No Loyalty Read online

  Also by De’nesha Diamond

  PARKER CRIME CHRONICLES

  Conspiracy

  Collusion

  THE DIVA SERIES

  Hustlin’ Divas

  Street Divas

  Gangsta Divas

  Boss Divas

  King Divas

  Queen Divas

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Heartbreaker (with Erick S. Gray and Nichelle Walker)

  Heist and Heist 2 (with Kiki Swinson)

  A Gangster and a Gentleman (with Kiki Swinson)

  Fistful of Benjamins (with Kiki Swinson)

  Also by A’zayler

  Passion of the Streets

  Heart of the Hustle

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  No Loyalty

  De’nesha

  Diamond

  A’zayler

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  DAFINA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by De’nesha Diamond and A’zayler

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Dafina and the Dafina logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1146-5

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1148-9

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-1148-3

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: August 2018

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  DANGEROUS LIAISONS - De’nesha Diamond

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  EPILOGUE

  TEARS OF BLOOD - A’zayler

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  EPILOGUE

  DANGEROUS LIAISONS

  De’nesha Diamond

  CHAPTER 1

  2015

  After weeks of record rainfall, the sun returned to southern California in time for the memorial service for Javid Ramsey. It was a good turnout of family and friends. Even Javid’s estranged parents made an appearance. Of course, they sobbed on each other’s shoulders and occasionally cornered the widow for details of their son’s tragic end and why there was such a hurry to cremate the body.

  Stone-faced and dry-eyed, Klaudya Ramsey gave no fucks about their fat tears and had no interest in assuaging their guilt for financially cutting off their son years ago—and for never welcoming her into the family when she married Javid.

  Truth be told, Klaudya didn’t even give a fuck about the ashes in the urn. In life, and especially in love, Klaudya had only asked for one thing: loyalty. Muthafuckas act like it’s the hardest thing to give to their loved ones when it should be the easiest.

  Lieutenant Erik Armstrong and his partner, Lieutenant Joe Schneider, late to the service, blended in with the attending guests.

  Armstrong kept his gaze centered on the dry-eyed widow while her eight-year-old twins, Mya and Mykell, looked like their beautiful mother’s opposites, especially the boy. His small body trembled and shook with racking, silent sobs before the bronze urn.

  Across from the grieving Ramseys stood another stone-faced observer, Nichelle Mathis—Klaudya’s young mother. For more than a year, the mother and daughter had kept the Calabasas’ grapevine buzzing. To Armstrong’s chagrin, he’d played a part in it all. Only he believed he was helping an estranged mother and daughter heal their relationship, not setting up a death match between the two of them. If only he could have put two and two together much sooner—but it went back to the night of the first murder . . .

  1995

  The house looked like a war zone.

  Veteran first responders mumbled to one another that they had never seen this level of carnage in their entire careers. In the center of the living room, a black male, wearing only a pair of silk boxers, lay sprawled across the floor with half of his skull splattered on the ceiling and walls. A bloody bat was clenched in his left hand.

  “My God,” Detective Erik Armstrong whispered, shaking his head. “The whole damn world has gone crazy.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” his partner, Detective Joe Schneider grumbled back, taking it all in.

  The police and emergency responders held a brief debate about whether they needed to take the lone survivor, eight-year-old Klaudya Ramsey, to the hospital or straight to the police station. Soon after an ambulance arrived, they told her she needed to see a doctor.

  Detective Armstrong cocked his head and smiled at the wide-eyed child. “Did you hear me, sweetheart?”

  Klaudya couldn’t unglue her lips to respond or stop the tears from streaming down her blood-splattered face.

  The cop’s concern dissolved into pity. “Poor thing. You’re still in shock.” He comforted the child. “Is there anyone we can call? A family member?”

  Klaudya bunched her shoulders and sidestepped the cop’s touch.

  Armstrong took the hint and backed off.

  It took forever for an extra ambulance to arrive. More people drifted in and out of the girl’s face, asking questions. She stared, her bottom lip trembling while bodies of her family were carried out on stretchers.

  At long last, her mother, Nichelle Mathis, was escorted out of the house. She held her head down with her hands cuffed behind her back.

  Detective Armstrong pulled the child closer as they both watched her blood-covered mother marched toward a patrol car. At its back door, Nichelle locked gazes with her daughter.

  Klaudya shivered. The ride to the hospital passed by in a blur. When a doctor and nurse came to see her behind a curtain, they wore matching plastic smiles and launched the same questions.

  The questions slowed to a trickle.

  “Nod or shake your head if you feel any pain,” the doctor instructed before checking out her bruises. It was stupid because she was already in pain. Everywhere. But she refused to nod or shake her head.

  By the time the doctor and nurse left her alone behind the curtain, their smiles were thin and flat. Later, she was taken to a strange place and led into a kid’s room filled with toys. She was told to wait and that someone would be in in a minute to talk to her.

  “Feel free to play with anything you want,” a woman, whose name she’d already forgotten, said. Once the door closed, Klaudya sat trembling in the small room, covered in her father’s blood. The bright toys clashed with slate gray walls, giving her conflicting vibes about how she was supposed to feel. She wished she could stop crying. How many times had her mother said that she wasn’t a baby anymore? But it was hard, and she was scared.

  Each tick on the clock matched
the rhythm of her pounding eardrums. After two solid hours of it, Klaudya’s head ached, and her eyelids were impossible to keep open. She’d nod off and jerk herself awake every other minute. Her next wave of tears was of frustration instead of anger. She wanted to go home and crawl into her bed.

  Outside the door, she heard the police officers shuffle back and forth in the hallway. Maybe they forgot she was in there. It was possible, she reasoned. Adults always get busy and ignored her all the time. Klaudya wrestled with the decision about whether she should leave on her own. She knew where she lived. She’d taken the city bus home plenty of times. Only . . . she didn’t . . . have any money. You can’t do anything without money.

  Her eyelids were like bricks again. She caved and laid her head on the table. Tonight’s horror sped behind her closed lids. She could still see her father lunging.

  Bang!

  Klaudya woke with a jump.

  A strange woman smiled at her. “I’m sorry. Did I startle you?” She closed the metal door behind her.

  Lips zipped, Klaudya eyed the woman crossing over to the table.

  When the woman settled into the chair across from her, she made her introduction. “I’m Mrs. Durham. You’re Klaudya, right?”

  Silence.

  “Do you mind if I talk to you for a minute?”

  Silence.

  “Oookay.” The woman held onto her smile. “You’re in shock and a bit confused about all the things going on right now—that’s understandable. You’re probably even scared, and that’s okay, too.” She stretched out a hand, but Klaudya jerked away from her icy touch.

  “Can I ask whether you remember what happened tonight?”

  Silence.

  “Do you remember anything at all?”

  The image of her father’s gun firing flashed in her head, but she said instead, “Can I go home?”

  Mrs. Durham’s ridiculous smile vanished, and her thin lips flatlined. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. It may be a while before you can do that. But we’re working on getting you placed somewhere safe. Everything is going to be all right.”

  Tears pooled in Klaudya’s eyes. “But . . . but . . .” She swallowed hard, but it was still hard to slow her breathing. “What about Momma? She’s coming with me, right?”

  “Aw, sweetie. I’m afraid not.” Durham reached for the girl’s hand and, again, Klaudya pulled farther away.

  “I want my momma. Now!” Klaudya’s bottom lip trembled.

  Mrs. Durham shook her head. “I’m afraid it may be a long time before that happens.”

  “When can I see my daughter?” Nichelle asked the first officer entering the interrogation room.

  “We’ll get to that in due time.” Armstrong settled wide-legged into the chair across from her while his partner stayed back and leaned against the door.

  “She was scared and in shock when I left her. I have to talk to her and make her understand that everything is going to be all right. I’m going to take care of everything.”

  Armstrong’s eyes narrowed as he watched her fret. She hadn’t been processed and was still covered in her husband’s blood. Her eyes were unusually wide.

  “Calm down, Mrs. Mathis. Your daughter is in good hands. She is being well taken care of.”

  “But I will get to see her again, right? I can get one of the girls down at the club to bring her in for a visit, right? They do let you do that, right?”

  “Mrs. Mathis, we need to go over what happened tonight. We need to know what happened to your husband and your son.”

  Tears streaked Nichelle’s face as she opened and closed her mouth without a single word falling from her lips. Until that moment, she hadn’t formulated what she was going to tell the police. Reality hadn’t set in. Her daughter may have been in shock, but she was in denial. Nichelle needed a story and quick.

  Armstrong cleared his throat and wrangled her thoughts back to the present. “You and your husband have quite the record of domestic violence. He’d call the police on you, and you call the police on him. He’d beat you up, and you’d beat him up. Which was it tonight, Mrs. Mathis? And who hurt little Kaedon?”

  “That was an accident.”

  “But your husband wasn’t an accident? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “What? No. He was . . . I was . . .” Her mouth kept moving even after the words stopped flowing.

  Armstrong turned and glanced back at Schneider, who looked down at the woman and shook his head. Sighing, Armstrong turned back to their suspect and pushed her for an answer. “Tell us what happened to your husband, Mrs. Mathis?”

  Another tear streaked down her face. “What happened? Shadiq . . . got exactly what he deserved.”

  At the end of the eulogy, Armstrong made a sign of the cross while the crowd’s gazes crept toward him and his partner.

  It was time.

  They had a job to do. Together, the two lieutenants marched through the crowd.

  “Nichelle Mathis?”

  The flawless older beauty turned with her brows already arched inquisitively. “Yes?”

  “We have a warrant for your arrest.” Schneider flashed the warrant while Armstrong produced the handcuffs to the astonished woman.

  “What?” Her beautiful caramel skin flushed.

  “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  Nichelle stuttered indignantly as the funeral crowd halted in their tracks to stare.

  Armstrong wasn’t without sympathy as they led her back through the crowd. He did, however, make a sidelong glimpse at Klaudya. Her ice-cold expression had yet to change. No, that wasn’t right. It had changed. A small smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

  Not for the first time, Armstrong wondered whether they were arresting the right woman.

  CHAPTER 2

  Locked behind prison bars, Nichelle couldn’t believe she was right back where she’d started. “This can’t be happening,” she repeated, raking her hands through her hair. How was she going to convince anyone she didn’t do this?

  Pacing, she couldn’t stop the horrible images from running in her head. She was looking at life without the possibility of parole—again . . .

  1996

  Nichelle Mathis was going home. At least that was the energy she put into the universe for the last year and a half. No matter how many times it had been explained to her, she didn’t grasp how this wasn’t a simple open-and-shut case of self-defense. When the state’s attorney had offered a three-year plea deal, she rejected it, confident her self-defense was well within the law. It was a risk. California had a fifteen-to-twenty minimum if she was convicted. This whole thing was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous, since she couldn’t post bail, Nichelle had been behind bars since that awful night. Hell, Klaudya would be ten soon. In the pictures Klaudya’s latest foster family had sent Nichelle, she couldn’t believe how big Klaudya was getting. She was missing out on a lot.

  Nichelle wished Klaudya could be there today. She’d envision them walking out of the courtroom together and riding off into the sunset on the Metro to start her wreck of a life over. Everyone deserves a second chance. She clutched the silver cross around her neck and prayed.

  The jury took fifteen minutes before informing the court they had reached a decision.

  Fifteen minutes.

  That couldn’t be good.

  I’m going home, she insisted, batting back a surge of negative thoughts from creeping into her head.

  “Don’t worry.” Her lawyer rubbed her arm.

  When her hand lingered too long, Nichelle cut a hard look at the attorney’s hand until she removed it.

  “Sorry.” The lawyer retreated to her side of the invisible wall between them.

  “All rise,” the bailiff bellowed.

  Nichelle climbed to her feet as the judge returned to the bench. Once she was back in her chair, the jury trooped into the courtroom. She scanned the twelve faces as they entered and settled into their chairs, but it was no good. Each one of them had an excellent p
oker face. She couldn’t read a single one of them.

  “Foreman, have you reached a verdict?” the judge asked.

  “We have, your honor.” The foreman stood and handed a slip of paper to the bailiff, who walked it over to the judge. The judge fiddled with his glasses before reading the paper and handing it back to the bailiff.

  “All right,” the judge said. “What say you?”

  Nichelle held her breath.

  The middle-aged, good-ole-boy foreman cleared his throat and read, “On the charge of manslaughter, we, the jury, find the defendant . . . guilty.”

  No! Nichelle’s heart plunged to her toes. She couldn’t have heard the man right. There had to be some mistake. Didn’t they see the pictures of her beaten black and blue? Guilty? How in the hell did they find her guilty?

  Her shocked gaze narrowed to thin slits on the foreman. However, he and the other white suburbanites kept their noses high and their gazes diverted from her distress. They knew this shit was fucked up. They didn’t give a damn. She was another black bitch being shipped off to one of their numerous concrete plantations.

  While the judge thanked the jury for their time and doing their civic duty, the jailers approached her table with instructions for her to put her hands behind her back.

  Nichelle wanted to refuse but knew better. The judge dismissed the jury, and then he and her attorney negotiated a sentencing date while cold steel clamped around her wrists. The state’s mandatory minimum charged back into her head. Her knees weakened. Had it not been for the jailer standing right behind her, she would’ve hit the floor.

  “Nichelle Mathis,” a prison guard’s voice boomed.