Blaque Juliette

by Tarris Marie

Genres: Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

In a world where loyalty can kill you and love can trap you, survival is the only way out in this engrossing, high-octane crime saga perfect for fans of Jahquel J.

Juliette “Jules” Remington was born in America’s murder capital and raised by the streets long before she ever chose them. Abandoned, betrayed, and broken too young, she learned fast that love don’t live here, unless you fight for it. And Jules? She’s always been a fighter.

Her only light in the darkness is Legend Prescott Remington—her protector, her ride-or-die, her first and forever love. From childhood snow angels to criminal underground tunnels, their bond runs deeper than blood. But when the Feds close in and a deadly setup tears them apart, Jules flees to Los Angeles chasing a chance to rewrite her story … and gets trapped in something far worse.

LA becomes a playground for cartels, traffickers, and men who see beauty as currency. Entangled with Scarlet Entertainment, an elite pipeline hiding exploitation behind luxury, Jules discovers that the same world promising her escape wants her soul in return.

Then comes Christian “Blaque” Savage, Atlanta’s smoothest kingpin with a mind like a weapon and a heart that shouldn’t want her. Their chemistry is lethal, their partnership forbidden, and their connection dangerous enough to ruin everything Jules is fighting for. Especially when she learns the only way out . . . might be to betray the man she loves.

Haunted by the past, hunted by the law, and torn between two powerful men, Jules must choose. In a world where loyalty gets you killed and love is the most dangerous drug of all, survival comes with a price. The question is whether she can outlast the darkness long enough to claim her freedom, or if her secrets will pull her under for good.

Release date: September 29, 2026

Publisher: Black Odyssey Media

Print pages: 288

Sample

Prologue

Angel

Juliette Rose Remington

Los Angeles, 2000

Born Juliette, a scarred butterfly who emerged from the asphalt of the tragic streets, my life wasn’t Shakespearean, or so I’d thought. I lived regretfully, knowing I’d die with the generational curse of too many secrets trapped in my soul. But I took an oath that I’d never expose the truths hidden behind America’s veil, no matter the cost. And as a Black woman, bred from the nation’s murder capital in the 1990s, my life was worth less than the fraction of my enslaved ancestors. And so, unless “Heaven Got a Ghetto,” and 2Pac was Machiavelli, my treason of Uncle Sam’s covenant would be my demise.

I was spread-eagle on the floor, lying on top of a dust angel I’d created as I had reminisced about the innocent snow angels I had made as a little girl in the Midwest. But those pure days of fragility had long gone.

My mind had been betraying me with happy thoughts fleeing from the light and getting lost in the dark, and “The end” was stuck on repeat inside my head. A sudden burn started in the pit of my stomach and radiated to the tip of my toes and then to the top of my cranium, which triggered an instant migraine. Surrounded by shouting prisoners and shuffles of sounds bouncing off the penitentiary walls, “You are alone” continued to scream above the chaos.

Bleach and the fabric softener dryer sheet draped over the vent did not drown the scent of other women’s coochies permeating the air. Caged in my cell, I had succumbed to every emotion imaginable. The pains of my imperfections pressed firmly against my neck. I couldn’t bear the numbness from the burdens I’d carried and the mistakes I’d made. I couldn’t stop my past from interfering with my present. Snuggled against the floor’s dirty epoxy, I prayed the concrete would cool the flames of my thoughts.

I was in darkness, without one song left in my heart, and I waited for my thoughts to shut the fuck up, but they didn’t. Instead, the banter in my brain got louder. Cracked like a broken egg, my mind split and drifted above my body. The images of my past flashed through my head like a silent film, and I relived the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I had long lost my mind, and for the second time, my will was gone. I cried and repeated the other words, shouting inside my mind’s ear, “Juliette must die!”

He had pulled the trigger, and the excruciation of that pain was tattooed inside my soul—the ringing in my ears and the ache of losing another who loved me had become too much to bear. To mute the anguish, I covered my ears and closed my eyes. I didn’t wish this torment on my worst enemies, and I’d known at least one who deserved it. I couldn’t take it anymore and wanted the end to come to life. Like a zombie led by an underworld puppeteer, I reached for the messy sheet sprawled over my cot. I began to twirl the material into a tight twister, creating the same lassoed weapon that was used to hang my ancestors, the strange fruit witnessed by Billie Holiday.

Bowing my head and wrapping the sheet around my neck, my final words tiptoed to the edge of my tongue. “Dear God . . .”

I had uttered His name for the first time, and in a snap, “The end” drowned into despair. Peace was suddenly still, and I dropped the sheet to the floor as if it were on fire. Then salty streams of sweat bled from every pore in my body, as if to baptize my sins. A gentle breeze swept over me, and under the weight rumbling within my spirit, my mind was freed. I wanted to know why. What was my purpose? Then clear as the Pacific Ocean, a celestial voice boomed, “But love.”

I repeated the words barely above a whisper. “But love”?

I started to hum the words of Keith Sweat’s “Make It Last Forever,” and a cheshire grin erupted from my gut to my face, exposing my teeth to the decades of musk brewing in the incarcerated air. I could feel my husband’s arms around me, and I realized that I may have belonged to America, but my heart was still mine.

To snitch or not to snitch, that was the question, and in my profession, snitches got more than stitches. The loose lips that sank the ships got tossed overboard. Too many lives were on the line, so I had no time to fear. Renewed with divine strength, I sat up. “But love.”

Determined to defy the disaster of a ghetto girl’s destiny, I had fought to beat the system built against me. But I had been a tragedy waiting to happen. Game had finally recognized society’s vicious game, and if I didn’t play my cards right, I would lose to “My Country ’Tis of Thee” charades.

Then I heard the words again. “But love.”

Closing my eyes, I pictured the one I loved and rolled myself into a human cannonball. Suddenly, I was squeezing my thighs against my husband’s phantom biceps. I could see him with my eyes shut. With his dark Hershey-colored skin and a body perfectly designed with every bold muscle defined, I yearned to do unearthly things just to see him again. He had towered over six feet tall, and when I wore four-inch stilettos, we were eye-to-eye. How I missed his deep, dark almond eyes, full, pillowy lips, and midnight facial hair. I had always wondered how someone so black could illuminate the darkest of rooms, and I was now awed by how his spirit penetrated my darkest thoughts.

But love.

I took a deep breath, inhaling the remnants of his memory. Coconut oil and Jam conditioning gel, the products I’d used since we were kids, percolated up my nostrils, and I imagined the stickiness on my fingers.

Instantly, I’m transported into our living room and braiding the black crown of silk curls on his head. He takes his hands and strokes my calves. I massage his scalp down to his shoulders. He leans his head back like he’d always done and moans.

He grips my thighs. “That feels so damn good.”

He turns his face toward me, pressing his lips inside the crevice of my hips and bare lips. I began to ascend, my body climaxing.

I blinked, waking up in a puddle of tears before I peaked, but it didn’t matter. Every inch of his soul was etched into my memory, and I would see my Romeo again in my dreams.

But love.

I heard God, loud and clear, but how? Was I worthy of His loving grace?

Legend, the man I loved, was dead and gone, and I was facing a life-long sentence inside the Los Angeles Correctional Facility for my transgressions, so the end felt like it had definitely come.

But love would be my conqueror, not Uncle Sam, because even in death, I knew Legend Prescott Remington was more than my Romeo. He was my Adam, and no matter what, I, Juliette Rose Remington, was destined to be his rib.

Chapter 1

Durty

Juliette Rose Remington

Los Angeles Federal Correctional Institute, 2000

I had been gratefully renewed, but after several confined hours in emotional limbo, I hadn’t stopped whimpering. I was justifiably accused of crimes I’d committed and terrified of the ones I hadn’t. And in addition to facing a life sentence in incarceration, I was mourning the day that marked the one-year anniversary of Legend’s death. I desperately needed to escape the trespassing thoughts seeping into my mind, and so, I shut my eyes.

“Where are you?” I whispered aloud as I tried to fall back into my fantasy realm.

I blinked and took another deep breath. Finally, I was being pulled to the water, my favorite place on earth. Legend and I grew up in Miller Beach, Indiana, a town blocks away from Lake Michigan, where our life and love’s foundation began.

I squeezed my eyes tighter, hoping my migraine would drift away so that I could fall peacefully asleep. After deep meditation, the stale air trapped within the prison walls began to transform into a fresh lake-effect breeze. From afar, I heard the seagulls’ fleeting cries, then the crashing waves, until finally, my dream was alive.



Floating onto the sapphire ocean, I’m basking in the heaviness of the fresh salt and virgin waters. The sun smiles down on my naked skin, and I smile back as the waves lick behind my earlobes. After inhaling, a thick, masculine scent takes over my senses. The fragrance is familiar to me, but it isn’t Legend’s.

The tantalizing hint of cocoa butter buried under Issey Miyake cologne grows stronger and stronger until I’m covered with his musk. The intrusive presence of this man is so close, I feel his soul next to mine. I don’t move. I can’t move. Then his thumb gently sweeps across my lips. I trembled into ecstasy. He’s done this to me before, and a deep desire to feel him do it again radiates down my back, creating icicles up my spine. I began to sink, drowning in a paralyzed panic.

“I’ve got you,” he gently whispers. Magically, his fingertips lift me above the waves.

I refuse to open my eyes because I know who he is. He doesn’t have to speak again, because I know the baritone in his voice. I had even memorized the off-tempo pulse of his breath and the boldness of his touch, which has become permanently stained in my memory. I’ve tried to erase any trace of him, but a part of him will always live inside me. I fight his spirit as it tries to infiltrate my heart, and finally, I open my eyes.

Christian “Blaque” Laurent Savage is staring affectionately back at me.

“Hello, gorgeous.”

For some reason, the expression on his face is different every time he finds his way into my thoughts, but I can’t escape the haunt of his hazel eyes. He smiles, and his comfort tortures me.

“Get out of my dream, Merman, and go back to Pearle,” I demand.

He deepens his smile. “Call me whatever you want, Unforgettable, pero no te dejaré. And you know why.”

I smack my lips, and he leans down toward my face. I fight the throbs and tingles penetrating through my body. I try to wake myself up but can’t. I try to sink back into the ocean, but fate holds me up. Before his lips caress mine, I close my eyes.



“Juliette!” a voice thunders, godlike, yanking me out of my sweet nightmare, but she wasn’t God. I’d heard the bold sweetness of His voice while tussling with my existence, and it was inked into my soul. Drowning in sweat and tattooed tears, I tried to get up but was bound.

“Jules, are you okay?” the warden hollered louder.

I’d been awakened in a nasty fog, hating that I had lost Legend and couldn’t stop Blaque from finding his way back to me.

But love.

I was already tired of hearing those words echoing inside my head, and the added stresses of life were mounting and hammering my migraine against the back of my skull. So, I wasn’t okay. And why in the hell was I tied up?

Frustrated, I started to untie my left wrist, which was strapped to the steel bed frame. “How would you feel if you woke up like this?”

Wart, the Warden’s nickname, stepped forward. She had a protruding, mountainous wart under her left eye that seemed to have a life of its own. Her outdated Jodeci boots clunked to the edge of my cell door. “Be grateful we care enough about you to keep you from hurting yourself.”

“You’re welcome,” yelled Winkie, my neighboring inmate, who’d been convicted of attempted murder.

With a proud grin, Winkie winked. I didn’t trust what she’d done to get Wart to restrain me while I was asleep, nor did I trust what they’d demand from me later as payback for “saving me.”

Then I thought of the pure heart of my dear friend, Songbird. What if they’d done it out of sincere kindness?

I got lost in my thoughts, and Wart cleared her throat. “Umm, you’re welcome,” she repeated.

I wished they’d known God had already intervened in my suicidal thoughts, but I forced a smile anyway. “Thanks.”

The door latch clicked, and the hem of the steel bars scraped against the floor and opened.



It was Monday morning, and Wart was taking me to see Dr. Doolittle for the second time. Dr. Doolittle was the nickname I had given my shrink. I had no clue how she’d received a license to help people with mental illness, but she was all we had.

Doolittle touted herself as a crisis intervention guru, and because days before I had succumbed to the voice that had screamed, “The end,” she was called to save me from myself.

Blessed and cursed with a sixth sense that deciphered lies from the truth, I knew Dr. Doolittle cared less about me and my feelings, which was why I preferred to live in the blissful state of lies, chasing Santa and the tooth fairy, as opposed to examining the real reason why my mother abandoned me as a child.

Wart and I stood at the door as Doolittle tapped her foot. She was glued to her chair at the miniature table in our space, no bigger than half the size of a dorm room. She was dressed in the same 1960s Leave It to Beaver yellow tweed suit from days before, and her loose, lopsided hair bun resembled a bird’s nest.

Neither of us said a word, and Wart finally broke our silent treatment by clearing her throat. “Good morning, Doctor.”

Dr. Doolittle huffed, “Hi . . .” I got a whiff of ass and coffee from her morning breath and gagged as she continued in a high-pitched tone. “Good morning, Warden?”

All Doolittle’s sentences ended with upward inflections, so it was difficult to decipher her questions from statements, and I wasn’t in the mood to try. Still battling the raging headache that had started the night before, I placed my head down on the table.

“Up,” Warden commanded.

I sat up and waited. Doolittle was staring, as if she were going to say, “Polly want a cracker?” but instead, she asked, “Are you all right?”

“Peachy.”

“What does peachy mean to you, Miss Remington?”

“I told you last session. My name is Mrs. Remington.”

“You do understand that your husband is dead?”

I decided to ignore all her follow-up questions. Clearly annoyed, she stamped her foot and shook the table by slamming her pen onto the top.

“Miss Remington?” she asked with a rise in her voice.

I glared from across the table. “I already told you my name numerous times, so please, put respect on it.”

“Respect?”

“Yes, or you can take your rude, crude, and uncouth ass, along with your busted Payless pumps, out of here.”

She flopped her head forward as we both looked down at her shoes. Then she lifted her head, and her bird’s nest shifted back into place. “What?” she shrieked. Then her glasses slid to the tip of her nose, highlighting the pink, smeared lipstick on her crooked lips. “I beg your pardon, Miss—”

“It’s missus! I know my husband is dead, but I was fucking married, so I am still Mrs. Remington until I decide otherwise. Comprende?”

“Do you need a break?” she asked.

“Please. Actually, let’s just get it over with.”

She took a deep breath and pointed to her tablet. “It says here you refused your medication last night.”

“It’s not my medication.”

“What?”

“I don’t take pills, lady.”

“They are designed to help you?”

“Have you taken them before?”

Her voice went up several more octaves, and my brain ached. “What?”

“Doctor, are you deaf?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Why do you keep asking me to repeat myself?”

Sighing, she responded, “I haven’t taken the medication, but other patients say—”

“How can you prescribe me medication without an examination? What’s my diagnosis?”

Dr. Doolittle’s head and eyes wandered around the room. “What?”

I screamed. “Oh my God. Where did you get your degree?”

She grabbed her pen and looked at her notebook. “Miss Remington, explore how you feel about your parents?”

A giggle erupted from my gut. “Are you asking or telling me?”

“Yes?”

I searched around for someone to rescue me. “I cannot take you.”

“What?” she huffed.

I covered my nose. “We’re finished—your breath smells like a dragon’s ass.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Help her, Jesus.” I massaged my temples. “Your breath is very offensive, ma’am. The room smells like the ass of a fucking dragon because of you.”

Her head bobbled around until her bun came undone. “Umm . . . I feel we should break.”

I giggled harder and pinched my nostrils. “Don’t you feel prisoners care about your oral hygiene?”

Her mouth dropped. Then her glasses slipped down her nose like a sliding board and landed on her top lip. I erupted into a laughing fit.

Tears dropped down my eyes as I laughed hysterically while massaging my forehead. She collected her things and rolled her eyes.

“Warden, where did y’all find this lady?” I asked while grabbing my belly. “Please get me out of here before I lose it.”

“I’m leaving.” She stomped her feet, and when the warden opened the door, Doolittle rolled her eyes again. “Adieu, Miss Remington.”

I waved her away. “Whatever.”

She barged forward, and the heel of her pump snapped off. Her legs wobbled, and she stumbled into the warden’s arms.

“See . . .” I screamed like a hyena. “God don’t like ugly!”

After she attempted to regain her balance, she picked up her broken heel, pushed her glasses onto her face, and limped out of the room with her middle finger in the air. When the door slammed, and the familiar whiff of cocoa butter and Issey Miyake cologne swept into my nostrils, I froze in a panic. I looked up and couldn’t believe it. Standing before me was the last man of my dreams.

Chapter 2

I’m Better

Juliette Rose Remington

Los Angeles, 2000

I was facing life in prison, and I’d known from the diamond on Christian Blaque Laurent Savage’s left ring finger, any idea of an “us” wasn’t an option, even in my dreams. Blaque’s bloodline belonged to one of the top organized crime families in America. He was legendary in the streets of Los Angeles, Kingston, and Atlanta, which was why it was an honor for me to have worked for him, and considering our last encounter, I figured we’d see each other again.

He pulled up the chair directly across from me and sat down. “Hello, gorgeous.”

“Hello, boss. Where’s Goldie?”

“I knew you were upset with me about bringing him to your room, but trust me. It had to happen that way.” Being the second-finest man I’d ever seen with his beautiful smile, sun-kissed skin, and undeniable charm, Blaque knew he had me smitten. “So, how are you holding up, Juliette Rose?” he asked.

“Your cousin, Judge, pulled some strings to make sure I was single-celled, so thank you.”

He forced a smile. “You’re welcome, but you didn’t answer my question. How are you?”

Although Blaque was handsomely dressed in grey Armani, the grocery bags under his daunting eyes, weight loss, and worry lines etched into his face indicated that he was not well. “Still better than you, Christian Laurent.” We had vowed we’d never use our government names again in this lifetime, so I was unsure by his change in formality. But any game Blaque played, I wanted him to know that I held all the trump cards. Then I saw in his eyes that he wasn’t playing.

“What’s wrong? Is it Pearle?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, there haven’t been any changes with Pearle.” Then tears formed in his eyes. “I came to tell you about Blue.”

My heart ached for him. I already knew what happened to Pearle from our brief encounter at the Wilshire, and seeing his pain when he uttered Blue’s name, he didn’t have to say what happened to his cousin. The vicious game we played gave no fucks about criminals, so I already knew. I stroked his hand. “I’m so sorry, Blaque. He was a good brother. As they say, when it rains, it pours.”

“And I’m fighting a storm right now.” I began to massage the tension he held in his hands, and a dazzle appeared in his eye. “But like before, your beauty and touch have managed to bring a smile out of me.”

I pulled away and fidgeted with the cornrows I’d finished days before. “Whatever. I look crazy, and you know I can read a liar.”

He reached across the table and grazed my lips with his thumb. “Then you know I’m telling the truth.”

I couldn’t help but smile at him. “Stop fucking with my emotions and tell me why you’re really here. You could’ve written me about Blue.”

“If my memory serves me correctly, there’s only one of us who fucked with the other’s emotions, and I’m looking at her.”

I hated how Blaque left me speechless. His truths had always smothered me like pillows. I squeezed my thighs together and shifted uncomfortably on my chair.

“Well, you are clearly a happily married man now, and I gave you all the information I could share at the Wilshire so—”

Blaque was silently studying me like he was preparing for a calculus exam, and he knew I had more of the answers, but like I’d told him, giving him my direct contact would get me killed.

“I know,” he said, “and I appreciate you for the tip.”

“Did you meet the girl in red?”

“I met someone better. His name is Larazo. Do you know him?”

“Yes. He’s the contact I hoped you’d meet, but please, be careful. He’s a very bad man.”

“I know.”

Then I reached across the table and grabbed his other hand. “Blaque, I’m truly sorry for my ties to Scarlet Entertainment. I didn’t realize how deep I was in it until it was too late. I would do anything to rewrite those wrongs. I face . . .