18. Dead Woman Walking
Walking onto our compound past Jared’s campaign headquarters felt wrong. I didn’t realize how much space that Nigga occupied in our lives until silence settled over everything. The compound should have felt alive. Instead, it felt haunted.
The twins were asleep upstairs after crying themselves into exhaustion.
Genesis finally stopped asking questions her grandfather couldn’t answer.
Camilla was still at the hospital, refusing to leave Jared’s side, and somewhere in Crestwood, the people who pulled the trigger were still breathing, and that part kept pissing me off.
I stood in my home office staring out the window at the campaign headquarters we’d built on the property for Jared.
Just weeks ago we stood out there talking strategy.
Now the glass building sat empty. The sight made rage simmer low in my chest. I was gritting my teeth so hard that I almost missed the soft knock that sounded against the door.
I didn’t have to turn around. I knew her sweet, intoxicating scent anywhere; my wife had a way of calming even the most wicked side of me.
Kenya stepped inside wearing one of my t-shirts.
Her hair had been pulled out of its bun hours ago and now fell around her shoulders in loose curls.
My bestie was beautiful, but I could see the exhaustion in her eyes.
She looked heartbroken. She closed the door behind her before crossing the room.
Neither one of us spoke. Words felt useless lately.
Instead, she slid her arms around my waist and rested her cheek against my chest. I held her tightly and let my warrior melt in my arms. I held her tight, as if I let go, she’d disappear, too.
For a long moment we just stood there encased in one another’s orbit.
Kenya and I have loved one another for twenty-two years, and through those two decades, we have survived so much; we will get through this just like we have gotten through everything else. ”
“I hate this,” she whispered finally.
I kissed the top of her head. “I know.”
“I hate seeing Camilla like this.”
“Me too.”
Her fingers tightened against my shirt. “Jared didn’t deserve this.”
He didn’t. That man had already paid enough.
Twenty-four years of his life were stolen.
He has a daughter he barely got to raise, and bonus sons that he nurtured and cared for as his own the entire time.
Jared’s future was delayed, and now somebody wanted to take more of his life from him.
Kenya lifted her head enough to look at me. Her eyes were red.
“Zay. Alan’s gone.”
The words settled between us.
“I figured. You and Chanel looked sneaky as fuck leaving the hospital in all black tactical gear.”
“You mad?”
“I know who the fuck I married.”
Alan Price stopped being a man in my mind a long time ago. He became a problem, and problems got solved. I knew my bestie had been calculating who needed to be eliminated, just as X and I were.
Kenya studied my face quietly. “What about Miles? Do you think he knows anything else?
I looked away toward the window. “Miles is gone, too.”
She closed her eyes briefly. I knew it hurt to hear it, but she knew Miles had to go, too.
Betrayal always hurts worse when it comes from somebody who once sat at your table, and Miles had been family to us for a long motherfuckin’ time.
He had made himself our target after betraying us, and I knew the weight of that was pressing on my baby.
I didn’t want her to have to pull that trigger.
“I know y’all pressed him before you killed him. What did he tell y’all?”
A bitter laugh escaped me. I guided her toward the couch and sat down, automatically pulling her onto my lap. Kenya curled into me without resistance.
“He gave us Cameron’s alias.”
Her head lifted immediately.
“Apparently, she goes by Janessa Price as well.”
“We found out the same shit tonight, and it broke Channy. That bitch was her roommate in college and introduced her to drugs and alcohol.”
Just thinking about all of the sick ways Cameron had access to her little sister for years made the color drain from YaYa’s face. For several seconds, she just stared at me. Then suddenly tears filled her eyes.
“I fucked up everything for Baby Bear. I should’ve never encouraged her to go away for school.” Her eyes flooded with more tears. “What if I had just told her to stay home?”
I stayed quiet. I had to let her get it out.
“I could’ve let her stay local and go to community college? She would’ve been safer staying with Xavier and seeing him behind the glass than what those motherfuckas did to her.” Her voice broke completely.
I grabbed her face gently but firmly and made her look me directly in my eyes. “No.” The word came out harder than I intended. But I needed her to hear it.
“We’re not gonna do any of that.”
“Zay—”
“No.”
I shook my head. “These people got a sick hard-on for your family.”
“Chanel could’ve stayed home.” I brushed away a tear from YaYa’s cheek.
“She could’ve gone to community college. She could’ve married Xavier at eighteen in a prison wedding, and they could have had a few more kids.”
I lowered my forehead to hers. “And these crazy motherfuckas still would’ve come for her.”
Because that was the truth. This wasn’t about opportunity. It was an obsession. The Price family was like a disease, and we all know diseases spread.
Kenya finally exhaled slowly as if she were releasing something she’d been carrying.
Then she kissed me, soft and grateful. I kissed her back. After twenty years together, I knew when my wife needed me. She needed reassurance and connection. She needed proof that, after everything, we were still here and still together.
Neither one of us spoke because words felt too small for the kind of grief we’d been carrying.
The kind of fear our family had been carrying was palpable with Jared fighting for his life. Our family was unraveling, and the world felt uncertain. But me being able to comfort my bestie was certain.
“I love you,” she whispered.
The words sounded fragile, as if she needed to hear them returned.
I cupped her face gently. ”Not more than I love you.”
Kenya rolled her eyes immediately. “There you go, being hardheaded. It’s always a competition with you.”
A laugh escaped me. The first thing I’d managed all day.
“I said what I said, YaYa.”
She kissed me again, longer this time and slower. The kind of kiss that reminded me of every version of us.
Our days at Cherry in the back seat of my whip.
Us sneaking quickies during house parties.
The night we conceived the twins, when I took her to Paris, and we made love in our Penthouse suite that had the perfect view of the Eiffel Tower.
We were the reckless Kingpin and Queenpin who fell in love. The older siblings grew up too fast and had to raise our siblings as if we were their parents, trying to figure it out. We were the husband and wife who survived things that should’ve broken us.
I stood from the couch without breaking the kiss and carried her upstairs. Kenya wrapped her legs around my waist automatically, her fingers finding the back of my neck.
Kenya was my home.
No matter what happened outside these walls, I would always protect her with my life.
Inside our bedroom, the world finally quieted.
We didn’t give a shit about the campaign folks calling for a statement every fuckin’ hour or a status update from the hospital.
I didn’t give a shit about the investigation.
For a little while, it all faded into the background.
I undressed, and I laid my bestie carefully against the mattress and brushed her hair behind her ear.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
Kenya looked up at me for a long moment. Then she nodded. “I’m always better when I’m under you.”
I kissed her forehead and her cheek. I planted kisses at the corner of her mouth.
My baby girl likes shit rough in here, but tonight I knew the vibes were different.
She wasn’t Kenya, the mastermind or the planner.
She could be all of that shit later. Right now, she was my wife, and she wanted to be soft.
So I took my time. I tore off the t-shirt she wore and unhooked her bra and gently planted kisses up and down her torso.
I was reminding her she wasn’t carrying any of this alone.
Her hand slid over my chest, settling directly above my heart, and for the first time since the chaos of the wedding, I felt some of the tension leave her body.
She smiled a small smile and let me suck on her nipples gently.
She cooed for me, coming undone as I kissed every fear from her.
I lifted her right leg in the air and kissed up and down her thick ass thigh.
I spanked her ass and watched her shit jiggle.
I used my long shaft to spank her wet pussy.
She moaned out at the slaps and called out.
“Don’t tease me, baby, just love me tenderly.”
I didn’t have it in me to deny my bestie, so I slipped into her as her mouth opened, forming the largest O.
“Ahhhhh Zayyy. Shitttt.”
Even after all of these years, she still growled as I slid in her, and it always turned me the fuck on.
It was a reminder that one thing was certain in this lifetime: Kenya King was made for me, and we fit together like glue because she was my bestie for the restie.
I slowly stroked my wife and punished her walls as euphoria took over her.
I folded her thick ass like origami, lifting both legs over her head while I delivered powerful and all-consuming strokes.
As she came, I caught that shit in my mouth, slurping from her pussy to her asshole.
My baby came undone and fell asleep trusting her man would move hell and high water for her, and it was an honor that my wife knew that I would massacre anyone and everyone behind her.