A Kingpin's Obsession: Ajoni's Story (4 page)

Now, the only territory I have taken over for the last eight years is The Pen. In here, I quietly give orders to inmates, with access to mules on the outside that carry my drugs in during visitation and make sure most of my dirty work is done by someone else in here. Someone has to make sure that nothing happens without my say-so while I am here, and after I am gone. I need loyal eyes and ears everywhere. That reminds me of how disloyal Ajoni is, and how I only have two minutes to get dressed or miss the chance to make her right her wrong done to me.

I yank the royal blue Aeropostale shirt off the bed then over my head, step out of my white canvas shoes to put on the Coogi jeans and Air Force Ones. I do not bother tying them up, instead stuffing the shoelaces in the side of my shoes. My fit and the shoes are a little too snug for my liking, but I deal with it until I get home.

The double doors at the far end of the room clank together behind me. They do that whenever someone is coming in or going out. I do not have to look back to know it is Hankin coming to see if I have given him reason to keep me here.

I shove my prison clothes and shoes in the paper sack, and then ball it up before stepping into the aisle to walk toward him smiling. I battle with myself to not wipe that cheesy ass grin off his face or make him die with it permanently etched there.

“I see you can take an order, boy,” he mocks as we get closer to each other.

“I’m pretty sure you were taking orders long before I got here, Hankin,” I state dryly and walk past him to the exit. I just wonder if his boss is wearing a sheet over his head or over his lap when they have their meetings and Hankin bows down in one way or another.

“I’ll be waiting to give you even more orders when you get back,” he whispers behind me.

“Do me a favor and hold your breath while you’re waiting,” I utter, with no intention of ever coming back here. If he dies now, he will save me the trouble of having to find out where he lives to kill his ass for stealing from me, but nothing worth having ever comes that easy.

I enter a shiny, tiled hallway leading to six other cell blocks, the yard, rec room, infirmary, and cafeteria one way. The only way out of Cell Block A and The Pen is in the other direction.

I turn toward a six-inch thick iron door with a scanner in place of the knob. Only the guards that supervise the cell blocks have swipe badges for it. I stop and place my back against the wall, making sure Hankin does not have the opportunity to breathe on me while swiping his badge. A buzzer sounds above my head, signaling the door will be opening. When it slides inward, we walk into a small room with iron chairs on one side. I let Hankin take the lead.

He stops at two small panels of glass in the wall on the opposite side of the room. “Calen Kingsley for release, Felicia.”

A slim, brown-skinned female in a correctional uniform with braids in a ball on the top of her head sits at a desk behind the glass, swiping at her nose. She then glances up, reaches up, slides the window open, and sticks her hand through it.

“Give me your damn uniform,” she orders in a bitter tone. I raise the paper sack up and place it in front of her face. She snatches it out of my hand and throws the bag into a pile that is already in the corner of the office, then rolls her eyes at me.

“It’ll take about fifteen minutes to process you out, Kingsley. Have a seat. If any red flags come up in the database while I’m preparing your release paperwork during that time, your ass will be putting that uniform back where it belongs, on your damn back… fucking criminals.” She shakes her head and turns her attention back to the computer in front of her and begins typing. I breathe in deeply, trying to keep from snatching her rude ass through the glass. If I ever decide to put my hands on a woman, she will definitely be the first.

Hankin takes a seat behind me. I choose to stand at the window with the lesser of the two evils in the room and let my mind replay the memories of what happened at the warehouse between Ajoni and me, as it often does.

***

After I knocked X and Leek the fuck out, I ordered Slade to stay outside and wait for them to rejoin the living. Raw went to the store without having to be asked to get ice, Tylenol, and a soda for Ajoni. I went back in the warehouse to sit with her.

While she was unconscious, I covered her up with brand new, black silk sheets, took off my shirt with X’s and Leek’s blood in it, and just watched her sleep. When she woke up, I planned to make her feel better, then make love to her. She would join the crew as Queen.

Or so I thought.

Raw finally came back, sat a bag of ice, a bottle of Tylenol, and a Pepsi on the table that I had pushed to the far end of the room with candles burning on it and takeout from a Chinese restaurant, and then he left. I emptied out a couple of pills in my hand and carried them along, with the soda and a piece of ice back to the bed. When I rubbed the ice over Ajoni’s swelling cheek, she moaned in her sleep then opened her eyes that were too light to be called hazel and were glazed over with pain.

I was damn glad she woke up finally and I did not have to worry anymore if she was going to wake up at all. If she did not, X and Leek would not either.

She cringed and slid away from me on her back, to the edge of the bed.

“King, take me home,” she begged. I knew she was scared as hell, so I reached for her with both hands, intending to comfort and help her. She swatted my hands down, knocking the ice, pills, and soda onto the bed, and sat up on the other side of it.

I reversed off my side and stood up to my full height, worried I would scare her even more if I reached for her again because that was exactly what I wanted to do. She stood up too, turned to face me, and was angry as hell suddenly.

“I’m going to take care of you, Ajoni,” I said quietly, then pointed to the middle of the bed. “I have some Tylenol for your pain and ice for your jaw, but you don’t have to be scared of me. Look around, sweetheart. This is all for you.”

Her eyes brightened, widened as pure fear filled them, and roamed the room filled with candles lit everywhere on the floor, but I was not who she needed to be afraid of. I just wanted her respect. Then she mumbled under her breath, “I don’t want this.”

Her words made something split wide open in my chest in that moment. The room went out of focus. That was the one and only time I ever wondered if I really had a heart, but I was not giving up on Ajoni because I had failed at my first attempt to romance a woman. I never wanted to before then, and thought all women were like my mother; weak-minded enough to become a crack head that would sell anything not nailed down to support their habit and forget they gave birth. Other women that often offered me ass by the truckload since I was fifteen, over six feet tall and more muscular than normal teenagers, did not help my opinion of them either.

I slept with the women anyway, but was not about to give them what they wanted; a place in my life as a teenager, or grown man. And then one day, Ajoni walked out of her house when she was sixteen and slammed the door behind her while I was sitting outside with the crew. I knew she was coming to get Jonny for Seeri. She then stepped onto the sidewalk, turned towards me, and yelled her daddy’s name while drawing all kinds of attention in skintight jeans broadcasting the sway of her newly formed hips and a white crop top that hugged her small breasts and tiny waist.

Suddenly, she was the spitting image of Seeri when Jonny first brought his wife to Mecca. I swore up and down that Ajoni did not look like that the day before, and no longer saw her as just one of the crew’s daughter that needed to be protected in Mecca. From that moment on, she was mine.

“King!” Ajoni yelled suddenly, making me look up at the two-years older, more beautiful than ever, and very angry version of her standing before me with her hand on her wide hips.

“Okay great, you remember I’m here now,” she sniped with a tiny tremor in her voice and putting up one hell of a brave front.

“What, sweetheart?”I asked and gave her my undivided attention, again.

She frowned. “Don’t call me sweetheart. Take me home now. Your boys just beat my ass so I’m officially a King, but I won’t be working for you. I can’t work for people I don’t trust.”

I cussed under my breath and considered going outside to make Leek’s and X’s nap a permanent one anyway. The shit they just did to her had fucked up my chances for convincing Ajoni that she should be mine willingly, and could trust me to protect her.

“I’m sorry about them hitting you. A man should never put his hand on a woman and I handled that by putting my hands on them. They won’t ever do that to you again. I promise.”

“No they won’t be doing that to me again because, I’m staying the fuck away from all of you after this.”

I could not allow that. “No you’re not, Ajoni. What you’re going to do is take the Tylenol, get jumped in the Kings, and take your place as one of the heads of my family with the street name Queen.”

She froze in place, shocked that she would sit beside me instead of work for me as a lowly street runner. I started walking around the foot of the bed towards her. She began to back away and move up the side of it away from me. If she got anywhere near the door on the other side of the room, I knew she would run for it. I could not let that happen either, so I retraced my steps and went back to the spot I was standing in between the bed and the door. She went back to her spot on the other side of the bed.

“K—King… I— I
don’t want you like that,” she stuttered, with her tiny chin wobbling.

“Because you want only Jordan like that, right?” I asked jealously, but knew the answer and hated every time she walked passed him and smiled. I never understood why she wanted a high school senior that thought he was too good to be a banger, street runner, and with her. Most of his friends were into all of that, and everyone on Teamon block knew she had a mad crush on Jordan. Almost every man that knew Ajoni had a mad crush on
her
.

Most of those men belonged to women that could not check their emotions at their front door before they stepped out of them. It made for good entertainment every time they made the mistake of stepping to Ajoni about their men’s eyes staring at her jeans. I would have handled those females for her too, but Ajoni would already have beat the chicks’ asses down before I could get to her.

Jonny would stand back and let his little girl prove to everyone on the block that she could handle herself. Seeri would hear the commotion outside, stop the fight by calling Ajoni’s name and make her go in the house, then blast Jonny’s ass for standing back watching.
Those same females would offer me their swollen asses as soon as the commotion was over, their weave was straight on their heads again, and their man’s backs were turned.

I planned to take Ajoni away from all that, convinced she deserved a better way to live and had a healthy respect for the Blue Kings. My six-bedroom, six-bath house in Mecca County, with a pool and anything else Ajoni wanted, waited for her to make it a home. She would be mine for life and I was not going to let her leave the warehouse until she understood that, then I would take her to her new home two miles away.

“Ajoni, this would be so much easier for you if you just do what I say.”

“No King, this would be so much easier for you if you just stick to being the boss of the Blue Kings and let me choose who I sleep with,” she snapped back.

I knew right then that Jordan fucking Cole was still a problem for me. I could give Ajoni a life so much better than a middle-class kid could that did not live on Teamon and liked to stand on the streets everyday while real men worked it. Jordan had everything he own handed to him on a cubic zirconium platter from his parents. Ajoni was going have to accept that he would not be sharing that shit with her.

“You know Ajoni, I wanted you for my own. But if I can’t have you, I’ll make sure Jordan does not have you either.”

Her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “You’re going to kill me because I don’t want you?”

I would never hurt her, but I would do just about anything to make her mine, even if that meant making her think I would hurt her.

“No, I won’t kill you. I’ll do something even worse.”

Her tiny chest began to heave up and down. I hated to make her terrified of me, but it was the only way to make her fear me more than most people do God, and respect me even more.

“If you don’t let me have you Ajoni, I’ll let the other Kings run through you. Most of them want you just as much as I do.”

She screamed at me, “You’ll let them fucking rape me?”

“Yes,” I answered quickly, then called out, “Raw, you’re next!”

Raw laughed out loud on the other side of the door to the one-room warehouse. She started to cry. It took everything in me just to keep from telling her that Raw likes his lovers with an Adam’s apple. She grabbed for her chest with one hand, as if she could not breathe suddenly, and then held the other hand out as if she was trying to hold something back.

“King, wait. I’ll… I’ll do it.”

I could see her struggle to get the words out of her upturned thick, pink lips, but Ajoni had not said what I needed to hear yet.

“You’ll do what?”

“I’ll sleep with you… only you, King.”

I smiled; Jordan would never get what was meant for me now.