“Well, no you didn't,” Naeema said, putting one hand on her hip. “But why is someone running from you anyway?”

His eyes dipped.

Naeema remembered that she was in just her purple cotton gown, which had a plunging V-neck and was way too revealing to be answering the door in. “Excuse me,” she said, moving to shut the door.

He jerked out his hand to hold against the door to stop her. “You butting into my family's business
right now,” he said.

“No, you
brought
your family business to me right now,” she stressed. “And now you need to carry that shit back with you. Ya heard me?”

“Mya,” he called out, taking a bold-ass move forward.

Naeema stepped in his path and put her hand up against his chest. It was sweaty and her fingers slipped a bit. “Are you kidding me?” she snapped.

“Mya,” he yelled again. “Let's go.”

Naeema stumbled back when he pressed forward just across the threshold. She rushed forward and pressed against his chest with both fists. “Mo-ther-fuck-er,” she said as he stumbled back onto the porch.

“I will call the police,” he said, his eyes darting to any space he could see inside the house.

“Yes, let's call the police and then we can have them interview all parties involved and run whatever tests necessary to get to the bottom of the whole story,” she said with clear intent that she was double talking and he needed to read between the lines.

He eyed her.

“Plus, you just tried to bum-rush my home,” she said. “So yes, let's call the po-po, ho.”

“I'm sure in the morning whoever you looking for will be home,” she said, closing the door as he nervously licked his lips and kept looking past Naeema with urgent eyes until the door closed in his face.

She grabbed her gun from under the pillow and cut off the lights before moving over to the window to pull back the curtain and blinds to eye him still standing on the porch with his hands on his hips looking down like he was deep in thought. She stayed there with her finger on the trigger as
she watched him until he finally left her porch and crossed the street to enter the apartment building with one last look back at her house.

Keeping the gun in her hand she crossed the floor to open the door to the kitchen and turn on the light. She frowned a bit when it appeared empty but then she found the young teen in the corner behind the door. “Sit,” Naeema said, moving over to the fridge to pull a can of no-name soda out to hand to the girl.

Mya did as she was told and took the soda with a small smile that didn't even appear real. “Thanks.”

Sitting the gun on the table Naeema took a seat. “How long has he been messing with you?” she asked, and then pierced Mya with her eyes.

“Messing with me?” Mya asked before opening the can and taking a sip.

“Yes . . . and based off what you was doing when I first met you, you know damn well what I mean,” Naeema said, her voice hard and meaning to show she was in no mood to play.

Naeema had a lot on her plate with keeping up with Tank's well-being, supervising Sarge as he helped protect Tank, and investigating three possible suspects in Tank's shooting. Mya was getting to be a handful when added to all that.

“If you didn't want me involved then why did you run your ass over here?” she snapped at the girl's continuing silence.

Mya's eyes filled with tears.

Naeema released a heavy breath and tilted her head back as she rubbed the space between her well-groomed
brows. She knew that her connection to the little girl—her desire to protect her—was all about her own harried childhood and the mother she never got to be to her son. The girl's tears caused a pang in her heart that let her know she had come to care for the misguided little girl.

“Since I was eleven.”

Naeema lowered her head to eye Mya in surprise and horror. “Does your mother know?” she asked, feeling her chest burn in anger.

Mya shook her head and looked away. “She didn't believe me,” she said.

The look of hurt in the girl's eyes was all too real and it stung Naeema to the quick.

“I want you to get rid of him for me . . . with your gun,” she added softly.

Naeema's face frowned. “No, because it doesn't take murder. We'll go to the police or DSS if we have to,” she said, surprised at her willingness to fuck with either agency.

“Then my mom will be mad at me for doing that,” Mya said, her eyes hopeful. “If he just goes away she won't blame me. She'll think he left her or something.”

The sadness of it all weighed down on Naeema's shoulders and she literally slumped from it. It was a world completely fucked up when a child felt she had to plot the murder of someone to feel protected. She eyed Mya. Her world was already laid out on a fucked-up foundation.
She'd rather take on the big bad monster than make her mother do it.

“I'm gonna figure out how to help you but
I'm not a killer,” she lied.

Mya looked hopeful and disappointed all at once.

“Murder is never the option,” she lied again, even though she knew she relied on it in the past to resolve plenty of issues.

“You stay here tonight. Go get in my bed,” Naeema said, rising to pour the rest of the soda down the drain.

As Mya left the kitchen Naeema wondered what to do with everything just laid at her doorstep. She could not ignore a child being molested. And if Mya had not asked Naeema to murder him she probably would have snuck and did it while leaving the girl and her mother none the wiser.

Naeema felt overwhelmed like a motherfucker.

She grabbed the gun and then the back of one of the chairs to carry into the living room. Sitting it by the window she took a seat and crossed her leg, sitting the gun on her lap. She glanced over at Mya lying on her side with her hands tucked under her head.

“First time in a long time I ain't got to worry about nobody bothering me in my sleep,” Mya said into the quiet.

Naeema gave her a smile and then turned her head to look out the window to make sure the girl's stepfather didn't let his desperation of Mya telling and getting caught lead him to do something stupid. She sat there keeping a watchful eye on the girl as she waited and plotted.

Thud-thud-thud.

Naeema whirled on the chair just seconds before Mya's stepfather came bounding across the room from the kitchen and swung, striking her across the face and knocking her from the chair to the floor. Her gun fell from her lap as she
did.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Her head throbbed like crazy and she winced as she raised it enough to lay eyes on him as she pounded her fist against the floor. She hated that she slept on this fool and he snuck up on her from behind.

Disrespect?

In her home?

Hell no, motherfucker
.

She fought through the throbbing pain in her head and jumped to her feet as he yanked Mya from the bed.

“Now let's go,” he said, his voice a low, fuming snarl.

Naeema grabbed the toppled chair and took two large steps to reach him before she swung the chair like a bat. His head was the ball.

CRACK!

He cried out and stumbled to the left to fall against the wall before he fell on his back.

Naeema's chest was heaving as she stood over him and released the chair. It fell to the floor loudly. She winced from the throbbing in her head.

Click.

She whirled at the sound of the gun being cocked behind her. “No!” she screamed, holding up her hand as she eyed Mya standing there with the gun pointed at her stepfather. In the fray she must have picked it up from where it landed.

“Mya, please, no—”

POW!

Mya's fingers began to tremble around the gun. “I'm sick of his shit,” said the little girl who had already grown up far too soon.

Naeema went to her and hugged her
close with one hand as she removed the gun from her quivering hand with the other. “Go home right now. Get in bed. Stay there. You were never here,” Naeema whispered as she rocked her back and forth a bit like a child. “You were never here.”

She leaned back to find Mya staring at his body as the blood continued to pool from the bullet that landed in his neck. It was hardly an accurate shot, but it was deadly as a motherfucker.

She led Mya into the kitchen. The back door was still ajar. She shook her head to see he had jimmied the door open. “Don't let anyone see you,” Naeema said.

Mya nodded but she looked numb and distant.

Naeema grabbed her chin and forced the girl to look at her. “Hey,” she said, jostling her chin. “You were never here.”

Mya nodded as another tear fell.

With one last hug she pushed the girl toward the door.

Naeema made sure to leave the door just as it was and walked back to the living room to step over his legs to turn on the lights. The smell of fresh blood was already rising into the air. Stepping back from the scene she bit her bottom lip as she eyed the dead body.

She missed Tank more than ever. One call to him and he would have come and handled it all. The body. The traces of blood. Her.

I have to protect Mya.

She felt guilt. She had a hand in this disaster. She couldn't deny it. If nothing else, it was her gun that Mya shot him with and she never should have let it be so accessible.
Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Dammit.

She opened a drawer and pulled out an old
sweatshirt. She carefully wiped away Mya's fingerprints and then wrapped the shirt around the barrel of the gun as she moved back to the same spot where Mya stood when she shot him. Shaking her head with regret over how Mya's life took a turn that the little girl may never overcome, Naeema fired a bullet into the wall. The shirt wrapped around the barrel muffled the sound a little bit. But most important, she wanted to make sure she had gunpowder residue on her hand.

Naeema retrieved her cell phone from where she left it on the bed and did something for the first—and hopefully last—time in her life.

“This is 911. What is your emergency?” the operator said.

“A man broke into my home and assaulted me. I shot him. He's dead,” she said, her voice just as lifeless as the man on her floor.

“You got enough yet?”

Naeema paused in the doorway of Tank's room the next morning at Sarge's sarcasm. Ignoring him, she walked over to the bed and bent down to press a kiss to Tank's forehead, cheeks, chin, and then lips. “Love you, Lavarius,” she whispered near his ear, using his real name, which most people didn't know.

She felt Sarge's eyes on her as she came around the bed to hand him the McDonald's she brought for him. “I know you saw the news,” she said, moving to stand before the sink and look at her reflection in the small mirror above it.

The blow Mya's stepfather—Shawn Polite—landed across her face had left it swollen and reddish in color. The shades she wore did not do much to hide that fact. Pushing them atop her close-shaven head, Naeema turned and leaned back against the sink with her arms across her ample chest.

Sarge shook his head as he took a bite out of the breakfast sandwich. “Better you got him than Tank,” he said.

“Ain't that the truth,” Naeema added.

The police had questioned her, checked the registration of her handgun, surveyed the evidence of the break-in and the assault before ruling she was within her rights to protect herself. She thought the comment one of them made that it was one less criminal they had to waste a bullet on was cruel and insensitive but she was just glad her plan to cop to the shooting and cover for Mya had worked.

Naeema didn't bother to tell them she knew he lived across from her. That was their job to ID him and notify the family.
Good fucking riddance.

“How was everything yesterday?” she asked.

“No visits,” Sarge said before releasing a belch that could rival a thunderstorm.

Naeema nodded. “You want to head home for the day and come back tonight?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

She knew he would never admit that he felt better keeping an eye on her.

“How's it going?”

Naeema shook her head. “I'm no closer now than I was a few days ago,” she admitted, hating that the truth was just
simply the truth.

Looking over at Tank in the bed, she rubbed her hand up and down the length of her tatted arm. Her son's faces. She didn't fail him and she could not fail Tank.