Kiss the Ring.

Meesha Mink.

For those with big dreams and the inner hustle to make them come true.

Prologue.

My son is dead. Just fourteen short years he lived on this earth and now it's been snatched away from him. Chased and run down in the street like a stray dog. Left to die like his life ain't meant shit.

Naeema Cole pushed the folder away from where she sat at her kitchen table. She picked up her glass pipe, dick-shaped, the balls hollowed out and filled with Lime Haze, her favorite strain of medicinal marijuana. She had a connect named Mook and not a doctor in sight trying to cure an illness. Pressing her lips to the tip, she took a deep toke, letting the smoke fill her mouth and then her lungs as a tear filled with her pain and regrets raced down her cheek. Exhaling the thick smoke through her nose, she shifted her slanted ebony eyes to the copy of the Newark Police Department's official record of the investigation into the murder of Brandon Mack.

Just one day after being released from the hospital with her newborn son she had placed him in the arms of Ms. JuJu, an older woman who lived down the street from the group home Naeema hated so much. She wanted Ms. JuJu to bless her son with all the kindness she'd shown every last one of the misguided group home girls where she volunteered.

I never was a mother to him but I loved him because he was mine. He came from me.

A tear of guilt followed the other as she shifted in the cheap black chair, causing it to loudly scrape against the dull laminate tile covering the floor. Pain hit her deeply in a place she never knew existed until the moment she got the call from Ms. JuJu telling her of her son's death. His murder. Naeema closed her eyes and opened her mouth slightly to exhale in short puffs as the words she read in the police report formed a mental image while she envisioned the night of his death . . .

The sound of feet pounding against pavement echoed heavily through the long stretch of alley flanked by two towering brick buildings. His heart pounded furiously in his chest and his throat was dry and pained from inhaling deep gulps of air as he ran for his life. Death was on his heels and fear was his adrenaline.

He didn't want to die at fourteen.

"Shit!" he swore, his eyes squinting when a pair of bright headlights suddenly flashed on him from the other end of the alley.

The light illuminated the panic in his eyes.

His harsh and labored breathing echoed more loudly as he stopped running and looked left and right for an escape route. There was none. "Shit!" he swore again, looking back into the bright lights as the vehicle suddenly accelerated toward him.

He turned and ran back down the alley, wishing his presence was as large and looming as his shadow cast against the brick by the towering streetlights. Then he wouldn't feel so afraid . . . so alone . . . so near death.

He burst from between the buildings and paused just long enough to decide if he should jet left or right. In that moment that shit felt more like choosing life or death.

The rumble of the engine steadily became louder behind him.

He took off to the right, his hands balled into fists and arching upward like he could make himself run faster. The muscles in his thin thighs burned and his chest ached from the exertion.

He didn't know, when he finally headed home after midnight and took a shortcut through West Side Park, that he would have to outrun death. That the same route would lead to much too much isolation for anyone to even hear his scream for help at that time of the night.

"Fuck this shit," he swore under his breath, turning the corner and fighting the urge to spin around and beg them to leave him alone.

Va-room!

He looked over his thin shoulder just seconds before the car jumped the curb and rammed his body back against a chain-link fence. Pain pierced his legs and ribs as the bones broke from the unrelenting pressure. He felt his bladder empty and the smell of his piss filled the air. As he closed his eyes, his upper body fell forward with a heavy thump against the hot hood over the rumbling motor.

The car jolted when it was switched into reverse.

He cried out in a high pitch as the car pulled his body forward, causing his broken legs to drag against the concrete of the curb and then the black asphalt of the street for a few feet before he finally slumped off the hood. Tears flooded his cheeks while he lay writhing in pain.

This ain't no way to die, man.

Even though his eyes were squeezed shut, the headlights lessened the darkness behind his lids.

Va-room.

"God help me," he whispered, feeling an odd blend of pain, fatigue, and fear.

The weight of the car rolled across his body with the first set of tires and then the second. This time he shitted on himself and the sounds of his bones crushing echoed around him. His body felt warm all at once and then cold chills caused his limp and battered body to shiver.

The pain was unbearable. The smell of blood was cloying.

"Take me, God," he begged, already feeling his ability to breathe fail.

He opened his eyes at the sound of footsteps, the last of his fourteen years of life seeping from him. A pair of boots came to stand in his blood that stained the street.

"Fuck you, motherfucker," a voice floated down to him, filled with rage.

He didn't understand. He knew the man standing above him. The man was someone he thought was a friend.

He'd thought wrong.

In the final seconds, as life left his body and his eyes became vacant, he felt his head being lifted from the concrete just before the acrid burn of a knife dragged across his throat.

His lips moved but the words wouldn't form. God forgive me, he thought just before his eyes filled with death.

Almost every night since Ms. JuJu called her, that was her dream. Her nightmare. Her vision of the night her son died. The invasion of peaceful sleep. It had her fucked up for real. She had no idea if the last moments of his life were better or worse than her imaginings. Only thing she knew for sure was her son was dead and the police had his friends listed as "persons of interest," but that was as far as their sorry-ass investigation had gotten in the last few weeks. As far as she could tell they never even questioned any of them. It was clear they could care less about another dead black boy in the streets of Newark.

Did I care any more than them when I never made sure my son even knew who I am?

Naeema lowered her head into her hands and cried so hard that her shoulders shook and her chest heaved. She screamed from the pit of her stomach until the veins in her neck strained. She stood up so forcefully that her chair slid back across the floor and slammed into the front of the refrigerator.

Somebody has to pay.

She sniffed and angrily swiped the rest of her tears from her eyes as she picked up the 9mm sitting on the kitchen table next to the file. It fit nicely in her hand and her finger itched to fire off a round as she flipped through the pages of the folder with her free hand. She spread the photos. Four of them.

Four guilty motherfuckers as far as she was concerned.

Smiling bitterly, tears of anger raced down her cheek as she tapped each face in the photo with the barrel of the gun. Hatred burned her gut like an inferno was lit inside her. One of her son's friends had become a lethal foe. She just knew it. She always trusted her gut.

Biting her bottom lip, she flinched as she fired off the gun, blasting a hole through each of the faces.

POW!.

POW!.

POW!.

POW!.

The wood of the table shattered and flew up in the air around her like confetti with each blast. She didn't give a fuck that she'd demolished it and filled her kitchen floor with bullets. She didn't give a fuck if the cops came knocking. She didn't give a fuck about anything but flushing out her son's murderer and making him beg her for forgiveness just before she blew his brains out.

Dropping the gun, she let her body sink down to the floor. "I'm so sorry," Naeema whispered, closing her eyes, letting the pain consume her and fuel her need for revenge.

1.

Four months later.

"Don't die today, motherfucker."

Steely brown eyes were all that showed through the ski mask as the barrel of the gun was pressed against the fleshy cheek of the bank's lone security guard. His eyes were filled with fear, shifting to the left to try to view the holder of the gun.

"Look forward."

He immediately did, and raised both of his pudgy hands up into the air without being requested.

"Good boy," the assailant mocked in a throaty male voice, pressing the gun deeper into the guard's cheek until the soft tissue dimpled.

Don't die today.

Three others dressed all in black with the same ski masks took their positions around the small bank. Number One, Bastian "Bas" Jones, stood by the glass door poised with a gloved hand on the 9mm still resting in the leather holster. Number Two, Nelson Hunter, quickly walked across the small foyer of the bank and raised the handgun to point in the air between the shoulders of the two tellers on duty. And Number Three, Jamal "Red" Manning, stood beneath the surveillance camera with an AK-15 sniper rifle pointed in the vicinity of the few bank customers unlucky enough to be in line.

And I'm Number Four.

It was most definitely a holdup and everyone in the bank was clear about that. Surprisingly, no one screamed.

Nobody move. Nobody get hurt.

"Countdown! Let's go," Bas shouted loudly, a stopwatch in his gloved hand.

"Get your asses on the floor," Red demanded in a hard, take-no-shit voice and eyed each one with a glare.

The elderly man who looked like he was ready to head right back to a life of leisure in his recliner before the television set.

The middle-aged woman dressed like a teacher running errands on a brief break.

And the young black girl still in her Dunkin' Donuts uniform probably wishing she had waited to cash her check.

Their morning run to the small South Orange bank with the stone exterior and warm decor just got fucked all the way up. All. The. Way.

"May God forgive you," the woman suddenly cried out in a high-pitched voice.

Red moved forward and used one strong grasp to lift the barrel of the assault rifle high enough to ease it between her thin crimson-painted lips. "Bitch, you want to ask him about it face-to-face?" he asked, his voice mocking but his eyes all too serious.

Uh-oh. Shit just got real as hell.

In the midst of the silence of the bank, the sound of her swallowing over a lump in her throat echoed like a bomb blasting off. Her pale blue eyes widened as tears pooled in them before they raced down her wobbling cheeks and her entire body shook in fear. Her moment of foolish bravado was gone.

Red bent his head to the side and then cocked the gun. The boldness, defiance, and daring in his eyes could not be hidden.

She whimpered and then passed out, falling to the floor as if she lacked any bones in her frame. Red roughly snatched his boot from beneath her body before backing away as the others looked up at him from their spots stretched out on the white tiled floor. He obviously gave zero fucks about her and whether she was passed out or dead. Zero fucks.

Red is not the motherfucker to test.

"Countdown. Number Two . . . let's go," Bas shouted loudly. "Number Four . . . handle that!"

The orders were clear.

"Get low, Rent-A-Cop." The gun was shifted from the guard's fleshy cheek to the back of his unkempt head as brown eyes quickly shifted to take in Nelson tossing the leather duffel bag over the counter to the tellers.

"Empty all the cash drawers. Make it happen," Nelson snapped, shifting the gun to point in a direct line on one teller's heart and then the other's as they quickly scrambled to grab and then shove all the cash from the drawers into the duffel bag.

The security guard was still frozen on his knees.

"Down, motherfucker."

"Please don't shoot," he begged, in a voice filled with his worries.

Hardheaded motherfucker.

"Down."

He finally pressed his rotund belly against the cool tiles as he lay flat.

Damn!

There was no denying the highly charged energy pulsating in the air. Nervous gestures. Tears. Whimpers. Prayers.

"Thirty seconds," Bas called out, his slanted eyes seeming even brighter against the blackness of the mask.

The energy shifted again and crackled in the air like white noise.

"Hurry the fuck up," Nelson snapped at the tellers, turning his hand sideways to twist the gun in the air.