by MìChaune
“Okay. You might have a point. But what’s my role?” Lysa wanted to know.
“Remember what I said about these pimps having an image to uphold. Well, they’ll come up off that bread when we hang a rape scandal over their heads.”
“Rape!” Lysa stared at Janae like she’d lost her fucking mind.
“Yes, rape. It won’t be true, but they will pay us to stay quiet regardless. They ain’t about to let something like a rape charge go public. They got too much to lose.”
“And I guess I’ll be the bait,” Lysa replied straight-faced.
“Yes. And don’t act like you ain’t never show some ass for a lick.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. What concerns me is if this shit will work. If the bread is like you say it is, I’m down for mine, and you know that.”
“It’s worth it, girl.”
“Better be.” Lysa stood with the tight boyshorts riding all up in her ass.
“Your butt getting bigger.” Janae snickered.
“Fuck you,” Lysa sang as she grabbed Janae’s keys off the table. “Uh, gimme some money for the cigarettes.”
Janae pointed across the living room at the kitchen table. “Take what you need. Lloyd left me a few dollars.”
“Bitch, lemme find out yo’ ass is prostituting!” Lysa joked.
“Eat my pussy! You know what time it is.”
Lysa took what she needed for the cigarettes and ten dollars for herself. She couldn’t get from her mind the fact that Janae rocked Lloyd loose. She exited Janae’s crib and strutted through a group of thugs posted out on the curb.
“Yo, Lysa!” one of the thugs called.
She didn’t pause a step. Tonight she wasn’t in the mood to flirt since the heartache over her lover was too fresh. Seconds later she strutted down Tunnel Road with confidence, and she winked at the occasional driver when they rode by. The stress over her mound of issues weighed hard on Lysa. She feared the possibility of things turning for the worse before she had a chance to make it to next month. Halfway to the store, she realized that her current situation would be all the way fucked up if Janae weren’t on her side. Janae never sweated the fact that Lysa preferred women but fucked niggas for a quick buck. Tonight proved to Lysa that the bond and friendship she had with Janae was unbreakable. But, in life, it’s the unexpected that trips us up; and for Lysa, the unexpected would come next month.
Chapter Five
“Mama,” 9ine called Leshaun as she struggled to get through her pancake meal at IHOP. She looked at the one whore in her life who could call her that. Leshaun remembered pushing him out on her Barbie bedspread when she was thirteen and couldn’t keep the pregnancy a secret. 9ine had full lips, mocha skin, and a ill bald fade just like three of the cousins who started raping her when she was nine. She couldn’t remember which of her mother’s sister’s children was her son’s father. Her parents never believed she was raped and they accused her of being too fast for her own good. Like it was her fault for having B-cups and hair on her pussy at nine, She didn’t ask for them.
Leshaun picked up a piece of turkey bacon and bit into it as she fought off the memory. She finally looked at her son and then looked away. While she loved her son dearly, she hated the fact that 9ine knew he was also her cousin, and how they both misused and took advantage of that relationship.
“I can’t believe I let them dusty-ass bitches burn my hotel to the ground,” Leshaun vented as she chewed her piece of bacon fast.
“Ma, don’t be like that,” 9ine offered as he took a sip of his cranberry juice. “Papa will be proud of us once he sees how fast we got the money together and get Price Street Hotel back together, watch.”
“Yeah,” Tiana cosigned. “You’ve always been a hustler, and you’ll get beyond this.”
“Yeah, Ma, 9ine, and Tiana are right,” Zay agreed.
Leshaun cut her eyes at Zay. He smiled and licked his lips. 9ine caught the tension between the two and promptly smacked his best friend in the back of the head. Zay shoved him back. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the three of y’all.” Leshaun shook her head.
“First things first. That new Chasity girl y’all brought in, we gotta teach her some new things and make sure she’s ready for her schoolgirl gig,” Tiana brought up as she brought her strawberry lemonade to her lips.
“How is she doing?” Leshaun had some reservations about Chasity and her mental state. When they introduced her to Leshaun, she could see right away that the girl had potential, but the wardrobe and the attitude needed work.
“Well, I made sure that ID she had was legit,” Tiana mentioned as she cut her pancakes with a knife and a fork. “Once I got that done, you know I made sure she was ready. I pulled in a favor from one of my friends who works at the clinic, and she came back clean. Then I watched as she put in some work with 9ine and Zay. She can definitely handle two dicks in one sitting.”
Zay looked away, catching the attention of an older lady a few tables away near the window. Leshaun knew he was trying to hide the fact that he enjoyed his time with Chasity. She wasn’t jealous; it just meant she’d make up some of the money lost by not having Lysa and Janae.
“You gonna stop letting your head fall, call Kofi, and put the three of us to work,” 9ine encouraged her, bringing the conversation back to the business and off his sex life. He knew Tiana was gonna tell his mom how Chasity performed in bed, but he didn’t want to be present when the news was presented. Aside from that, he hated seeing his mom angry, upset, or down and he made it his business to lay hands on anyone who brought pain to her doorstep. “We gon’ find out who did this and, I promise you, the minute I know will be the minute they take their last breath.”
“You so smart.” The sarcasm in Zay’s voice was hard to ignore. “We making threats in the motherfuckin’ IHOP where these scared-ass white people probably are recording us on their smartphones and shit.”
“Naw, I’m speaking facts,” 9ine defended himself. “You gonna stop coming at me like I’m slow and shit. Best friend or not, you can get your head rocked too.”
Leshaun reached out to the two men she loved most. She knew neither one of them would get rowdy in her presence. As she looked at Zay, a part of her felt guilty for sleeping with him. She raised 9ine’s friend since he was five years old. She barely could afford to take care of 9ine and his sister, Ten, but when Zay’s mom got too strung out on meth and heroin, her heart wouldn’t let her allow the department of social services to take the boy and put him in foster care. 9ine and Zay were only three days apart, and while Leshaun didn’t care for Zay’s mom, she had appreciated that she was one of the few parents who would let their child play with 9ine.
“Okay, Zay, you said we got to be smart right now and you calling it right because the last thing I need is to end up in jail. And, 9ine, you also right: we gon’ get whoever had the balls to put a flame to Price Street Hotel, accident or not.” Her hunger struck her, and she finally picked up a fork and scooped some of the pancakes on it and brought it to her lips. She enjoyed the taste and swallowed. “I’m just trying to figure out what I’m going to do with all of you. It ain’t just the two of y’all; I got eleven other whores to feed and take care of too.”
“Well, you know me, Zay, and Kofi got ourselves and can hold our own,” 9ine called out. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, 9ine was telling the truth. “You worry about them other bitches and make sure they become resourceful. You been taken care of them for all these years and now it’s time they take care of you.”
9ine’s words rang true to heart as she thought about how she made her younger sister, Gogo, one of her first whores. Their mother hadn’t always felt well coming up. Maybe that would explain why getting along with her and living with her could be so difficult at times. Gogo was fifteen and only three years younger than Leshaun. Gogo knew her sister struggled with being on welfare and trying to work a job at Wendy’s to support herself and 9ine. Gogo never cosigned on how their paren
ts treated Leshaun once they found out she was pregnant and claiming to be raped by her family members. Gogo knew Leshaun was telling the truth because the same cousins who were touching her sister were touching her too.
Gogo figured out that if she got on her back, opened her legs, and let a few men spend some time dancing and swimming inside of her, releasing their tensions and inner demons, two things would happen: one, the men would pay her hush money to keep their secrets, especially the ones old enough to be her grandfather; and, two, if she kept her body right and stayed on top of her grades at school, she could use both to advance her career.
When Leshaun found out what her sister was doing, and how she was able to give her money for Pampers, apple juice, and brand new baby clothes that came from Belk and JCPenney, she couldn’t let Gogo mess with these men unattended. She arranged for her boyfriend and Ten’s father, Prince, to stand guard and make sure Gogo was okay. The nigga wasn’t doing nothing but smoking weed and stealing knickknacks from the convenience store he was working at.
Thinking about her sister, Leshaun was surprised that Gogo hadn’t reached out to her by now. Usually, if one was in trouble, the other was on the way. Even though Gogo lived in Greenville, South Carolina, she made the forty-five-minute trek to Asheville to make sure her sister was all right and had everything she needed.
Maybe Gogo on the way, Leshaun comforted herself as she ate the rest of her food. She looked at her two twenty-year-old gigolos and smiled as they were huddled up, surely looking at something profane on Zay’s iPhone. Every year they got a new model, Zay was the first one at the Best Buy to get his hands on it. Zay passed the phone to Tiana, and she passed it back, giggling. When he wasn’t looking at something on Facebook, he was filming something lewd and crass to put on his Instagram or Snapchat. That’s how she discovered how big Zay’s dick was. She crept on the page one time while she was bored and Zay had just briefly uploaded a small clip of some trashy white girl swallowing him and going up and down his length. That intrigued her, and as she looked through his past pics and flicks, she discovered that Zay had the potential to be a full-fledged porn star. Leshaun talked Tiana into hitting him up in his DMs and, the next thing she knew, Zay and Tiana started sending each other nasty pics and posting pics and flicks of them having sex all over the place. Zay’s pipe game was all right and, at ten and a half inches, he definitely couldn’t hide that with his five foot seven, 210-pound frame. Leshaun thought that if Zay lost a few pounds, ten and a half inches might turn into twelve and she’d really have a killer on her hands.
Leshaun got her mind focused on how she was going to rebuild Price Street Hotel and off of what Zay had going on below the waist. The way 9ine and Zay laughed, some girl was struggling to take all that Zay had to offer, and she was silent when the two of them debated on whether the flick should go on Instagram or the Web site she helped Zay set up where people could pay to view some of his exploits in real time. It linked to the ConnectPal account, which mostly his gay fans paid a monthly subscription to, to watch him jack off, dance, or fuck random chicks, watching his ass move as he laid pipe.
When Leshaun finished her meal, she looked up and could’ve sworn she saw Prince heading to the back of the restaurant. No, she was sure, because she’d recognize Ten’s father anywhere and no one carried off a white button-up shirt, black slacks, and black work shoes the way he did. Leshaun looked at her boys one last time before she got up, left a fifty dollar bill on the table, and headed in Prince’s direction.
“Ay, can you ask Prince to come here please?” Leshaun commanded the waitress who was ringing up an order on the computer screen near the kitchen. Leshaun looked at the card and, just that fast, she memorized Sheila Goldfield’s name, Discover card number, and the expiration date; and all she had to find out was the security code on the back.
Luck was on Leshaun’s side as she saw the waitress being careless with the card as she went to fulfill her request. She repeated the numbers again and again until Prince stood before her. He was still as fine as the day she met him when 9ine was only a year old. He wasn’t a day older than twenty-six himself, and he couldn’t believe that the fourteen-year-old girl he laid eyes on was built better than some of the women his age. It wasn’t until he got inside her that he found out she felt just as good as the women his age, too.
“How’s Ten doing?” Prince broke Leshaun’s concentration. When Leshaun didn’t answer right away, he knew what time it was and stepped to the side so that Leshaun could focus on getting whatever information off the card she needed. “I wish you wouldn’t do this shit at my job.”
“My bad.” Leshaun felt bad for not recognizing Prince standing in front of him. She looked at him again, and he still smelled like that Alpha cologne that he ordered from his aunt who sold Avon. Alpha smelled good on him and defined what kind of man he was. “I saw you, and I just wanted to speak.”
“I see your two boys are up to no good.” Prince pointed out the pretty and well-built Asian woman who ke-keyed with them, and the waitress brought another order of food to feed them. She thanked God when she saw they mostly had fruit on their plates.
“It’s not like that with me.” She told Prince the truth. “I saw you, and I didn’t think it would be right if we didn’t speak. Besides, I had a rough day the other day.”
“What happened?” Prince was concerned. No matter what went on between him and Leshaun, he was always concerned about her. “Is Ten okay?” The inquiry confirmed that Prince always looked out for his seed.
“Ten is fine. She’s at Western Carolina University tending to her studies. The Price Street Hotel caught on fire yesterday. I lost half the building.”
Prince gave Leshaun a hug. That wasn’t the reaction she was expecting from him. The careless waitress turned the card over, punched in the three-digit code, and then flipped the card back over. Regardless of their relationship, Prince was more of a help than he was a hindrance. “I’m okay. I’m just pissed because I have to pay rent for the first time in like, years, and I haven’t figured out how I’m gonna run my business.”
Prince gave her the side eye.
“I mean, running my hotel,” Leshaun defended herself. “Don’t judge me like that, muthafucker. I had paying customers in those rooms, and dealing with the insurance and the credit card companies has given me a headache. I don’t have a property in sight to purchase immediately, and it could take months before Price Street Hotel is up and running where I need it to be.”
“Ma, say no more,” Prince replied. “I got to get to work, but as soon as I lay down this nine to five, I’m gonna call you. My ex has a property she ain’t using and before you roll your eyes and say no, let me do what I do, and I’ll get back with you. I can’t fix one area of your business, but I sure can provide you the space to take care of the business you need to handle.”
It wasn’t what she asked for, but it was a concession she was willing to take for now. Even though she couldn’t stand Prince’s ex-wife, she knew she didn’t want to stay in someone else’s hotel, either. Like it or not, she knew she was going to have to have her whores on the road and revamping that part of her business while her property got fixed. Once she figured that out, she could then bring everyone home.
Chapter Six
“Girl! What the fuck are you doing?” Gogo shouted as she and Tiana entered Leshaun’s room. Seeing Leshaun out of character across the dimly lit room raised concern.
Leshaun lowered the chrome .22 with a flood of tears streaming down her innocent face. “I’m tired of this life!” she sobbed from the floor.
“Leshaun.” Tiana lowered her voice. “Put the gun down, okay? I know you’re going through hell right now, but killing yourself ain’t the answer.”
“Gimme the gun!” Gogo demanded as she and Tiana cautiously approached Leshaun’s bed.
“I can’t do this!” Leshaun wiped her eyes. “My building is ruined. I haven’t been able to get in touch with Lysa and Janae, which confirms for me tha
t they did this shit. I’m living in this damn Grand Bohemian Hotel, and I haven’t figured out my next fuckin’ move!”
“I know that.” Gogo carefully put her arm around Leshaun.
“None of it is worth taking your life.” Tiana tried to be the voice of reason. “Especially over them sorry-ass hoes. We kill bitches like them over less.”
Leshaun wiped her eyes again with a firm grip on the. 22. “But don’t you get tired of this life?” She looked up at Gogo. She could barely see the concern on her face for the tears in her eyes. Leshaun shook her head. “It’s easier this way.” She sobbed.
“No, it’s not. Don’t say that!” Gogo stated. She couldn’t figure out for the life of her what had gotten into Leshaun. Last time Gogo checked in on 9ine, he and Zay were clowning in the IHOP. He was the one who told her his mom was tripping and needed her. The way he said it implied to Gogo that she needed help figuring shit out, not that Gogo needed to try stopping her from committing suicide.
“Nobody is gonna miss me,” Leshaun reasoned as she held the gun firmly in her hand.
“Bitch, are you crazy?” Tiana snapped. “I’m gonna miss your ass, but I’m not even going to think like that because you got to be fucked up if you think I’m going to let you take your life like this!”
“What about me?” Gogo shouted as she pointed to herself. “You’re my sister, Leshaun. 9ine and Ten are going to miss they crazy-ass mama. Prince still worships the ground you walk on. Kofi and Tiana are loyal as fuck; and Zay, you been raising that nigga for a minute and fucking him for the last two weeks.”
Leshaun gave Gogo the side eye. Only Tiana knew she’d crossed that line with Zay. If Gogo knew, she knew it was a matter of time before 9ine and Zay fought and 9ine was standing over her cussing her out.