Street Queen

By Meesha Mink

In this long-awaited action-packed entry to the acclaimed Queen series, Naeema "Queen" Cole—a crime-solving modern-day Foxy Brown— is once again on the hunt for a killer on the streets of Newark…

Naeema has avenged the brutal murder of the son she never knew and taken out the culprit behind the attempted assassination of her on-again-off-again husband Tank. She hoped deadly vengeance was no longer a part of her life and normalcy would reign. She was wrong. Her wild and crazy next-door neighbor/friend, Coko "Hunga" Brown, has been found dead from an apparent heroin overdose, but Naeema knows she was fresh out of rehab and appeared sober the last time she saw her. Suspecting foul play, she is going undercover once more as "Queen" and using Coko's social media accounts to retrace the last days leading up to death she's sure is murder in disguise.

Delivering yet another "sassy, sexy, streetwise story," (New York Post), bestselling Meesha Mink's Naeema "Queen" Cole is playing it all by ear, with nothing but grit, gut instincts, and a plan to make her friend's killer wish they were already dead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Infinite Ink Presents...
• Release date: Feb 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201300340

Book preview

Praise for Meesha Mink

"Kiss the Ring is a fast, hard-boiled urban tale. The elements are all there: explicitly detailed sexual acts, drug use, mystery, and murder. You’ll find the prose strong, the premise compelling, and a cast of dynamic well-developed characters. Enjoy the ride. This is a sure-fire winner, as is Mink’s Real Wifey series."

—Ebony

––––––––

Mink writes with street flair while sliding in a few erotic sex scenes, yet her tale is one of hard-boiled noir. Naeema plays the noble soul seeking the truth, determined to right all wrongs, and she’s willing to off anyone who blocks her path. Sex, bloody violence, betrayal, and a crackling mystery come together in a resounding crescendo of a finish. Take a bow, Meesha Mink, this one’s a winner.

—The Library Journal (Top Pick of the Month)

––––––––

This crisply written urban thriller from Mink introduces a street-savvy protagonist, Naeema Cole, who is both a villain and a heroine...Fast-paced action, sizzling erotic sex, and a heartwarming kick-ass heroine will have newcomers and urban fiction fans alike eagerly awaiting Naeema’s next escapade.

—Publisher’s Weekly

––––––––

Meesha Mink is an incredible writer with a penchant for character development. Her thorough descriptions make the reader feel like they are right there in the scene with the character living and breathing in each moment. Queen is the perfect character for an urban murder mystery. Her Foxy Brown mannerisms and zero f*cks given attitude make her quite easy to love.  I look forward to seeing where Meesha takes Queen next.

—Parle Magazine

––––––––

"All Hail the Queen is a well-written sequel to Kiss the Ring. It offers realistic characters within a riveting plot."

—Birmingham Times

––––––––

Mink’s energy and grit make it a fun read.

—Juicy Magazine

––––––––

Unexpected storylines...very realistic...a quick read with an engaging main character.

—Huffington Post

––––––––

"The Real Wifeys series tells the tales of strong female characters who overcome obstacles while standing by or getting over the men that they love."

—AllHipHop.com

Dedication

For those people with big dreams

and the inner hustle to make that shit happen.

Also by Meesha Mink

The Queen Series

All Hail the Queen

Kiss the Ring

––––––––

The Real Wifeys Trilogy

Real Wifeys: Hustle Hard

Real Wifeys: Get Money

Real Wifeys: On the Grind

––––––––

The Hoodwives Trilogy (Co-writer)

The Hood Life

Shameless Hoodwives

Desperate Hoodwives

by Meesha Mink

prologue

2016

––––––––

I’m a killer.

Naeema Queen Cole closed her eyes as she stood under the spray of her shower. There wasn’t enough heat or water to wash away her sins of the lives she’d taken—even in the name of justice and vengeance.

How many?

She’d never taken a count but knew it to be four or five. Maybe more.

I did what I had to.

Growing up in the hood and seeing the police shoot and kill at will, lie and plot in abundance, aggravate and instigate with crazy randomness all made her untrusting of them. So, she took justice into her hands. First, when her fourteen-year-old son, Brandon Mack, was brutally killed. She thirsted for the blood of his murderer. The guilt of never being in his life drove her need for retribution. Undercover among his false friends, she had eventually exposed the truth and struck with deadly vengeance.

Naeema pressed a hand against the shower wall and looked at the ring of the son who never knew her. She always wore it once she took possession of it after his death—including the night she took the life of the motherfucker who ended his.

Nelson.

Little grimy, jealous-hearted bastard killed my son because he was afraid of losing his spot as the favorite of their gang’s leader, Bas.

The pleasure she took in killing him had come with so much ease.

Kiss the ring. Kiss it and beg me not to kill you.

The kiss nor Nelson’s pleadings for his life had worked.

POW!

She also killed Bas...in a church.

POW!

After she spared his life and forgave him for wanting her dead, the bastard had shot her in the shoulder. Her aim had been better, landing the bullet in his heart.

I forgave you, but you were still going to kill me? she asked as she stood over his body as his blood stained the floor.

I killed my own mother. You really think I ever gave a fuck about you? he had asked as blood gurgled from his mouth.

POW!

The second bullet to the head had put him out of his misery.

Naeema cringed at the memory, tapping the tips of her long neon stiletto-shaped nails against the pink tile before balling her hand into a fist as best she could. She released a breath as the heat of the water did nothing to block the sudden chill that raced over her nude body. It was foreboding. Old folks swore it was a sign of someone walking over your grave.

Would death come calling, looking for her to pay in kind for the lives she’d taken?

Scary thought, but not a deterring one in the past.

Next, after Naeema witnessed four bullets pierce the flesh of Tank, her husband, and she held his bleeding body in her arms, she had been unable to rest easy. Not until Tank recovered and she hunted down his wannabe killer, Grip, his supposed friend and right-hand man in his high-profile security business.

Motherfucker lost his grip thinkin’ he was getting away with that shit.

She envisioned him that night on the floor, looking up at her with his eyes filled with the fear she evoked.

Don’t do this, Naeema. Please, he’d begged.

You ain’t got much choice in the matter, Grip. The queen always protects her king. Always, she had countered.

The knife she plunged into his heart was his ending.

Fuck him.

That was six months ago, and her sudden feelings of conscience surprised her. There had been others. Random motherfuckers that got in her way or tried to take her life first.

But it was enough. Enough bloodshed. Enough death. Enough vengeance.

No more.

She nodded as if reassuring herself that the carnage was over.

I was a killer. Right? Right. Shit.

Naeema focused on the heat of the water pelting against her shoulders, back, and buttocks before she rinsed the cherry-scented shampoo from the buzz cut of her recently dyed fuchsia hair. Focusing on finishing her shower, she ignored how the slickness of the suds against her body was stirring up desire. Without the time—she was late for work as a barber—or her man around—she preferred his hard dick to her fingers or the pulsing spray of her shower head—she pushed away any ideas of giving in to a nut.

"I could use some dick—no, no his dick," she muttered, missing every bit of Tank that gave her pleasure, comfort, and security.

He was just as skilled at fucking as he was at fighting. The latter had him and a small crew of employees out of the country doing security for a singer’s six-month international comeback tour.

The vibe she picked up from their phone convos, sexts, and Facetimes was that Tank was horny as fuck too. He swore he wasn’t even giving in to jacking his dick. He wanted her to feel every bit of hardness bought on by his celibacy while on the road.

He better keep a case of dry dick syndrome.

Their marriage of eight years was on again and that meant the dick was all hers. Period. Hell, to her, it meant that even when they were angry and giving each other space.

Fuck ‘round and cheat, and I’ll shoot his ass. Humph, my aim is better than the last motherfucker who tried to take him out.

She turned off the shower and reached for a plush towel to wrap around her body as she stepped out of the tub and into bright neon furry slippers. As she left the bathroom, the heat and steam escaped via the open door. She rushed across the short distance to her bedroom—the same one she had when she was first moved in with her grandfather, Willie Cole, at age eleven.

Back then, losing her mother due to the heinous crime of a drunk driver had made her not care about everything her grandfather did to make her feel welcomed. And loved.

As a hot-in-the-ass teenager, she had run away from his rules and the home he provided her. Three years ago, escaping the loneliness and mistrust in her marriage to Tank, she ran back to the abandoned brick colonial house and reclaimed it from its squatters. Little by little, she had made repairs to make it habitable, but in the beginning, the limits of her money kept the renovations to the first floor. Still, it had been hers, and she’d made it home.

And reclaimed my independence.

Briefly, Naeema looked about the room. Gone were the faded and torn teddy bear wallpaper, replaced with all-white décor and the new furniture Tank purchased for her. Once he began to spend more time there, he’d insisted she dismantled her makeshift bedroom in the living room and used one of the three on the second floor. She chose the one that had been her originally, unable to forget her grandfather’s rule to never intrude on the one spot in the house that was his and his alone—his bedroom. Dead or alive, she was still respecting his wishes.

Naeema moved over to one of the two windows overlooking the backyard and old garage where she stored the motorcycle Tank gifted her for their third wedding anniversary. Who knew she would leave him by the fifth?

She frowned a bit at her next-door neighbor and friend, Coko, standing in the middle of her yard with her arms splayed wide, her head flung back, and her tongue extended as she tasted the light snow now falling in February. She held the towel around her body with one hand and pushed the window open with the other. Coko, are you crazy? It’s cold as a mean bitch out there, she yelled over to her.

The woman opened her eyes to look up at her. They were free of the signs of the heroin addiction she finally beat. Body curvy and clean. Young again. Healthy again. Hard to think it was the same woman who she found damn near dead of an overdose on her front porch last year.

Coko looked down at the gold sobriety bracelet on her left wrist. This cold weather feels good when you been through what the fuck I been through, she said before she bent and used gloved hands to ball some of the now pristine snow into a ball.

She better the fuck not.

Naeema gave her a look like, Don’t be stupid, bitch.

Coko flung her head back and laughed with the glee of a child before she swung. The snowball hit the rear of Naeema’s house with a solid THUD.

There was a sweetness to the joy Coko displayed. It was infectious and pure. The woman was happy. Happy to be drug-free. Happy to be alive. Happy to feel the cold—to feel something.

Naeema smiled. It was hard as fuck not to do so.

Even after she closed the window, she stood there for a little bit, watching the other woman enjoying life.

Go for yours then, Coko. Fuck it.

chapter one

Death just won’t leave me the fuck alone.

Naeema straddled her motorcycle as she eyed the body bag strapped to the stretcher in the back of an ambulance. The darkness of night would cover the large town soon, and the February winds that whipped about the city of Newark were chilling. She felt them through her short leather coat but knew they were not the sole cause of her shivers.

Coko was dead.

Shit, she swore, accepting the pain that stabbed at her.

Naeema swallowed over the lump in her throat as she looked up and down the length of the street off Eastern Parkway where she lived, seeing the neighbors standing on their porches staring but not stepping up to ask questions. Show concern. Give a fuck.

Bullshit rumors would fly.

Speculations would be made.

And no tears would be shed for her friend.

Fuck them all.

Naeema turned and looked at the door to Coko’s house as the ambulance pulled off down the street. Red lights flashed, but the sirens were silent. There was no need for urgency anymore.

She scowled, trying to make sense of it all. When she first arrived on the scene, she had asked for the cause of death. The words of the paramedic replayed:

Overdose. That heroin ain’t shit to play with.

Her frown deepened.

Overdose?

Coko had completed thirty days in rehab. That was in July—no August, she said aloud to herself. Yeah, it was August when she came home.

Naeema thought back to the exact summer day. It had been hot, and she’d been outside on the porch when a taxicab pulled up next door. Coko had stepped out the back and soon walked over to Naeema to genuinely thank her for saving her life the previous year. Gone were the tell-tale signs of her severe heroin addiction.

Her eyes were clear. Her skin was fresh. Clean. Neat. Sober.

Just like this morning as she played in the snow. What happened?

Naeema parked her motorcycle in the space left empty by the ambulance. As she climbed off it, she spotted Sarge standing on her porch in his faded military fatigues even though it had been decades since he served. She gave him a brief wave and wasn’t shocked worth a fuck when he didn’t return the gesture.

The older man with all-too-knowing eyes had come along with the house when she reclaimed it from the squatters. She hadn’t the heart to kick him out—even with his dirty fatigues and wild-looking silver hair. The fear of being homeless had been in his eyes, and something about him made her feel less alone. She couldn’t explain it but didn’t even try. She just followed the gut instincts she trusted so much, and upon her insistence, he agreed to wash away his stink. They dwelled in the house together with him having a free claim of the basement. She offered him a place to stay, and he had become her protector, advisor of sorts, and most definitely her comic relief. Love for him grew, and she counted the oddball as one of the dearest people in her life.

There weren’t many.

Naeema stepped onto the sidewalk and then jogged up the stairs of Coko’s house. She peered through the window but couldn’t see anything beyond the blinds.

What happened?

She turned, finding Sarge now standing at the foot of the steps with his hands pressed into the pockets of his fatigues.

They said Coko died from an overdose, she said, vaguely noting he needed on a heavier coat to fight off the brutal winter.

He just released one of his noncommittal grunts.

Naeema crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "But that’s bullshit because Coko was drug-free. I just saw her this morning, Sarge. She was clean," she stressed, surprised at the tears welling up in