by Erica Hilton
“Bitch, stop lying. Look at you, naked underneath that fuckin’ robe and stayin’ the night at his crib and answering his door—and you gonna fuckin’ lie to me.”
Chanel was at a loss for words. There was no talking rationally to Sheree.
Sheree was making a scene. She became so loud in the apartment that she could have woken the dead. Eventually, the ruckus caused Pyro to come out of his bedroom dressed in his boxers with Mecca following right behind him.
“Sheree, why the fuck are you here?” Pyro yelled, his hands clenching into fists.
“Who the fuck is that bitch? Oh, so you got a fuckin’ nasty-ass orgy happening here, huh, nigga? I see why you can’t come see ya fuckin’ son,” Sheree shouted.
“Yo, first of all, you need to watch your mouth, and second, it ain’t like that. But how the fuck did you get into this building?”
“Don’t worry ’bout that!”
“A’ight, you need to leave,” Pyro shouted.
“Fuck you. I’m not goin’ nowhere,” Sheree replied. “Who is she, Pyro?” Sheree’s head nodded toward Mecca while her eyes continued to blaze.
“My name is Mecca, Sheree. And I was hoping one day to meet you and your son because Pyro and I are together.”
“My son,” Sheree shouted. “You come near my fuckin’ child and I will whip your ass, bitch! Pyro, is she serious?”
Chanel sat front and center as the three argued. Pyro still had no idea how Sheree had gotten into the building, but he wanted her gone. He quickly called security to come and escort her out.
Sheree continued to rant and curse. It was clear that she was extremely jealous seeing Pyro with someone else.
“Me and you aren’t together, Sheree. How many times do I need to fuckin’ tell you that?” Pyro said with irritation in his voice.
“Oh, it’s like that, nigga? We ain’t together, but you sure wasn’t sayin’ that the other night when you were deep in this good-ass pussy—coming inside of me raw and shit,” she responded, while sexually gesturing between her legs.
Chanel gave Mecca the subtle side-eye, saying silently, I told you so.
Pyro clenched his jaw.
“Yeah, muthafucka, don’t get quiet now,” Sheree continued. “You wanna fuck me and that delusional bitch at the same time and act like you’re committed to her?”
Mecca had heard enough. She was heartbroken and couldn’t even look at Pyro. She spun around and went back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She thought Pyro was the one—her man to love and cherish. Their relationship was clearly a lie.
Pyro shot Sheree a look that could cut her in half. “You’re a crazy bitch, Sheree. That’s why I don’t fuck with you.”
“Say that to yourself next time you eating me out,” she countered.
Pyro went into the bedroom, where Mecca was hurriedly getting dressed.
“Mecca, let me explain,” he pleaded with desperation in his tone.
Mecca spun around to face him and shouted, “Explain what, Pyro? You fucked her the other night?”
“Look—”
“Fuck you, Pyro!” she screamed.
Pyro was urgently trying to stop her from leaving, and while doing so, Sheree boldly stood at the threshold to the bedroom and shouted, “You keep playin’ wit’ me, Pyro, and I guarantee you that you will never see your fuckin’ son again.”
Pyro’s rage was reignited, and he moved toward Sheree with a ferocity that even scared her. “I’ll kill you before you take my son away!”
They continued to argue while Mecca continued to get dressed. It had turned into chaos inside the place. There was another loud knock at the door, and Chanel answered it. It was security arriving. Chanel pointed the guards to the bedroom and they moved with a sense of urgency to carry out their job.
Seeing the two men, Pyro bellowed, “Yo, get that fuckin’ bitch outta here.”
They grabbed an angry and bitter Sheree to remove her from the premises and she tried to resist. They threatened her, letting her know that if she didn’t leave right away, then they were going to call the police and have her arrested for trespassing. Sheree didn’t want to go to jail, so she reluctantly allowed the guards to escort her out of the apartment.
Mecca was right behind them, leaving in tears. Pyro was unable to stop her. She cursed at him again, and when he tried to grab her arm to get her to hear him out, she angrily jerked away from his grasp.
“Fuck you!” she cursed at him again.
He slammed the door behind her and fumed.
Chanel exhaled. She was glad that Mateo didn’t have baby mama drama and a bunch of women like Pyro. Now Mecca might see Pyro for the player he was, and Chanel only had to open the door and step aside.
It had been one entertaining morning. Pyro wanted to be left alone, so he went into his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Chanel saw no reason to bother him. She felt that he had made his bed, and now it was time to lay it in. He was a real asshole for fucking Mecca and his baby mama at the same time—and without protection. She knew he was a player, but damn, not like that.
Chapter Eighteen
Charlie could feel the twists and turns of the moving vehicle. Then she felt the car moving at a steady speed and figured that they were on the highway now, but she had no idea where she was going. She had been blindfolded and placed into the backseat. She felt a tinge of nervousness, but she tried to keep her cool. She hoped accepting Mona’s proposition wasn’t a mistake.
“You’ll do fine, Charlie—lots of money to be made if you fuck wit’ me,” Mona had told her.
“Doin’ what?” Charlie had asked.
“What you’ve been doing—hustling,” Mona had replied.
Charlie paid attention to Mona’s lavish lifestyle, and she knew whatever Mona was doing on the side was paying a lot more than her police salary. Her $65,000 a year was pocket change compared to her primary source of income.
The vehicle traveled through the Holland Tunnel into New Jersey and then made its way to a warehouse on the outskirts of Newark. The car entered the spacious warehouse, and a man closed the rolling gate behind the vehicle for a clandestine meeting inside.
Still blindfolded, Charlie finally felt the car come to a stop. She heard the doors opening and right after, a pair of hands grabbed for her and someone said, “C’mon, get out. We’re here.”
She didn’t resist. She was removed from the backseat and heard several voices. Finally, the blindfold was removed and Charlie was staring at nine high-ranking officers in uniform from various New York City precincts. Not only was she staring at cops, but she also saw tons of confiscated kilos of cocaine and heroin.
“What the fuck is this?” she asked with uncertainty.
“Relax, Charlie. This is the business opportunity I was telling you about,” Mona said.
It was an awkward moment for Charlie. She didn’t do too well with cops. Mona and Ahbou were an exception.
“So, this is her?” asked a sergeant. “And you’re sure she can be trusted?”
“I can vouch for her, sergeant. She’s good peoples and really good at what she does,” said Mona.
They all stared so intensely at Charlie, she felt like she was being put on the auction block. There were sergeants, lieutenants, and even a captain in her presence. Some of NYPD’s finest weren’t looking so fine right now. It was corruption. Only the most trusted criminals were recruited to the inner sanctum, and once drafted, you were guaranteed a “get out of jail free” card. The cops had an elite list of hustlers on their payroll that moved their seized drugs, but there was so much to move that they needed more quality recruits.
The seized drugs were supposed to be destroyed after samples were taken for trial. However, certain members of law enforcement who were assigned to carry out the destruction of the narcotics decided otherwise. Seeing all that val
uable product destroyed when it could have been making them rich made them all go against the badge. They had been making a killing for over six years and showed no signs of slowing down. The seized drugs were a cash cow and covert retirement plan.
Mona’s cohorts had heard stories about Charlie. She was grimy, and that was just the kind of recruit they were looking for.
“What we do here, Charlie, is get money . . . lots of it,” Mona said.
Judging from those kilos on the table, she saw it. Charlie had her reservations about dealing with more cops, but this was an opportunity to make more money than she could ever dream of staring right at her. There was no way she was going to turn it down. She wanted to get paid too.
“What y’all need me to do?” she asked.
“The arrangement is, you work for us. You move drugs for us, nothing else and nothing extra, and we’ll give you points on the package. If you abide by our rules and do what we say, you will become a very rich woman,” Captain Curtis Halstead, a twenty-year vet with the NYPD, said to her.
She was listening.
Lieutenant Patrick Davis, who had over a decade on the force, handed her a burner phone. “Only we will contact you through that phone, no one else. And it’s not to be used for anything but to converse with the faces you see in this room today. It’s clean.”
Charlie nodded.
“If you happen to get arrested, you should know the drill—keep your mouth shut and one of us will get in contact with you . . . to help you out,” Sergeant Whyte promised. “We have lawyers on standby, so don’t panic. We’ve been doing this for a long time. You look like a smart woman who knows what to do in a crisis.”
“I can hold my own,” Charlie replied.
They all looked at her with intensity. The decorated NYPD uniforms, the badges, the holstered weapons—it all felt surreal to Charlie. Cops were telling her how to be a criminal. How ironic.
“And where would I be moving the drugs to?” she asked.
“We’ll call you with locations and times,” said Lieutenant Graham, who had been a cop for fifteen years.
They were meticulous with the details and instructions. The officers knew the tricks and trades of the streets, the law, and their fellow officers. They had access to information that no one else had, from pending indictments and prosecutions to forthcoming raids on organizations and dealers. They felt that they would always have the upper hand against prosecution because they had plants in every department and they were extremely wary about who they brought into their corrupt organization.
Charlie agreed to take them up on their offer. With God and Fingers dead, she needed a new hustle. She couldn’t plan and execute licks alone, but selling cocaine was just really about transportation, she believed. Who couldn’t do that? The deal was that Charlie would get ten percent of the profit.
She didn’t like those fractions, but she agreed to it.
“You’ll be fine, Charlie. Just move carefully and always do what we say,” Mona advised her.
Charlie nodded, and the deal was sealed.
What Mona and the other officers didn’t tell Charlie was that her name had come up in the investigation of the murder of Godfrey Williams. Kymberly Stephens had parents in high places, and they had hired a topnotch criminal defense attorney for their daughter. They also hired an outside DNA specialist to test everything inside the apartment to prove their daughter’s innocence. There were key pieces that they wanted tested, but the corrupt cops were already trying to find someone dirty in a New Jersey precinct and lab to swap out the evidence. If they couldn’t find an ally and Charlie’s DNA was present, their plan B was simple—murder Charlie before she was arrested. They couldn’t allow her to turn state’s evidence against them.
Chapter Nineteen
Chanel looked lost in thought when the cabbie said to her, “Ma’am, we’re here. That will be twenty-five dollars,” snapping her out of her backseat daydream.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Chanel said, reaching into her purse to pay him.
“It’s okay.”
Taking a cab to the rehab center was easier for her than driving her Range Rover. Parking was a headache in the city, and it was expensive.
Chanel was outside the rehab facility, about to go inside to see Mateo. It was an uncertain feeling, when it shouldn’t have been. In the past, she was always excited to go visit her man, ready to nurse him back to health and comfort him. Considering the traumatic incident he endured, he was doing better than expected. However, his rehabilitation was taking a long time, and it was taking a toll on her. She yearned for him to get back to normal, so they could be together like a couple should be. She wanted to marry him and move on with their lives.
But lately, she had been feeling torn about love and matters of the heart. In her spare time she would watch chick flicks or romantic comedies, and then she would find herself crying her eyes out. She was lonely.
Chanel stood at the threshold of the hospital room gazing at a sleeping Mateo. He looked so peaceful. She sighed heavily and stepped farther into the room. A slight smile crept across her face. She took a seat next to him and took his hand into hers. Her touch was what woke him. Seeing Chanel by his side, Mateo smiled.
“Hey,” he greeted.
“Hey, baby. How are you?”
“Better now that you’re here,” he replied warmly.
She smiled.
“I love you,” he said with unwavering certainty.
“I love you too, Mateo.”
Mateo sat up with ease. His legs were wobbly and his coordination was still off, but his upper body strength had returned.
“Don’t you look gorgeous?” He kissed Chanel’s hand and patted his bed for her to sit down beside him. She did.
“Me?” she replied, “I’m starting to think I’m competing with you lately. And don’t think I don’t know about you and Nurse Beth.”
His smile was wide. “She gives the best sponge baths.”
“What!”
“She likes to pay extra attention all around here.” Mateo’s left hand circled his groin area. They both chuckled, but Chanel thought there was some truth to that.
Chanel saw a game sitting on the chair.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a game Pyro bought for me. It’s called Mahjong. You wanna play?”
She perked up and shook her head. “Pyro? When was this?”
“He came by last night cryin’ on my shoulders ’bout that baby mama drama. Ain’t you glad I saved myself for you?”
“And I saved my . . .” her voice trailed off.
“You know that your values still stand, Chanel. Don’t ever think differently. You’re still the woman who saved herself for me—who is still saving herself for us, for our love. If it’s taken, then it doesn’t count. Remember that—it doesn’t count.”
Chanel nodded.
Nurse Beth came in to check Mateo’s vitals just in time to break the somber turn the conversation had taken.
“Hello, handsome,” she sang as she pulled out her stethoscope. Chanel peeped how she took the extra step to warm the chestpiece before placing it on Mateo’s heart. To Chanel, Beth was ancient. She was at least thirty-five years old, with brown skin and natural hair. Her apple bottom was her best asset, and by the looks of how tight her scrubs were hugging her hips, Beth knew it too.
Next, she grabbed Mateo’s wrist to check his heart rate. While Beth was counting, Chanel asked, “How’s he doing?”
Nurse Beth’s index finger quickly shot up to silence her. A couple of awkward moments of silence and finally she said to Mateo, “You have a resting heart rate of sixty, which is very good. You’ll be out of here soon.” She smiled again at him. “I’ll be sad to see you go.”
She was off to the next patient, and Chanel realized she never spoke directly to her. This contributed t
o her already funky mood.
“There goes your cougar.” Chanel was being snarky.
“You mean panther.”
Chanel rolled her eyes. “She’s at least forty.”
“Nah, she just a little older than me,” he replied, scooting over so Chanel could lie next to him and snuggle.
She crawled into his bed, and his strong arm comforted her. “I thought black didn’t crack.”
Mateo loved the attention. “Ah, look at my baby. You jealous.”
She smiled. “Un poquito.”
“Poquito my ass,” Mateo replied and then planted a kiss on her lips.
Chanel’s visit with Mateo was shorter than usual. Instead of spending the majority of her day with him, she stayed for a couple of hours and then gave him an excuse why she needed to leave. He seemed understanding.
Chanel took a cab back to Pyro’s place. Mecca called Chanel during the ride. She wanted to meet up and talk. Chanel was down.
When she walked into the apartment, Pyro wasn’t home. It had been nearly a week since the incident between Mecca, Sheree, and him. Chanel didn’t want to get involved with their drama, but it was easy to see that Pyro was hurt by Mecca leaving him. It was obvious that he really liked Mecca and he was missing her. But he didn’t want to talk about it to anyone, especially not Chanel. That incident put somewhat of a strain on their friendship.
Chanel got dressed for the weather in some jeans, sneakers, and a light, pumpkin-colored leather jacket. It was late autumn with a chilly breeze outside, and the holiday season was about to be in full swing. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas—each one was right around the corner. Thinking about the holidays weighed on Chanel’s spirit. She didn’t want to spend them without Mateo. She wished he could make a full recovery so they could spend them together. It had been a daunting few weeks for her, but she was still moving forward, praying that she went into the New Year with high spirits and Mateo walking by her side.
She trekked down into the parking garage and got inside of her white Range Rover and headed to Manhattan to see Mecca.