A Woman's Worth 3

by Jahquel J.

  “Yeah, nigga and you ain’t shit for fucking his bitch.” I laughed and handed him a soda.

  We bullshitted some more and went upstairs to see what Tyrisha was cooking. When we got to the kitchen, Madison and Tiffany were in the kitchen baking cookies. Tyrisha was nowhere in sight. I picked Madison up and kissed her cheeks. She looked so much like Reshawn it was crazy. She giggled and tried to feed me some of her mushed up cookies.

  “Thanks, Moe, for listening to me going crazy,” Tiffany spoke.

  “You’re my sis. I’m here… Where’s Tyrisha?” I looked around.

  “Upstairs. MJ had woke up from his nap.” She placed the cookies on the plate.

  I took a couple and went upstairs to find Tyrisha. I knew she and Quinton had shit to talk about and I found out all my information beforehand. I didn’t want to be around for their screaming match if there was one.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Quinton

  A nigga is back and man does it feel good. After dealing with my crazy ass ex- girlfriend in Cali, I couldn’t wait to touch back down in Miami. I am glad I didn’t sell my place I had down here. I did some renovation, which was why I stayed with Moses and Tee. The whole situation with Tiffany wasn’t all that big. We fucked around and talked when I was in Cali. She expressed how she and Madison missed me, and she wished we had made it work. I did too. I love Tiffany and Madison and to be a hundred percent real with y’all, I would take her back if she wanted to come back. We could pick right back up where we left off and forget about the past.

  While I was away in California, I had a lot to think about. I needed my life to get back on track and in order to do that; I needed to be back in my city. In the short time I was back in the city, I opened a Miami office backup and had ads around the city letting people know I was back in Miami. I would keep my Cali office. It brought in too much money for me to let it close. My partner, who also happens to be my ex-girl wasn’t too pleased about me leaving. I didn’t care, I had to get as far as I could away from that crazy bitch.

  Tiffany moved around the kitchen like I wasn’t sitting here in her face. I stared at her waiting for her acknowledge that I sat here. She used the excuse of baking to avoid eye contact. I laughed at loud and she stopped mixing up the cookie dough to look at me.

  “Something funny?” She squinted her eyes at me.

  “Yeah. You.”

  “How am I funny, Quinton?” She quizzed.

  “Tiff, I don’t have to explain. Just by you acting funny and not speaking. What’s up?”

  “I lost Marquise for good. He packed our stuff up and I hadn’t heard from him. I’m really thinking about just moving to California with him, it’s not worth breaking up over,” she sighed.

  “He left because he found out about us. Moses told me.”

  Her eyes bugged out her head and she placed the spoon down and looked me in the eyes. “You didn’t tell anyone, right?”

  I blew air out my lips and looked at her. “When have I ever bragged about getting pussy?

  She didn’t say anything, all she did was sit on the counter and put her head in her hands. I couldn’t blame her. She got caught up and now she lost her relationship with her man. I didn’t know how deep her love went for Marquise, but she could see it either as fate or as a disaster. I walked over to her and kissed her on the forehead. I hated to see her stressed like this, but if homeboy were a real man, he would have stayed to talk instead of coming when she was out of town.

  “You know what, I’m not stressing no more. This shit isn’t about to get me down. The loss of my son didn’t tear me apart so I’m not letting him get me down. He left and didn’t want to talk that’s his problem.” She hopped off the counter and finished baking her cookies.

  This bitch went from zero to one hundred and then back to zero in a minute. She tripped off this nigga and now she screamed fuck him. I guess she went through the stages of a breakup. Shit, I didn’t care what she went through I planned on taking her sexy ass out. She had got all thick from her pregnancy and it looked good on her.

  “Let me take you out tonight. Tee will watch Maddie, let me make you feel good,” I suggested as I rubbed her shoulders. She let moan escape her lips and nodded her head yes.

  “Sounds like heaven.”

  “It is. I want to make you feel good and smiling again,” I told her. I wanted to see her beautiful smile light up again.

  “I do too.”

  “Alight, I’ll text you where to meet me,” I informed her and walked out the door. I had a lot to plan for tonight. I wanted it to be special.

  *

  I stood on the beach with a single rose in my hand watching Tiffany as she removed her heels and trotted across the sand toward me. The smile on her face couldn’t be hidden, she glowed and she couldn’t hide the smile even if she tried. I could tell the wheels in her head turned because the closer she got to me the bigger her smile got. She looked so beautiful in the light pink maxi dress with a white denim vest. Her hair was pulled up into a bun and her makeup was flawless. I loved when she smiled; it exposed her little-chipped tooth that I loved so much. Damn I got caught up on her. Nah I never stopped getting caught up on her.

  “Is this the beach you took me to on our first date,” she baby talked me.

  “Oh, it was a date? You kept reminding me that it wasn’t,” I joked with her.

  “After I got drunk and you stayed the night, I think we have to call it a date.” She laughed and took in the scenery.

  I had a table set up on the beach with lanterns and chairs. There was a fire going on a couple yards from the table. On the table, I set up the champagne and a present I had bought for her. We took our seat and the staff I hired started to serve us. The menu was surf and turf and I could smell the porterhouse steak from a mile away. There were also lobster, clams, and shrimp. I made sure to have her king crab legs on deck too. She cut into the steak and took a bite, careful not to smear her lipstick.

  “This is delicious. Tell me why you went through all this for me?”

  “Because you deserve it. I thought this would cheer you up some,” I honestly replied.

  “Well, it worked. I’m feeling so much better about the situation, and I’m not just saying that. Thanks.” She took some more food into her mouth.

  “The pleasure is all mines.” I ate my food and stared into her eyes.

  After we had finished eating, we headed back to the hotel room I got for the night. I was serious about making her feel good. I wanted to make her feel so good she would forget that nigga’s name. She opened the hotel room and immediately flopped on the couch. She started taking off her heels and I followed behind her. I took her foot into my hand and started massaging it. She threw her head back and let out little moans. I grabbed both her feet and massaged the shit out of them. You would have thought I ate her from behind the way she acted.

  “Where the hell you learn how to massage feet like that,” she yawned.

  “I got skills.” I winked.

  Although I wanted to fuck the shit out of her, I didn’t. I didn’t know what her situation was down below, seeing she had just lost her baby. We cuddled on the couch and watch the TV. I watched as her chest went up and down from her breathing. I also noticed she had taken the ring off her finger. I smiled and closed my eyes. Tiffany will be mine, again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nard

  I watched as my dumb ass cousin came out a house in New Jersey. I trailed his dumb ass for a week and he didn’t switch his routine once. He came out the house and jumped in his car. As always he stalled a bit before he eventually pulled off and headed out the driveway. A Spanish woman stood in the doorway waving to him. She looked real familiar, but she wasn’t my issue. I let him get to the end of the block before I pulled off and followed him. I knew his next stop would be his trap house and after that, he would pull up to his house. I knew more than likely he would have a bag full of money with him.

  “I’m hungry as hell,” D
alia complained.

  “We’ll eat after this.” I continued to tail Malik.

  Since being back in New York, I hadn’t even set anything up. New York wasn’t the same anymore. Niggas were too busy trying to kill off the next man to be on top. Nobody wanted to earn their title anymore. I had been burned before and I was smart enough to know when to head back to Miami. After I handled Malik, I would bounce back to Miami with my family. We would still keep the place here because we still had family here.

  Back in the day, I ran the game with an iron fist. Some called me the biggest hustler since Frank Lucas. I had cops, judges, and the DEA on payroll. I owned big rigs that transported my shit from here to Canada. My cousin was still in Haiti at the time doing badly. I paid to have him brought over here on the boat. Once he got here, I put him up in a condo in Manhattan and bought him a nice whip. Dalia took him shopping and made him look like something.

  Greed is the root to evil. I looked out for my cousin more than I should have. He had a nasty gambling addiction that I bailed him out of plenty of times. When I refused to give him money for a seven hundred thousand dollar debt he owed, he plotted on killing me. The night it happened, I had to hurry home to Dalia. She was pregnant with our son, hormonal, and bitchy. I walked into the warehouse, where the load would be coming in. Malik never tagged along when a shipment came in, which should have been a clue to me. I remember him being so impatient and jumpy. The trucked pulled in on clockwork and my workers began to unload the truck.

  Everything went great and it looked like I would be leaving an hour early than expected. I stepped away, to answer one of Dalia’s many calls, and that was when I heard a string of gunshots throughout the warehouse. My first instinct was to hit the floor and pull out my gun. I shot at everything I could while looking for my cousin. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to him. As I shot my way to the front of the warehouse, one of the agents on the case ran into me. Out of habit, we both fired our guns. My shot nearly missed him and his shot hit me in the arm.

  He told me everything that went down. He told me Malik spoke to them and how he had called them on his way over here. I guess that was why Dalia blew my phone up. There wasn’t any way I would make it out of the warehouse alive or without doing time. The agent had no choice but to shoot me. As I turned to run out the side door, he shot me in the back. He called the paramedics right away. I thought I was gone, but little did I know. He had the ambulance rerouted. I went in a private hospital in New Jersey and later transferred down to Miami, where Dalia waited.

  Of course, once I got there, I realized that I didn’t have any of my money. Keeping my freedom came with a hefty price tag and my cousin took the remaining of my money. It was illegal money, but I worked hard to get where I was. Of course, I didn’t have the proper money for physical therapy and how was I going to retaliate from a wheelchair? A couple times, I thought of suicide. How could I take care of my family from a fucking chair? I had my girl who woke up, went shopping, and now she worked a job she hated. This is why my cousin had to be killed. He couldn’t continue to live off what I built after doing me wrong.

  “Babe, he stopped,” Dalia deterred me from my thoughts.

  “Damn, he didn’t make that stop, he went straight home,” I muttered.

  “Don’t matter, baby. I’m ready,” she confirmed. I reached over, grabbed her neck, and gave her a big sloppy kiss.

  “Alight. Be careful.”

  She hopped out the car and walked up the pathway to Malik and Keyshia’s house. I said a prayer everything would go as planned. We still had a son to get back home to and I wanted to make sure we made it there in one piece.

  **

  Dalia

  At Malik’s Front Door.

  I stood at his front door knocking on the door rapidly. I knew his black ass was home because we had just watched him come in. I saw the porch light flick on and figure come to the door. When the door swung open, Malik stood there with a white beater and boxers on. My first thought was how the fuck he got undressed so damn quickly, but I decided to just drop that subject.

  “What you doing here this late, D?” He asked in his thick accent.

  “Umm, is Keyshia here?” I looked around and rubbed my arms. He opened the door a little wider and nodded for me to come in.

  “Nah, she’s in Dubai. She didn’t tell you? Want something to drink?” He walked behind the Island and started preparing a drink.

  “I called her and she didn’t answer. I went to her mama house too. My girl international now, I’m jealous,” I joshed and he cracked a smile while continuing fixing the drinks.

  Malik and Nard didn’t look anything alike. Malik was short, fat and dark skin. He kind of reminded me of the singer T-pain, a little. He had a thick accent and the only reason Keyshia got with him was because of his money. She used to complain to me about having to have sex with him. I told her ass if she wanted to leave her mama’s house in the hood, he was her best bet.

  “Yeah, that gal spends all my money. Shopping all the time and traveling all over, she don’t even take me,” he faked griped. I Knew he was serious, they only trip they went on together was Miami. That was only because Keyshia wanted to visit me.

  “What’s good, Malik?”

  I heard Nard’s cold voice ask from behind me. How he got in the house was beyond me.

  “Nard, what’s good, Cuz?” Malik stuttered.

  He sat the drink down and looked as if he reached for something. I pulled out .22 and pointed it at his head. He looked shocked staring into my cold eyes.

  I had a lot of hate for this motherfucker standing in front of me. He was the reason I went through hell and back the last couple of years. It wasn’t the fact about the money; it was based off him trying to take my son’s father away from him. He tried to reach for whatever he had, so I cocked my gun back and looked at him.

  “It’s your choice, Malik,” I threatened.

  Nard took a seat beside me as I held the gun to his head. He sipped the drink he had made and then slammed the glass on the granite counter top. I watched as the cup shattered and the contents spilled all over the floor and counter.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Malik played stupid. I could tell Nard was getting impatient.

  “Why set me up? I was there for you when no one was. I helped you as much as I could with your debts. I burned bridges and you couldn’t see that, nigga.”

  “I needed that money, Nardarian. They would kill me and you could care less. Taking care of this gal and spending money like it wasn’t nothing.” He moved around the counter, but I kept the gun trained on his head.

  “Fuck you, Malik!” I yelled.

  “Fuck me, eh? How bout you tell Nard how I fucked you,” he announced.

  “I knew. Why do you think I didn’t give you the money?”

  I smiled because I told Nard everything. One night I got drunk and me and Malik fucked. I was drunk, but Malik was very much sober. When I awoke, I couldn’t remember if I fucked Malik or not. I told Nard soon as he touched back down in town. I couldn’t stand to have a nigga holding something over my head.

  “Bruh, you really going to kill me and leave this bitch alive?”

  “This bitch had stuck by my side when I lay in the hospital with a fucking pamper on. This bitch risked her life so we can get back on top. So yes, this bitch is going to be alive.” He got up and grabbed Malik’s neck. He squeezed him so hard he couldn’t get a word out.

  In one quick moment, he pulled his gun out and emptied his clip into Malik’s head. Blood and brain matter was everywhere. Nard dropped him to the floor like a broken toy and grabbed my hand. We hopped in the car and took off. I was glad my cousin was already on the plane with my son in route to Miami. Nard’s vein popped out of his neck and he had a stone face on.

  “It’s over now, okay,” I whispered and leaned over and kissed him.

  “It’s over, babe.”

  Chapter-Twenty-Three

  Me
zzie

  Life has been amazing since returning back to Miami. Reshawn and I seemed to be on the same page, and he behaved himself. He called if he knew he wouldn’t make it home. I also tried not to be so consumed with the kids that I didn’t give him any attention. We also talked about opening my dance studio soon. I had fun showing him all my moves on the pole. I was satisfied with how everything went with us, for now. I knew he cheated on me while he was in New York. I didn’t push the subject because I didn’t want to go back to square one.

  I sat in the office in our house going over Reshawn’s numbers for the month. He busted his ass and the numbers proved that. I still was in shock that he wanted to buy a house in Trinidad. I talked to Tyrisha and she said Moses wanted the same thing. I didn’t see why they bought houses with that huge estate Moses’s father had. I didn’t mind, it was beautiful there and we needed a little vacation house. I could see us on the water with a huge infinity pool in the back yard. Secretly, I went looking online at some properties. A knock interrupted me from going over the spreadsheets in front of me.

  My flip-flops echoed through the house as I walked to the front door. Since our door was glass, I could see a woman standing there with her hands on her hips. I opened the door and looked at her like she lost her mind.

  “Yes?” I asked looking over my glasses.

  “Reshawn here?”

  “Nope. Can I help you?”

  “Tell him to call me, thanks, Hun.” She sashayed back to her car.

  I slammed the door and ran to the phone like a marathon runner. I dialed Reshawn’s number, and he answered on the third ring. Yes, I counted.

  “Yeah, babe.”

  “Some bitch just came to my house asking for you,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “What did she look like?” I looked at the phone like he lost his mind.

  “Some Spanish big breasted bitch. She had blonde highlights.”