Fistful of Benjamins

by Kiki Swinson, De'nesha Diamond

Genres: African American Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

National bestselling authors Kiki Swinson and De'nesha Diamond light it up with two devious tales of players, hustles--and running out of time. . . Special Delivery Kiki Swinson Mail carrier Gabriella Vasquez is making stacks of sweet paper from the innocent-looking packages she delivers on her route. And that much cocaine can buy a lot of the sweet life--and even more of her sexy partner Eduardo's undivided attention. But when the Feds make her an offer she can't refuse, can she play Eduardo and his ruthless kingpin boss--and survive? Gun Play De'Nesha Diamond The only thing Julian Smith can remember is a beautiful woman's anguished face. Still, for a man with no memory, he suddenly has a lot of enemies. Now he'll need all the lethal skills he didn't know he had to elude his pursuers and uncover the truth. But deep in the heart of the Caribbean underworld lies the one danger he'll never see coming in his merciless quest to get his life back. . . "Kiki captures the heat of the streets." --Wahida Clark "Diamond is dead-on with authentic slang . . . The raw prose will burn itself in readers' minds, leaving them screaming for the next installment." --Library Journal on Street Divas

Release date: September 30, 2014

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

“Oh my God, Eduardo. What do you think they will do to us? I don’t want to die . . . I can’t leave my son,” I cried, barely able to get my words out between sobbing and the fact that my teeth were chattering together so badly.

The warehouse-type of room we were being held captive in was freezing. I mean, freezing—like we were sitting inside of a meat locker type of freezing. I could even see puffs of frosty air with each breath that I took. I knew it was summertime outside, so the conditions inside where we were being held told me we were purposely being made to freeze. The smell of sawdust and industrial chemicals were also so strong that the combination was making my stomach churn. Eduardo flexed his back against mine and turned his head as much as the ropes that bound us together allowed. He was trembling from the subzero conditions as well.

“Gabby, just keep your mouth shut. If we gon’ die right now, at least we are together. I know I ain’t say it a lot, but I love you. I love you for everything you did and put up with from me. I am sorry I ever let you get into this bullshit from the jump. It wasn’t no place for you from day one, baby girl,” Eduardo whispered calmly through his battered lips. With everything that had happened, I didn’t know how he was staying so calm. It was like he had no emotion behind what was happening or like he had already resigned himself to the fact that we were dead. In my opinion, his ass should’ve been crying, fighting, and yelling for the scary men to let me go. Something. Eduardo was the drug dealer, not me, so maybe he had prepared himself to die many times. I hadn’t ever prepared myself to die, or to be tied up like an animal, beaten, and waiting to possibly get my head blown off. This was not how I saw my life ending up. All I had ever wanted was a good man, a happy family, a nice place to live, and just a good life.

“I don’t care about being together when we die, Eduardo! You forget I have a son. Who is going to take care of him if I’m dead over something I didn’t do?” I replied sharply. A pain shot through my skull like someone had shot me in the head. I was ready to lose it. My shoulders began quaking as I broke down in another round of sobs. I couldn’t even feel the pain that had previously permeated my body from the beating I had taken. I was numb in comparison to the pain I was feeling in my heart behind leaving my son. I kept thinking about my son and my mother, who were probably both sitting in a strange place wondering how I had let this happen to them. That was the hard part, knowing that they were going to be innocent casualties of my stupid fucking actions. I should’ve stuck to carrying mail instead of stepping into the shit that had me in this predicament. I was the dummy in this situation. I was so busy looking for love in all the wrong places. I had done all of this to myself.

“Shhh. Don’t cry. We just have to pray that Luca will have mercy on us. I will try to make him believe that it wasn’t us. I’ll tell him we didn’t do it. We weren’t responsible for everything that happened,” Eduardo whispered to me.

“But he’s the one who got us out so fast. I keep thinking that he only did that because he thought we might start talking. He got us out just so he could kill us, don’t you see that? We are finished. Done. Dead,” I said harshly. The tears were still coming. It was like Eduardo couldn’t get what I was saying. We were both facing death and I wasn’t ready to die!

“You don’t know everything. Maybe it was something else. Let me handle—” Eduardo started to tell me, but his words were clipped short when we both heard the sound of footsteps moving toward us. The footsteps sounded off like gunshots against the icy-cold concrete floors. My heart felt like it would explode through the bones in my chest and suddenly it felt like my bladder was filled to capacity. The footsteps stopped. I think I stopped breathing too. Suddenly, I wasn’t cold anymore. Maybe it was the adrenaline coursing fiercely through my veins, but suddenly I was burning up hot.

“Eduardo Santos,” a man’s voice boomed. “Look at you now. All caught up in your own web.” The man had a thick accent, the kind my older uncles from Puerto Rico had when they tried really hard to speak English.

“Luca—I—I—can—” Eduardo stuttered, his body trembling so hard it was making mine move. Now I could sense fear and anguish in Eduardo’s voice. That was the first time Eduardo had sounded like he understood the seriousness of our situation.

“Shut up!” the man screamed. “You are a rat and in Mexico rats are killed and burned so that the dirty spirit does not corrupt anything around it,” the man called Luca screamed. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I couldn’t keep the tears from bursting from the sides.

I was too afraid to even look at him. I kept my head down, but I had seen there were at least four more pairs of feet standing around. Eduardo and I had been working for this man and had never met him. I knew he was some big drug kingpin inside the Calixte Mexican drug cartel that operated out of Miami, but when I was making the money, I never thought of meeting him, especially not under these circumstances. I was helping this bastard get rich and couldn’t even pick him out of a police lineup if my life depended on it.

“Please, Luca. I’m telling you I wasn’t the rat. Maybe it was Lance . . . I mean, I just worked for him. He was the one responsible to you. He was the one that kept increasing everything. I did everything I could to keep this from happening,” Eduardo pleaded his case, his words rushing out of his mouth.

“Oh, now you blame another man? Another cowardly move. Eduardo, I have people inside of the DEA who work for me. I know everything. If I didn’t pay off the judge to set bail so I could get you and your little girlfriend out of there, you were prepared to sign a deal. You were prepared to tell everything. Like the fucking cock-sucking rat that you are. You know nothing about death before dishonor. You would’ve sold out your own mother to get out of there. You failed the fucking test, you piece of shit,” Luca spat, sucking his teeth. “Get him up,” Luca said calmly, apparently unmoved by Eduardo’s pleas.

“Luca! Luca! Give me another chance, please!” Eduardo begged, his voice coming out as a shrill scream. His words exploded like bombs in my ears. Another chance? Did that mean that Eduardo had snitched? Did that mean he put me in danger when I was only doing everything he ever told me to do? Did Eduardo sign my death sentence without even telling me what the fuck he was going to do? I immediately thought about my family again. These people obviously knew where I lived and where they could find my mother and my son, even after they went back home. A wave of cramps trampled through my guts. Before I could control it, vomit spewed from my lips like lava from a volcano.

“What did you do to me, Eduardo?” I coughed and screamed through tears and vomit. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t care anymore. They were going to kill me anyway, right? “You fucking snitch! What did you do?” I gurgled. I had exercised more loyalty than Eduardo had. The men who were there to kill us said nothing and neither did Eduardo. I felt like someone had kicked me in the chest and the head right then. My heart was broken.

Two of Luca’s goons cut the ropes that had kept Eduardo and me bound together. It was like they had cut the strings to my heart too. Eduardo didn’t even look at me as they dragged him away screaming. I fell over onto my side, too weak to sit up on my own. Eduardo had betrayed me in the worse way. I was just a pawn in a much, much bigger game. And, all for what? A few extra dollars a week that I didn’t have anything to show for now, except maybe some expensive pocketbooks, a few watches, some shoes, and an apartment I was surely going to never see again. Yes, I had been living ghetto fabulous, shopping for expensive things that I could’ve never imagined in my wildest dreams, but I had lost every dollar that I had ever stashed away for my son as “just-in-case” money. I had done all of this for him and in the end I had left him nothing.

“Please. Please don’t kill me,” I begged through a waterfall of tears as I curled my body into a fetal position. With renewed spirit to see my son, I begged and pleaded for my life. I told them I wasn’t a snitch and that I had no idea what Eduardo had done. I got nothing in response. There was a lot of Spanish being spoken, but I could only understand a fraction of it; so much for listening to my mother when she tried speaking Spanish to me all of my life.

“I promise I didn’t speak to any DEA agents or the police. Please tell Luca that it wasn’t me,” I cried some more, pleading with the men that were left there to guard me. None of the remaining men acted like they could hear me. In my assessment, this was it. I was staring down a true death sentence. I immediately began praying. If my mother, a devout Catholic, had taught me nothing else, she had definitely taught me how to pray.

“Hail Mary, full of grace . . .” I mumbled, closing my eyes and preparing for my impending death. As soon as I closed my eyes, I was thrust backwards in my mind, reviewing how I’d ever let the gorgeous, smooth-talking Eduardo Santos get my gullible ass into this mess.

Virginia Beach, Virginia, one year earlier

“Excuse me, mister, can you get the dog, so I can bring the mail in?” I called up to the tall, bald, fat Deebo look-alike standing in the doorway of an old, decrepit house on my mail route. The man just grunted like I hadn’t even spoken to him. The dog was standing on high alert, tail stiff as shit, eyes focused in on me, like he knew he was going to eat my damn heart right out of my chest. That huge beast of a dog was just waiting for me to open the chain-link gate. I wasn’t that stupid. I had been a mail carrier for two years and I already had been bitten by two dogs. I wasn’t trying for a third time. I squinted my eyes at the ugly-ass man and tapped my foot impatiently.

“Mister, I am going to ask you again to get the dog or else I’ll be forced to return the mail and tell them it was undeliverable,” I said as calm and as nice as I could. I really wanted to curse his black ass out.

“He ain’t gonna bother you,” the man grumbled. “Don’t be such a pussy, drama queen. If you take my mail back I’ll report you to your supervisor.”

It was like someone had splashed me with cold water. I couldn’t believe he had just said that shit to me. I was gearing up to curse him out and throw his mail into his yard, when someone approached from across the street. I turned my head because I could see the guy coming toward me from my peripheral vision.

“Yo, Brock. Why your miserable ass giving this beautiful mail lady a hard fucking time? Just take that stupid-ass mutt, that fake-ass Rottweiler, inside that dirty-ass shack you call a house and let her deliver the mail. You ain’t getting shit important in the mail, no way. It ain’t the first of the month,” a gorgeous guy called out as he walked up to where I was standing. I had to turn all the way around to face the guy and he was surely a sight to see. I couldn’t stop staring at him. He had the most beautiful face I had ever seen on a man and forget about his swag—it was on one thousand. He was about six feet tall with the smoothest, most perfect cinnamon complexion I’d ever seen. He had a headful of tight, dark curls hugging his scalp that were cut neatly with a fresh line-up making him look clean-cut and sharp. His goatee was also perfectly trimmed and it accented his full, smooth lips. It was his eyes that were the most striking. They were a cross between hazel and green and the shape was hard to describe, but piercing nonetheless. I was stuck on stupid looking at this dude. He was definitely movie-star quality. I suddenly felt a bit shy and awkward. I knew that my U.S. Postal Service uniform didn’t do much for my shape and I didn’t have on one ounce of makeup that day. I guess that’s what I got for rushing out of the house that morning.

“Thank you,” I said, blushing like crazy. The guy grabbed the mail from me as the big, ugly dummy inside the gate took his dog inside.

“Don’t worry about Brock . . . he’s all bark and no ass bite. Give me the stuff, I ain’t scared of that big-for-nothing nigga. I’ll take the mail up there for you today,” the gorgeous guy said, smiling. Damn! His smile was a woman-killer. I was standing there in shock, gushing like a teenage girl who’d just gotten spoken to by her first crush. I couldn’t help my eyes from batting like a damn coquettish cartoon character. The gorgeous guy took the mail and tossed it on the steps inside the gate. He came back out to where I was standing and smiled again. Those eyes, those thick lips and perfect teeth were more than I could stand. I knew right at that moment that I wanted to be with this dude in the worst way.

“I’m Eduardo, but my friends call me Eddie,” he said, extending his hand toward me. My heart sped up, but in a good way.

“Gabriella,” I said, almost whispering. I gave him my hand and thought he’d shake it. Instead, he took it and kissed the top of it. Oh, he was laying it on thick. I swear I almost wet my damn panties. I couldn’t even look him directly in the eye, which was a sign that I was feeling him. I looked across the street, trying to see where he’d come from, but there were nothing but abandoned buildings over there. I looked back at Eduardo, not in his eyes, but at his clothes. He was dressed sharply in a pair of neat, slim-fitting True Religion jeans, a Gucci T-shirt, and a pair of Giuseppe Zanotti sneakers. He was too well dressed to be living in an abandoned house. So where had he come from? Strange. Yet, I wanted to know more. I was definitely intrigued.

“Can I call you sometime, Gabriella?” Eduardo asked me, snapping me out of my little daydream. “I think you’re beautiful.” I thought he would never ask. I almost fainted when he said that I was beautiful. Don’t get me wrong; he was fine as shit, but I wasn’t so shabby myself. I was a thick-in-the-right-places type of chick with round hips, plump ass, and medium, but perfect, tits. I stood five feet, five inches, I was the color of melted butter, and my skin was blemish-free. My features were typically Puerto Rican—dark, straight black hair that curled up nicely when wet, dark brown, deep-set round eyes, small heart-shaped lips and nice teeth. That day, I had my hair wet and curly, which usually always had dudes on my mail routes trying to holla at me. Trust me, I usually ignored them all, but this was different. Even though I had no makeup on, Eduardo had told me he thought I was beautiful.

“Oh . . . um . . . sure. Thanks again for helping me out. It’s so crazy delivering mail around here. All of the houses looked run-down and all of the people have big dogs that they never want to put on a leash or anything,” I said, laughing awkwardly as I scribbled down my number.

“Yeah, all these niggas waiting on is SSI checks and letters from the welfare telling them when their next load of food stamps gonna be on their EBT cards. Lowlife shit around here. I would be scared to even deliver mail around this bitch,” Eduardo agreed with me. I was smiling all goofy because I had been taking quick peeks at his lips. He was really gorgeous. I couldn’t say that to myself enough.

“Well, I have to go. I hope to hear from you,” I said, flirting as hard as I could. Truthfully, I could’ve spent the rest of my workday standing right there talking to him.

“Oh, you’ll hear from me baby girl, don’t worry,” Eduardo said as he turned to walk back across the street. I had an extra pep in my step the rest of that day.

“Yes! Yes! Fuck me! Harder! Don’t stop! Don’t ever stop!” I screamed as I dug my nails deep into the skin on Eduardo’s back. The more I screamed, the faster and harder he slid his thickness in and out of my dripping wet pussy.

It had been two weeks since our first meeting on my mail route. I usually didn’t fuck dudes this . . .