All the Kings Men, page 26
I didn’t expect Mali to rush over to me, but he did. Mali didn’t do things like that; Kadeem did. So anytime Mali did something obviously affectionate, it surprised me. He took me to my room then undressed me. I heard the shower running but didn’t even remember seeing him go back to turn it on. He got inside with me in his arms. It was the most surreal thing.
Mali was an asshole, and he wore the title proudly, but in this moment, he was something else altogether and it had nothing to do with him having two different personalities. Mali cradled me on his lap while washing me up. He was as gentle as ever from the way he washed my hair to the way he washed my vagina. Yes, he washed my vagina.
I hissed when he touched the sorest area of my injuries. I damn near jumped out the water when he pulled wood that had embedded into my skin from my back.
“Sorry, baby. Almost done,” he said quietly. “You something else.”
Watching my blood pool down the drain of the shower, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“I came out ready to kill all these niggas and you went along with that crazy fucking shit on the strength of loving me.”
I studied his eyes and lips. I couldn’t help it. His eyes hypnotized me and his kisses were soul turning.
“You’re the only man I’ve ever loved. From the moment I knew what love was, probably before I knew. You’re the only person who ever saw the real me and didn’t run. You loved me in your own way even when I couldn’t love myself.”
Mali studied me for a while. The sound of the water pelting down on us and the tub couldn’t drown out my thoughts. He ran his fingers through my hair and gave something of a smile.
I thought he was going to say something along the lines that I had, but in typical Mali fashion he said, “Stop all that mushy shit.”
I tried to laugh but because of the pain in my side, all I could make was a sound similar to a cough. Mali finished washing me up.
“Stay in here for a minute,” he said then stepped out.
He removed his wet clothes then wrapped a large towel around his waist before heading back to the front room. I noticed the purple bruise near his rib cage and several cuts on his body. Mali came back a few minutes later and scooped me out the shower. As he carried me to the front room, I got quite a shock.
Candles had been lit around the room. There was some oil burning. I could smell lavender floating in the air. He placed me on the mattress. I watched from somewhere above the clouds as Mali doctored on me. The fact that he knew how to treat me spoke of how much time he spent treating himself in lock up.
I moaned and grimaced when he put a little pressure on my right side. “Ribs ain’t broken,” he said. “If they were, you’d be having a hard time breathing.”
“At first, I did have a hard time breathing when Prime kicked me.”
“Was just pressure build up. If they were broken, you’d need a hospital. Unk has a doctor coming in the morning, but I’ma do the best I can now. I know how to wrap you up and shit. Oh—
Mali reached over, grabbed two pills then handed them to me— “take these.”
“What is it?”
“Vicodin.”
“I need to take two?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Shouldn’t one be—”
“Take the fucking pills, Jaded,” he finally yelled. “I wouldn’t tell you no shit that would fuck you up. Damn. Trust me, take two now or when you wake up, your ass gone regret it.”
I rolled my eyes, mumbled under my breath about him being a jackass. He took a deep breath and looked at me like I was getting on his nerves.
“Take the pills or we fighting,” he quipped.
I took the pills and swallowed down a few gulps of water.
He snatched the glass away. “You stubborn as fuck and always asking hella questions. Shit aggravating.”
“Shut up, Mali.”
“Make me.”
If I could have, I’d have kicked him, but something in his eyes made me chill out. He was trying to help me, but I could see in his eyes that he would really square up with me if I had been up to it. I laughed, inwardly, at the thought. Wrestling him around like when we were kids would have done me some good. Would have taken my mind off the mess we’d left back on the block.
“Police gonna come looking for you now that all of them are dead. Well minus Magnolia,” I said.
“Probably,” he said nonchalantly. “Sit up as far as you can.”
I did and the discomfort kicked my ass. “Ahhhh,” I moaned.
Mali scooted closer to me, his legs enclosing me in so I was sitting between his. “Bite my shoulder.” I shook my head. “Bite my shoulder, Jaded. It’ll help with the pain while I wrap your waist since the pills didn’t kick in yet.”
I didn’t want to, but the pain of sitting up was kicking my ass, so I had no choice. I bit down into his shoulder as he wrapped my waist. Water leaked from my eyes as I did. I knew I was biting pretty hard and not once did Mali wince.
“Okay. Done with the top. Before I wrap the bottom, I gotta stitch up the cuts.”
“I can’t lay on my stomach, Mali.”
“I know. Hold on.”
He got up, went to my liquor cabinet and grabbed some Tequila. He poured me a shot.
“Take it to the head. Will help the meds kick in sooner.”
I did what he said. Watched as he went to his bag and pulled something out. I had no idea where Mali had gotten medical supplies.
And he knew I was about to ask. “Don’t ask me shit,” he said when he sat behind me.
I lied. “I wasn’t about to ask you anything.”
He was quiet as he gently cleaned my wounds. I hissed then jerked forward when the needle went into my skin.
He chuckled. “That’s what your ass get for lying.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Uh huh.”
Another ten minutes and he was done. I sat still as he finished wrapping my abdomen. Once he was finished, he helped me to lay back. I watched as he moved around the room. The candlelight gave him a different kind of aura. One less primal and more erotic. I couldn’t help but look at his dick print under the towel. My vagina pulsated thinking about the times we’d had sex, especially the last time…right before he went to that meeting and left me a love note with an insurance policy.
“Stop looking at my dick. You damn near dead and thinking about dick,” he spat. There was a bit of comical mirth to his tone, but no smile was on his face.
“I wasn’t looking at nothing,” I snapped.
He had my coconut oil in his hand when he came to sit near my feet. I watched him lather his hands with it then start to massage my feet.
“Uncle Lo tell you how we’ll be spinning this thing?” I asked.
Mali nodded. I listened as he gave me details. I knew Chevy would be easy to get on our team—even if it was against his will.
“He’s still going to be a problem,” I said.
Mali watched me. “I know, but he’s just an asshole. Nothing we can’t handle.”
“And what about Prime and Throne? How will he spin that?”
“Uncle Lo has an ace in the hole.”
“What? Who? What does that mean?” I asked.
“Just know, we come from a family with a history of mental illness. What may seem crazy to you is perfectly normal to us.”
I didn’t know if it should have been scared or what, but I was confused. I didn’t know how to take what he’d said. And I was in too much pain to really delve into it. The shot of tequila and the two Vicodin pills were kicking in. My eyelids got heavy, and I started to feel my mind and body mellow out. Mali said something to me about Michaela, but I couldn’t be sure what it was. I was out like a light before I knew it.
I woke up a few hours later. I guess I’d forgotten how banged up I was. I made the mistake of trying to turn over and screamed out in aggravation and agony.
“Relax, baby,” I heard to the right of me.
If I’d been anybody else, the sound of another man’s voice in the room with them would have set off alarms. Not me, though. Although, it did catch me off guard.
“Kadeem?”
“Yeah?”
I didn’t ask any questions. I just let it be for the moment. I heard the news on in the background.
He only had on sweats, sitting in my wing back chair. The shades were barley opened so a thread of moonlight cascaded across his chest bringing attention to the tats there.
“Have you been to sleep?” I asked him.
“Guess I was sleeping while he was awake. When I woke up, I was lying next to you, hand on your ass.”
He chuckled. I smiled.
“Mali…ever the ass the man.”
KD shrugged then glanced at my ass before looking back at me. “It’s a nice ass.”
We were silent for a while. I guess each of us were thinking about all that had transpired since his release. Maybe we could have a normal life now…well as normal as we could call it. Nothing was normal about anything in our lives, but in our case, normal was in the eye of the beholder.
“So, you really thought I betrayed you all those years ago? For ten years, you were plotting to kill me, too?” I asked out the blue.
He nodded.
“If I could get up, I’d beat the shit out of you,” I said, groggily.
“You could try.”
“How could you think that after all we’d done together?”
“I thought the only logical thing a sixteen-year-old thrown in prison could think,” he explained.
“But it was me.”
“I admit that there were some days my mind played ping pong with the notion,” he said.
“And it always came back around to me being in on the coup?”
He nodded. Shrugged. “What was I supposed to think? Especially after not hearing from you?”
“But you did hear from me.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it.” A smirk flashed across his face.
“I wish I could move freely right now, KD. I’d fuck you up for thinking that stupid shit.”
“Ah, I see Skittles still likes to daydream about useless shit,” he said then chuckled.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
I watched him sit forward, run a hand down his face then get up. He walked around the mattress then laid down in front of me. We laid that way and because I knew when Mali came back that I’d have to fight for this moment, I stopped fussing. It was going to take a while for me to get used to this, but my man was home, and I had no intentions of letting him get away ever again.
In the end, there was no Kiki and no KJ. They were all parallel people who Kadeem created to cope with the world around him. In the other part of his mind, I was Kiki and our son was KJ, and we lived as productive citizens in a world meant to keep from reaching the top of the success ladder. In real life though, we were Mali and Jaded…two kids who had been dealt a fucked-up hand…Two kids who made the most out of what was handed to us. Two kids who ended up on the wrong side of the law and lived—barely—to tell about it.
Those were the thoughts that ran through my mind as we laid in the glow of the candle lights, fingers running over flesh, tracing the scars of our past while the real world finally caught up with us and became ours to control.
Chapter 32: Throne
Felt like he’d hung in that abandoned house for hours. The pain he suffered was a combination of things that he couldn’t put into words. Throne wasn’t a man who would pussyfoot around his mistakes. He’d made a hell of a lot of them…and his chickens had come home to roost. He’d killed a man and his son many years ago. Then he sent his other son to prison on a setup. Throne wanted to be sentimental in the moment, but the way his pride and ego were set up? He had murder on the brain.
It was funny how people said their lives flashed before their eyes right before death. Throne guessed he wasn’t dying because his mind was on getting down and ways he could accomplish the task. He chuckled. No mirth was in it. He just chuckled.
Jaded didn’t die. She was right up under our noses the whole time. What a genius fucking move.
Those were the thoughts running across his mind while his shoes burned and the flames licked his feet and ankles. Throne ground his teeth as sweat pooled down his face, trying to keep from yelling out to reserve some of his testicular fortitude.
It was odd to him that Mali, or whatever the fuck his name was, didn’t tie his hands. Maybe that nigga was up to something. Throne kicked his feet while simultaneously trying to get the rope from around his neck. He’d figured that nigga had a game plan. One that Throne doubted he’d live to see if he didn’t get that rope from around his neck.
Jaded’s screams replayed in his mind…
The day he and Prime had hurt her. Tore at her body and…
His mind stopped. He thought he had passed out. Came back to…just to roar out in pain again.
His arms got tired…
Jaded’s screams when he tossed gasoline on her back then watched Prime toss a lighter on her reverberated…
They blended with Throne’s screams and yells.
I could give up, he thought. Just let go and deal with the consequences of all the shit that I did.
Years ago…in a back alley, I’d killed a man in front of his children and wife.
It had been all for personal gain.
He’d been a man who, along with Lo, took me under their wings.
Fire burned. It hurt like hell to be burned alive. He glanced down. Didn’t know why. Just did. Tendrils of flames crawled up his legs. The rope wasn’t budging. He was going to die, hanging from a rope, burned alive.
Michaela. He thought about his girl. She’d been there for him for seven years. Throne guessed this was their year of completion. She’d come through gunning for him because she was and had always been a bad-ass bitch. He didn’t know where she was. After she got shot by Lo, He told her to get out and run. She didn’t want to leave him, but he made her. At least she was safe.
Jaded’s screams assaulted him again.
That day Jaded fought like a wild animal. But there were two of them and one of her. Some nights Throne regretted that shit. Tonight, he regretted that shit.
Being burned alive was suffocating.
But…Jaded didn’t die, right?
No, she was alive. Someone had found her and saved her life. Someone had found her burning naked body and saved her. Maybe someone would save him...
Was this the point that people asked the Most High for forgiveness?
Throne stopped fumbling with the rope. His hands dropped down to his side as slobber—mucus and blood— hung from his bottom lip. He couldn’t stop the screams. His throat burned. The smell of his burning fleshing rent the air.
Then he saw her. Michaela.
“Baby,” she screamed out. “Oh shit,” she yelled.
She glanced around, looking for something. He didn’t know what. He kept fading in and out. Through blurry vision, Throne saw her wild hair rushing around the room. She found something. He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t breathe. He kept trying, but the more he did, the more his throat closed. He didn’t remember shit else after that.
Epilogue: Kadeem
I sat in the middle of Jaded’s home with my notes and plans burning in her fireplace ready to call Uncle Lo. But, something on her TV caught my attention and stopped me.
I smiled while reading scrolling words on the bottom of the screen. “Hey, Jaded?”
“Yeah?” I looked up to see Jaded slowly walking in, due to the soreness in her body from the battle, from the kitchen with a plate. A sandwich and some fruit were on it. Baby girl was watching me with concern. I guess this was my life now. I’d have to get used to the looks that she’d give me, wondering if I were Mali or Kadeem. For now, I was both. In my temper, it was Mali. In my reserved, loving manner, it was Kadeem. I recognized that in me, and maybe one day she’d get it too.
“Yeah, Kadeem?” I heard her say again.
My gaze ran over the dip of her hips, over her thick lush thighs, then back up to take in her slightly swollen lip and bruises on her face and arms. We were battle worn and in it all, she was sexy as fuck. Anyway, I knew if I was silent too long that she’d get worried, so I motioned for her to sit. Just to reassure her that all was good in our world, I pulled her down to where I was, kissed her neck and tilted my head to the TV.
A loud shrill sound indicating breaking news was happening sounded interrupting our conversation…
“Sources inside of the police department tell us that they can confirm every top-ranking member of the gang known as Ward Section Kings have either been killed, or violently attacked. There is one we can confirm that is still alive. Although he was sexually and physically assaulted, he is recovering in a local hospital in his home state, he is still in police custody …”
“I’m sorry. It was just reported that the suspect in custody was found dead in his cell. The specifics are currently unknown. However, the charges leveled at him included human trafficking, child molestation, statutory rape, and a litany of others. His murder may be in relation to his charges. Continuing on, Terrell King, who was the leader of WSK, was found burning as evidence of possible involvement in the murder of the other WSK members who were found in the burning manor, including that of the body of his supposed right hand, Percy Showman …”
My gaze, went to Jaded, and Jaded’s went to mine.
“How?” she whispered, then shook her head as I quickly broke down the true endgame.
I felt her lay her cheek on my shoulder while she listened to me speak as a slick smile spread across my face. The dual personalities that I had were coming together in reprieve. We had taken all the players off the board. Starting with Powder and ending with Throne. See, as the news said, Magnolia was found dead in his holding cell. Nigga should have been found bleeding out thanks to being handled by some friends.…and why do I know the specifics? Because that shit was planned down to the most minute detail.
