TTW 3 ( Thicker Than Water 3 ) Read online

  Angelic Script Publishing Presents…

  A Takerra Allen Production….

  TTW3

  The Last Installment

  Welcome to Jayde’s Garden of Evil….

  Copyrighted Material

  This is a work of fiction. Any characters, places, objects, or situations in this book are solely of the Author’s imagination.

  Any resemblances are purely coincidental.

  Introduction and story ©2011 by Takerra Allen in c/o Angelic Script Publishing.

  Copyright ©2011 by Angelic Script Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for quotations in review form.

  ISBN-10: 0984415041

  ISBN-13: 978-0984415045

  Printed in 2011

  Printed in the USA

  Welcome to the City of Angels!

  GOD. You the man. You the truth. If you don’t believe in him, I don’t need to say kill yaself, you already are. MOMMY. It’s getting a little easier. But I still miss you, every single day. Know you’re proud. Know you’re happy that I finally am. HAPPY. DADDY. Thank you. I’m so proud to have you as my father. I love you. PUMPKIN. I love you so much. Soulmates are real. We’re in this for the long run. DEE. So lucky to have you holding me down in both aspects of my life. In business and as a great friend. We’re doing it! MY SIS LESLIE. You’re the best. My friend, my sister, and an inspiration as well. N’NEKA. I adore you and I’m jealous of California for seeing you more than I do. MY BROTHERS COREY, BILLY, LANDON, MALIK, JOE – love you guys. PAC – They can picture me rollin’ now. I owe it to you. NANA – you’re the best! Love you to pieces. LES and AUNT BARBARA – the best aunties ever. CAROL FLOYD – fairy godmother. ALL OF MY FAMILY THAT I ADORE. I love you soooo much. THE FUTURE: JAIELYN, DAVID, NAOMI, KENDAL, KAMANI, CHAMBRAY, TANAIA, LAYLA, MARCUS, MALCOLM, JASMINE, BRIANNA, ALEXIS, AYESHA, LEILANI, GREYLIN, LIL IVAN – be all you can be. Love you. TO MY LUVS-MY ADORING AND INCREDIBLY PATIENT READERS, I love you guys so much. You are my fuel, my purpose, and I am so grateful for you all. THANK YOU SO MUCH for your support up until this point. I am just a girl from Jersey who started writing and you guys started reading, and it’s all because of you that the rest of the world is paying a little attention now. I hope I keep you guys forever. TAZZY and WDS, LONDA’S BOOK CLUB, AMAZON forums, Readers R’ US, Black Faithful Sisters & Brothers & all FB clubs. ALL OF THE BOOKSTORES that support. REVIEWERS. Fellow authors that have showed me love and that I admire as well. SO… this is it. The closing of a saga. The end of an era. I want to thank the cast of the Thicker than Water Series for everything you have done for me. Books like Heaven’s Hell and Restricted may have made the magazines and Award Shows, but you put me on the map with the READERS. So to me, you guys are the truth for that. (Sorry Heaven, G, Jordin, and Julez :/) I can’t believe this is it. I can’t believe that I won’t have you guys to fall back on, characters that the world has fallen in love with, the ones I can always come back to and peek in on their lives, write it up and know that they will love it because you guys are so authentic. But I promised you guys would go out with a bang, didn’t I? SASHA – Thank you for being my beautiful leading lady, and for showing the readers your naivety and your flaws, even when it made them want to wring your neck. Thank you for doing it again in this one. CHAUNCEY - Thank you for showing the world that real n!ggaz do mess up, do stupid ish, and don’t always make sense. But they can still be irresistible. RESPECT – Thank you for letting me introduce you to the readers. I know you don’t like to be looked in on like that. But they had to see it to believe it. KIM – I know you’re gone. But thank you for blessing me with your charisma while I could. You set an ill foundation in TTW, and two books later, your memory still lives on. NELI – Thank you for being my disturbed, broken winged bird. You took a lot of hate from these readers. JAYDE – You happily picked up that hate. Thank you for being a perfect villain. Someone’s gotta be the bad guy right? TATUM – Thank you for being real. As real as the girls that walk by me every day. A little tough, a little weak, a little happy, a little sad, and I appreciate you letting these people look into your life to see that. And thank you for playing my star…ONE…LAST…TIME.

  “True trilogies are all about going back to the beginning and discovering something that was never true from the get go... Whatever you thought you knew about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest. Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you... If you find yourself dealing with an unexpected back story and a preponderance of exposition, then the sequel rules do not apply. Because you are not dealing with a sequel, you are dealing… with the concluding chapters… of a trilogy.” – Wes Craven’s Scream 3

  “Have you ever felt so alone and then looked in the mirror, and realized you probably hate yourself more than everyone else does?”

  -Neli, Thicker than Water

  -Prologue-

  “I’m Adriana…what’s your name?”

  “Lola…”

  “Nice to meet you, Lola.” Adriana smiled, extending her dainty hand to the brown-skinned, Coca-Cola bottle shaped woman next to her.

  Lola continued to file her nails as if she didn’t see the gesture.

  “So… what nursing school did you graduate from?” Adriana probed.

  “…I went to Emory.”

  “So did I! What hospital did you work at before this?”

  Before attempting to reply, the newest nurse subtly rolled her eyes at the hyper girl’s chatter. Adriana reminded Lola of a less cute version of Lucy Liu. And she knew that Adriana was not her real name, what Asian was named Adriana?

  “This is my first position…”

  Lola was nervous by the silence that followed.

  “Your first…? Really…? They put you on ER your first day?” Adriana held a confused facial expression. “Wow, have you been trained? Did you even consult with any of the doctors?”

  “Damn, you ask a lot of fucking questions!” Lola snapped, losing her cool and immediately regretting it.

  Before Adriana could even recover from the harsh response, a young girl on a gurney covered in blood came whizzing by their desk, pushed quickly by EMT workers.

  “It’s that time people… We need a doctor, now! This woman’s been shot!”

  Lola and Adriana immediately ran from behind the Emergency counter anxious to assist.

  Oh my god! She’s so young, Adriana thought to herself. And she’s really pretty.

  Lola was lost in her own thoughts.

  She’s so bloody… Goodness, am I going to be able to do this?

  Adriana took control and wheeled the wounded young girl into one of the nearest rooms.

  “The doctor’s already been paged!” She let Lola know, feeling like this could be a shock on someone’s first day. “That’s normal procedure. We have to start the IV and check the vitals, her airways, her pulse, all of that.”

  Just then the doctor entered and immediately approached the victim.

  “She’s losing a lot of blood! We have to stop this bleeding!”

  “You! Start the IV,” he ordered pointing at Adriana; however Lola already had it in her hands.

  “I’m already doing that,” she answered meekly. Two other nurses who had entered with the doctor began to tend to the bleeding and Adriana decided to check the young woman’s vitals.

  “No, you go check her belongings! See if we can get some information on her. Allergies, medications, see if she has insurance,” he stated as if it was the most important of any. “Look for contact names.”

  Adriana hesitantly inched toward the door. Should she be the one checking for information? That sho
uld be something Lola should cover, it was her first day after all.

  “But…”

  Adriana at that moment began to fear that she would never be respected by the doctors at Grady Memorial Hospital.

  “Check her belongings? I want to help her,” she mumbled aloud as she reluctantly stepped outside of the room.

  Adriana picked up her pace toward the EMT workers who were still seated in the back of their opened ambulance, right outside of the emergency room. She knew that it could be vital if the woman in fact did have medication allergies or anything of that nature.

  “Hey! You guys got anything on the girl that just came in?’

  “The little redbone, sprayed up like Swiss cheese?” The young worker cracked insensitively as he pulled from his cigarette. The other guy of fewer words tossed a black leather purse toward Adriana.

  “There ya go. Now when we gonna hook up, Ming Lee,” wise guy continued.

  Adriana rolled her eyes and turned on her heels, beginning to roam through the bag in haste.

  “Wit’cha flat ass!” He added in anger but she continued to walk, no longer hearing him. She was too enthralled in the contents.

  First thing she spotted was a black leather wallet. Opening it, she read the driver’s license aloud.

  “Penelope Daniels… 575 Ann Street, Newark, NJ? …You’re a long way from home Penelope,” she spoke solemnly.

  Adriana continued to rummage through the wallet, not coming across much else. A flight ticket, forty dollars, an old ID card to somewhere called Greystone… and a picture. She paused at the picture of four beautiful black girls taken at what seemed to be a nightclub. They must have been her friends. They were an array of earth tone shades but equally stunning.

  Feeling that the purse had a significant weight to it, Adriana remembered the task at hand and dug deeper. She felt all types of junk, typical woman things. Suddenly her hand ran across a ripped lining on the side and she pushed her petite fingers through it as much as possible.

  “What the..?” She questioned as she grabbed something metal and pulled it out with ease.

  Adriana stared down with her brows furrowed and a million thoughts racing through her mind.

  A tape recorder?

  “She’s stabilizing, I think she’s gonna make it! But we need to get her into surgery. Where’s Adriana?”

  Neli could hear the doctor and nurses talk amongst the room but they sounded so far away. So, so far away…

  Her body felt tingly all over. She had heard them say she was losing blood but she felt no pain.

  ‘That’s how it is,’ she could remember Kim saying one time at Tatum’s house. ‘Lil’ Pookie said you see the light and all that.’

  Tatum, Sasha, and Neli had laughed at her, but now Neli wondered if Kim knew what she was talking about. Flashbacks of Kim’s laugh replaced that memory. And then ones of Sasha’s beauty, Tatum’s smile.

  ‘Okaayyy white bitch!’ She could hear them all shout as they got ready to hit the clubs.

  ‘Y’all my girls and I’ll do anything for y’all,’ Tatum had told them seriously one day in her living room. Scenes played in her mind like a picture slideshow. Sasha’s family cookout, the night they met Ree at the club…

  ‘That nigga look like somebody from Shottas!’ Kim had shouted. Neli laughed to herself at that.

  ‘He looks like a killer,’ she could hear herself respond.

  The day they met Chauncey, her best friend’s boyfriend, replayed also.

  ‘Why you so persistent?’ He had asked with his white smile and chocolate skin.

  ‘Because I like you.’

  An image of them making love entered her mind, she remembered the feel and smell of him.

  ‘Damn, you know how to make a nigga feel good.’

  Then it all turned sour after that.

  ‘Stop fucking calling me! You crazy bitch!’

  ‘Neli, what is wrong with you. I know you’ve always been jealous of me,’ Sasha accused the time the girls all went to dinner.

  ‘Maybe you should get some help,’ she recalled Ray, her old boyfriend, whispering to her. Neli wanted to wake up, her demons were catching up with her and she didn’t want to hear anymore. She didn’t want to relive these memories.

  ‘Bennie, I got something for you. Her name is Sasha. She’s got her boyfriend’s money. She’ll be alone…’ That was the phone call she had made to set Sasha up.

  ‘It was Chris, it was Chris who took your money,’ she could see herself lying to Respect after she had been responsible for getting him robbed.

  ‘You have to kill Kim.’ That was another conversation with Bennie which ended in the death of her good friend, all because Kim had known too much.

  No, no…I’m sorry.

  Now she was at Greystone, involuntarily revisiting her days in the psychiatric hospital… and there was her friend Emerald.

  No, I wish I never met you Emerald.

  ‘I want you to meet somebody,’ Emerald had introduced with a smile. ‘Jayde, this is Neli, Neli, this is Jayde…’

  ‘How do you know Sasha?’ She could hear Jayde ask as she had studied Neli’s pictures on her bedroom wall at Greystone.

  ‘She’s the bitch that has my man…,’ Neli had responded to Jayde with contempt. ‘She also used to be my best friend.’ She remembered the smirk Jayde wore after that.

  I wish I could take it back, Neli thought, feeling terrible. I wish I never met you, Jayde.

  Flashbacks of her here in Atlanta trying to warn her friends about Jayde’s intentions began to play.

  ‘Sasha, please! Just listen to me.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Sasha shouted after punching her down the steps.

  I should’ve made you listen, Sasha.

  ‘I’m feeling like it’s judgment day, your wicked ways have caught up with you…’ Those were the words Jayde had cursed her with. She could envision Jayde again, standing with her gun aimed at her, which had all occurred not too long ago.

  Pow! Pow! Pow! She remembered feeling the bullets. But she wasn’t dead yet. Being in this state was like being asleep, feeling emotions with no actions accompanying. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, and she wanted to tell someone, anyone… everything.

  If I can only make it…please let me make it.

  “Can someone please tell me why I am wasting valuable time waiting for someone to come and scrub me down when I can be saving someone’s life?” The doctor questioned in a condescending tone, eying all three nurses.

  No one moved.

  “Anyone?”

  Silence.

  “Goddammit, you and you, let’s go! …Damn airheads!”

  Two of the nurses scattered out as the doctor trailed them, ready to begin his scrub and dress for surgery. Lola could hear them shuffle and then began to retreat, and she seized the twenty second moment. It’s now or never, I should have been did this.

  Lola slid her hand into the pocket of her scrubs and produced the prefilled needle that she had been carrying. Stepping over to the bed, she began to switch it with the standard IV that Neli was already hooked to. Hearing the door creak open, she rammed the new needle into Neli’s fresh vein, puncturing it and causing a few drops of blood to spill.

  “Shit!”

  She quickly wiped it with her hand and shoved the old needle into her pocket. Neli would not be making it to surgery, not with the syringe full of potassium chloride now pumping into her system.

  The doctor marched in quickly, ready to operate and bring a now stable Neli into recovery. It wasn’t but a minute into the procedure however when she began to go into a violent cardiac arrest.

  “She’s going into arrest! What the hell is happening? That’s why I say every fucking second counts!” He shouted.

  As the room went into panic and everyone’s focus seemed to be elsewhere, Lola took the opportunity to lean into Neli’s ear and whisper three sweet farewell words.

  She rubbed Neli’s wavy hair and smirked down at her with a w
icked grin, knowing her boss would be pleased with her accomplishment. She had attained the goal that she was sent to the hospital to complete. Venom dripped from her lips as she whispered to a dying Neli with certainty and malice.