Kiss the Ring (14 page)

Rico made a face and shook his head. “Little dude got in a good punch or two and that's the part of the fight this kid posted online. Now I fucked that kid, Bilal, up for that bullshit move.”

Naeema believed him. “I'm gonna ask around, and if I find out you lyin' I will find you again and next time I ain't asking no questions.” She turned and stepped over the chair on the floor.

“What about my fire?”

“Is it registered to you?” she asked without looking back as she opened the door.

“Huh?”

“Deuces,” she said, slamming the door closed behind her.

• • •

As soon as the taxi pulled to a stop outside Club Infinity, Naeema held down the hem of her jean skirt as she climbed out beside a bright red Jaguar. There were plenty of eyes on her as she walked up the length of the long line waiting to get into the club. She knew the combination of her body and her outfit would make just about everybody pause . . . in admiration, in lust, or in hate.

Her denim skirt rode low on her hips and high on her thick thighs. She'd paired it with a crisp white tee with a jagged edge that left her flat caramel belly exposed. She topped off the casual outfit with a bunch of fake pearl and diamond necklaces in varying lengths and a short off-white fur to fight off the chill that crept into the September air late at night.

Naeema raked her fingers through the loose curls of her long jet-black wig as she walked up to security at the door. The tall bouncer dressed in all black didn't try to hide that his hazel eyes were locked on her legs. She curved her gloss-covered lips into a smile and looked at him through her dark shades. “How you doin'? I'm Queen,” she said, tucking her replica Marc Jacobs clutch under her arm.

“Last name?” he asked as he leaned back inside the doorway to retrieve a clipboard.

“No last name. Just Queen,” she said.

He gave her a once-over that was slow, thorough, and meant to show his appreciation. “As in ‘All hail the . . . ' ”

Naeema smiled. “You tell me.”

He just smiled.

Club bouncers—especially sexy ones—got thrown plenty of pussy on the regular. Unfortunately, she knew this for a fact from the days when she first met and started dealing with Tank. Although Tank rarely worked at clubs and instead focused mostly on security details for East Coast celebrities, Naeema's fiery jealousy in their marriage was bred off women at clubs always offering her man the goodies.

This bouncer stepped aside from the door and raised both of his large hands to playfully bow to her. “Enjoy,” he said.

She moved past him, and the music that was just a steady bass line outside became louder as she stepped inside the club. The heat of the gyrating bodies pressed nearly wall to wall forced her to remove her fur. As more of the men in the club noticed her, they made room for her to walk past until there was a clear path ahead of her.

Power of the thick thighs and a fat ass.

She had to sidestep a few brothas that tried to get hands
on but finally made it to the rear of the club. Red was sitting alone in a booth dressed in all red with a fresh pair of white kicks on. She was surprised to see him. He rarely ever hung out with them when they had a girls' night out.

She sat in the booth, placing her clutch and coat on the space between them. “What it do, Red?” Naeema asked, leaning over so that he could hear her over the steady pulse of Kid Ink's “Show Me.”

Red gave her a nod and barely looked her way as he reached for his drink.

“Where's Viv?” she asked.

“Bar.”

This Tiny Lister–looking asshole.

Naeema had to give herself a three count to check her own attitude as she felt the one he was straight up giving her. She never got the chance to catch Red alone and she couldn't let a chance for even a few minutes of convo with him pass her by. She scooted over on the semicircular padded bench. “Are you mad at me?”

He frowned and cast her the briefest side-eye that was dismissive as hell. “For what?”

“Because I brought up that kid . . . Byron,” she said, reaching for one of the bottles in the bucket. It was empty. She wasn't really thirsty and when she went home to get dressed she'd hit some fabulous loud called Girl Scout Cookies that her connect Mook blessed her with. She was already mellow as a motherfucker.

“Brandon,” Red corrected her before he took another sip.

Naeema forced herself to stop staring at his profile. “I guess I was kinda scared, you know,” she said.

“Scared of what?”

Naeema shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe whoever killed him will try to come for one of us too?”

Red balked. “I doubt that shit.”

Because one of you did it?

“Why?” she pressed.

“Ain't nobody crazy enough to fuck with us.”

“But they fucked with him and he was one of y'all,” Naeema said with simplicity.

Red turned his head and looked at her full on. “You a punk?”

Naeema's eyes searched his in the dimly lit club just as colorful lights flashed across the ceiling. She was looking for some sign of crazy but mostly she felt a coldness in the brown depths that sent a yellow streak down her back. She opened her mouth but not a damn thing came out.

“And it won't stop, stop, stop . . .”

They both looked away as Vivica came to stand at the table in a white studded catsuit with a drink in each hand as she sang the chorus to Sevyn Streeter's “It Won't Stop” louder than anyone else in a ten-foot radius of their booth.

Red stood up so that Vivica could ease her way past him to sit. She kicked off her heels and stepped up onto the leather banquette seat, bringing her breasts level with his eyes. She pressed her hands to the back of his bald head and stroked his tattoo as she danced and sang to him. Red stood right there. He didn't smile or dance back or even look that fucking happy . . . but he didn't stop her and he looked her in the face the whole time she performed for him.

“When you give me thunder you make my summer rain,” she sang as she leaned in to press kisses to his stern face.

Naeema eyed them as she pressed her back against the
banquette. They actually looked in love and cute . . . but that didn't have shit to do with her putting a bullet in both of their asses if she found out they were in on Brandon's death. She'd kill both their cute asses and keep it moving without a moment's regret.

She reached into her purse for her phone. She was disappointed there were no missed calls or text messages from Tank. When he gave her that thunder on the heavy bag earlier that day he made
her
summer rain.
Shit
.

It had been intense.

It wasn't that they talked every day because they didn't. Since their separation they sometimes went weeks without any communication, but today had been a game changer. They either had to work it out or leave it alone because that middle ground was a mind fuck.

An intense mind fuck.

And it won't stop . . .

Naeema bit her bottom lip and scrolled to a folder within a folder within another folder, where a lone picture sat there waiting to make her salivate in full creep mode. Tank was naked and lying in the middle of their king-size bed atop black silk sheets with his king-size dick in his hand—hard and ready. Everything about it was good. From the serious
come fuck and suck me
expression on Tank's face to the soft, fine hairs covering his muscled chest.

Just sexy.

The pic was a relic from better days in their past.

“What was you and Red talkin' 'bout while I was at the bar?”

Naeema jumped in her seat from the sudden closeness of Vivica. She felt the woman's breath breezing against the side
of her face. She was so caught up in Tank's dick pic that she didn't even notice that the club dj's remixed version of one of Lil' Kim's 1990s bangers was playing and Vivica's serenade to Red was over. He had left the booth.

“Huh?” Naeema asked as she locked her phone's screen.

“Red went out the way with you?”

Naeema frowned as she scooted over enough to look Vivica in the face. She was surprised to see that her faux friend was dead-ass serious.
Play your position, Na.

“Girl, stop playing. Plus, Red wouldn't fuck with that. Would he?” she asked with a doe-eyed shocked expression.

“I don't put shit past him,” Vivica said, turning her head. “It ain't like I ain't never caught his ass fuckin' around before.”

Naeema followed her line of vision and it landed on Red in the distance as he moved through the crowd. Vivica's eyes followed him until he walked into the men's bathroom.

“Get the fuck outta here,” Naeema said, feigning surprise. “Well, let me get this straight 'cause I don't want you feelin' some type of way about me. I was apologizing for bringing up Brandon the other night.”

Vivica raised up off the seat long enough to reach across the table for her drink. “Some bitch off Tremont Avenue was sending Red pussy pics,” she said as she stirred her drink. “Payback is a bitch.”

Naeema was only half listening to “The Days of Vivica's Life with Red” as she gently pulled her fur from beneath Vivica's ass.
Man, who gives a fuck?

“I used to laugh at his ass every time I thought about Brandon eating me out.”

Naeema froze
. Say hunh?

“Right in the church too. Trust and believe I ain't the bitch to sit back and let a negro play me.”

Brandon hadn't been but fourteen and barely that. Vivica had to be in her early twenties.
Was this bitch crazy?

She felt her anger snap on like a light switch and her fingers curled into a fist so tight that the semipointed tips of her stiletto nails dug into the flesh of her palm. She wanted to box that bitch upside her head until it was lights out for her ass. She pressed her hand between her folded legs to keep from doing it.

“You let a kid eat you out?” Naeema asked, feeling the heat of her anger in her chest.

“Shee-it. Kid? He was taller than me with a light mustache. And it wasn't his first time. Best believe that,” she said and then raised her glass in a little salute as she giggled.

This bitch dumb as hell.

Naeema gripped her thigh until she had to wince at the pain of her nails in her flesh.
The bigger picture, Na. Don't forget the bigger picture.

“Just that once though to pay Red back.”

Red.

Naeema's mouth opened a bit as she gasped lightly. Had Vivica's payback been enough to send Red into murderous rage? Naeema wouldn't doubt it. He walked around all day every day like he stayed on one and would shoot up the world over nothing.

Another dude messing with his woman. A younger dude? A younger dude he used to chill with?

She caught a flash of bright red from the corner of her eye and turned her head just as he made his way through the crowd toward their booth. Her eyes squinted and she
knew if looks could kill she would've dropped that fool before she could blink.

With her eyes still locked on him, she leaned over to Vivica. “Did Red know?” she asked in her ear as the other woman swayed in her seat to some Young Jeezy banger.

“Fuck no,” she emphasized.

Someone stopped Red and he turned to look back at them. The club's colorful laser lights flashed again and highlighted the tattoo KILLA on the back of his head.

Murder was all about motive, and now she knew Red had had one.

• • •

Naeema felt overwhelmed.

When Brandon first died, there had been nothing but dead ends surrounding his murder. Now she was standing at a fork in the road and there were so many paths to his possible killers that she felt like she was sinking in all the info. For the first time she felt like everything was over her head. She was playing out of her league. She wasn't no vigilante. No modern-day Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones, or some shit.

“Fuck,” she swore.

She walked out of the club and the cool fresh air felt like salvation. She took deep gulps of it as she leaned against the building and wiped the sweat from her face with both hands.

“What the fuck am I doing?” she asked.

“You tell me.”

Naeema peeked through her fingers to find Bas standing before her. She started and pressed her fat ass back against
the building, her heart pounding in surprise. “What you doin' here?” she asked, taking in how good he looked in an off-white thin silk sweater and linen pants.

“I came to pick you up,” he said in that low and husky voice of his.

Fuck
. She looked left and right and then past him to see a dark gray convertible Maybach double-parked. “
That's
your whip?” she asked.

“Nah,” he said with a smile.

Naeema wasn't sure she believed him, and there was no way in hell he'd robbed enough banks to buy a fucking Maybach—even one that was a year or two old. “Where we going?” she asked.

“Your crib.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“I don't wanna go there.” She lied, because there was nothing she wanted to do more than go crawl under the covers of her bed and sleep off the anxiety rising in her. “I live with my mother.”

“Then come ride wit' me, Queen,” Bas said, turning to stride away with this cool-ass swagger that would make Diddy rethink his whole way of being.

Naeema pushed up off the wall and followed his path across the sidewalk and into the street, where he stood with the passenger door opened and waiting. Naeema thought she was older than him by a few years but he had this confidence and suaveness that made him seem older. Still fly as fuck . . . but older.

A'ight, Naeema. This fly and suave motherfucker is still on your list of suspects.