Inhaltsangabe
Hit records, loads of cash, gorgeous groupies - Ringo has it all. But he wasn't born a rap superstar. He built his hip-hop kingdom by pounding the pavement...and he doesn't like to dwell on old ghosts from the 'hood. Like his pal Brice, or that dark day that changed both their lives forever...What began as a simple heist ended in a horrible bloodbath. With the little money they'd stolen and the clothes on their backs, Brice and Ringo each escaped - never knowing the other's fate. While Ringo was busy climbing the charts, Brice was becoming the ruthless overlord of an unstoppable crime family. Now Ringo's got to right the wrongs from the past - before it's too late. Because this time, there's just too much to lose...
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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor
Relentless Aaron was born and raised in New York. He served in the USMC before attending Pace University and Westchester Business Institute. He runs Relentless Content, a company that publishes books and produces videos. Relentless also regularly conducts seminars for aspiring writers, publishers, and entrepreneurs.
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Two young men lured by the promise of fame and limitless power learn the hard way that no empire lasts forever in the latest urban drama from
RELENTLESS AARON
Hit records, loads of cash, gorgeous groupies—Ringo has it all. But he wasn’t born a rap superstar. He built his hip-hop kingdom by pounding the pavement…and he doesn’t like to dwell on old ghosts from the ’hood. Like his pal Brice, or that dark day that changed both their lives forever…
RAPPERS ’R IN DANGER
What began as a simple heist ended in a horrible bloodbath. With the little money they’d stolen and the clothes on their backs, Brice and Ringo each escaped—never knowing the other’s fate. While Ringo was busy climbing the charts, Brice was becoming the ruthless overlord of an unstoppable crime family. Now Ringo’s got to right the wrongs from the past—before it’s too late. Because this time, there’s just too much to lose…
“Relentless is VERY REAL.”—98.7 KISS FM
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Chapter One
All of the drama started right here, on Queens Boulevard, in broad daylight. The three hoods—Brice, Cooksie, and Ringo—were about to "bust a move," as they called it. However, to the rest of the world, this was but a "robbery in progress." All last week Brice was saying, "We gonna bust this move! We gonna bust this move!" And he had been promoting the escapade almost every hour since then, repeating himself like a scratched CD. So now here they were, the three of them, about to play God with the lives of others—and with their own lives.
When Brice spoke on this five days earlier, he was charged like a hot wire, doing his damnedest to stop Ringo from the low-budget rap demo he had scheduled for the same day. Not that he was hating on Ringo's aspirations, but Brice needed another body to execute this event that he had planned so many times in his dreams.
"Yo—fuck that rap shit, dawg. We gonna bust this move over on the boulevard. I'm tellin' you . . . one score like this, and you'll have way more money in one day than some record deal can get you. Word."
"Not if I go platinum."
Brice laughed at the idea.
"Nigga, you must be smokin' crack if you think you can all of a sudden do a demo, get a record deal, and sell a million records. Don't you know the odds? Huh? A nigga wanna be a basketball player or a rap star, but the real deal is that there's a billion otha muh fuckas who want the same thing. It's a fuckin' pot luck game, dawg."
"What if I'm one in a billion?"
"Well, if you are, then let's do this shit, so I can get some money and invest in you. 'Cause without the dough, your ass ain't even goin' ghetto gold!"
Brice was cracking up. Cooksie (and eventually Ringo) couldn't help but join in until they all created a chorus of laughter. When Ringo calmed down some, he said, "I ain't never shot nobody before, Brice. That's not even in my flow."
Cooksie added, "We ain't gonna shoot nobody, right Brice? I mean, you telling us this check cashing joint is sweet, and the guns are just for show . . . right?" Even Cooksie needed some assurance, evidenced by his uncertain tone of voice.
"No doubt," Brice told both friends as he passed around a forty-ounce beer. Ringo sat adjacent to Brice and Cooksie as the three checked out a cheesy drawing—the layout of the Just Right Check Exchange—on a sheet of paper between them.
"And besides, the guns won't even be loaded," he went on to say.
"No?"
"Why should they be? Them people will be so scared shitless they'll hand the money over just like we say." All three homeboys, none of them older than eighteen, agreed to execute the plan on the following Thursday.
"Okay, check it," warned Brice. "The armored car should be there by twelve thirty. My girl says that it gets real slow by one o'clock, when the lunch crowd goes back to work. So, that's when we move."
"When the lunch crowd gets back?" asked Cooksie.
"No, stupid. At one o'clock, when it gets slow." Brice slapped Cooksie upside the back of his head.
ONE WEEK EARLIER AT SUMIIA'S
GRANDMA'S HOUSE
Sumiia Johnson was a nineteen-year-old that Brice claimed possession of. She started out as an acquaintance—a friend of a friend, really. But as of a month earlier, Brice began to pour on the charm, at precisely the time he found out that she worked as a cashier at the Just Right Check Exchange.
"You gotta watch this guy called Simmons," Sumiia told Brice, the morning after their marathon of uninhibited sex. "That guy swears he's John Wayne or somebody. He even spins his gun around on his finger like that horse on the Cartoon Network."
"You mean Quickdraw McGraw?"
"Yup."
"Don't worry, I gotcha. The dark-skinneded one with the eyes like they about to shoot out of his face." Brice had spent a few days checking things already and pretty much knew the who's and what's relating to the check cashing franchise.
"Yup."
"And he probably works out two times a day, huh?" Brice guessed.
"Maybe three," said Sumiia in a tone of warning. "Or so he says."
"Yeah, yeah. But all that muscle ain't gonna stop this here." Brice reached down by the side of the sofa. He showed her a machine pistol—or the "baby whop," as Brice called it.
"If he gets anywhere within two hundred yards o' this . . ." Brice made a whoo-ee expression.
"Brice—"
Brice covered Sumiia's mouth with his hand.
"Shhh, before you wake your grandma."
She still managed to pry Brice's hand away. "I thought you said you'd keep that in the car?"
"Right. I know what I said, boo. But your grandma don't live in no goddamned gated community. A nigga gotta protect what's his."
"Oh? And what do you consider yours?" asked Sumiia.
"You ain't gonna start that black feminist mess again, are you?"
"What's that? A feminist?"
"Just something my brother tells me about in his prison letters. He says y'all mess things up real bad."
Sumiia sucked her teeth.
"What ever, nigger. I don't see no ring on my—"
"Whatchu call me?"
"Nigger?" she repeated while crossing her arms over her bare breasts. Sumiia barely finished her sentence before Brice slapped her face. Emotions welled up in her eyes and throat while the tears flowed spontaneously. Eventually, Brice felt it was safe to remove his hand. The last thing he needed was her grandma all up in his business.
"But last night you told me to call you—"
"That was my dick talking, stupid. And I didn't say nigger, I said nigga. There's a difference, dummy."
Sumiia held her cheek and began to sob, however softly, however hopelessly. This wasn't the worst she'd been through, messin' with one hood or another from around the way. And regardless of all the craziness here, the two were still intimately positioned, with Brice hovering over her, with both their naked bodies still mashing against one another there on her grandma's couch.
"Now, to answer your question," Brice went on to say, "ever since I've been sticking this power drill up in your ice cream, I considered you mine." Only now did...
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