Dead on Arrival Read online

  Also by Kiki Swinson

  Playing Dirty

  Notorious

  Wifey

  I’m Still Wifey

  Life After Wifey

  Still Wifey Material

  A Sticky Situation

  The Candy Shop

  Wife Extraordinaire

  Wife Extraordinaire Returns

  The Score

  The Mark

  Anthologies

  Sleeping with the Enemy (with Wahida Clark)

  Heist and Heist 2 (with De’nesha Diamond)

  Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless (with Noire)

  A Gangster and a Gentleman (with De’nesha Diamond)

  Most Wanted (with Nikki Turner)

  Still Candy Shopping (with Amaleka McCall)

  Fistful of Benjamins (with De’nesha Diamond)

  Schemes and Schemes 2 (with Saundra)

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  DEAD ON ARRIVAL

  Kiki Swinson

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  PROLOGUE - DAWN

  1 - REESE

  2 - DAWN

  3 - REESE

  4 - DAWN

  5 - REESE

  6 - DAWN

  7 - REESE

  8 - DAWN

  9 - REESE

  10 - DAWN

  11 - REESE

  12 - DAWN

  13 - REESE

  14 - DAWN

  15 - REESE

  16 - DAWN

  17 - REESE

  18 - DAWN

  19 - REESE

  20 - DAWN

  21 - REESE

  22 - DAWN

  23 - REESE

  24 - DAWN

  25 - REESE

  26 - DAWN

  27 - REESE

  28 - DAWN

  29 - REESE

  30 - DAWN

  31 - REESE

  32 - DAWN

  33 - REESE

  34 - DAWN

  35 - REESE

  36 - DAWN

  37 - REESE

  38 - DAWN

  39 - REESE

  40 - DAWN

  41 - REESE

  42 - DAWN

  43 - REESE

  44 - DAWN

  45 - REESE

  46 - DAWN

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  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 St.

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2018 by Kiki Swinson

  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.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2017955333

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

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1276-9

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: May 2018

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1279-0

  eISBN-10: 1-4967-1279-X

  First Kensington Electronic Edition: May 2018

  PROLOGUE

  DAWN

  Where the fuck was he?

  I looked at the clock and noticed that I’d been sleeping for a couple of hours. I’d dozed off waiting for Reese to come home so we could talk about where we were going when we left town. He told me he was leaving his grandmother’s house and was gonna make a quick stop at NIT. Then he was coming straight here. So, where the fuck was he?

  Before I could grab my cell phone and dial his number, my phone started ringing. I picked it up from the nightstand next to my bed and looked down at the caller ID. I let out a sigh of relief when I saw that it was Reese calling me.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Did I wake you up?” he asked. He sounded kind of weird.

  “Reese, where are you?” I asked, ignoring his question.

  “I’m about to pull up to the house, so put on something and meet me outside,” he instructed.

  “Meet you outside for what? Do you know what time it is?” I screeched. He was making me angrier by the second because he was displaying some very odd behavior.

  “Please don’t ask me any questions. Just do what I said,” he replied calmly.

  “Bye,” I said, and then I disconnected our call.

  I was furious at the thought that I had to get out of my bed and meet him outside. What kind of fucking game was he trying to play?

  I grabbed a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants from my dresser drawer and a pair of sneakers from my closet and got dressed. After I grabbed a jacket from the hall closet by my bedroom, I headed toward the front door. My adrenaline was pumping. I was already thinking of what I was going to say to him if he was making me come outside for nothing. He was going to feel my wrath.

  Blinded by the headlights of Reese’s car parked in our driveway, I blinked my eyes a few times and held up my left arm to shield my eyes. I saw the silhouette of Reese’s body sitting in the driver seat, so I closed the front door behind me and walked over to his car. I was heading toward the driver side, until he rolled his window down halfway and told me to get into the car from the passenger side.

  I obeyed his instructions and got into the car with him. As soon as I closed the door, I turned around and looked at him. “What the fuck is so important that I had to come outside and get into the car?” I asked him.

  Reese wouldn’t open his mouth to respond.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I questioned him.

  A voice from behind me said, “He’s dead!”

  I turned my face slightly to the left and saw an Asian man with a gun and a silencer pointed directly at me. My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. Anxiety and fear crippled me as I slowly moved my eyes away from the Asian man, back to my husband’s face. At that moment, that’s when I noticed the blood seeping from the hole in his head. I instantly froze. I knew then that this man was about to take my life too.

  1

  REESE

  I knew Dawn was going to jump down my throat when I walked through the front door of our home. Not only did I not come straight home from work, I didn’t answer my cell phone when she called me over a dozen times, and I didn’t have the $800 I promised her I would have. Shit hasn’t been going right for us these last six months, so she’d been breathing down my neck because of it. To be more candid, we’d been having some financial problems for the last couple of years. Our car payments were past due, our credit cards were maxed out, our light bills had more than tripled, and our home was in fucking foreclosure. Taking a boatload of flat-screen smart televisions, laptop computers, and fur coats here and there helped me pay a few of our bills. It also helped me get into a few poker games at my homeboy Edward Cuffy’s spot, which was exactly where I was when Dawn called me earlier. Edward was one of the senior operators at the Norfolk International Terminal. So far, he’s got twenty-four years under his belt. In other words, he had seniority, so nothing got by him. If anything was stolen out of the shipping containers and sold for a handsome profit, Ed definitely got his cut. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

  Edward was like a big brother to me. He wasn’t a big guy, but he made up for it in height and walked around like he owned the world. He was like Samuel L. Jackson. Sixty-five percent of the longshoremen on the pier liked Edward, but the other thirty-five percen
t hated him. My wife, Dawn, was one of them. “Did you just come from Ed’s house?” she didn’t hesitate to ask as she walked toward me. I knew she had just come from the kitchen because I smelled the aroma of tomato sauce, she wore a cooking apron, and she held a plastic mixing spoon in her left hand.

  “Why are you asking me that?” I instantly became defensive after I locked the front door.

  “Because I called you over a dozen times and you kept sending me to your voicemail,” she spat as she stood before me. Dawn and I got married two years ago. We dated for a year before I popped the question. When I first met her, she was gorgeous. She resembled the actress Toni Braxton. She was sexy too. Plus, she wasn’t this fucking nagging. I remember when she used to walk around our house almost naked, on a daily basis. Now I can’t get her to take off her terry-cloth robe. She went from looking like a Playboy bunny to a Catholic nun. She assumed on several occasions that I was cheating on her because I complained about her appearance, but my guilty pleasure was gambling.

  “I was at the pier. This new guy named Nate needed some help with a few containers, so I stuck around and helped him,” I lied as I passed her and strolled into the kitchen. She knew I was lying, so she followed me.

  “So, if I call down to the office and ask Porsha’ to check your time sheet, it’s gonna show that you were still at work?”

  I gave her a head nod and then I turned my attention toward the pot of boiling water. When I looked closer and saw spaghetti noodles, I knew I was having spaghetti for dinner.

  I changed the subject. “When will the food be done?” Dawn knew that I wasn’t confrontational. I’d do anything to stay away from an argument, especially with her. She was famous for backing me into a corner, and I hated it.

  “As soon as you hand over the eight hundred dollars you promised to bring home to me,” she answered as she stood two feet away from me.

  Hearing her ask me for the money hit me like a ton of bricks. Anxiety consumed me. I literally felt like a fucking little kid who just got caught stealing money from my mother’s wallet. I tried to think of a good excuse as to why I didn’t have the money, but my mind went totally blank.

  “Reese, where is the money?”

  “I don’t have it yet.” I dreaded my own words.

  “What the fuck you mean you don’t have it yet?” she roared. I could tell that she was at her wit’s end.

  “Listen, Dawn, I’ve been working on a few things, so as soon as it comes through, I’ll get the money,” I tried to explain.

  “You’re still stealing from those shipping containers, huh?”

  “Why are you concerning yourself with that?”

  “Because I don’t want you going to jail,” she said. “Do you know that the port police are doing a lot more patrolling than usual?”

  “Stop being so paranoid. I know what I’m doing,” I assured her.

  “So, how much longer am I gonna have to wait for the money?”

  “Give me until tomorrow. I’ll definitely have it by then,” I told her, even though I wasn’t sure. I needed to say something to get her off my back, at least for now.

  “Reese, I’m telling you right now that if you don’t have the money tomorrow, I’m taking your fucking Rolex watch down to the pawn shop and pawning it,” she threatened, and then she turned around and walked to the stove.

  I didn’t comment one way or another because if she knew that I had already pawned my Rolex, she’d really be breathing down my neck. It was important to her to get this money from me because for one, she lent the $800 to me a couple weeks ago and two, she needed it for a fertility treatment. Having a baby was the most important thing to her. I had children from a previous relationship, but I didn’t have any children with Dawn.

  I’ve told her time and time again that if she and I don’t ever have kids that I won’t love her any less. But she doesn’t believe it. She thinks that having a child with me will bring us closer together. I don’t believe that. I think things are good the way they are. We don’t need another mouth to feed. Shit! I bring home around $85,000 a year and Dawn about $50,000. But we’re still in fucking debt. She pays the little things like the light bills, gas bills, and her $750 BMW car note. I pay most of the bills, like our $2,500 mortgage payment, $700 a month in child support for my other kids, my $1,300 truck payment, and then I gamble up the rest. So, tell me how bringing home another mouth to feed is going to bring us closer together? It won’t.

  I headed to the bathroom and took a quick shower. After I was done, I slipped on a pair of shorts, a white T-shirt, and then I headed back to the kitchen. Dawn had my plate of spaghetti on the kitchen table waiting for my return. She was already sitting down and eating when I walked in. “Looks good,” I mentioned as I took a seat in the chair across from her.

  Instead of thanking me for the compliment, she rolled her eyes and continued to eat. We sat there in an awkward silence for at least five minutes. I started to get up a few times and take my plate in the living room so I could watch a little TV, but I knew that would send her up the wall, so I decided against it. Thankfully, the doorbell rang. I pushed my chair back to get up, but Dawn insisted that she answer the door while she got to her feet. So I scooted my chair back toward the table and continued to eat.

  I heard Dawn as she walked across the hardwood floors to the front door. And when she yelled through the door and asked the person on the other side to announce themselves, I listened for their answer. “It’s me, Alexia,” I heard the lady say, and then I heard Dawn unlock the front door and open it. “What brings you by?” I heard Dawn ask Alexia.

  “I was in the neighborhood,” she replied.

  Alexia was Dawn’s older sister. She was five years older, to be exact. She closely resembled Gabrielle Union. She had this overly confident personality. When she walked in a room, she always commanded the attention of everyone there. I personally didn’t like her because she always had something negative to say about Dawn’s and my marriage. And to keep from cursing her ass out, I did my very best to avoid her.

  “Wait, I smell food,” she continued, and then I heard two sets of footsteps walking in my direction. I knew that at any moment I was going to come face-to-face with Alexia, so I needed to keep my composure. She knew how to ruffle my feathers, but I wasn’t going to let her get to me today. I had too much other shit going on in my personal life, so I refused to let her add anything to it.

  “Look at what we have here,” she commented after turning the corner to enter the kitchen. She gave me this cunning look.

  “What’s up?” I said, and then I buried my face back into my plate.

  “Nah, what’s up with you? I see you got my sister slaving over the hot stove again,” she replied sarcastically, as she sat down in an empty chair at the table.

  “Isn’t that what a wife is supposed to do when she has a family?” I told her.

  “Speaking of family, Dad’s been complaining about how he’s been giving you guys money so you can make ends meet around here,” Alexia said while she gave me the evil eye.

  I got defensive immediately. “I don’t know why you’re looking at me. I don’t owe your daddy shit!” I roared, firmly gripping my fork.

  “Alexia, Reese didn’t go to Dad to get the money, I did,” Dawn chimed in.

  “He might as well have gotten the money from Daddy, because if he was handling his business with the money he made from the terminal, then you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

  “Bitch, why don’t you just mind your fucking business!”

  “You’re the bitch! Got my sister around here running to my parents for money so y’all won’t lose your house and cars. You aren’t a real man. Real men take care of their family and make sure there’s nothing lacking in the household. Not you. You rather throw your money away gambling while your wife does what she can with the money she makes and the money she gets from my parents.”

  “Alexia, you promised that you wouldn’t say anything else!” Dawn yelled.r />
  “He started it with me.”

  “Fuck her! She out of line, coming in my house talking all that fly shit out of her mouth.”

  “Nah, nigga, fuck you!”

  “Reese, please stop. You too, Alexia. Y’all are about to give me an anxiety attack!” Dawn yelled once more.

  “So, it’s okay for her lonely ass to walk in here and start talking her shit to me?” I hissed.

  “Stand up and be a man, and then I wouldn’t talk shit to you,” Alexia spat.

  Dawn walked over toward Alexia and grabbed her by the arm. “Come with me, please.” She led Alexia out of the kitchen. I realized that Dawn had taken Alexia outside after I heard the front door open and close. I heard bits and pieces of their conversation, with Alexia talking louder than Dawn, of course. Their spat only lasted a couple of minutes and then they came back in the house. This time when Alexia entered the kitchen, she focused on carrying on a conversation with Dawn, instead of me.

  Alexia started talking about some bullshit-ass nigga she just started dating who wanted to have kids with her already. “We’ve only been dating for a month and a half and the nigga wants me to have a baby. I told him he was crazy.”

  “I thought you couldn’t have any kids,” I blurted out. I swear I couldn’t let her slide by with that bullshit-ass statement, especially since she started running her mouth at me as soon as she walked into my kitchen. In my eyes, this was the perfect time to put her ass back in check.

  “Don’t worry about me. Worry about the fact that you haven’t gotten my sister pregnant.” Alexia hurled her words at me. I swear, I wanted to ignore her and not feed into her bullshit, but she started hitting nerves I didn’t know I had.

  Dawn jumped to my defense. “Come on now, Alexia, that’s hitting below the belt. And besides, it’s not his fault that I haven’t gotten pregnant.”

  “Well, who’s fault is it, my sister? He’s a fucking loser.” Alexia pressed the issue.