Schemes

Book 1: Schemes Series

by Kiki Swinson, Saundra

Genres: African American Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Devil in Sheep's Clothing by Kiki Swinson
Karlie Houston hasn't seen a raise in forever, but the payday loan office she manages is raking in the cash. So why not get what she's rightfully owed by masterminding a heist? Once her lover Sidney's boys hit all the company's locations at one time, there's a fortune to split. But suddenly bodies start dropping - and Karlie better devise the perfect plan to survive.

Twisted Deception by Saundra
Raised by a ruthless mother, Yazz Armstrong lives by "scheme or die". So she's cool with helping her man, Kevon, take control of head dealer Caesar's territory. And when the fallout racks up unexpected casualties, Yazz finds Caesar's bed a refuge - and his empire hers to help rule. Too bad someone with an even more lethal agenda won't stop 'til Yazz and her dreams crash and burn for good.

Release date: October 1, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 240

Sample

“Karlie, please make them stop.” My sister begged me through sobs. But I couldn’t do anything. I was tied up too. All I could do was beg these goons for their mercy.

“No! Please!” I begged, gagging from the mixture of snot and blood running over my lips and into my mouth. The salt from my tears stung the open wounds on my bottom lip. But that was the least of my pain. Another slap across the face almost snapped my neck from my shoulders. The hit landed with so much force, blood and spit shot from between my lips and splattered on my assailant’s crisp white shirt. I wasn’t going to escape this assault. That much was clear.

“Just let her go. It’s my fault,” I groaned through my swollen lips. “Please. She didn’t do anything wrong. It was all me. I swear,” I rasped, barely able to get enough air into my lungs to get the words out.

“Oh yeah? It was your fault? Well, look at what you’ve done,” he growled evilly. “Just look!” He grabbed my face and forced me to watch.

“Agggh!”

Miley let out a pain-filled scream. I could hear another crackling round of electric shocks rocking through her body. It sounded like the sizzle, crackle, and pop of the mosquito light in my uncle’s backyard, cooking the little nuisance bugs when we were kids. I couldn’t even stand to look over at my baby sister’s naked body dangling like a captured animal. They had Miley’s arms extended over her head and her wrists bound to a thick, silver pipe that ran across the warehouse ceiling. Her face was covered in a mix of tears, snot, and blood. Her hair was soaked with sweat and matted to her head. I could see tracks of burn marks running up and down her stomach and extending down her thighs. I knew then that even if by some miracle we made it out of this shit, Miley would never be the same again. I sobbed at the sight and at the thought. It was my greed that had landed us here. It was my need to prove a point to the world. A world that didn’t give two fucks about me or what I had anyway. More skin-searing sizzles interrupted my thoughts. More screams from my sister sent my emotions over the top.

“Miley!” I screeched until my throat burned. I strained against the restraints that held me to the cold metal chair. “Miley! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“Agh!” She let out another scream. This time, urine spilled from between her legs and splashed all over the floor. I was so close I could feel the warm fluid hitting my feet. The smell of my sister’s piss, mixed with my own blood, threatened to make me throw up.

“I . . . I . . . I’m sorry,” I rasped. “I wish I could just take it all back,” I murmured, barely able to formulate the words. The loud laughter that followed told me all I needed to know. There was nothing else I could say or do to make up for what had already happened. Shit had officially gone down the tubes. I had only been trying to find a way for us to survive, but it had turned out to be our destruction. I had singlehandedly killed us.

“Oww!” I yelped, as my downturned head was yanked up by my hair. Pain shot through my scalp as the large gorilla-like hand clenched my long hair.

“Open your fucking eyes,” the deep, scratchy voice demanded. I could feel his hot breath on my face. The stench of old cigarettes and alcohol shot up my nose and to the back of my throat. I forced my battered eyelids open and squinted. The blurry image of his face came into focus, but quickly went fuzzy again.

“You’re going to watch your little bitch sister die now,” he growled in my face. “All you had to do was be loyal. Be smart. But a bitch like you ain’t neither, and now you gotta pay.”

I felt my heart sink. I was powerless. My legs trembled fiercely and sweat danced down my spine. I couldn’t stop obsessing over the what-ifs. What if I had just accepted my position in life? What if I had refused the plan, never gotten involved? What if I had just stopped?

My actions had put us in this predicament, and now nothing could save us.

“Miley. Baby girl, I’m sorry.” I cried so hard my entire body rocked. I heard my sister scream one more time. It was a deep, guttural scream that I would imagine coming from an animal at slaughter. She gurgled a few times. And then there was silence. The silence seemed louder to me than her screams. I just knew right then and there my baby sister was gone.

“Didn’t any fucking body ever teach you not to bite the hand that feeds you?” he said. Then he let out the most evil, maniacal laugh that I’ve ever heard come from a human being. He let my hair go with so much force the chair I was in toppled over and my body crashed to the floor. My jaw cracked against the concrete and shattered under the skin. The mixture of grief for my sister and the pain of the fall sent me into a deep darkness and reeling back in time.

What did you do, Karlie? What did you do? I asked myself.

Two months earlier

“Another damn cut-off notice,” I huffed as I dumped yet another bill onto the growing mountain of bills that sat atop my rickety kitchen table. “This shit don’t make no sense. I work every damn day and can’t get ahead for shit. All of the money that slips through my hands every day, and for what? I ain’t seeing none of that shit.” I let out a long breath and shook my head. “I’m fed up. Real damn fed up. Being broke is for the birds.”

Of course, my prima donna little sister, Miley, was popping her gum while scrolling through her iPhone, like she was going to magically find some hidden money to help us out of our situation. She was the only person I knew who was broke but acted like she was rich. The latest iPhone, expensive bags and shoes . . . you name it, my sister had it. She spent every dime she made on material things.

“Do you hear me? I need more money from you, Miley,” I said, bending my head into her face so she could understand what I was saying. “Together we shouldn’t be struggling this bad. I know you like to floss for the streets, but we don’t have it like that,” I said bitterly.

“What happened to your hustler robbing boyfriend?” Miley said, looking up from her phone for a second, her face folded into an expectant frown.

I cocked my head to the side like I hadn’t heard her correctly. “What?”

How dare this spoiled-ass girl!

“Sidney. Where is that nigga?” she said, smacking her full, lip-gloss-painted shiny lips. “I thought he said he was gon’ hold you down. Yeah, right. That nigga out here sticking up hand-to-hand corner boys. You probably make more working at EZ Cash than he makes robbing them lil broke niggas,” Miley scoffed.

“I know you gotta be kidding me right now,” I retorted.

My nostrils flared at the audacity of her stupid-ass comments. She was always trying to put my boyfriend, Sidney, down, and it irked my nerves more than the mounting bills.

“Shut the hell up, Miley. I don’t wait for a man to take care of me. Unlike somebody I know,” I snapped back, raising an eyebrow at her to let her ass know that her situation was no better. She was way out of line. “You talking about me, but last I check that nigga you running with ain’t laying no bread on these bills either. Your ass is just as broke as me. We broke together, chick. If I don’t have lights, gas, and water up in this bitch . . . you don’t have lights, gas, and water either,” I reminded her. “You want to be around here looking like a million bucks but ain’t got no cable, lights, and gas. You a fucking hood rat.”

“What-ev-er,” Miley mumbled. She knew I was telling the truth.

“Say what you want. We both working at that damn slave ship EZ Cash, and neither one of us ain’t got shit to show for it but bills. You lucky I hooked you up with the job at the other location, or your ass wouldn’t even have no damn iPhone to scroll through or no damn weave to flick over your shoulders. Not that you ain’t running around here with Taz’s wannabe so-called big-time weed-dealer ass too. Broke is broke. If we both got niggas we fuckin’ with and we both broke, then neither one of us ain’t no better than the other. Period,” I lectured. “Bottom line is I need more money from you. Either that or you better come up with a get-rich-quick scheme fast.”

It was bad enough we lived in the Carriage House apartments. Some of the worst apartments in Virginia Beach. I had hopes and dreams of someday getting the hell out of the slum-ass place. It was one of the worst neighborhoods in the area too. I don’t think my sister got it. She had her head in the material clouds all of the time.

Miley sucked her teeth and stormed out of the kitchen. I flopped down in one of the raggedy kitchen chairs. I covered my face with my hands and inhaled deeply. Thinking. I always felt bad when my sister and I argued.

Miley never liked to hear the truth, but as her older sister, it was my job to make sure she did. I mean, let’s face it, Miley and I were in the same boat so there was no sense in us pointing fingers. My mother left us both for dead when she died of a heroin overdose. I was fourteen and Miley was ten when we found our mother, slumped over, face gray, lips blue, with the needle still jammed in her arm. I had been the one who wiped Miley’s tears away and rocked her to sleep at night after that tragedy. I had to grow up fast after that. I had always played mother to my sister, even before our mother died, but after her death I became a fourteen-year-old adult. I had tears in my eyes now just thinking back to that time.

Miley and I knocked around to a few of our relatives after our mother died, but that shit didn’t last. My mother’s sister—yes, I refer to her as my mother’s sister and not my aunt—tried to sell us to her men friends for money. Verona straight tried to turn us into little prostitutes. One night, some big, fat white dude came to the house and requested a night with Miley. This nasty motherfucker said he wanted the youngest one in the house. That was the last straw for me. I had to whoop Verona’s ass, threaten that white man with a butcher’s knife, and take Miley and run like hell.

My mother’s brother, Darwin, another trifling ass family member, was collecting our Social Security check but leaving us starving with no clothes or shoes. Living with him was no better than being on the damn street. We never had food or clothes. This dude would be fly while Miley and I walked around with clothes so raggedy we looked like two homeless people.

Our last resort was my mother’s aunt, our great aunt. My grandmother’s sister, Bernice. As old as that bitch was, she had to be the worst of them all. She would make Miley and me get up at the crack of dawn to clean her house every day. When I say clean, I don’t mean straighten up or make up beds. I mean dust, mop, scrub, clean windows, and shit like that . . . every single day. Who needs their house cleaned every single damn day? Then that evil bitch Bernice would give us one meal of plain, watered-down grits but not until after all of the cleaning was done to her standards. After she used her white-gloved hand to inspect for dust and dirt, she’d feed us the slop and then make us leave the house. She would tell us we could not return until 9 PM at night when it was time for us to go to bed. Dinner . . . yeah right, that was a joke. We never got dinner unless Bernice was having company from her church. We would literally be roaming the streets all day long because going to school wasn’t even an option with the dirty, threadbare clothes she had us in. The fucking worst. I got so fed up, I grabbed Miley one day and dragged both of us downtown to Social Services. I signed myself and my sister into the system without even thinking twice. It was either that or we’d be homeless on the streets.

People complain about foster care, but trust me, it was a hell of a lot better than dealing with my own low-down, dirty family. I only had one condition when we entered the system—I was not going to be separated from my sister. Ever. Period. No matter what. I don’t care how old I got and how many homes wanted Miley and not me; I would have the foster care workers turn them down. Finally, we were placed with a really sweet Spanish woman named Magda. She loved us until the day she closed her eyes. We loved her too.

Miley was the only family I had in the entire world. We fought like archenemies sometimes, but I loved her little conceited ass no matter what. Nothing was ever going to change that. Not even now with her riding on my last good nerve.

“Are you going to Beans’s party?” Miley asked, slipping back into the kitchen and breaking up my little blast-from-the-past daydream. I looked up at her, my face folded into a scowl.

She can’t be serious right now!

“Bitch, didn’t I just say we got a damn cut-off notice and you asking me about some damn party!” I shot back. This was what I meant about her. She didn’t believe shit stunk unless she fell face first into the shit. She was so used to me always thinking of a master plan to bail us out. Not this time. “You really have your priorities fucked up, Miley,” I grumbled, shaking my head in disgust.

“Well, I heard from one of Taz’s boys that Sidney and his crew supposed to be rolling deep to the party. Which means bitches will be circling like buzzards on dead meat. So . . . humph, if I was you, I would be pulling my shit together to be there. Fuck them bills. Ain’t like we haven’t lived without lights n’ shit before. You better make sure ya nigga ain’t out there throwing his paper at the next thot. Especially if you could use that paper to pay some of your bills.” The tension in my face quickly eased into worry. Miley knew exactly what buttons to push to get my attention.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Miley mocked once she saw my facial expression. “I guess you ain’t thinking about them bills now, right?” She sashayed out of the kitchen with that hateful-ass teasing giggle she always did. Her words about Sidney being surrounded by chicks in the club was playing in my ears and nagging me. I knew how these hungry hoes in Virginia Beach operated. For every one man there were about fifty chicks so keeping your man faithful was a daily chore.

I got up from the chair and fixed myself a drink. Even that didn’t ease my mind. I growled and let out a long sigh. “Fucking fed up,” I grumbled under my breath. I took another swig of my drink. Still, I felt no relief. It was so damn frustrating that I worked around so much money on a daily basis, yet I was struggling like a damn welfare recipient. I slammed my empty glass down on the chipped Formica counter top.

“Fuck it.”

Miley was right. If I didn’t go to the party God only knew what and who Sidney would be doing without me there watching his ass.

Sidney and I had been together two years and we’d had our fair share of side chick incidents. Sidney was six feet, two inches of caramel gorgeousness. Women all over Virginia Beach knew about his fine ass and wanted him just the same. When we met, Sidney had the East Side drug game on lock. He was the boss of the streets. That was until he got knocked after one of his runners got bagged and snitched. After Sidney came home from his time in the feds, there was no way he could touch a drug, so he resorted to robbing hustlers. It was risky, but at least he wasn’t on the Narcotics Unit’s radar anymore. Sidney may not have as much money as he used to back then, but his dick game was still the best so I was always on the lookout for chicks trying to get at him.

“So what’s the damn verdict?” Miley came back into the kitchen. She was like a damn annoying fly buzzing in my ear. Unrelenting and annoying. I rolled my eyes.

“Hook my hair up for me.” I caved. Miley busted out laughing.

“I knew your ass wasn’t going to let that nigga be up in there without you.”

“Oh shut up. You better worry about coming up with your half of these damn bills. And . . . I’m wearing my Gucci stilettos, not you,” I stressed. That shut Miley up real quick.

“Mmm-hmmm. See what I mean. Boom! Just like I suspected,” Miley yelled in my ear over the music. “That nigga is busted!”

She didn’t have to say anything else, nor did she have to point out the obvious. We both noticed Sidney at the same time. He was so engrossed in a conversation with a female that included a lot of laughing and smiling, that he never looked up or noticed me. Of course the bitch that was in his face also smiling and blushing like whatever they were sharing was making her pussy wet. I bet she thought she had snagged her a trick for the night for free drinks and VIP treatment. As I scanned the little huddle of people around him, my insides began to boil. There were lots of bitches hanging all around Sidney and his entourage. I felt heat rising from my feet and climbing my body as I watched Sidney cheesing like some little thirsty young boy about to get his first piece. I squinted my eyes into slits. I felt my hands curling into fists on their own. My heart pumped furiously too.

“Oh, this nigga said he ain’t have no money, but he look like he got a lot of bottles on his table though,” I grumbled under my breath. “Want to be smiling at a bitch?” I gritted. Before I could even get my full thoughts together, I was on the move. My sister was right on my heels. She always had my back in situations like this. Miley would fight an old lady too. She didn’t give a damn.

As I navigated through the sea of bodies in the club, a few dudes tried. . .