Queen of hip hop fiction Nikki Turner follows her gritty, emotionally charged novel The Glamorous Life with this new tale from the hood featuring a beautiful down-on-her-luck sister who can out-hustle the best of them as she rises from the ghetto to glory. After Mercy’s beloved dad is murdered in cold blood on her seventh birthday, her mother gives her up to foster care. But despite an unsavory upbringing, Mercy vows to make something of herself–at all costs. Working as a concierge at a hotel notorious for its shady clientele, Mercy meets and falls hard for a notorious dealer who keeps her living large in Gucci clothes and off-the-hook apartments. Then she lands a real lucrative deal: running drugs up Interstate 95 from Miami to New York. But Mercy doesn’t want to live the gangsta life forever. She’s got bigger dreams. She turns legit and makes her mark, yet despite a new, cleaned-up career, she can’t get the streets completely out of her blood. A sexy hustler named C-Note steals her heart. And as their relationship heats up, Mercy discovers that their pasts are hopelessly–and tragically–entwined. Interstate 95 runs from Maine to Florida, and the stretch between Richmond and Miami is the main thoroughfare for drug traffickers. Growing up in Richmond, Virginia, Mercy Jiles is the last of eight children born to street hustler Nathaniel Jiles, who is murdered over a gambling debt on Mercy's seventh birthday. After 10 years of being in foster care, molested and mistreated, Mercy seeks emancipation. She works the only job she can get, as the concierge at a seedy hotel, and makes friends with some of the clientele. Once she begins dating a drug dealer, her quality of life improves. Without realizing what happened or how, Mercy becomes his mule, trafficking drugs on I-95. Another up-and-coming drug dealer, C-Note, notices Mercy. Each time they have an encounter, it is foiled because of their underground lifestyles. They finally become involved and discover that their families are linked. Mercy and C-Note have to decide if their desire to build a future together is stronger than their destructive pasts. Lillian Lewis Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Riding Dirty on I-95 is USDA hood certified.” –Teri Woods, author of the Dutch Trilogy and True to the Game “[A] gritty, fast-paced street tale with heart.” –Publishers Weekly Nikki Turner , Queen of Hip-Hop Lit, is the bestselling author of Heartbreak of a Hustler’s Wife, Natural Born Hustler, Relapse, Ghetto Superstar, Black Widow, Forever a Hustler’s Wife, Riding Dirty on I-95, The Glamorous Life, A Project Chick, and A Hustler’s Wife, and editor of and a contributing author to her Street Chronicles series. She is also editor of the Nikki Turner Presents line and has collaborated with hip-hop heavyweights such as 50 Cent, Dana Dane, and Styles P. Chapter 1 Everybody’s Got a Hustle “Would you like to say anything else before I make my ruling?” the judge asked. Mercy looked directly into the judge’s eyes as she spoke. “Your Honor, I would just like to say that I have been a model student in spite of my circumstances and it wasn’t the state, my social worker, or any of the foster families I was placed with that made that possible. It was me, my determination, and my drive to rise above being molested, beaten, and mistreated while the state turned its back. I persevered and endured until a better day. This day, Your Honor. The day my life would be placed into my own hands without any roadblocks to hinder me. If allowed, I could be a productive member of society.” She paused a minute to wipe her eyes. “So, Judge, I am asking you—I am begging you—please grant me independent living.” Her voice went soft as she swallowed. Despair was written all over her face as she prayed for her emancipation. “I can only hope that you don’t make me go back to the group home. I am asking you to give me what no one has ever given me since I was seven years old—a chance.” At seventeen years old Mercy stood in front of the judge and pleaded her case. Over the past ten years she had been in eleven foster homes and one group home and had never even come close to being adopted. At the last foster home, her foster mother’s boyfriend tried to molest her. He crept up on her in the kitchen and tried to stick his hands under her skirt. She grabbed the first thing she could, a steak knife. Lucky for him, the butcher knife wasn’t closer. Once she stabbed him, there were no more foster homes for her. She was hauled off to a group home, even sent to a nuthouse for evaluation at one point. Now she wanted her independence. The judge looked her over. Her smooth walnut skin bore no makeup, and her short, flat pageboy haircut made her look innocent. However, having a file of her entire life in front of him let him know different. Their eyes met, and he quickly redirected his eyes to the stacks of legal documents before him and began to write on the court do