From # 1 Essence best-selling Crime Novelist K'Wan comes a tale of forbidden love, high stakes murder and the robbery gone bad that set it all in motion, Diamonds and Pearl. They say that good girls like bad boys, and this was especially true for Pearl Stone. A child born of privilege to a drug baron and reputed killer known in the streets as Big Stone. Although the flashy, fast-paced nature of the streets calls to Pearl, she’s been brought up to look but not touch. But when a young hustler named Diamonds crawls up from the swamps of Louisiana and sets up shop in New York City, everything Pearl was taught flies out the window. Raised in the wild and schooled on the mean streets of New Orleans, Diamonds is no stranger to hard times and is willing to do whatever it takes to stay above the poverty line, including kill. When a robbery turned mass murder goes wrong, Diamonds is forced to flee New Orleans and lands in New York where he meets Pearl, and for the first time finds something he craves more than wealth and power…love. As the stakes get higher, Diamonds has to push away his past if he’s to grab hold of his future―but by doing so, will he show Pearl that all that glitters isn’t gold? "Top-notch street lit...one of the top urban fiction novels of the year." - Library Journal Starred Review on Diamonds and Pearl K’wan has penned over 2 dozen bestselling novels, including the widely popular Animal series, as well as several paranormal stories written under a pseudonym. He was also the recipient of the 2012 and 2013 Street Lit Book Award Medals (SLBAM) in adult fiction for Eviction Notice and Animal . K’wan currently resides in New Jersey where spends his time writing, cooking and binge-watching reruns of the Vampire Diaries with his teenage daughters. Diamonds and Pearl By K'wan St. Martin's Press Copyright © 2016 K'Wan All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-250-10261-4 Contents Title Page, Copyright Notice, Acknowledgments, Part I: When the Levees Broke, Part II: Kingdom of Stone, Part III: A Swarm of Locusts, Part IV: Damage Control, Part V: Love and Consequences, Epilogue, Also by K'wan, About the Author, Copyright, CHAPTER 1 NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA / SEPTEMBER 2005 "It looks bad out there, man," Larry said, staring out the rain-slicked window of the second-floor bedroom. It was the only level of the house that hadn't been completely flooded yet, or soaked to shit. Looking at the rapidly rising floodwaters, that was likely to change soon. Larry doubted if the house would last through the night before being washed away like everything else. In his thirty-five years of life he had never seen anything like it. It was a storm of biblical proportions that made him think back to his grandma reading passages of the bible about God washing sin from the earth in a merciless tide of judgment. The city he had grown to love so much was being cleansed. It was fitting that this particular hurricane had been named after a woman, Katrina, because she had come through and unleashed the wrath of a woman scorned on the city of New Orleans. Just about everyone who was able to had already fled the area, and those who couldn't scrambled for higher ground and prayed for help that was in no rush to get there. "This shit has got the white man's stink all over it." Big Aaron came into the bedroom. He had a ham sandwich in one hand and a can of beer in the other. He took a huge bite of the sandwich and continued his theory. "As strong as them levees was supposed to be, how the hell are damn near all of them gonna fail at one time? If you ask me, this shit was all a government plot to get all the niggers out of New Orleans so they can turn this into a tourist trap." "I don't recall asking you about no damn conspiracy theories, but I do recall asking you to help them young boys finish loading my dope onto that truck before the water gets too high to drive out. Most of the roads have already flooded, so we only got a small window of time to get gone. Turn that sandwich loose and tend my business, hear?" Slim barked in a heavy Southern drawl. He was sitting on the bed, stuffing money into a duffel bag. It was one of several that now littered the bedroom floor. Having his money outside the safety of his vault rattled him, but there was no way they'd be able to move the massive thing. He'd acquired the name Slim as a boy, when playing the harmonica and picking the pockets of tourists in the red-light district had been his means of living. As his reputation and wealth grew, so did he, currently tipping the scales at just nearly four hundred pounds. Slim used memories of starvation to motivate him in his climb up the underworld ladder, devouring food and territory alike. It was whispered in some circles that Slim enjoyed the touch of a greasy cheeseburger and his money over that of a woman. "Slim, them young boys got it under control," Aaron said as if it were nothing. "What you need to be wo