The Double Cross 2

by Anna J.

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

At one point, Selah, Vice, and Skye were inseparable … but money will change the very meaning of "friends to the end."
Life after losing a loved one can be hard, especially if you're the reason why they are no longer here. These are the times that you are supposed to lean on your friends the most. Selah is about to learn a hard lesson that she may not be ready
for. Will her ride or die chicks ride with her again, or will this be the end of the trio? Feelings will be hurt, and the things they've done in the dark will come back to haunt them, whether or not they're prepared. Nowadays, you have to be careful who you call a friend.

Release date: September 28, 2021

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Friends. How many of us have them? It’s such a simple question that should be easy to answer but has so many stipulations that you have to really think about that shit for a while before you’re confident you answered it correctly. I’m talking about true friendship, “ten toes to the ground, standing side by side, we in this together” friendship. The ones you never have to have doubts about because you know where their loyalty lies, and it ain’t a lie. They have your best interest at heart over their own every single time. The ones you can have around your man and not think sly thoughts because they wouldn’t dare cross that line. The ones you have around your parents and they feel at home because your home is their home, and vice versa. Your girls. You tell them all your bullshit, and they never judge you because they did shit just as fucked up or worse alone and with you. Your secret keepers. Your friends.

Well, let me tell you about friendship. I’m slowly learning not to fuck with it. It ain’t healthy, just saying. You have to be careful with that shit and read the caution label on the back like a bottle of cleaning solution. Hell, we learned in science class not to mix bleach and ammonia, and mixing the wrong bitches together can prove just as deadly. There are rules to this shit, feel me? It’s the Bible as far as friendship goes. Following rules is a must. Those who don’t always end up salty as fuck at the end. I found this out firsthand the hard way.

Rule number one: you have to make sure that the level of friendship in your head is the same as what’s in the other person’s or people’s heads. There’s nothing worse than a lopsided friendship. This right here is guaranteed to put you in your feelings quick!

Rule number two: ensure that your crew is air fucking tight. The shit for sure needs to be leakproof. No secrets out. No secrets kept among the squad. No spreading rumors with basic bitches.

Rule number three: make sure that shit is consistent across the board because, in real life, bitches don’t always want you to be successful. They will low-key sabotage you, the entire time being your biggest cheerleader, and blame you for the outcome of some foolishness like it was really your fault. And maybe it is your fault for not seeing her shady ass for who she really is in the first place. Trust is earned, not given all willy-nilly. They will always show you who they are no matter what they tell you. Actions speak louder than hot pink lipstick on a dark-skinned bitch.

Rule number four: do not gossip about your main bitch with side bitches. Who are side bitches? Them hoes who are not a part of your main crew. Coworkers, neighbors, cousins you see once a year—anyone who doesn’t hold a space in your heart is a side bitch, period. However, listen to the tea. There’s always some good shit floating on top with the lemons, and just know that, before it was brought to you, some sugar was added to make it extra tasty. You’re going to do one of two things with this info. If it’s harmful, take that shit right back to the crew so that you can deal with and dead the situation, in that order. If it’s useful, tuck it away until you need it. Even your main bitches can be shady sometimes, so always protect your neck.

Rule number five, the most important rule of them all: remember, anybody can catch a bullet. Team included. Protect your heart at all costs, and do not apologize for it. Hell, they will always move accordingly. You should do the same. If they weren’t trying to hurt you, there would be nothing to get back to you in the first place.

Trust me on everything I just said. Believe me, you want to. You’ll be out here talking that “best friend” crap, ready to pull the trigger and do time in the clink for they ass, and they don’t even fuck with you like that. The same bitch you riding for will sell you out like $50 for $100 on an EBT card with her food-stamp ass. What’s even more crazy is everybody knows this, even you, but you refuse to believe it. This is your best fucking friend. Why would you ever doubt her loyalty? The one you give your last to because she’s never hesitated to give her last to you. Why would you not believe she felt the same way about you that you did about her? The one you stop all conversation about because can’t nobody tell you no bad shit about your main bitch. The one who does you the dirtiest. The one you least suspect. You’ll soon come to find that taking the time to listen to some of those conversations may be beneficial to your health. Keyword: listen. And then act accordingly.

You’ll also find out that the one you stand for is the same one you’ll eventually have to dig a hole for. When you stay ready, much doesn’t surprise you. However, it will still hurt like hell, and that’s when you have to stop and think rationally. Sit still and get yourself together. The burn from that is like nothing you’ve ever experienced even if you have before. It’s a fresh hurt every time because the old friends who are still left know what you’ve been through and will still do some fuck shit to blow your mind. Sometimes, without a shadow of a doubt, you have to put them down first or they will come get you for sure. Blink and she got your ass. Know it, own it, claim it, and do what’s necessary when the time comes. Now is not the time to hesitate for even a millisecond. Shoot that bitch dead in the head, preferably at close range, and deal with the body later. Clean her fucking clock, and don’t think twice about it.

For the record, because in reality this should always be at the forefront of your every thought, staying ready is a learned behavior that’s in direct correlation with distrust. These hoes ain’t loyal, period. This isn’t new information either. This is something your gut has been telling you since day one when you met her ass, and for some odd reason you chose to ignore the damn signs. You see how she treats others, so don’t ever think your ass is special. Red flags just slapping you upside the head, and you just turn a blind eye to it all. Just stupid. You’ll soon come to find that’s one of the biggest mistakes you’ll ever make, but not the only one. You’ll definitely make more mistakes because you lead in love with your hardheaded ass. Love can’t fix everything, sis, and you will find out the hard way that the ones you love most are the ones you really have to watch your back around. Those “throw a rock and hide your hands” type bitches. Wolves dressed in friends’ clothing. “Kiss your mom on the cheek and kill her child” ass bitches.

“Dig just a little deeper. I gotta be sure this bitch doesn’t pop back up on us. We don’t need a repeat of what happened before,” I said to my girl Skye as we dug a fresh grave not too far from where we put Chase in the ground just a year before. We started to throw her ass right on top of him, but I refused to let him have company even in the grave.

It took everything in me not to dig his dumb ass up and shoot him again. I still couldn’t believe he wasn’t here with us physically in the flesh. We were supposed to be working on marriage and a baby who looked like us. I still couldn’t believe he had the audacity to cheat on me—with my sister of all fucking people. I still couldn’t believe I was in love with his now-dead ass. He typically wasn’t the type I went for, but I gave him a chance in spite of the fact that I knew better than to fuck with a drug boy. It was the good dick for me. I still couldn’t believe this shit even mattered to me as much as it did. Why the fuck am I not over it at this point? I made a mental note to discuss these feelings with my therapist on my next visit.

I kept trying to move forward, but I was stuck in this rut I couldn’t seem to climb out of. I wasn’t really sure I even wanted out. Lately I’d been coming to the realization that, all jokes aside, I’d killed people, people I’d loved, still loved. I’d ended lives, and these motherfuckers wouldn’t let me rest. I deserved to feel like this. It was my punishment for the wrong I’d done, which was why I wouldn’t mention it to anyone—not Skye, not my parents, not the therapist, not the woman in the mirror. At this point I felt like I deserved whatever torture came to me. I’m going straight to hell for the shit I’ve done. You can put your entire check on that and double up.

Wait, let me just clear up something right quick. I personally only murdered three people: both my exes and my sister. All of them were impulse kills because I was in my feelings and triggered by the moment. I regretted them all. Whatever happened to just breaking it off with someone and walking away? Clearly, I always brought a damn gun to the party, and that had proven repeatedly to cause more harm than good. I was a damn monster, even though my therapist and Skye tried to convince me otherwise. As far as I was concerned, I was a demon just walking among the people above the ground. All I was missing were visible horns.

You would think it gets easier living life after murdering people, but each time is harder than the last. You learn a lot about a person once they are gone, but you have to decipher the bullshit to find the truth. You learn even more about yourself, and trust me when I say you are not ready for that truth. That person staring back at you in the mirror is mean as shit. No remorse. No held punches. Throwing every wrong you’ve ever done right in your face with full force so that you can really feel the impact.

Everybody always wants to tell you what someone said about you when they get mad, but you can miss me with the bullshit. If you didn’t feel inclined to clue me in on the spot and stop that convo dead in its tracks, don’t try to backtrack that shit months later. You had your cup ready for that tea, only to swallow it and find out that shit is bitter to the taste. You just as shady as the bitch who started the conversation. Shit, a friend once told me that I was hanging out with people who didn’t even fuck with me like that. I asked her, as my friend, why did she allow it? If you know the people ain’t checking for me, why would you not say anything, but want to tell me years later? The bigger question is, why would any person feel comfortable discussing you with anyone else? Shade check! Neither that bitch who’s pouring or the bitch holding the cup can be trusted. Fuck them both.

Oh, another word of advice. When those people call you to tell you something someone else said, stop the conversation, and if you have their number, put them on a three-way conference call. That way, everything that needs to be discussed can be talked about among all involved. It’s so easy to lie on a person when they’re not there to defend themselves. This takes you right back to rule number four. If a person feels comfortable talking about a person to you, imagine what they say about you when you’re not around.

These are the questions you have to ask yourself, and eventually your crew, when shit gets crucial. Don’t be like me and ignore the signs, sis. Do yourself this favor, and address that shit immediately. Be careful with those kinds of hoes and keep them extra close. The fact that any random person can go to your “friend” and discuss you candidly is a dead giveaway that the loyalty you thought was there may not be. That they never even brought the tea back to you, and you have to find out from some random-ass person months later, is all the evidence you need to confirm you acted in your own best interest. Best believe your friend is talking about your ass too, and maybe y’all not as friendly as you thought.

Chase hit me close to the heart, and burying him drained me for sure, but this Vice shit hit dead center like a bull’s-eye just as hard as Sajdah’s murder, if not harder. I’d never thought the day would come when I’d have to put down one of my own again, but it just goes to show that trust is earned, and even when you think you can trust them, you can’t. I hated that the people I loved the most kept proving me wrong. The person I grew to love from a child turned out to be a totally different person I didn’t recognize anymore. Why can’t folks just act right? Life would be so much easier for everyone that way.

We dug in silence a little more, and then I boosted Skye out of the hole first. I was a little afraid that she would leave me in there and bury me alive, but once she was out, she immediately reached down to pull me up. Who would know to look for me here if she were to try some slick shit? We were the only two back here, besides the two dead asses. What was stopping her from bashing me in the head with a shovel and burying me in the same hole? No one would ever know the truth, but unlike this one, my folks would hunt me down. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t know to look in a self-made hole in the bottom of West Philly behind an abandoned house. These thoughts almost had me trying to climb out of the hole without her assistance, but I knew enough about people to know I couldn’t show fear. She would know she had me for sure.

Did I think Skye would do me like that? I definitely felt like she was capable of pulling it off. My heart was telling me that I could trust her fully. She’d yet to make me feel like I couldn’t. I didn’t want to box her in with the rest, but I didn’t think Vice or Sajdah could do me as dirty as they did, and you see what happened to their simple behinds. Both were dead in the fucking ground, and I would have put Skye’s ass there too if I had to. Hell, who was I kidding? I didn’t trust Skye, and my guard would be up until I was the last one standing.

The first thing I did was make sure both phones that needed to be discarded were still in the hole before she pulled me up. I just needed to make sure for my own sanity this time that Chase’s phone was gone for good, and now this phone was gone too. I took a hammer to both of them and burned the SIM cards as an added measure.

At this point it didn’t matter who found those phones. You weren’t going to be able to do a damn thing with them shattered into a million pieces unless you just had some time on your hands and a steady hand to glue them shits back together. Jealousy will have you doing some crazy shit, and I had to protect myself at all costs in spite of the love I had for her. I was overly cautious these days, and rightfully so. This last year had taken me all the way through the ringer, and I just didn’t have the mental capacity for anything else to go wrong. Throw the whole year away, and let’s skip ahead a few years if we can. I was over it, and I needed these memories as far behind me as possible.

We popped the hood on the trunk and dragged the body out with a hard thud as it hit the ground. She definitely wasn’t handled with care like Chase was as I carelessly scraped her body across the concrete. I almost wanted to stomp on her ass again before throwing her in the dirt, but I resisted. Her being dead was far worse than anything else I could do to her now, and stomping her out would just make a mess we didn’t have time to clean up. I started to hide her ass in the basement in Tasker Homes and let the rats eat her corpse, but the residents didn’t deserve that kind of torture from having to smell a dead body for weeks on end. They weren’t the type to snitch over there, so she would have just sat until there was nothing but bones left. Now the worms would feast on her. I hoped she was looking up at her body being tortured the entire time it was in the ground, because she surely went to hell for the life she lived.

It wasn’t the fault of anyone in Tasker Homes that she was a snake-ass bitch, so to the ground she went. When we got her to the opening, we rolled her in headfirst, not caring how she landed at the bottom. Her body hit with a hard thud that echoed a little in the quiet of the night, and it looked like it landed in a very uncomfortable and awkward position. Immediately we began filling the hole again, each pile of dirt hitting harder than the last. No words of concern. No prayers for forgiveness or a peaceful rest. No remorse. I got her before she got me. That was the way the game was played.

Once we were satisfied with the filling of the hole, I knew the hole she had placed in my heart wouldn’t last long. I hated to have to do this to her, but she begged me for it. Skye knew it too. She forced my hand in this situation when all I was trying to do was elevate us as a unit. Shit, we were the last of the Mohicans. I wanted the very best for all of us, and Skye did too. We came to find out that this one didn’t really give a fuck about us. It hurt me to the core that she couldn’t see what I was trying to do for her. Unfortunately, I had to give her the same treatment I gave to my ex-fiancé. The only difference between her and Chase was that no one would look for her for long. They would inquire, but she’d be a distant memory in no time. She was from the projects, and down at that end of the world, it’s every woman for herself.

Taking the broom we brought along with us, I evened out the leftover earth as best I could in the dark, being sure to sweep away our boot prints as we backed our way up out of the yard and to the car, same as we’d done before. It felt almost routine at this point and actually began to hurt less each time. Heading to Tasker Homes to drop our dirt in the furnace was next on the list as we undressed and bagged everything up before getting into Skye’s vehicle.

Now that she was dead, her truck had been smashed days ago at the scrap yard on Essington Avenue after it was stripped of useful pieces that could be sold for cash. The same dude handled that who took care of my sister’s car when we needed him to hide that truth for us as well. That was one less thing on the list of shit we had to hide from the law. Hell, I almost hated to crush it considering she used the money I gave her to purchase it. It was in pristine condition, fully loaded and everything, but I didn’t feel like being paranoid. . .