15.

"I just checked, the house is still up for sale."

Naeema looked up at Bas leaning in the doorway to the bedroom as he looked down at where she sat on the edge of the bed. "You really got enough money saved up for the down payment?" she asked, fighting through the numbness she felt.

"Down payment?" he balked. "Nah. Cash deal. In full."

Crime pays.

"Matter fact, the fellas and I are meeting. Time to put in work," he said.

No, it's time to put a body in the ground.

She nodded but she didn't have zero fucks to give about the next move of their little crime syndicate.

"I gotta make a run," he said, scooping up his keys. "You want me to bring you something back?"

Naeema looked up at him and shook her head. "You meeting up with the crew now?" she asked, seeming calm even as one hell of a storm brewed inside of her.

"Nah," he said. "Not 'til tonight."

Damn.

"A'ight," she said.

Moments later he was gone. As soon as she heard the door shut she hopped up to her feet and grabbed her cell. First she called for a cab and then she called Ms. JuJu, all as she made sure she left nothing behind. Every single thing Bas had purchased for "Queen," including her entire outfit from the night before, she left in a neat pile on his bed.

"Naeema?"

"How you doing, Ms. JuJu?" she asked as she walked to the door and left the house without looking back one last time. I'm free.

"My arthritis been acting up and the doctor said-"

"Ms. JuJu, did Brandon have on his chain the night he was killed?" Naeema asked, knowing she was being rude.

"He sure did. I just assumed it was stolen that night."

"It was, Ms. JuJu. It was," Naeema said, as the cab pulled up and she opened the door to climb into the back. "Let me call you back."

"How you been, Naeema?"

"I'm better now."

"Good."

"Bye, Ms. JuJu," she said. "And thank you."

Naeema ended the call as she settled against the backseat of the cab.

"Where to, ma'am?" the driver asked, looking at her in his rearview mirror.

She started to give her own address but caught herself. The charade was over but she still didn't want to be tracked down, especially when Bas realized that she was gone. For good.

Don't lose it, Naeema. Play this shit smart.

"Newark Penn Station," she said.

She had the upper hand and she had to use it to her advantage.

She looked out at the beautiful sprawling homes lining the streets of Forest Hill, but her focus wasn't on them. Naeema was on the hunt for a killer and now she had her focus locked on the right target.

Lying motherfucker.

Last night, for the first time, she had noticed that Brandon wore his ring and a long gold necklace with a lion medallion in every damn picture on his Facebook. Every single one. But the fact hadn't really mattered to her until she realized that she'd seen that same chain on his killer earlier that night.

She dug her fingers into her thigh so deeply that she was sure she left tiny bruises in the flesh.

Lying thieving motherfucker.

As the pieces to the puzzle had finally slid together and locked into place, she had floated somewhere between joy and rage. The shit seemed so cliched but just when she was contemplating admitting that she had to walk away from the chase for her son's killer, everything became clear as day.

She didn't know whether to cry or laugh.

For the rest of the morning she lay there stiff as a dead body with Bas's arm draped over her while she tried to find a reason for her son's murder. Although her gut had always told her one or all of them was behind it, she just couldn't make sense of why he did it.

With the light of day she realized it really didn't fucking matter. Lying, thieving, bold, murderous, soon-to-be-dead motherfucker. She picked up her phone and started to dial 69 on her speed dial but she put the phone away again. This is my fight . . . and I gotta learn not to rely on Tank anymore.

She didn't allow herself to feel anything about the strain between them right then. She was flooded with enough emotions, and spending time on her disappointment in her husband wasn't going to do shit but fuck up her focus. She'd have to deal with her relationship with Tank another time.

Naeema paid the cabbie once he pulled up outside Penn Station. Her intention was to hop in another cab and head home but first she walked inside and headed for the waiting area where she had once spent so many nights trying to stay warm and off the actual streets of Newark. Everything looks so different, but my memories ain't changed.

In those weeks, up until she got placed in foster care, she had done more to nurture her son while he was in her womb than she had once she birthed him. I did the best I could.

Turning, she walked back out of the grand-looking building to climb into the back of one of the many waiting cabs lining the streets. As soon as it pulled up to her house, she quickly paid her fare and rushed up the stairs to unlock her front door. With a lift and a push she entered. She snatched off the wig and tossed it into the cold fireplace before she moved her TV off the hard lid of the container and pulled out the smaller plastic box.

Brandon's ring was nestled in the corner. Naeema picked it up. The sunlight beaming through the window made the gold gleam.

She took it off the chain and slid it onto her index finger. Tonight, under the cover of darkness, she would kill the man responsible for her son's death, and then tomorrow she would say good-bye to the wigs, the false identities, and the fake detective work to get her ass up and go cut hair for a living as Naeema Cole.

Tonight all the Foxy Cleopatra Christie shit came to an end.

She was ready.

Naeema sat on her bike in the drive of an abandoned house across from the old church that housed the Make Money Crew's hideout. She wasn't playing like she was one of them anymore. She had finally tossed her burner phone into the fire, although she knew Bas was blowing that number up while he wondered what happened to his Queen.

She never really was yours, motherfucker.

She was glad to be free of him because her mind was saying this could never work between them, but her pussy was a deceitful, no-manners bitch.

With her eyes trained on the overgrown fields surrounding the church she calmly waited. There was a path through the high grass that led to the back of the street behind it. They usually parked their personal vehicles another block over, in the lot of an abandoned supermarket, and walked over to take the path to the side entrance into the church. The entire block was mostly empty and you would never know the abandoned church with its boarded windows was being used.

Some of Bas's clever shit.

Naeema pressed the black leather gloves down onto her hands and zipped her black pleather jacket up to her neck. The sun was gone and there was a slight chill in the early-October air. Winter in the northeast was brutal and she suddenly realized she had to make sure the house had heat. Fuck around and find Sarge down in that bitch like a big-ass angry ice pop.

"What's that?" she mouthed as she climbed off the bike and used her foot to put down the kickstand.

The door to the church opened and closed but she couldn't tell who had just entered or left the building. She pulled on her spare all-black helmet and hopped on the bike. As soon as the motor revved she took off, entering the street and then turning the corner by the church and going down to the end of the block to check for oncoming traffic before she sped up the one-way street.

As lights suddenly flashed, she cut through two parked cars and up onto the sidewalk. She slowed down and sat idling as she waited twenty feet down from the overgrown field connecting the back of the church to the next street.

A figure stepped through the break and turned up the street in the opposite direction.

It's him.

Adrenaline made her heart pound.

She waited to see if anyone was coming out behind him before she revved the motor and sped off the sidewalk and back into the street just as he crossed it to reach the lot. Knowing he was strapped, she hit him with the bike from behind, knocking him forward onto the sidewalk. She pulled up and onto the sidewalk, already reaching with one hand behind her for the 9mm in the waistband of the black jeans she wore like a second skin. She pointed it at him down on the ground as he struggled to rise up to his hands and knees. "Don't do nothing stupid, Nelson," she said in a cold voice, her anger sparking as the chain fell forward on his neck and the lion medallion dangled from the end of it.

She had to maneuver like crazy to back the bike into the parking lot as she kept the gun trained on him, while he looked up at her lost as a motherfucker. "Don't fucking move or I will blow your fucking head off."

Naeema climbed off the bike and walked over to press her boot onto his back and push him back down onto the cold concrete of the sidewalk. She looked up and down the street to make sure no other crew members or random strangers got near them.

"Queen?" Nelson asked as she patted him down.

"Shut the fuck up," she snapped, pulling a switchblade from the pocket of his hoodie.

Naeema opened it. The knife was serrated with tiny sharp teeth along the edge of the blade.

She closed her eyes as she recalled the image of her son with his neck slashed open. The edges of the cut hadn't been smooth. Nelson's knife was just the tool to make the rough cut.

No gun.

She stood up and kicked him in his sides as she pressed her lips into a thin line.

He cried out and rolled onto his side as he brought his knees up to his chest like it would ease the pain.

"Get up," she snapped.

Nelson coughed. His eyes were tightly closed.

She bent over to press the gun to his temple.

"A'ight, yo. Damn," he swore, struggling to lift his portly frame up to his feet.

She backhanded his ass, causing his head to swing to the left as the connection echoed in the air.

WHAP.

Hatred for him and the brutality he put her son through made her growl as she eyed him. "Let's go," she said, coming around with him but never removing his head as the target of her gun.

"Go where?"

Good question.

All her plans to take him to an abandoned building to kill him flew out the window when she chased him. She looked around and then jerked her head in the direction of the trees, bushes, and high grass separating the parking lot from a house hollowed out by a fire in the past.

"Through there," Naeema said, roughly nudging him across the unlit parking lot.

She looked back at the sound of a car starting and Nelson turned and grabbed her wrist. "Silly bitch," she said, not even stressing as she kneed him in the nuts and then roughly pushed him back enough to kick him square in the chest between his fluffy boobs. He fell back to the ground.

"What do you want, yo?" he cried out, sounding tired and worn out.

She pressed the foot of her thigh-high boots against his cheek. It was the car down at the corner, in front of a small house. Still, both Red's and Hammer's cars and a small blue Porsche sat parked next to Nelson's Cadillac convertible. They could be coming out any second. She couldn't fight all four.

"Get up," she snapped again, kicking his thighs when he took too long.

With her gun pressed to his back she led him across the lot and through the high grass to the abandoned house. The exterior walls of what appeared to be the kitchen were missing and she moved him deeper inside the charred mess to the living room. A large rat scurried across the blackened hardwood floors bold as hell.

Is this shit even safe?

Only the streetlight in front of the house lifted the dark shadows of the house as she pushed him down onto the floor.

She finally took off her helmet and dropped it to the floor by her boot.

"Queen?" he asked again, his eyes taking in her shaven head and makeup-free face as he looked up at her.

She shook her head. "That's what your mouth say," she told him, squatting to tap the barrel of the gun against his soft chin.

"You think Bas gon' let you get away with this?" Nelson asked, sounding a little cocky at knowing his captor.

"You think I should just let Bas know you killed Brandon?" she asked, her voice filled with menace as she pierced him with cold eyes.

His round face filled with shock before it changed in an instant with his anger. "Trust me, I know he'd kill me for Brandon. Trust me," he said with attitude. "But I didn't kill Little Dude."

"Liar."

"I didn't."

"Or should I go through with my plan to kill your punk ass for taking out my son, bitch?"