A Kingpin's Obsession: Ajoni's Story (21 page)

***

Ajoni

King finally steps off the curb into the street as we pass by. If I had not been looking backwards, I would have not seen him. I barely resist jumping out the damn car and running to him to make sure he is okay—he is ten minutes late.

Raw turns the headlights off and stops in the middle of the road so we blend into the night while we sit idle. King jogs to the passenger side as I opened the door to get in the backseat, gripping the Mickey D’s bag with the food that we think he will eat, or I would have thrown my arms around his neck and held on for dear life.

“Where the fuck were you, King?” Raw asks angrily before we drive off at a high rate of speed, then he turns the lights back on.

“Waiting for Hankins to die,” he says simply.

“Waiting!” Raw bellows. “You were supposed to ghost his ass yourself. In and out, King, remember?”

“Nature decided to give him a heart attack first. I saved my bullets and dialed 911 after he died.”

Raw bangs his hands on the steering wheel. “Why the hell did you dial 911?”

King looks at him with a small smile playing on his face. “Raw, you know I’ve been taking shit from people for so long that didn’t deserve it just to feed myself, and it felt good to watch a motherfucker that did deserve it to get what was coming to him. I needed to make sure that he got it, and for somebody to find the photo of one of the prisoners that Hankin raped.”

I gasp in the backseat. Raw does a double take.

King nods. “That motherfucker wanted to do the same shit to me, and hoped that I got locked down again so he would have his chance to get at me in prison, but karma did her job for once. I made sure it couldn’t be undone.”

“So he wouldn’t hurt anybody else,” I add quietly.

King looks back at me. “Yes.” He turns around. “Let’s get back to our warehouse and burn these clothes and get rid of the evidence from Chang’s. I hope y’all didn’t bring me nothing from Mickey D’s.”

Raw chuckles under his breath. “You gone starve then because Ajoni is against stopping at a store.”

“I’ll starve.”

The ride back to Mecca gets quieter than a cemetery, everyone lost in their own thoughts. Surprisingly, I have only one; all we have done tonight is take lives. Somebody needed to give at least one back. I guess that falls on me since I am the only one in the car that can do it, and I am positive that if I do not swallow the morning-after pill in the next two days, giving back a life is exactly what I will be doing in nine months. Everything that makes up King seems to stick with me long after he’s gone, including his seed.

Yeah, I will be stuck with another shitload of responsibility,

but I brought this shit on myself, and I will deal with it happily when the time comes. Since my decision of what to do about the baby incoming is made, I just need to go home now and figure out what to do when King comes to visit Anjuwan tomorrow. I haven’t figured out how to be around him without wanting him, yet.

Thirty minutes pass again before we are back in Mecca at King’s warehouse. No one speaks as we empty the trunk of everything, from the damning evidence of our crime to the clothes we were wearing earlier today. I go inside the pitch black tin can alone, feeling my way to the table where I light a candle before getting undressed then redressed slowly while letting the old memories wash over me. When I go back outside, I still have not made my peace about me and King never being as a real couple, and he and Raw have already started a fire in a barrel, burning everything from the shovels to our clothes bought from Shad.

I want to call home just to hear my family voices even though it is one o’clock in the morning, but I know better than to turn my phone back on before we get to the hotel. Hopefully, Seeri has not called me every hour on the hour like she promised, but I am confident that she has and that I need talk to her before she calls MPD, and starts a manhunt. This would not be a wasted trip if I had actually checked in with my father and gotten King to understand my side of our story.

“Raw, can I use your phone to check in with my mother, and have you seen Jonny?”

He turns away from the flames. We exchange my clothes in the sack for his phone.

“Yeah, I’ve seen him a couple times. He stays in the projects with a crack head.”

“Do you know which apartment?” I ask while dialing Seeri’s cell. Mecca Heights has sixty apartments. I am not interested in going door to door, looking for him.

“No, I don’t know which one, but he’s usually standing just outside the gates or in front his building slanging dope. I swear he doesn’t sleep.”

“No change there or anywhere else in Mecca,” I mumble and put the phone to my ear, just as Seeri’s line stops ringing.

“Hello! This had better be Ajoni,” she says angrily into the line.

“It is, Mama. How are you and my baby?”

“She’s asleep and we’re both worried as hell about you! Why haven’t you been answering your phone? I’ll have called your number a hundred times and got your voicemail! I was just about to buy plane tickets for me and Anjuwan and fly out on the first thing smoking to Mecca!”

“No need. I’m fine, and standing here with King and Raw now. We’ve been talking about Anjuwan, and my phone’s battery is useless. I’ll be home in the morning as soon as I can. I want to check on Jonny before I fly back.”

“Ajoni—”

“Everything is okay, Mama. I promise. King knows about Anjuwan. He’s dealing with it the best he knows how and does not want anything from me but to know his daughter.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. He told me that, and I believe him. You should too. Now, go to sleep. I’ll call you before I get on the plane in the morning.”

“Okay, but if anything—”

“Mama, I’m good! Go to sleep and kiss my baby goodnight for me. I love you both. Bye.” I disconnect the call before she can say another word, or we will be on the phone all night until she catches me in half of the lies and all of the half-truths that I just told her.

I am not alright, and I still want to look for Jonny before I go home. Instead of going straight to the hotel after we leave here, I would rather make a side trip to the projects first. I give Raw his phone back, while avoiding King’s eyes trained on me.

“Raw, before we go back to the Hilton, can you—”

“You’re not going to the Heights this late at night or staying here to look for your pops, Ajoni,” King interrupts.

I catch an immediate attitude. “I didn’t ask you for your two cents.”

He grins. “Well, you have them. Go home to Anjuwan. I’ll deal with your father.”

“And how exactly are you going to do that? You can’t even deal with the fact that you have a daughter.”

He smirks. “Oh, I’m dealing, just not the way you want me to, and I hear the projects are even more dangerous than they were eight years ago with Lex running the drug traffic. He doesn’t take care of his territory. If you stay here, you’ll just sneak your ass in it, looking for Jonny anyway and find trouble. You’re going home.”

This bastard knows I want him more than my next breath, but is making me live without him anyway.

I plant both of my hands on my hips, tilt my lips upward, and nod in true black-girl-about-to-go-off fashion.

“I get it now. You’re getting payback for how I hurt you, and the faster I get back home, the faster your idea of making me suffer can begin. Well, King, you’re about eight years late on making me suffer without you… and I’ll continue to. If you want to deal with Jonny and the projects on my behalf, have at it, but I just need you to not get yourself killed for Anjuwan’s sake. Raw, take me straight to the airport after we finish up here please.”

Before he can agree, I turn on the spiked heels of my boots and walk away, planning to get in the backseat of the Camaro and wait to get home and breakdown behind my bedroom’s closed door.

***

King

Raw’s head swivels to me, while he tunnels through Ajoni’s bag looking for her gun that will be thrown away with the casings in a dumpster somewhere in Mecca. I stare at Ajoni’s hips switching back and forth under her coat, her body calling to me as usual—no change there either. I wait for Raw to give me his two cents on my present situation with her, but he does not, or I would have told him that I am not making her suffer on purpose. She will have to come to me on her own this time.

If she wants me badly enough, she will. My obsession for her keeps taking people down. It is time that I stop taking what I want from people, and give something back to those that have stood by me in their own way, but he does not bring it up, so I do not explain.

When she gets into the car, I turn my attention to the fire while feeling her eyes on me from the behind the windshield of the car. I am not sure how long I can wait before she breaks down and tells me she wants me in her life as her old man, but it had better be soon. King is just underneath the surface of my skin, waiting to take what he wants badly—everything that is Ajoni.

When the clothes and shoes that are burning reduce to ashes in the barrel finally, Ajoni’s eyes are no longer boring into me. Raw and I put out what is left of the fire with several gallons of water that have been stashed under the bed in the warehouse for eight years. I put them there to get them out of sight during her jump in—the sight of them would have thrown off the romantic atmosphere that I was trying to create. We have burnt a lot of shit here, and keep the water on standby for times like this. Hopefully, we never have to keep anything on standby again.

Raw and I watch the flames sizzle and disappear until only smoke rises from the barrel, making sure nothing is left intact in the bottom of it that can be used against any of us in a court of law, except for the blades of the shovels cleaned by the fire and what remains of the handles. Only then do we stroll toward the car. When I open the passenger’s door, I realize why Ajoni stopped staring holes into me—she’s asleep, her neck lying at an odd angle between the headrests.

She will feel that in the morning.

I push the passenger’s seat up and climb in the backseat, every one of them too damn small for me now. I close the door, then pull the passenger’s seat to the upright position before picking Ajoni up, turning her sideways, and cradling her against my chest in my arms.

She snuggles into me, making it harder to let her leave Mecca tonight, and me behind. I am going to though. But for the moment, I am taking what I need from her; her body next to mine—both sides of me need it tonight. Neither Calen nor King knows when she will decide that she needs us too.

The drive to the airport is too damn short. Before we get there, I sit Ajoni up in my lap. She groans and reaches for me. I put her back in her seat quickly before she can wrap her arms around my neck.

She whispers my name, ‘King.”

I smile—I’m still on her mind even after all that we’ve gone through today. I kiss her on the lips lightly, then lean her gently against the side of the car. Raw shakes his head and gets out. I know he is real disappointed in me for what I’ve just done, but I do not want to influence her decision to have me in her life like I did eight years ago. She needs to come to that by herself.

I push the passenger’s seat up, and get out of the car, then in the front seat like I have been there the whole time. Raw waits for me to buckle up before he wakes Ajoni up with a gentle shake of her shoulder. She comes to groggily, and reaches for her laying purse on the seat beside her before getting out without looking at me. The canyon that began to close in my chest earlier tonight opens right back up, a little wider than before.

Raw walks her inside the airport. I barely keep my ass in the car, desperately wanting to follow her and make her come back to me—old habits are hard to break, and I refuse to tell her goodbye. This will not be last that she sees me.

Ajoni never looks back as she walks away, but Raw does several times before the sliding glass doors to the airport open, allowing them to vanish inside. When he comes back, the ride to Mecca Heights is silent. I do not know who is brooding more, me or him when we drive up to the opened gates of the projects and find Jonny Mitchell standing outside of them, handing off a bag of something in exchange for payment in the same hand movement.

Raw parks in the entrance way, not giving a damn that he is blocking it. I get out of the car first, approaching Jonny, who looks nothing like himself. He is just skin and bones in a raggedy, royal blue hoodie and dirty jeans. His face has not seen a razor in months, and his hair is an uncombed, thick, and gray short afro. He is in no shape to meet my daughter.

“Jonny,” I call just as he looks away from his client and Raw walks up behind me, watching my back like always.

Jonny frowns and squints his eyes at me. “
King!
What the hell? You on ground again, boss?” He smiles widely before stepping forward.

I walk into a bro hug, and have to breathe out of my mouth—his stench took my breath away. I step back as quickly as possible while trying not to make Jonny aware that I had to move back from him, or risk passing the fuck out.

“It’s time, Jonny. Your daughter is worried sick about you.” Yeah, that is partly my fault, but I am fixing that—I hope.

He drops his head. “Yeah, I know. Shit hasn’t been the same since she and Seeri left Mecca. I guess you know you have your own daughter now too. Ajoni probably didn’t want me to tell you like this if you don’t know, but a man deserves to know if he has seed that is growing.”