When A Gangsta Loves A Good Girl

By K.L. Hall

Angel Harrington had always been unfazed by her title as the one and only daughter of Atlanta’s most notorious drug mogul. She was taught to keep her head in the books, but her daddy never mentioned anything about her heart. The moment she met Saint Phillips, her life changed forever. After all, he was just a knuckle-headed corner boy with no business being her suitor. Unbeknownst to her father, she had a fetish for bad boys with reckless intent. Fast forward into adulthood and one massive heartbreak later, Angel finds herself returning to her hometown to face the ashes of her past. Returning to Atlanta means returning to the chapter of her love story with Saint she can only hope stays closed. Not only is Saint Phillips the successor of Angel’s father’s multi-million-dollar business, he is also the co-owner of King’s Playhouse, Atlanta’s most popular strip club. His lifestyle brings status, influence and power, and yet his heart still has a void that no amount of money can fix. He has the life most men would kill for, and the only thing that can make him walk away from it all walks into his club and back into his life after seven long years. The more time Angel and Saint spend around each other, the more they realize the old flames between them had never been extinguished. She’s ready to risk it all for him as long as he promises to give up his spot in the game. When an unexpected enemy makes a play for Saint’s crown, he’ll have to rely on his power to settle a brewing street war, all while trying to win back the heart of the only woman he’s ever truly loved. Will Angel’s love be enough to help him walk away with from the street life for good?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Royalty Publishing House
• Release date: Aug 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781648404825

Book preview

1

Angel Harrington

If you think you’re lonely now, wait until tonight, girl.

Bobby Womack’s voice crooned through the speakers while echoing against the bare walls in Angel’s living room. The lyrics were a complete understatement, and an insult to her ears. She quickly scoffed and changed the Pandora station on her phone while looking around at all of the boxes and totes that surrounded her one-bedroom loft in Los Angeles. For the money she paid monthly for 627 square feet, she could’ve had a damn mansion back in Atlanta. That was one of the reasons she was happy to move back to her hometown, ‘The A.’ But, for every happy reason, she had two more filled with doubt. Angel hadn’t stepped foot in the Big Peach in the past seven years for more than a couple days at a time to pay respect to her father at his gravesite on his birthday. She was his baby girl. She knew she owed him that much and more for providing the life for her that he did. At eighteen years old, she accepted a full ride on her father’s dime to the University of Southern California, and traded in the souped-up Mercury Capris on rims and niggas with more gold in their mouths than money, for sun, sand and a fresh start at a new life in the sunny state of California.

I am your man, but only when you’re lonely.

Angel rolled her honey brown eyes again as she listened to Ginuwine’s melodic voice sing one of his 90’s throwback jams. If anybody knew what lonely was, it was her and her nine-inch black vibrator that she liked to call Black Magic. She swiped over to her period tracker app and groaned. She didn’t even know why she even bothered to torture herself with tracking things like that. It was a constant reminder that she wasn’t having sex, doing the do, hooking up, getting busy or any other word that meant getting fucked. To her, there was no big need to track something that came faithfully every 28 days. It had been over a year since she’d been dicked down something proper, and as much as she enjoyed the back to back orgasms her favorite toy provided on a nightly basis, she was long overdue for the real thing.

Before the thoughts had time to settle inside her mind, she pulled out the pocket vibrator from her purse and flung herself back onto the couch, laid her head against the cushions and parted her velvety smooth thighs. She could feel her body jerking forward as soon as the vibrations touched her most sensitive spot.

Mmm, shit, she groaned.

Angel started to rub the toy against her clit in slow circles while pulling on her erect nipples. If she was going to cum, she needed to settle her mind and think about something. Someone. Somewhere. Chris Brown…no, Michael B. Jordan…mmm, yeah, fuck, she thought to herself. The louder the toy buzzed, the quicker she rubbed. Harder. Faster. Her body tensed as she released, and against her better judgment, Michael B. Jordan’s face had been replaced with that of Saint, her bad boy ex. Before she knew it, her thoughts were flooded with images of her past, and how he used to put it on her morning, noon, and night. Angel sighed loudly and got up to take a shower. It had been years since she’d seen Saint, and with her upcoming move back to Atlanta, seeing him had her more shook than she’d even realized. As much as Angel hated to admit it, her pussy was still stuck on him. He was the best she’d ever had.

From the moment Angel laid eyes on Saint Phillips, she knew that he was going to break every piece of her heart. In some way, shape, or form, pain would come from the two of them being together, but she was young and cared more about the thrill of being with a bad boy than she did about the consequences that would stem from it. After all, Saint wasn’t hard to love. His barrel-chested, six-foot frame made him a sight for sore eyes on his worst day. If she closed her eyes real tight, she could even remember how smooth his tattooed, caramel skin felt against hers, or the way he looked at her with his cocoa brown eyes. She sometimes wondered if he still looked as good as she remembered. It would be much easier for her to share a city with a man who didn’t make her go weak at the knees every time she saw him.

Angel pushed each and every thought of him to the side before stepping into the shower, in hopes that she could cleanse both her body and mind. Saint was no good for her back then, and even though the two were hopefully both older and wiser than when she left, Angel was sure things hadn’t changed much. If there was one thing she knew, it was that men never changed. They only pretended to change for a moment of time until they got what they wanted. They never stuck around long enough to get what they truly needed. Her left foot popped out from behind the multi-colored shower curtain and hit the bath mat, followed by her right. She’d only gotten the chance to dry off half of her body before her phone vibrated against the bathroom counter.

Hello? she answered on the third ring.

Baby, Malik greeted her.

As much as she tried not to smile, she couldn’t help it. What did I tell you about calling me that?

I don’t care what you say or where you go, you my baby, he replied.

She rolled her eyes. Whatever.

What are you doing?

Just got out of the shower.

Perfect. I’m on my way over to get you dirty.

Angel chuckled. Funny, but no. You know I’m on this celibate thing right now.

And I also know you’re about to pack up and move over 2,000 miles away.

It’s only five hours by plane, she reminded him.

He sucked his teeth. Yeah, trust me, I know. Why you think I’ve been saving up all my frequent flyer miles?

Oh, all that for lil’ ole me? she asked, flirting with him.

You know how I feel about you, Angel. Quit playin’ with me.

Angel sighed as she wrapped her towel tightly around her hourglass-shaped body while holding the phone between her cheek and shoulder. I do know how you feel, but you know that I’ve made it clear about where I’m at and what I want.

You know everything you want I can give it to you. You just too stubborn to let me.

She shrugged. Maybe so. I never claimed to be easy to deal with.

Trust me, I know.

I’m just doing my own thing, she told him.

You’ve been doing your thing since I met you how many years ago?

I know, Malik. I’m finally getting to a place where I’m good with me and just being alone in this world. You know I don’t have a family like you do.

I know, and I don’t fault you for that shit. Just don’t forget about a nigga all the way over there, aight?

I could never forget about you. You were my first real friend out here.

There you go with that friend shit again, he said, with a twinge of bitterness in his voice.

---

On paper, Malik was great. He was everything Angel or any woman in her right mind could’ve ever wanted in a man. He was on the straight and narrow, worked a nine-to-five job that gave him pay stubs the IRS would never question. He had the time to spend with her instead of being too busy wrapped up in the game. The only problem was, he just wasn’t bad enough for her. As much as Angel kept telling herself that she’d outgrown her bad boy phase, she found herself turning down every suitor that didn’t have that hood appeal in him. She didn’t know if it was because of how she was raised, or what, but Destiny’s Child said it best: if his status ain’t hood, I ain’t checkin’ for ‘em. Malik was a catch. He just wasn’t on Saint’s level. She craved a boss.

---

Hey, I’m getting a call. I’ll text you when I land in Atlanta tomorrow, okay? Angel told him.

Yeah, okay. Have a safe flight, Angel.

Thank you.

Malik ended the call before she’d gotten the chance to hang up, which told her that he was in his feelings. Unfortunately for him, Angel didn’t have the time to deal with it. It killed her that she couldn’t give herself to him the way he wanted her to, but she had to stay true to herself. Angel’s mind and body knew what and who they wanted.

Angel and Saint first met when they were seventeen years old. He had been a corner boy for her father’s drug cartel since he was sixteen, but by the time they crossed each other’s paths, he had already started moving up in the ranks of the Harrington Cartel. She knew Saint was bad news from the moment she laid eyes on him. At first, she was thrilled to be chased by him and loved being kept on the edge of her seat every time she was near him.

The Harrington bloodline created the Harrington Cartel, which was the first black drug cartel in the south. Angel’s father was the connect that pumped drugs through Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas, Louisiana and Virginia. To most of the south, he was one of the most feared ghosts because few had gotten the privilege of seeing his face before death or learning his government name. From the corner hustlers to the big time dealers, he was known as Big Town, but to Angel, he was simply known as Daddy. Her father always told her that although he had chosen to place a façade over his street life, he didn’t want his daughter living that life or being with a nigga who did. This is the life I’ve chosen. It’s not something I want for my Angel, he would say to her. Angel’s mother passed away when she was only four years old, so her father’s word was what she lived and died by.

After almost an entire year of sneaking around under her father’s nose, Saint and Angel finally came clean about their forbidden romance to him. After witnessing the pure love the two had for each other, Big Town gave them his blessing with the caveat that if Saint ever broke his daughter’s heart, he would rip his out of his chest and feed it to his hounds.

A year later, Big Town’s poor health caught up with him before the streets did. After he was diagnosed with cancer, Angel foolishly thought that everything having to do with the streets would magically cease to exist. But a business that big didn’t sleep and never died. As long as there were drugs on the streets, there would be fiends trying to suck, fuck and swallow for their next hit. Which meant there would always be money to make. Big Town didn’t want his daughter to see him as anything less than the strong man he’d always been. He knew he was the only parent she’d ever truly known, and he wanted to do right by his late wife and his daughter. He knew that getting an education would be more beneficial to her than loving a boy ever could be, so he told her that it had always been his dream for her to go off to college and make something of herself.

Angel spent many nights talking to Saint until she was blue in the face about how they could finally be free to leave Atlanta for good. She could go to class in the daytime and work in the evenings, while he found himself a full-time job. She was ready to fall deeper in love with him, but he was young, and wasn’t ready to leave the street life alone for her or anyone. She had fallen in love with a man who had become a monster in the streets, and coming up under her father only made him more of a menace.

The night before Big Town passed away, he named Saint as his successor, which meant Angel would be going off to college alone. She never imagined that Saint would become her father’s right hand and take over his empire after his death. He’d done the one thing she never thought he’d do; choose the streets over her, and that was something she couldn’t accept. Her father had pulled the thread that started to unravel their young romance, and Saint cut the tie all together. With a heavy heart, Angel packed her bags in hopes that being over five hours away from Saint would ultimately break her connection to him. She refused to cope with losing the only parent she had left and Saint’s decision to remain a key player in the streets.

Over the years, she let her grief transform her into a different person. Not only was she mourning the loss of her father, but the heartbreak that stemmed from the realization that she would never have a normal relationship with Saint. Even with thousands of miles in between them, Angel still wondered if things would’ve been different between them if her father had still been alive, but she was too stubborn to find out. In her eyes, Saint robbed her of her happily ever after to build his own status. He chose the streets over love and she would never forgive him for that. It only proved her father’s words were true all along. She didn’t need a man in her life with his hand in the streets. Angel had more to offer than being just the trophy wife or girlfriend of another Atlanta dope boy. All she had to do was stay true to what her mind knew better than her heart; Saint Phillips was off limits.

2

Saint Phillips

His bare feet trekked across the calacatta gold marble floors of his two-level penthouse suite as he headed into the kitchen for another glass of D'Usse. As soon as his glass was filled to the top, he walked over and pressed the button to let the electronic shades go up to reveal the Atlanta skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Saint had arguably one of the best views in the city. Content with his drink in his hand, Saint watched the city move from hundreds of feet above everyone. To him, they were as small as ants, working away while he reigned king over the entire city.

After standing in silence for a few minutes, he carried himself back upstairs to the master bedroom and looked at the mountainous piles of money taking up residence on his bed. With his glass on the nightstand, he began counting, stacking and wrapping the neat stacks with money bands.

Two hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars, he said aloud, and then stacked half of it inside the hidden safe that had been custom built into his bedframe. He stuffed the other half into a black duffel bag and slid it underneath the bed.

Saint pulled his shirt over his head, revealing the scar on the inside of his right arm and the tattoos on his chest, arms and back. He ran his fingertips across the raised skin on his collarbone with the words Trust No One inked in script. It was late, he had a headache, and he didn’t feel like entertaining new pussy, so the next best option was to go to sleep. As soon as his eyes closed, the factory iPhone ringtone blared into his ears. He gently shook his wrist to see the time show up on his designer watch before answering the call from his business partner, Omari.

Hello? he said into the receiver.

What’s up, Saint?

What’s up, O?

Shit… just called to see if you were going down to the club tomorrow night, he said.

Saint smiled to himself thinking about all the money the club would rake in. The more money the club made, the easier it was for him to filter in the illegal drug money that he needed to clean from his real hustle.

Yeah, you know I’ll be there. Fridays are one of our biggest nights. How did we do tonight?

Not bad. How does almost thirty thousand in liquor revenue plus another ten thousand in entrance fees sound? I’d say that’s a hell of a good night for a Thursday.

Hell yeah, especially when you know we about to triple that shit between tomorrow and Saturday.

For sure. Oh, before I forget, Reese invited the girls out tomorrow night for one of her damn ‘girl nights’ or whatever, he said.

His forehead creased in confusion. At a female strip club? Nah, she just wants to spy on your ass. That’s all that is, Saint joked.

It’s a free country. Wifey can go anywhere she wants as far as I’m concerned. Omari chuckled. But hey…I gotta get home. I’m just now leavin’ the club and shit. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.

Bet, he said and ended the call.

Saint leaned back against the headboard and the mahogany wood creaked out an eerie sound. With his conversation with Omari replaying in his head, his thoughts were easily transferred back to his money. Although Saint and Omari were business partners, he had a way of keeping even the closest people to him at a safe distance. Omari was good at handling everything that running a business entailed, and most importantly, he was green when it came to the hustle and bustle of the street life. That’s exactly why Saint kept his straight and narrow partner in the dark when it came to what really made him rich. Back when King’s Playhouse was just an idea inside his head, Saint knew he needed someone he could trust to keep the books and help him run the club better than anyone in A-Town. Saint’s business outside of the strip club was none of Omari’s concern. He planned to keep rinsing his drug money through the club and all Omari had to do was run it.

Unbeknownst to Omari, he had involuntarily robbed Saint of the opportunity to fall into the deep sleep both his mind and body needed. He replayed the phone conversation in his head for the last time. The only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was the mention of his wife, Reese. She’d been married to Omari for years, and just so happened to be the best friend of his ex, Angel. Although Saint wouldn’t admit the truth to anyone outside of the four walls that made up his bedroom, he knew she was what was missing in his life. Dealing with his feelings for her was complicated enough as is, so he only dealt with them in his spare time, which he was grateful that he didn’t have much of. He was a man, which meant he was fine with packing away his memories of her into a rarely visited corner of his mind, and moving on as he always did when relationships turned sour. He’d given Angel his heart when he was seventeen years old because he knew that in the game, a heart was the last thing he fucking needed.

Thinking of his past with Angel only made his headache worsen, so he reached into his nightstand for a daily dose of his special medicine. He pulled out his weed, grinder, a pack of grape cigarillos and custom made lighter. It was 24-karat gold with diamonds around the top and bottom. The lighter alone cost two months of somebody’s rent. Saint had been fortunate enough to make so much money that he could afford to spend it on things he didn’t need every once in a while. With all the money he brought in on a daily basis, one would think there wasn’t a thing in the world that could stress him, but he almost always ended the day with a migraine. Instead of becoming a pill popper, he smoked to relieve the pain. After he emptied some weed out of the black, satin drawstring pouch that it was stored in, he started to grind it up. The Harrington Cartel supplied the best strains of weed in the entire south, so he knew he was about to drift off to sleep in no time. Saint emptied the weed into the gutted cigarillo, rolled and sealed it, then sparked that shit up. His thumb flicked the lighter once and a blue flame ignited, making the diamonds around it sparkle even more than before. An appointment with Mary Jane was the first meeting on his calendar when he woke up in the morning, and the last thing at night. With the life he lived, he probably needed counseling, but with as much money as he had in the bank, he didn’t see therapy as a necessary expense. It was too time consuming to have somebody tell him what he or she thought he should do with the cards life had dealt him, and get paid for some bullshit advice. He preferred to give all his problems to Mary. She was the only bitch who didn’t give him any lip.

He exhaled slowly and closed his sleep-deprived eyes, letting his drifting thoughts lead him right back to Angel. Saint had never wanted any woman the way he wanted her. When he first decided to get into the drug business, he worked on the block instead of being in class just to try and roll with the big dogs to get him to the connect. It turned out that the connect just so happened to be Angel’s father. Saint looked at Big Town like the father he never had, and Big Town returned the gesture by calling him the son that he never had. That meant a lot to Saint who never had even the shadow of a father in his life. When Big Town offered Saint the deal of a lifetime, being next in line to take over his spot in the game, he couldn’t resist.

Although that was a lot for a teenager to take on, Saint felt like it was his calling. Plus, he would’ve been a fool to say no to the head of the Harrington Cartel. He knew he was destined to be a businessman, and a smart one at that. Having a nice ride, a dope ass place, and owning a thriving business that wasn’t a fast food chain or a convenience store were major milestones for someone who bounced from couch to couch after his mother died in a car accident when he was thirteen. He made sure that the money he made in the streets kept food in his gut and a roof over his head until he started making real money. Not only was he able to make a bigger investment into the game, when he turned 23, he bought an old building in the heart of Atlanta’s night life, remodeled it from the inside out alongside Omari, and King’s Playhouse was born.

3

Sierra Gray

Sierra Gray was a natural born hustler. By no means was she born with a silver spoon in her mouth. In fact, she was lucky if she had a plastic spoon sometimes. Everything she ever had in life was either taken, worked for, or a combination of both. She was barely over the age of sixteen when her mother died from a crack overdose, and her father lost his job. All of his assets were seized on a bad investment deal and he was shipped off to a prison in North Carolina to do a twenty-year bid. She became a ward of the state and was forced to take care of herself. When things began to get too hard, she found herself signing up on different websites and lying about her age to be a sugar baby. If somebody is willing to take care of me, I’m gonna let them, she thought.

At the age of 21, Sierra didn’t mind using what she had to get what she needed. She learned a long time ago that a woman was one of the most dangerous creatures that God had put on this Earth, and used that knowledge to its full potential. The Gucci belt around her size 23 waist, Christin Louboutin heels on her French-pedicured feet, and Celine bag hanging on her wrist proved that there was absolutely no shame in her game.

She started out trying to pay her way through community college to make something of herself like a good girl would’ve. She even worked as a waitress at the Waffle House off Piedmont Avenue to make an honest living for herself. One late night, she met Omari who told her about the club he and his boy were opening up. Sierra quickly traded in her dusty ass apron for a pair of sky-high heels and made her way from an amateur to the premiere dancer at King’s Playhouse under the pseudonym Sapphire. Her first few months at the club consisted of all the other dancers talking about her like a dog, or even worse. She didn’t do anything but brush their jealousy and hate right off. She had trained herself to see a hater from a mile away. To her, they were jealous because all the men flocked to her like bees to honey based off her beauty and perfectly stacked 36-23-36 body alone. Plus, she was the one walking out of there with trash bags full of money every night she worked the pole, not them.

As natural as she made it look, it took Sierra a while to get used to dancing for old men who seemed to know all the ins and outs of strip clubs. It wasn’t her idea of fun at all, but just like people clean toilets and mop up shit all day, she figured somebody had to do it. Those disgusting old men were her bread and butter, which meant she got anything she wanted, anytime she wanted, and never left a good night shift with less than $3,000 in hand.

Seeing all that green at one time had her head spinning and pupils dilating to green dollar signs. She had successfully secured the bag and quickly developed an expensive taste because of it. Sierra began living the life she felt she always deserved. She’d always felt like she had been accidently born into the wrong life, like God got his wires crossed and by the time He figured it out, he was like ‘fuck it.’ It took her twenty-one years, but she made a lane of her own. In her mind, if she had to show some ass or titties to those old sleaze bags to sport Gucci shades or a Birkin bag, she was going to do it with no questions asked.

Even with old big spenders on her weekly roster, Sierra’s money seemed to start drying up quicker than she could stack it. When she found herself having to pawn her luxury bags and accessories just to make ends meet, she knew she was in need of a get rich quick scheme. She needed a sucka that she could leech off of, or a baller she could fuck to get access to his black card. She was ruthless and didn’t give a fuck if that meant being a sugar baby to older rich men or snatching up a young hustler. Her pockets were screaming, and come hell or high water, she was not going to be seen returning her Louis V wristlet or Prada shoes. There were hoes all over the city waiting for her to fail, all because their men screamed her name at night when they were fuckin’. Besides, if she was going to attract new money, she had to look like it.

4

Omari Grant

Omari woke up to annoying ringing of his alarm blasting into his eardrums like an overhead PA system. Even with all the new technology around him, he liked to keep things old school. He didn’t depend on using his cell phone to wake him up in the morning. He enjoyed the blinding, neon red light that illuminated his side of the room. He sluggishly reached over and slammed his large hand over the sleep button, and after another five minutes, his ears were greeted by the alarming wakeup call once more. With sleep still in his eyes, he sat up and tossed his feet onto the plush carpet. Before getting up, he glanced over his broad shoulder at his wife, Reese. Her peaceful sleep had been uninterrupted by the multiple rings. As much as he wanted to stay entangled in their red, Egyptian cotton bed sheets with her, he had work to get done.

Being a relatively new entrepreneur in the Atlanta nightlife scene was stressful as hell. Growing up as the son of a pastor and a Muslim father, Omari never saw himself being the co-owner of a strip club. By his second year