The Last Kings

by C.N. Phillips

Genres: African American Urban; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A city full of lies, deceit, and cold-blooded murder, Detroit plays widow to drug cartel after drug cartel, and the Last Kings are the latest to take over the throne. It seems that nothing can crumble their empire, but when an unexpected series of events take place and blood is shed, everything spirals out of control.

Can Sadie and Mocha survive the game as the head women in charge, or will disloyalty and treachery threaten to end them for good? Ride with C. N. Philips as she tells the greatest story street fiction has ever seen.

Release date: August 30, 2016

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Three Years Earlier

“Mocha, wake your lazy ass up!” I yelled at my best friend who was snoozing loudly in her bed.

She continued snoring like she hadn’t heard me, although I was pretty sure the people in the dorm room next to us had. I grabbed a pillow from my bed and hauled it across the room at her, hitting her dead in her pretty sleeping face. The expression it held when she was fully awake almost made me regret my actions.

“Sadie!” Mocha growled before she sat up and shot me the dirtiest look she could muster.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Who could take a person seriously when they had slobber sliding down their face? Not to mention her hair was all over the place.

“Shut up, bitch, and go clean yourself up. We have class in an hour,” I said back to her still grinning.

“I don’t see anything funny! I was sleeping good!” Mocha complained, stretching.

“Clearly,” I said sarcastically.

“Fuck you, Sadie. I’m not going to class. I’m tired.” Mocha tried to throw the covers back over her.

“Well, if you weren’t out fucking Antwan’s ass all night, you wouldn’t be tired!” I walked to her side of our dorm room and snatched the cover back. “Your ho ass should have remembered you had class in the morning.”

Antwan was Mocha’s newest male interest. He was a wannabe hustler who thought he was the man. Key word: “thought.” I personally didn’t see what she saw in his tall, black self; besides his perfect smile and smooth chocolate skin. Other than that, I saw nothing appealing about him. He attended a few classes at the community college in Detroit, Michigan, where Mocha and I went, and he must have laid the D on her something vicious. He had my girl’s head gone.

“Girl, don’t hate!” Mocha said, sitting up. “Just because your pussy is covered in cobwebs doesn’t mean you have to rain on my parade!”

I rolled my eyes at her comment. She was completely wrong, and I let her know so.

“Bitch, my pussy has standards unlike yours—Mrs. Bust It Wide Open for anyone with a big dick.” I threw some clothes at her. “And don’t forget that the only reason we’re even here is because of our scholarships. We don’t have time to slack off. Here, I even picked out your outfit!”

I was already dressed in a purple Victoria’s Secret pink hoodie and sweats with my light tan Uggs. My long, dark brown hair was pulled on the top of my head in a bun. I had picked out a similar outfit for Mocha, except hers was red. I loved how the pants accented the curves of my hips and plumpness of my behind.

“I fucking hate your ass.” Mocha stood up with her clothes and headed for the bathroom.

I could tell she had just recently had sex by the way she was walking, yet trying to pretend her legs weren’t sore.

“You got forty-five minutes!” I yelled as the bathroom door slammed shut.

Twenty minutes later, Mocha walked out of the bathroom looking like a shapely model. I had always been a little jealous of her figure. We both had curves for days, but her butt was a little pumper than mine, and her hips a little wider. I got more luck than she did in the chest department with my 36 C-sized breasts, while she couldn’t even fit a C. Her creamy mocha latte-colored skin was silky smooth. She wore her long hair wet, crinkled, but pulled back in a tight ponytail. The way her hair was slicked back brought out the light green specks in her light brown eyes.

“Awe, boo!” I gushed at her natural beauty. “You so cute.”

“Leave me alone, Sadie, I’m still pissed off at you.” She was trying hard to hold back her grin.

“Whatever.” I handed her designer Coach backpack to her. “Let’s go before we’re late.”

Mocha put on her matching Uggs, and we grabbed our pea coats, mine black and hers gray. I locked our room up and just like that, we were on our way. I made small talk on our way to our math class, mainly to keep my mind off of the cold nipping away at my ears.

“Have you talked to Ray?” I asked Mocha, swerving to miss a young white guy riding his bike on the tiny campus grounds.

“Bitch, he’s your cousin,” Mocha said through chattering teeth as she walked. “You’d hear from him before I would!”

I rolled my eyes at her smart remark, mainly because it held truth to it. Although my grandmother had taken Mocha in when she was fifteen after her dad was murdered and her mom ran off with the first man who would take her, she wasn’t my blood. Ray looked at her like his little cousin, but he and I were closer. It hadn’t felt like it the last three or four months, though. It seemed like he was distant. He set Mocha and I up with everything designer and kept our pockets full, but that still didn’t make up for the absence of my favorite cousin. I knew that his name was loud in the streets, and I also knew what he did to keep it that way so it was something that I had to deal with. Knowing him, though, he would pop up sooner or later. We had almost made it to the building our class was in when we heard a deep voice and footsteps coming up behind us.

“God knows he’s wrong for giving y’all all that ass!”

I whipped my head around ready to curse whoever it was. I calmed down when I saw it was nobody but Antwan’s black self.

“You’re so stupid,” I shot him a dirty look.

“Antwan, it’s too early.” Mocha tried to sound annoyed, but I could tell she was a little happy at just the sight of him.

I couldn’t lie, Antwan was looking fresh with his hair newly cut, and he was rocking Ralph Lauren head to toe. But still, he was so not my type. He licked his lips hungrily at Mocha while his eyes traveled her body up and down.

“Yeah, it’s too early,” Antwan caught up and began walking in between us. “What are the two baddest bitches on campus even doing up right now?”

“I’m not a bitch,” Mocha snapped. “And we have class, silly; this is a school. Why the fuck else would we be up?”

Antwan chuckled and shook his head.

“Yeah, this is a school, and you obviously didn’t check the school Web site either. If you’re not an upcoming graduate, you ain’t got school all week. Somethin’ about neighborhood violence or some shit.”

Mocha stopped in her tracks and glared at me.

“Fuck!” I said, remembering I had seen that the night before. “I forgot!”

“Fuck is right! Because I’m about to fuck you up!” Mocha told me.

“Damn, I said sorry!”

“When? I didn’t hear it!” she huffed.

I wanted to punch her, but she was right. It was my mistake.

Antwan was cracking up.

“Aye, man, y’all are a trip! I’m going to fuck with y’all later though,” he said and continued walking.

“Where are you going?” Mocha inquired.

“I got some business to handle,” he said. “Aye, Sadie?”

“What’s up?” I asked wondering what on earth he could have to say to me.

“My man C. J. wants to know what’s up with y’all.”

“Not a damn thing!” I informed him sternly.

C. J. was Antwan’s best friend, who Mocha talked me into going out with. Whereas C. J. was sexy as he wanted to be and had a big dick to back it up, after a few dates and him discussing nothing but himself and money, I just couldn’t do it. Also, after our third date, I actually let him come into my dorm so we could get it in. I was disappointed when he couldn’t even last two minutes—and we tried two times! The whole situation made me mad because I didn’t give myself to many people, and when I did, it usually was worth it. I stopped answering his calls after that, and he hadn’t stopped trying to get at me.

“Damn! It’s like that?” Antwan laughed loudly.

“Yeah, it’s like that! Tell him when he can last longer than two minutes, his bitch ass still won’t have a chance with me!”

“All right, I feel you, ma,” he said and gave us two fingers to tell us good-bye.

“I cannot believe your ass has me out in the cold, and we don’t even have class!” Mocha kept saying the whole way back to our dorm room.

Once there, she climbed right back into her bed after throwing off her coat and shoes. I sat down on my colorful polka-dot comforter and looked at my best friend.

“I’m sorry, Mocha; you know I wouldn’t have woke your crazy ass up if I would have remembered we didn’t have class today. That was a waste of both of our time.”

“Fuck that. Even if we did, you shouldn’t have woke me up. I’m tired of this shit,” she said snuggling back under her covers.

I knew exactly what she meant. About a week ago, Mocha and I had a discussion after her school trip to Atlanta on the reason why we were in school in the first place. What we wanted to be when we graduated. Neither of us had an answer. We both made good grades, but we both had always hated school. If it hadn’t been for my grandma Rae, we probably would have dropped out at the drop of a dime. We lucked up and got scholarships at the community college where we resided in Detroit. Grandma Rae made us go, and we only stayed because of the fat refund checks we got every semester. Mocha was a math genius, like Ray, and I excelled in English. That night she returned, we talked about using our refund check money to start our own little business. Mocha jokingly made a statement about starting a drug cartel. It was crazy because with all of the knowledge I had about it, I never thought about getting into the game myself. Mainly because every single one of the men my mother dated were hustlers who met sticky endings no matter how much of a boss they were. One of the worst experiences in my life happened due to the game and the life that came with it. After that, I was skeptical about that idea, and it made me worry about Ray every day. However, if it came down to it, though, I know I would be down for the ride.

“Really, Mocha, I feel you,” I said lying back on my bed. “This shit is getting played out to me too. If I didn’t think Grandma Rae would flip, I would have been gone.”

“I know. These petty-ass refund checks can’t cover the kind of taste I have. I’m tired of Ray buying all of our shit. One day, he isn’t going to be here, and school isn’t taking me anywhere. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with my life. Right now, I feel as if I’m wasting it taking tests to get a degree that I don’t even want.”

“We can get jobs,” I said but instantly took it back. I couldn’t picture either of us flipping anyone’s burgers. “Never mind.”

“Right. The working world ain’t for us,” Mocha agreed, turning to face my bed.

“Yeah,” I concurred.

There were a few minutes of silence before Mocha began speaking, a little more quietly that time.

“So you haven’t talked to Ray at all?”

“No,” I told her. “I don’t know what’s been up with us lately. I used to talk to him every day.”

“Yeah, you know what they’re saying, right? About Coopa?”

I nodded my head. Coopa was the kingpin of Detroit. He usually kept his business tight. From what I heard and saw, he was a man that you didn’t want to cross. He shot first and didn’t ask or answer any questions. He was a good-looking man in his late thirties; light skin with small brown eyes and well respected in the game. He currently was the head of the biggest drug trafficking operation the city of Detroit had ever seen, and his team consisted of all the hustlers in Detroit. Ray was like his right-hand man, which meant that Ray was big. Lately, though, I’d been hearing that some people wanted Coopa’s head on a stick. Something about he had been making some business deals and not holding up his end of the bargain. He thought he was untouchable, and so far, he had been. I just didn’t want Ray in any mess behind Coopa’s messiness.

“What do you think about it?” Mocha asked me.

“I mean, what can I say? Ray’s a grown-ass man. I just hope that when Coopa goes down, Ray doesn’t go with him,” I told her.

“Maybe he’s just waiting for the right time to get out,” Mocha threw out.

“Naw, Ray loves his life too much. If anything, he would just take over. Then we could finally drop out of this bitch,” I said.

“What does that mean?” Mocha asked.

“Nothing,” I said, not really knowing what I was saying.

“Sadie, are you really thinking about that?” she asked. “I thought we were just playing around with that shit.”

“That ‘shit’ would be better than just sitting here wasting my life away doing nothing,” I told her.

“You tripping; you’re trying to be on some crazy shit,” she said.

“Some C. N. Phillips-type shit,” I said glancing at my bookshelf.

“OK, Say,” Mocha said, calling me by my nickname. “This isn’t a book! This is real life! Let’s be real for a second. If we start up our own business, it would get shut down before we even took flight! Antwan told me about what Coopa did to those niggas from California. Their bodies were found in Dumpsters. Fuck with that shit if you want to, Sadie, but it’s not smart. What makes it worse is that we’re girls! You know what happens to girls in the game.”

Mocha’s rant went in one ear and out the other. I wasn’t scared of Coopa. He was just a man who stood behind his army instead of in the front.

“Whatever, Mocha.” I didn’t feel like arguing with her, especially since she had been the one to even bring it up.

“For real, Sadie, do you think they would take us seriously?” she asked. “I mean, we don’t know anything about the game to even try to play.”

“You don’t know shit about the game, Mocha,” I said, and I thought about the question.

I knew the city was hungry, but I also knew that even though Coopa was running shit, he wasn’t handling business like he should have been. Eventually, Detroit would birth a new king . . . so why not make it a queen?

“I don’t know, Mocha. Maybe, but only if we were strapped heavy and had a team of loyal ones,” I finally answered.

Mocha sighed heavily.

“I’m going to sleep. Your ass is crazy. I can’t believe we are even still having this conversation.”

I heard her turn over, and I lay facing the ceiling for a few more moments, lost in my own personal thoughts. If I could come up with a way to take the game by storm, I’d do it in a second. I’d grown up around the world of drugs and fast money. The attraction that I had to it was undeniable. It enticed my soul. I was ten when my mother dated her first hustler. My mother always had a new man almost every six months. They gave into all of her lavish wants and always made sure I had everything that I needed. My mother wasn’t just your typical beauty; she was drop-dead gorgeous. Her father was part Dominican so her hair flowed almost to her butt. She didn’t believe in the working world, so she played off of her wide hips and plump breasts because it worked for her. We moved around a lot, and in every city, she would date the new “big thing,” until he either got himself killed or incarcerated.

The longest relationship she had was for two years, and I hated him. His name was Nino, and I was fourteen at the time. I was just coming into my looks and many would often tell me I was beautiful, just like my mother. My mother moved us into his large six-bedroom estate and promised me that “this was it.” Like a fool, I believed her, like I always did. It didn’t take long for the fairy tale to be shattered. Soon my mother began to realize that Nino was an angry and very possessive woman beater. Whenever my mother did anything he didn’t agree with, he would floor her. For a while, my mother put up with it saying that she needed him, and if it wasn’t for him, we would be on the streets. But when Nino started paying inappropriate attention to me, things started to really get out of control. Instead of protecting me like a mother should have, she turned to drugs. The same ones Nino was selling to the crack whores roaming the streets. The first night Nino raped me, he put a gun to my head and told me that if I screamed, he would blow my and my mother’s heads off.

I had never felt pain like that before in my fourteen years, and I felt lower than dirt. He was large, too large for a young girl’s first time. I remember biting my lip so I wouldn’t scream. My womanhood was stripped from me in thirty minutes and fifteen seconds. I knew that because I’d closed my eyes and counted to mentally evade Nino as he humped my body deeper and deeper into the mattress. No matter how much of a failure my mother was, she was still my mother, and I didn’t want him to hurt her any more than he already had. After that first time, it began happening periodically. I never spoke a word of it to my mother. Whenever she looked at me, her eyes reeked with sadness and pain. I could tell she knew what was happening, and the fact that she didn’t do anything to stop it turned my heart cold. She was too strung out from playing with her nose to help me. She had completely lost her shape, and any beauty once in her face was long gone.

After some time, Nino actually began using me to make drops and collect his money. I used to take the drugs to school. When my beeper went off, I knew a customer was out front. Not the smartest idea in the books, but I never got caught, so it worked for me. Nino knew how much he would get back so I started to up the prices on my own so that I could make my own profit and give him what he knew he would get. If there was one thing being my mother’s daughter taught me, it was to never depend on a man to take care of me. I saw how far that got her and made a promise to myself that I would never be in that position.

Nino had a son that lived. . .