A Kingpin's Obsession: Ajoni's Story

A Kingpin’s Obsession:

Ajoni’s Story

LONDON STARR

Copyright © 2016 LaToya Wilson

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1530352614

ISBN-13: 978-1530352616

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to everyone and anyone that has anything to do with its publication. No one can do anything alone, and several people stepped up to the plate to help me out, whether you gave your time, or made time for my family so I could work on it. Tysha Jordyn and Katrina Breier were an integral part to getting this novel done, because they had to read the first draft of it. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart, and this novel is the testament to anyone that has a dream and want it bad enough to do what it takes to make that dream a reality.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I don’t think this page has enough space to acknowledge everyone that had a hand in making my tenth novel possible. Each of you know who you are and what you did to make this story a reality, so I will skip the naming part, and just say Happy Birthday to Diamond Wilson and Cheron Wilson since the anthology that contains the first six chapters of this story and the full length novel will release on their birthdays. You’ll be writing a dedication next Shadric Dixson.

Introduction

Have you ever wanted something so bad that you would do anything to get it, and just made matters worse for you and everyone around you after you did obtain it? Well, Ajoni has, and she did, and now she’s about to reap what she has sown. This is her story…

CHAPTER onE

~*~2008 in Mecca, Georgia~*~

Ajoni

“Damn Ajoni, what time is your mama bouncing,” Leek, the youngest of the Blue Kings, spews into the open line of my cell phone. “I can’t sit out here all day or King will chop both of our necks off.”

I huff air into the receiver, tired of hearing Leek complain already. He has only been waiting in his car outside my house, which is a series of neglected rooms positioned around the crumbling walls of the living area, for five whole minutes.

“Leek, she’s leaving for work in
ten minutes, but you know this already. So either stop talking shit or
you
bounce. I can be jumped in the Blue Kings later if you can’t wait.” But I do not want him to leave me in my tiny bedroom, with just an old yellow dresser with green specks of paint showing through the peeling topcoat.

That piece of furniture will be the first thing I get rid of, as soon as I am a part of King’s crew. He runs the one and only violent and well-paid gang in Mecca, a city ten minutes from downtown Atlanta. If you are lucky enough to be under King’s protection here, you have nothing to worry about.

I’m tired of worrying about what will happen to me and my mother if she overdoses on heroin or loses her job one day. Thanks to King, I have a way to keep both of our heads above water when one or both of those disasters strike.

“Have you chopped it up with Jordan today?” Leek asks suddenly, making my face burned and a wide smile break out on it.

Since my mother is half German and half Caucasian, I am light enough to turn beet red whenever I am embarrassed, or simply thinking about the man I have craved like chocolate since I was fourteen, which was when my body and heart figured out I can love someone differently than I do my parents.

“No, I haven’t seen Jordan today and he doesn’t talk to me. You know that too,” I answer quietly, while sitting on my bed that squeaks with every movement and is not much bigger than my room.

I do not have the best of anything, but I will soon though if all goes according to plan. Maybe then Jordan will see me as much more than a teenager and give me the best of him too. There is only a two-year gap in our age, but it seems like he is completely out of my league at six feet tall, with mocha skin that captures the sunlight like it owns it. My insides liquefy every time I see his profile, which is complete with a mouth-watering view of his tapered fade, sideburns cut neatly around his square jaw line, all suspended over wide shoulders always cased in a collared Polo shirt.

Most times, Jordan barely looks at me when I pass by him standing in front of the houses between mine and King’s drop house. He is always in loose jeans that hug his lean hips and waist but leave room for his muscular thighs to breathe. If we do make eye contact, he always tilts his head back as if he is greeting another man before looking away quickly.

“You don’t have to chase after that nigga, Ajoni,” Leek says, interrupting my thoughts. “You have the pick of any man you want around here. He’ll realize what he has missed out on when you have your Blue King colors.”

But I do not want the pick of any man in Mecca—just Jordan.

“I have no idea how adding a new color to my clothes will make him see me,” I mumble dryly.

“Trust me, Ajoni. You’ll have a new swag about you that even blind men can see after King gets through making a real woman out of you. Now quit worrying about a boy that isn’t old enough to see what’s right in front of him yet, and figure out what you want your crew name to be.”

It is routine for King to give his crew street names usually taken from the first part of their last names, after they have been jumped in. Unfortunately for me, I do not have the most creative of surnames like most of his top soldiers do. I got stuck with plain old Mitchell, and I hope Leek does not think he came out the winner when he got his new moniker either.

“Well damn, Leek. Is it wrong to speak more than Ebonics in the hood? And I don’t know what my crew name should be yet, but you most certainly won’t be calling me Mitch. That much, I
do
know.”

He roars with laughter in my ear as my mother begins to move around in the living room on the other side of my closed bedroom door. My eyes fly over to the splintering edges of it that are hazards when I am running late for anything. If my mother does not leave for the nursery ward at Mecca Regional Hospital soon, I am going to jump clean out of my skin.

Seeri Mitchell has dreams for me, joining a gang is not one of them. She may be a junkie, but she can raise hell like everybody else and threatens to beat my ass when I have done something I am not supposed to.

“No we can’t call you Mitch,” erupts through the phone, drawing half of my attention. “That’s your father’s crew name. What about Chell?”

“That sounds a hell of a lot better than Mitch,” I whisper.

“I’m feeling it. Maybe King will too… if I ever get you to him,” he grumbles.

I sigh, much more than irritated now with Leek’s impatient ass which is making me even more nervous. I do not want a member of my future street family to have to face King’s wrath because of me either, especially before I can rightfully claim his set. King has snapped on many people just because he thought someone looked at him sideways.

“Just leave me here, Leek, before you and I both get on King’s bad side. I’m not even in the family yet so he may just cap my ass for being late. Tell him
—
”

“That you’re coming,” Leek cuts me off. “I’ll wait.
He’ll
wait. Trust me.”

“
Then stop bitching! You’re not the only one that wants to leave
,” I yell, and then cover my mouth, afraid that my mother heard that. My nerves rattle inside me. For a dope addict, Seeri can hear like a bat and hover like a professional helicopter pilot if she thinks I am up to something, and I am usually up to something.

“What, Ajoni?” she yells hoarsely through the door.

“Leek, she’s coming,” I hiss. “Hold on.” I snatch the flip phone from my ear and stuff it under my flat pillow in a faded pink case then lay back on my multi-striped comforter thrown over dingy white sheets just before the door opens. My mother walks through it just like I knew she would.

I close my eyes for a moment as I think,
professional helicopter pilot all day,
then turn my head to watch her stroll closer in solid white scrubs. She thinks they make her extremely thin frame look bigger than it really is. What she does not think about is how the color washes out her translucent skin and blond hair that is growing paper-thin from her drug use. When she is healthy, she is beautiful with chocolate oval eyes, a small nose with a long bridge that fits her heart-shaped face perfectly, and lush lips that are just the right size. She has not been that beautiful in a couple years now.

Seventeen years ago, Seeri Anders made the mistake of meeting my father, Jonny Mitchell, while on a drug run for a sorority party at University of Georgia with some fellow pledges. They crossed the academic border, found themselves ten miles away in Mecca, and stupidly rode up on the first tall, good-looking, black man they thought was holding and dressed in thug apparel: white tee, baggy jeans, and untied Lugz boots. They were right; Jonny was and still is a low level drug dealer that stays in and out of jail and has worked for quite a few kingpins since he was fourteen years old. King has been his boss for the last four years.

Sometimes, I wonder if I imagined that my father once lived with us; but I have memories of him teaching me things about the streets that I have never forgotten, things that have kept me from getting my ass torn out the frame in a lot of fights in Mecca. I have even more memories of watching Jonny work the block while I played outside with the neighbor’s kids that I am still friends with to this day.

Seeri got tired of being at risk when the cops would serve a warrant for Jonny’s arrest at any hour of the day or night and having to spend the rent money for his bail. She knew one day Mecca Police Department would come for him, accidentally find drugs in the house, and she would lose me. When I turned ten, she kicked my father out for good, but he was rarely home before then, so nothing really changed in our household.

Their relationship started when Jonny gave the pledges an ounce of weed in exchange for a date with Seeri. She got pregnant immediately afterwards, and they married. She barely managed to graduate on time to become a nurse as she got accustomed to life in Mecca. After she gave birth to me, he introduced her to a weaker version of heroin that he used to cook up just for himself then he taught her how to cook it for herself so he could stay gone even more.

In my parents’ minds, they are not really dope addicts since they do not use at full strength. As far as I am concerned a user is a user, but I love my parents more than the air I breathe, and wish they would get their shit together. I highly doubt that will happen since they both are thirty-eight, unless a major tragedy occurs. I am trying to prevent that from happening or at least be prepared for it by joining the Blue Kings for protection on the streets, and getting paper for carrying their dope from one drop to another. I do not know of one problem that cannot be handled if you can throw enough money at it.

“Ajoni, what did you say?” Seeri asks as she stops at the foot of my bed, scratching at one of the white thermal sleeves peeking out from under her uniform. Their purpose is to hide the scabs that come from her mindlessly picking at her dehydrated skin.

“Nothing, Mama,” I mumble. Panic starts to roll through me. Seeri will happily question me for hours and physically block any moves I try to make out of this house if she suspects something. She seems to
always
suspect something, and she should. Our neighborhood is nothing more than a gangster’s paradise, a junkie’s heaven, and crime’s sanctuary.

“You’re going to be late for work if you don’t leave now,” I mention as incentive to get her on her way. She frowns and starts to examine me like she is looking for something out of place. I have learned to not let my eyes stray from hers when she does that or she gets suspicious.

Finally, she says, “Yeah baby, I’m going. I have to do a double shift today, and I took chicken out for you to do whatever you want with it. Save me some. Last night’s dishes are still in the sink. If something happens or you get scared, call Auntie Laila or my mother. Better yet, call one of them anyway. They’ll come right over and pick you up.”

My mother’s only sister Laila and Grandma Addie are Seeri’s backup fathers for me since mine is locked up for another three years for violating parole. They will sit on me, literally, if Seeri tells them to.

“Mama,
I’m seventeen, will be eighteen tomorrow, not scared of sh… anything in Mecca, and I got the dishes and the chicken. I’ll even wash your uniforms too. Now go to work. I have homework and will see you in the morning.”

I get up off the bed and walk across the threadbare carpet that only adds color to the concrete floor beneath it. Five steps take me into my mother’s personal space. I wrap my arms around her waist, lay my head on her small breasts, and hold her tightly to me like I have always done just before she leaves. These days, I have to slouch to hug her. I stand four inches above her five feet two frame, and feel like a parent with all the duties and none of the advantages.

“Happy early birthday, baby girl,” she whispers. “I’ll bring your present back with me in the morning.”

I wait for her to tilt my chin up, kiss me on the mouth, say she loves me, and will see me later. I then let her go and step back so she can walk two blocks over to catch the bus on time. She turns around to stroll away, and then stops in her tracks; so does the blood flowing through my veins.

She looks back, frowning.

“Ajoni,” she calls me in that quiet tone that means she is bothered by something.

Shit!

“Yeah, Mama,” I respond nonchalantly, but I swear this lady has a crystal ball that warns her whenever I have plans.

“Don’t leave the house unless you’re with an adult. It’s not safe out here even in the daylight hours.”

“Mama, I’m almost grown.”

She smirks, like almost grown does not count.

“Alright, I promise I’ll be with an adult if I go anywhere,” I say to appease her and get her on her damn way; glad I did not have to lie to her outright. Leek is a strapped, violent twenty-two year old that is not afraid to bust his guns if trouble shows up. What more protection can we both ask for?

Seeri still stands rooted to the floor, staring at me doubtfully. I bend one arm at the elbow and reach over to tap my wrist, hoping to influence her to get moving, or she will keep standing.

“Okay, I have to go,” she says before turning her back.

I follow her out of my room to make sure she leaves. She grabs her purse and coat from the faded, stained couch that used to be blood red with clean, tan stripes. She will not be home before eight in the morning. By then, I will be at school covering up the bruises that I will get from getting beat down by five grown men, and proudly displaying my royal blue bandanna from the back pocket of my jeans, with a lump of cash in the front. Tomorrow, Seeri will just have to deal with my decision. For now, I am keeping her blind to all of my moves.