The Black Widow Clique

by Genesis Woods

  “Baby?” I gasped. That single word knocked the hell out of me. “Melonee’s pregnant?”

  Chasin’s future wife hung her head down. “Shit . . . I forgot you didn’t know. Um, I’m not one to bullshit or beat around the bush—plus, I’m hungry as hell right now, and my attitude is on ten—so I’ma tell you like this. The night you and Melonee ‘made love,’ as she put it, y’all created a baby. At first, she thought that the baby belonged to the person who attacked her, but now she believes that the baby belongs to you. She was going to tell you when you came to my house tonight, but you canceled on her. All this shit is crazy as fuck to me, but if my niece believes the baby is yours, so do I. I don’t know what’s going on now. All I can tell you is that she started having contractions and then started bleeding. Hopefully, everything is okay and you two will be parents in a few months. . . .” She shook her head. “If not, this might destroy my poor niece.”

  My head was swimming with the news that had just been told to me. Melonee was pregnant . . . and by me, at that. I closed my eyes and thought back to the one night that she and I had had sex. My memory was a little fuzzy about everything that had gone down, but I did remember emptying my entire soul and existence into her as I came. There had been no barrier between us that night, and I didn’t regret it at all. Just that fast, my day had gone from being one of the scariest in my life to one of the best. When I had first laid eyes on Mel at Decadence, I knew that she would one day carry my child and wear my last name. I just hadn’t thought it would happen this soon. While I was still marveling at the news that I was about to become a father, I felt a light tap on my shoulder. It was Joc.

  “Hey, I heard everything she just said. If you want, I can go back and see what’s going on with the baby and it’s mother,” he said in a low voice.

  I nodded my head at Joc and then sat down in one of the vacant seats behind me. Bree walked over and sat next to me.

  “It’s a lot to soak in, huh?” she asked, eyes focused on me.

  “It is, especially when she doesn’t really remember what happened that night.”

  Bree crossed her legs and then leaned back in the chair. “Mel remembers some things, just not everything. One of the memories she’s real adamant about is that you are not the one who attacked her. She’s always said that to me, even after her trifling-ass friend Fiona kept trying to tell her that you did attack her.” Bree laughed. “You don’t know how many nights I have had to listen to Melonee talk about Roman Black. About how sweet you are, how gentle you are . . . and those sexy green eyes of yours.”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes before she continued. “Can I ask you something, Roman?”

  I nodded my head and looked directly into her eyes. Sitting this close to Bree, I could honestly see why Chasin was interested in finding out who she was. Her hazel eyes, cute round face, full lips, high cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes would have any man drooling at her feet.

  “Do you love my niece?” she asked, totally catching me off guard.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, do you love my niece?”

  I cleared my throat. “I . . . um . . .”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit, Mr. Black.” Bree laughed. “The way Melonee talks about the connection you two share, I’m pretty sure you feel the same way about her as she does about you.”

  I could hear people start to whisper around us at the mention of my name. From the looks on some of their faces, Bree saying my last name had confirmed who I was. While many continued to mind their business, there were some who pulled their phones out and started snapping pictures. I didn’t know what they were expecting to see, but my reaction to their cameras now being in my face wasn’t on their list. My phone began to ring in my pocket, but I ignored it, as I already knew who it was.

  I blew out a breath and wiped my hand over my face. Leaning back in my seat, I tilted my head back as far as it would go and closed my eyes. The conversation Uncle Kazi and I had had on this same topic back in Russia a few months ago invaded my thoughts.

  “You love this girl, no?” he asked with his thick Russian accent.

  I looked out the window at my uncle’s beautiful garden that had been planted in memory of my mother, and thought about lying to him. Would he think I was crazy for falling in love with Melonee after being with her for only one night? Was it wrong that I craved her very being, that I longed to have her in my arms right now, even though I’d been ordered to stay away from her? In my heart, I believed that this thing between us was meant to be, regardless of what was going on around us, but my mind still had its doubts.

  Uncle Kazi placed his hand on my shoulder and handed me the shot of vodka that he had poured for himself.

  “Do you think I’m crazy for falling in love with her?” I asked.

  “Depends on what your definition of crazy is. I’ve seen and heard a lot of craziness in my lifetime.”

  “Anything similar to my situation?”

  I noticed a look of longing cross over his face. “When it comes to love, we’re all crazy in some way, Roman.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He looked at me, then out at his garden. Standing tall, with his hands folded behind his back, dark eyes focused on something in the distance, he said, “If I told you that I fell in love and started a relationship with a woman I was given a contract to kill, would you think I was crazy?”

  I slowly shook my head. “Not really.”

  “What if I told you that I put a bullet between her eyes the day after she gave birth to my child? Would that still be your answer?”

  When I didn’t respond, Uncle Kazi turned his hard gaze on me and smirked. “Like I said, nephew, when it comes to love, we’re all a little crazy.”

  “So are you going to sit there and ignore me or answer my question?” Bree’s voice floated to my ear, causing me to open my eyes and sit up.

  Without hesitation, I replied, “I do.”

  A small smile played on her lips before she nodded her head in approval. “Well, I hope you’re ready—” Bree began, but she was cut off when Joc came running up to us.

  “Something was wrong. I don’t know all the details, but they are about to perform an emergency C-section right now on your friend,” Joc announced. He turned to walk away but stopped in his tracks when he noticed we were not following behind him. “You are the father, right?”

  I looked at Bree, then back at him, and nodded my head.

  “Well, come on, then. Don’t you want to see the birth of your baby?” he said.

  Without any further hesitation, I followed behind Joc. He led me to the room where they were about to remove my child from Melonee’s body. Another nurse verified that I was the father, and let me in the delivery room. Melonee’s screams and cries echoed throughout the room until her eyes connected with mine. At that second, it felt like everything around us stopped and only we were in the delivery room. A small smile formed on her lips as tears started falling from those beautiful gray eyes.

  “Roman . . . ,” she cried with a small laugh before her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she passed out.

  Fiona

  “Dreams,” by the Game, was knocking hard in my car as I sped down the freeway toward the valley. So much stuff was going through my mind that I really didn’t want to think about, one being the phone call I had just got from my uncle Dro a few minutes ago, in which he requested another fifty K payment. That nigga was crazy if he thought he was going to get anything else out of me. He had done his job and had already got compensated for it. I’d be damned if I’d pay him again for some shit I could’ve found a muthafucka off the street to do for two Gs. The only reason he had got that first fifty K was that I knew Benji would give it up to make sure his involvement in Melonee’s attack would stay on the low. Uncle Dro really had the game fucked up if he thought we would keep breaking him off to keep his lips sealed. I’d kill that bitch-ass nigga myself before that happened.

  While I t
ook a puff from the Black & Mild I had just lit, my mind drifted to Melonee and the last conversation we had had. My so-called best friend was a sneaky, selfish bitch, and I had honestly underestimated her. I had called Cowboy and had told him to check into her finances to see if he could find out where all this money was sitting at, but the nigga hadn’t returned any of my calls yet. I made a mental note to stop by his place after I left here to check on him and to see where the fuck his ass had been.

  Blowing out a thick cloud of smoke, I smiled to myself at the new plan I had for Melonee’s ass. The bitch still seemed to be living a happy life, even after the shit that had happened to her, and I couldn’t stand it. When she vowed to be a part of the BWC, she had promised to break bread with us, ride till the end with us, and to always make getting this money her number one priority. But somewhere along the way, the bitch had stopped being about the BWC and had turned to looking out for herself. She had me all the way fucked up if she thought that she wasn’t about to hand over some of that other money she got from the marriage she had with Doug. I deserved my cut of that, just like everyone else. Best friend or not, Melonee’s ass was about to come up off that money; she just didn’t know it yet.

  My “no fucks given” attitude was at an all-time high right now, and no one was excluded. Especially Bree’s fat ass. The way she had come at me on the phone the other day was super disrespectful. When she called to tell me that Mel had been rushed to the hospital because she had started having contractions and bleeding out, I had acted like I was really concerned, but in actuality, I really didn’t give a fuck. Low key, I prayed to God that she would lose the damn baby so that she could feel some sort of hurt in her heart like I did, because obviously, she was doing just fine after getting the shit beat out of her.

  I pulled up to the new house Benji had just purchased for himself in Santa Barbara, and shook my head. The private and secluded Mediterranean estate was a beautiful sight, but in my opinion, it was not worth the 5.7 million dollars he had paid for it. The twenty-three-thousand-dollar monthly mortgage alone would’ve turned me away, but I guessed when you were the new CEO of a multimillion-dollar company that had just closed two-billion-dollar international deals, money wasn’t a thing. The view overlooking the ocean, a bird refuge, the harbor, and the city was indeed a fantastic one, but the place was still not worth that 5.7 million.

  I walked up the pathway that was paved with red flagstone to the front door and rang the bell. A short Hispanic chick with a French maid’s outfit, fishnet stockings, and some sky-high stilettos answered the door and smiled.

  “Hola. Cómo puedo ayudarte?”

  “Where’s Benji?”

  “Qué?”

  “I know you speak English, little Spanish fly. Where’s your boss?” I snapped as I sized her up. Benji had told me that he hired some staff for the house, but I hadn’t expected a knockoff Jennifer Lopez to be among the new help.

  She stared at me for a moment before shifting all her weight to her left foot and placing her hands on her wide hips. “You must be Fiona.”

  “If you know who I am already, that means you knew I was coming. Be a good little worker now and take me to my man.” I didn’t know why I had said that. Benji and I were nowhere near a couple, even though I kind of wanted us to be. Where that feeling had come from, I didn’t know. I guessed you could blame it on the mind-blowing sex, the out-of-this-world head, and the fact that he was worth so much money right now. Just thinking about his net worth had my pussy wet as hell.

  A small smirk played on this bitch’s full lips as she looked over her shoulder at the empty foyer, then back at me. “Your man, huh?” She crossed her arms over her silicone-filled titties. “Benji told me that you had a smart-ass mouth. You’re a rude little bitch, I see.”

  “He also should’ve told you that I have no problem beating a ho’s ass. Stay in your place and your lane before you find your fake ass on the corner with the rest of your familia, selling fruit cups and pillows,” I said, pushing past her and into the house. “Benji . . . ,” I yelled. If she didn’t want to take me to him, I was going to make him come to me. “Benji.”

  “And you have no home training, either. Oh, Dios mío. Benji sure does know how to pick ’em,” said the wannabe Sofia Vergara as she closed the door and locked it.

  Her eyes scanned my body from head to toe as she slowly walked around me. Although my titties weren’t as big as hers, I knew my curvy frame still looked good in the tight jeans and the BOSS BITCH tank top that I had on. The thigh-high boots matched the black fedora hat on top of my head, while the light makeup on my face complemented the purple spiral curls in my hair.

  “Never knew he had a taste for ghetto bitches, but you never know with him. His dick seems not to discriminate nowadays, I see,” she mumbled to herself.

  “What the fuck did you say?” I growled at her, but then I quickly turned my gaze in the direction of the wall from behind which Benji had just appeared.

  “What the fuck you yelling for, Fiona?” he asked as his ass strolled to the front of his house. He was dressed in a big black robe and some silk pajama pants that were hanging low on his hips, that sexy washboard stomach and his V shape on full display. With a cigar hanging from his mouth, and a glass of some brown liquor in his hand, Benji was looking like the rich playboy that he was. No lie, he looked sexy as fuck too, with the light five o’clock shadow on his face and those dark eyes dripping with nothing but pure lust. I had to squeeze my thighs together to stop my clit from thumping so hard. Although I would rather enjoy christening every part of this small mansion with him right now, my reason for being here at this moment was strictly business.

  The shit going on with Mel, this baby, and Roman had me really feeling some type of way. Not only that, but to know that this bitch had that huge amount of money sitting somewhere, untouched, had my left palm itching, and I knew that I would need Benji’s help again to take it from her.

  After walking up to me, my sexy partner in crime wrapped me in his arms and pulled me close. After kissing my cheek a couple of times, he lightly brushed his lips against mine before burying his nose in my neck and inhaling. “You always smell so good. Let’s go to my room for a few minutes. I wanna show you the bed I just had flown in from Italy.”

  I pushed him off me. “Stop, Benji. I’m not here to see your pussy dungeon right now. We need to talk.” I looked back at J Ho and noticed how she was pretending to clean up while ear hustling. “In private.”

  “Let’s go to my bedroom, then. We can talk in private there,” he suggested while grabbing my hand.

  “No, Benji, I already told you. If we go to your bedroom, you and I both know we won’t get any talking done. Let’s go in the living room or in one of the other ten rooms I know you got in this muthafucka.”

  “We can’t go in the living room.”

  “Why?”

  He took a sip of his drink and hissed, “Because my mother’s in there.”

  “Julia’s here?”

  “She is. Been here since Richard was admitted to the hospital.”

  Benji took a pull of his cigar before turning around and leading me into a room that was lined with panoramic windows that afforded a view of the city and was furnished with all-white furniture. Everything, from the fireplace to the big fur animal rug that was laid out on the floor in front of the couch, was white. Whoever had decorated the house for him was worth every penny he or she must’ve charged.

  “Take your shoes off before going any farther,” he said over his shoulder as he let my hand go and dumped the ashes from his cigar in a crystal ashtray. Molly the maid fluffed a few pillows on the couch before refilling Benji’s glass with some more of whatever liquor he was drinking. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Didn’t I say in private, Benji?”

  “Carmen isn’t going to repeat anything we talk about in here, so go ahead and say what you need to say.”

  The bitch had the nerve to smirk at me as she began d
usting off the white baby grand piano, which I was sure was in here only for show.

  “I don’t know her, which means I don’t trust her,” I countered as I sat down on the couch.

  “Your trust in people is up in the air with me right now.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Am I or am I not out of fifty K because of the uncle you trusted to do a job and then disappear?”

  “But that’s—” I began, but Benji held up his hand to cut me off.

  “That the same uncle who called me early this morning, requesting another fifty K to keep his mouth shut,” he growled.

  I silently cursed myself for not listening to my father and leaving Pedro’s money-hungry ass alone. Seemed like I was more like him than I was like my own daddy.

  “Don’t worry about my uncle Dro. I’ll take care of him,” I said. “What I want to talk to you about is Melonee and how I need your help with what I have planned for her.”

  Benji shook his head and laughed. “What’s up with you and this revenge shit against Melonee? At first, I thought it was kind of hot that we both bonded behind wanting to fuck up the lives of people we considered family, but now it seems like your taste for revenge is on a whole other level. You have to know when to stop and leave well enough alone, babe, before the shit starts to blow up in your face. What have I always told you? Come up with a plan, execute it, and then get out. Three things to live by when you’re doing ‘white-collar’ crime. The little shit you had going with the Black Widow Clique, or whatever y’all call it, was cool when you were getting money from those cheap-ass insurance policies. But you’re in the big leagues now.”

  He went on. “You see me. I got what the fuck I wanted and haven’t thought about my poor stepbrother since. Roman’s position, his money, and basically his life are all mine, like they should’ve been from the beginning. When he goes to jail behind those rape charges or that IRS bullshit, I will call a press conference to express the hurt my family has suffered from Roman’s bad choices in life. Then, after that . . .” He shrugged his shoulders.