The Black Diamond Trilogy

by Brittani Williams

Overview

Diamond and Mica have been best friends since grade school, and have always watched each other’s backs. After Mica moves out of their drug-infested neighborhood, they have a scandalous falling out and lose touch. It isn’t until Diamond hooks up with one of North Philly’s most notorious drug dealers that she’s able to leave the place that she’s always called home.

Under extreme circumstances, Mica and Diamond meet up and are back on the map as the Laverne and Shirley of the ghetto, but unfortunately, both friends have ulterior motives for rekindling their friendship. The two plot to get rid of the dealer and hit the road with his fortune, but one of them has her own sinister plan that could leave the other staring death in the eye.

Jealousy and greed create plenty of drama for Diamond. Even when she thinks she’s on her way to a happily-ever-after ending, she finds herself fighting against foes she never saw coming. Will her “I rule the world” disposition keep her on top, or will Diamond lose the things she cares about the most?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781622866243
Publisher:	Urban Books
Publication date:	12/26/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Author extraordinaire Brittani Williams began her foray into writing by happenstance when she was required to pen a play as an assignment. It was then that Brittani discovered her unbound imagination, creativity and the escapism rooted in great literature. After much encouragement from family, friends, and co-workers alike, Brittani's hobby be-came a profession in 2005 when she completed her first manuscript titled Automatic Princess, (later renamed Daddy's Little Girl). Within four months of her completed manuscript, Brittani was signed to a two-book deal with Q-boro Books. In 2007, at the youthful age of 24, Brittani released her first book entitled Daddy's Little Girl. The release was highly successful and received positive reader reviews from across the globe; making Daddy's Little Girl Brittani's bestselling book to date. Later that year she contributed to two anthology projects, Fantasy (Urban Life-style Press) and Flexin' & Sexin' (Life Changing Books), alongside some of the best authors in the industry. With the release of her sophomore novel, Sugar Walls, Brittani had four projects in circulation, all released in the same year.In June 2008, Brittani released The Cathouse, a novel co-written with Anna J and Laurinda D. Brown. The following December, her third novel, Black Diamond, was released by Urban Books. Two short years later in 2010, the sequel, Black Diamond 2: Nicety was released. To broaden her horizons beyond exclusively writing novels, Brittani made her directorial debut in June 2010 with the stage play adaptation of one of her bestselling novels, Black Diamond. In addition to directing, Brittani also wrote and produced Black Diamond the stage play, which successfully debuted to a sold out crowd of over 700 on its opening night. On the heels of her successful stage play, Brittani signed a three-book deal with her publisher, Urban Books, for Cover Girl, Black Diamond 3, and Hell on Heels. Brittani also wrote book for hip hop artists and reality stars Jamal Green, know as Mazaradi Fox, Girl Code with Hazel E, and No Excuses by Dreux "Lil Fizz" Frédéric. Other works by Brittani include Carl Weber’s Kinpins: Philadelphia, Kiss The Girls and Make Them Cry, and The Streets Keep Pulling Me Back. Brittani has inked a new three book deal with Urban Books, her first releases since 2022. Stay turned, because your favorite author is back!

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Diamond: Who's Betraying Who?

I heard the moaning loudly through the halls and had I not been standing here myself I would have never believed it. Two people that I trusted, the two people that I would have taken a bullet for, were right there in my home betraying me. Sorry would never be enough to ease my pain, and at that point there was no turning back. My footsteps couldn't be heard over their loud lovemaking, and not even the door opening interrupted them. I stood there in the dark hallway watching. Hell, I figured I might as well let them finish before I let my presence be known. At least then it would all be worth it. As Kemp laid flat on his back, his arms tightly gripped Mica's waist. She grinded into him and let out moans each time the strokes hit her spot. The flickering of the candlelight bounced off of her body, making it radiant. Even the beads of sweat that formed on her back were evident. Though I was furious, I can admit that watching the two of them in action was slightly turning me on. Under different circumstances I would have gladly joined in, but I had to focus on the action at hand. She continued to ride him jockey style and soon he was yelling her name and palming her ass until he had expelled every drop of his love inside of her.

She slowed her pace and after stopping I knew that it was my cue. I raised my gun and aimed in their direction. I released the safety, which quickly gained their attention. Mica jumped off of him and began backing up to the top of the bed, covering her naked body with the sheets. Kemp sat up in shock and spoke immediately, trying to calm me down.

"Baby, it's not what you think," he spat, the same bullshit line that every man speaks when they get caught. What the fuck did he think — I was blind? I clearly walked into this room and saw him fucking my best friend and all his stupid ass could say was that it's not what I think.

"What kind of asshole do you think that I am?" I screamed, trying not to lose my cool. "Did you actually think you could get away with this?"

"I'm so sorry you had to see this. I never wanted you to find out this way!" Mica cried, as tears began pouring out of her eyes. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"You didn't want to hurt me? That's bullshit! Fucking my man is definitely not the way to avoid it. I trusted you and this is what I get?" I pointed the gun again.

"Please, Diamond. Don't do this. This is not the way to handle this," Kemp continued to try his hand.

"Fuck you! You don't have the right to tell me what to do and what not to do. I'm running this shit! Do you see this gun — remember this sight cause this is the last thing that you are going to see. I hope the pussy was worth it!" I cocked the gun and began shooting, releasing five shots. The blood spraying all of the room was something that I would never forget, somewhat like a bad dream that seemed too real not to believe. I would take this to the grave.

I never wanted to resort to murder. Hell, I wasn't a criminal. Well, not a convicted one anyway. I worked hard to get to the point where I was today and I didn't plan on letting anyone take me down. You never really know the things that lie ahead for you but all of the choices you make ultimately have an effect on the way things turn out. Looking back on the way I grew up, most would say that they wouldn't have expected anything different from me. I, on the other hand, expected much more.

I was adopted at the age of two and it wasn't until I was ten that my mother decided to reveal the truth. I knew I didn't fit the mold of the family from the beginning but I never had any concrete proof. After my mother and father divorced we moved in with my grandmother to a small row house in North Philly. In total, there were about five houses on the block occupied by humans. The rest were boarded up and infested with rodents, most of which the crackheads used as shelter to get high. My mother always said that eventually we would move on to bigger and better things, but eventually never happened.

My grandmom had lived there all of her life and refused to move. Shit, she still had the old sofas with the plastic on them, so you know she wasn't going anywhere. We weren't the only ones in the family that had run to Grandmom's for shelter. There was my aunt Cicely who swore her shit didn't stink. She was on welfare and worked under the table at the hair salon as a shampoo girl. She was the reason the working class hated paying taxes, since she was more than capable of getting a full-time job but she'd rather collect money from the government to go clubbing every weekend. She barely saw her children since they were stuck in the house with my grandmom most of the time. Her idea of quality time was stopping in and giving them a few new toys. It was bullshit to me; I figured that anyone who wasn't capable of being a good parent should never have kids.

It was rough in the neighborhood. Resisting temptation was the hardest. With all of the drugs and things around, how could I not get involved? I know that sounds like bull, but try living in the world of sin and see if you'll come out of it a saint. I didn't have a lot of friends in the neighborhood because girls weren't my choice of companionship. I was into boys early, which only got me into trouble.

I met Mica through her brother Johnny. Johnny and I met after we both were caught stealing from the supermarket. There was a room in the back of the store where they would hold you until your parents arrived. I sat there quietly waiting for my mom to come and watched as Johnny cried buckets of tears. He must have been scared of an ass whooping or something because he was definitely a little extra with his reaction.

"Are you okay?" I asked, trying to get him to stop crying, because he was annoying the hell out of me.

"Yeah, I'm fine!" he replied, turning his face in the opposite direction.

"What's got you so upset? I mean, damn, is the beating going to be that bad?" I asked, still not done probing him for information.

"Why do you care? You don't even know me," he replied.

"I know that, but I'm tired of hearing you cry like a little girl, so I'm trying to make small talk to get you to shut up!"

"What?" he replied, turning to look at me.

"You heard me! Stop crying like a little girl!" I yelled.

He jumped up out of his chair and ran over to where I was sitting. Soon, we were rolling around on the floor fighting like two cartoon characters. It was probably comical seeing us trying to hold the other one's hands down.

He wasn't really that much stronger than me, but I didn't really feel like fighting. I simply wanted him to shut up.

"Get your hands off of me," I yelled, struggling to get my hands loose. "I knew you were a little girl, boys don't fight girls!"

"They do when girls don't know how to keep quiet," he yelled, not releasing his grip on my wrists.

"You know you like it, you like a girl that's slick with the tongue," I said, trying to make him lose his concentration.

"What?" He loosed his grip for a second, and that was all that I needed to get the upper hand. I flipped him over and was now sitting on top of him holding his hands down.

"Now, why don't you just give up? I got you now," I said, looking him in the eyes as he tried to get loose.

Just then the door opened and his father and sister came in with the security guard from the store.

"What is going on here? Get off of him!" his father yelled.

I quickly got up and moved over to the chair that I had been sitting in before our fight started.

"Nothing, Dad. We were just playing," he lied.

"Just playing my ass, you know how much trouble you're in right now?"

"Yes Dad," he answered after getting up from the floor. "Let's go, don't worry, he'll never steal anything from your store again," his dad said to the security guard as they headed out of the room.

I felt sorry for him because I could tell that he was afraid of his father. It was a few weeks before I ran into his sister. I was walking to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread for my grandmom when I saw Mica. She looked at me strangely before coming over to talk to me. I thought for sure that she was going to want to fight since she walked in on me and her brother, but I was surprised by what she had to say.

"You're the girl that was in that security room with my brother, right?"

"Yeah, that's me. Why?" I asked, preparing for a throwdown.

"Girl, what's your name? My brother hasn't stopped talking about you since that day. I think he's in love," she said, laughing.

I stood there for a second in shock. In love? After the way I talked to him, he must be crazy, I thought. Then I replied, "My name is Diamond. What did he say about me?"

"He just said that he liked your style and you were sly with your mouth but he could deal with that."

"That's crazy, he really said that?" I asked. Now I was blushing because though I thought he was a little punk, he was cute. He wouldn't be able to protect me but he was good to look at, as long as he wasn't crying.

"Yeah, he did. My name is Mica and his name is Johnny. We live right over there on Dover Street. Why don't you come hang out with us sometime? We're always outside."

"I might just do that. Thanks, Mica, I'll be seeing you around soon," I said before turning to head into the store. Soon Mica and I were best friends and Johnny was my first love. I found out that their father was really abusive and Johnny got it the worst. He was afraid of his father and that was why he cried that day in the supermarket. Johnny was really calm, not like all of the other boys I had dealt with. Most of them already had a sample of sex so they didn't really care about quality time and conversation. Johnny, on the other hand, did. We would talk on the phone for hours every night about anything you could think of.

During this time Mica and I hung out a lot too. We got really close but grew closer before Johnny got locked up for murder. After years of abuse he was finally fed up and in a rage he shot and killed their father. I was shocked when Mica called and told me the news. I was even more shocked that she blamed part of it on me. She said that it was me that pushed him to do it. I knew I had nothing to do with it. Johnny was fed up; all I did was encourage him. I never wanted him to be afraid of anyone. I hated that he was being abused. Shit, if anything she should have thanked me. It saved her from being beaten too.

A few months later Mica and her mother moved out of the neighborhood to somewhere in Delaware County. It would be years before I would see Mica again, and now that I think of it, it may have been better if I'd never seen her at all. Then I wouldn't be in my home covered with her blood. Damn, what happened to the good old days?

CHAPTER 2

Mica: Dreams

I hated the long ride up to the Camp Hill Prison, but I had to show my brother love. Besides the fact that we didn't have much family, most of the family we had didn't want to see him. I knew my brother too well and had it not been for him falling too deep in love he would have never been in prison in the first place. Though it had been five years since the day he murdered my father it still felt like yesterday.

I was only fifteen the day they hauled him off to prison. At the time I didn't get a true sense of what was happening, but it didn't take long for me to figure it out. As time passed I realized that both my father and brother were gone. Johnny wasn't dead but he was gone from the life that I'd been used to. That gunshot, to me, killed two birds with one stone. Most of my family completely erased him from their life. I loved him too much to treat him the way that they had. Where others couldn't forgive him, I did. The person I couldn't forgive was the bitch who pushed him to do it. I mean, I've been in love — don't get me wrong — but if there is a love that can make you kill your own parent, then I don't want it.

After I arrived and checked in to see my brother I had to sit and wait until they brought him down to the visiting area. I was anxious to get this visit over with because I had a date with a fine-ass hustler that I couldn't miss. I know that sounds inconsiderate, but shit, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. He might be the key that would finally get me out of the fucked-up neighborhood we called home.

As my brother entered the room, I smiled. I missed my Johnny so much and even the letters weren't enough to make me feel the closeness that we once had. He had gotten so big in prison and had turned into a man. It saddened me that he had to grow up this way.

"Hey, baby sis!" he said, smiling and looking me up and down as if he hadn't just seen me last week. I made it my business to get up there every week no matter what else I had to do. In my book, family came first. Everything else was secondary.

"What's up?" I said, reaching out to give him a quick hug. Hugging wasn't really allowed but the guards were cool and would allow it for a second. "Did you get the money I sent last week after I left?"

"Yeah, I got it. I told you not to do that. You are supposed to be saving that money for school," he replied, sitting down on the opposite side of the table.

"Johnny, when are you going to give up? I'm not going to school. I told you that I'm going to be all right without that. Shit, Mom can barely make ends meet so the little bit of money I make working at the mall I give to her. I can't see you in here without, so I do what I have to do. You know me, always looking out for the family."

"Yeah, I know, but sometimes you got to look out for yourself."

"I will soon, trust me; I have something in the works."

"Like what? I hope it's not illegal. I don't want to see you behind bars too. One of us is enough."

"No, it's not illegal. You know I'm not into shit like that," I responded, twisting my lip because I wasn't hardly trying to do anything that would land me in jail. I wasn't that damn crazy.

"Just checking but hey, have you seen or heard from Diamond yet? Or checked on her old address? I still haven't gotten a response from her. I must have sent her hundreds of letters since I been here."

"Hell no, I haven't seen her and that's the way I want to keep it. You know how I feel about her," I replied, annoyed that he would even say her name to me. Just the mention of her made my skin crawl.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Black Diamond Trilogy"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Brittani Williams.
Excerpted by permission of Urban Books, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Chapter One - Diamond: Who's Betraying Who?,
Chapter Two - Mica: Dreams,
Chapter Three - Diamond: King of the World,
Chapter Four - Mica: Role-Play,
Chapter Five - Diamond: Him, Me, and She,
Chapter Six - Mica: Three-Letter Word,
Chapter Seven - Diamond: As Seen on TV,
Chapter Eight - Mica: Family Matters,
Chapter Nine - Diamond: Running His Game,
Chapter Ten - Mica: The Glamorous Life,
Chapter Eleven - Diamond: A Place Called Home,
Chapter Twelve - Mica: The Battle Within,
Chapter Thirteen - Diamond: Free to Roam,
Chapter Fourteen - Mica: That Old Thing,
Chapter Fifteen - Diamond: Fly like Me,
Chapter Sixteen - Mica: Risky Business,
Chapter Seventeen - Diamond: Down the Aisle,
Chapter Eighteen - Mica: Held Hostage,
Chapter Nineteen - Diamond: We Meet Again,
Chapter Twenty - Mica: Seal the Deal,
Chapter Twenty-one - Diamond: Together Again,
Chapter Twenty-two - Mica: New Horizons,
Chapter Twenty-three - Diamond: Hook, Line and Sinker,
Chapter Twenty-four - Mica: Sucka for Love,
Chapter Twenty-five - Diamond: Stick to the Script,
Chapter Twenty-six - Mica: Make Me Love You,
Chapter Twenty-seven - Diamond: HBIC,
Chapter Twenty-eight - Diamond,
Chapter twenty-nine - Black,
Chapter Thirty - Diamond,
Chapter thirty-one - Black,
Chapter thirty-two - Diamond,
Chapter Thirty-three - Black,
Chapter Thirty-four - Diamond,
Chapter Thirty-five - Black,
Chapter Thirty-six - Diamond,
Chapter Thirty-seven - Black,
Chapter Thirty-eight - Diamond,
Chapter Thirty-nine - Black,
Chapter Forty - Diamond,
Chapter Forty-one - Black,
Chapter Forty-two - Diamond,
Chapter Forty-three - Black,
Chapter Forty-four - Diamond,
Chapter Forty-five - Diamond,
Chapter Forty-six - Diamond,
Chapter Forty-seven - Diamond,
Chapter Forty-eight - Diamond,
Chapter Forty-nine - Diamond,
Chapter Fifty - Diamond,
Chapter Fifty-one - Diamond,
Chapter Fifty-two - Black,
Chapter Fifty-three - Diamond,
Chapter Fifty-four - Black,
Chapter Fifty-five - Feels So Right,
Chapter Fifty-six - Brass Knuckles,
Chapter Fifty-seven - Frenemies,
Chapter Fifty-eight - Back Against the Wall,
Chapter Fifty-nine - His Little Secret,
Chapter Sixty - Second Time Around,
Chapter Sixty-one - Forbidden Fruit,
Chapter Sixty-two - A Game of Chess,
Chapter Sixty-three - Foolin' Around,
Chapter Sixty-four - Breath of Fresh Air,
Chapter Sixty-five - A Dose of Reality,
Chapter Sixty-six - Mr. Perfect?,
Chapter Sixty-seven - Open Season,
Chapter Sixty-eight - The Ties That Bind,
Chapter Sixty-nine - Choices,
Chapter Seventy - Sudden Impact,
Chapter Seventy-one - On a Mission,
Chapter Seventy-two - Lost,
Chapter Seventy-three - Chance Meeting,
Chapter Seventy-four - Expect the Unexpected,
Chapter Seventy-five - The Unimaginable,
Chapter Seventy-six - Game Time,
Chapter Seventy-seven - The Culprit,
Chapter Seventy-eight - Finale,
Chapter Seventy-nine - Life After Black,