Red Hot Liar (9781617738654)

by Noire

  Bopping over to the chair, Zeke plopped down on the edge and then leaned back like he was low-riding in a sporty whip. His legs were cocked open wide in his baggy faded jeans, and he sat there trying to look hard as hell as he lounged across from one of the richest men in America.

  “So, you’re probably wondering why I asked you to come here,” Ruddman said.

  “Um, yeah.” Zeke grinned. “I mean, I ain’t exactly the type of cat who slums with the oil willies ere’ day, so yeah. The thought crossed my mind.”

  Ruddman sat back and nodded, pleased by what he saw. Earl Washington had been a quiet brainiac, but his kid was all ruthless street charm. He looked just like all the other young uneducated black men who were caught up in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness, and whatever potential greatness he might have tapped into had his father lived and Viceroy Dominion not fucked him out of a fortune, was way in the past.

  Two waiters entered the office quietly. They pushed covered platters ahead of them on carts and busied themselves setting up lunch for the big boss and his guest.

  “So, what are you doing with your life?” Ruddman probed as Zeke pounced on the food the moment the waiters were done. He took the top bun off both his cheeseburgers and stacked a fistful of French fries on top of the thick and juicy chopped steak patty. Ruddman watched in amusement as the young man slathered ketchup all over the mound, then smashed the buns back on top and choked the cheeseburgers down two at a time.

  Yeah, he’s hungry all right, Ruddman smiled inside as he watched the young cat grub. Now let’s see if he’s ambitious.

  Barron stared down at the folder in his hand then flung that shit on his desk like it was a hissing snake. Somebody was trying to fuck the shit outta his father and it damn sure wasn’t his mother. Barron’s mouth wanted to fall open as he thought about what he’d just read but he knew better than to let a mofo see him sweat.

  They were in the middle of a heated political campaign and not only had that bastard Ruddman dug up some skeleton bones on Viceroy that could put him in a legal bind due to his shady business dealings with his late partner, he had also called in Earl Washington’s son to help him bury Dominion Oil in the dirt.

  “It’s hot off the press,” Digger Ducane said with a shiesty grin. “In fact, my sources tell me Earl’s son is eating lunch in Ruddman’s office right now.”

  Barron shrugged and angled his chin at the folder on his desk as he played it cool. “So what, Unc? Is this shit supposed to scare us?”

  Digger had torn his drawers raggedy with the Dominion family. He had once been a trusted member of the fold, but when Viceroy was in a coma he called himself pulling a slick move by jumping ship and going to work for Rodney Ruddman. Right now the look in Digger’s eyes told Barron that his reaction wasn’t the one his uncle had expected, but Digger played his hand just as cool.

  “It ain’t supposed to scare you, Barron, but it is supposed to make you think and plan. Ruddman got these papers from Zeke Washington. He’s planning to turn them over to the commission as proof that the documents Viceroy filed with the state thirty years ago were forgeries.”

  Barron was an attorney and he shrugged like he had ice-water in his veins. “These papers don’t mean shit. They’re not notarized or executed. I could sit down at my computer right now and type up something just like this myself.”

  “But these papers are signed. Any handwriting expert could prove that’s your father’s signature.”

  Barron nodded. “So what? They may be signed but they’re not executed. The only version of this contract that counts is the one that’s on file at the county office. People sign shit every day and then revise different drafts of the same document. That’s how it’s always been in this business, and I doubt if this is any different.”

  “Oh, it’s different,” Digger assured him with a smug grin on his shit-eating mug. “Have you ever heard of a gentleman by the name of Wally Su?”

  Barron shook his head. “Nah. His name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Well, it should,” Digger said. “I’m sure your father could tell you a whole lot about old Wally Boy.”

  “Oh yeah? And why is that?”

  “Because Wally Su is his dear old friend. He’s also the former county clerk who signed as a witness to the documents drawn up between Earl Washington and your father all those years ago. Wally’s on his deathbed now, and he’s been convinced that confession is good for the soul. He’s prepared to testify that the documents he filed thirty years ago when he was a clerk were forged, and to air every piece of dirty laundry he has on the swindle that sent Washington to a poor man’s grave and made your father filthy fuckin’ rich.”

  Barron stood there looking like a statue. From the outside he appeared to be etched from granite, but inside he was enraged and his blood swirled around in his veins like hot lava.

  These muthafuckas were gonna do his daddy. Not only were they gonna hit him with a prosecution and a public shaming, they were gonna rip off his pants and yank his drawers down, and then bite off a great big chunk of his big black dick. If this Wally cat testified in front of the commission then the carefully built walls around the empire that Viceroy had built were gonna come tumbling the fuck down right on top of their heads.

  Unless Barron was able to stop them, that is.

  As furious as he had been with Viceroy’s bullshit lately, he was still his father’s son.

  This was some serious shit, and there was only one man in the state of Texas who Barron knew could save Dominion Oil and get his father’s ass out of this sling. One man in the country, in fact. Hell, in the whole fuckin’ world.

  “All right. I’ll make sure my father sees this.”

  “You’re gonna let him know I was looking out for him right?”

  “Yeah. I will.”

  “You be sure to tell him I’m still his boy and I still have his back.”

  “A’ight.”

  Leaving his uncle in his office, Barron strode down the hall to the private conference room. He slammed the door shut, then locked it with both bolts. Pulling the curtains closed, he took out his cell phone and hit the speed-dialed number of the best damn closer on this side of the Atlantic.

  He dialed his other uncle. The brolic nigga who moved the mighty mountains and held back the raging seas.

  He called Suge.

  CHAPTER 15

  Miyoko Su sat motionless by the bedside of her dying father and gazed down at him with loving eyes. At the age of fifty-four, Wally Su’s body was wasting away from the ravages of stage four cancer, while his mind remained alert and strong.

  The hospital room was large and serene, and as a multi-billionaire Mr. Su was benefiting from cutting-edge medical expertise and every man-made comfort that money could buy. Each morning his attendants read to him from the business sections of all the major newspapers in order to keep him engaged with the outside world, but Wally Su was dying, and the end was very near. He knew it, his doctors knew it, and his beloved daughter Miyoko knew it too.

  “You must drink a little water,” Miyoko urged him gently as she held a paper cup to his lips and patted his burning face with a damp cloth. It pained her to see her once strong and powerful father reduced to such a diminished condition. His sallow skin stretched tightly across his hairless skeleton, and his muscles had long since turned to mush.

  But his eyes. His eyes still burned with intelligence and awareness, and the force of his will was ever strong. Wally Su had once been considered one of the most powerful men in the state. He had graduated from the University of Texas Law School and gone to work at a premiere law firm where he learned the ins and outs of contract law from the very best minds in the nation. But it was during his tenure as a law clerk that Su formed the most lucrative alliances of his career. He had built his financial empire by trading favors under the table with those who were even greedier and grimier than he was, and now, with the last of his life hanging by a thread, all Wally Su wanted to do was to confess to
his crimes and let the chips fall where they may.

  “It’s almost time,” he whispered to his beloved daughter. He had spent the last thirty years of his life protecting her, and he was well prepared to protect her in death as well. But everyone else who would be affected by his deathbed confessions? Too fucking bad for them. It was only right that when the tree died, its tainted fruit died right along with it.

  “Are you certain you want to do this, Papa?” Miyoko asked softly. Ever since he’d met with the young black man sent by Rodney Ruddman, Wally had been restless and filled with anxiety. The young man had asked him to make his confession during the annual meeting before the election, and Wally Su sincerely hoped he would live long enough to fulfill the boy’s wish.

  He gazed at his daughter and his nod was painful. “Yes, Miyoko. This is something I must do. I must rid myself of this burden. I can no longer bear it, and I refuse to take it with me to my grave.”

  Miyoko nodded. “As you wish, Father.” She paused and then she asked softly, “When?”

  “At the annual commission meeting, right before the election.”

  Miyoko raised an eyebrow.

  “He’ll be disqualified and he’ll lose everything, you know. And it will be all your fault.”

  Wally coughed painfully and then nodded. “Who cares? He’s enjoyed all the riches of the world for the last thirty years, and that was all my fault too.”

  Suge Dominion had spent his whole life doing battle in the trenches and navigating the line between the business world and the bing. He was a tried and tested G and he had a reputation for calculated thinking and swift brutality, and he had no problem slaughtering a whole army of enemies if that’s what it took to protect his fam.

  For as far back as Suge could remember he had been his big brother’s keeper. He was a problem solver and a killer, and he had dedicated his entire life to making sure the sharks of the world didn’t bloody up Viceroy’s waters, and today wasn’t gonna be no different.

  But the frantic call he’d just gotten from his nephew Barron had caught him by surprise. His brother was running an intense campaign in a real cutthroat political bubble, so it was normal for a foe to toss a couple of grenades in their bunkers to see what they could blow up.

  But this shit right here was different. The stuff Bump was talking went way beyond the realm of dirty politics. This shit here cut right into the core of the company. It rattled the foundations of Dominion Oil and sliced through the meat and down to the gristle-bone.

  “Yo, we gotta fix this shit!” Lil Bump had been damn near panicking over the phone. “Not only do we have to stop Wally from testifying, we gotta make sure his documents never see the light of day. This is bigger than just Ruddman trying to get at my pops. If this shit gets out then everybody—you, me, and Mama—we could all go down!”

  Suge was well-schooled in the runnings of their business, and so was everyone else in the game. There wasn’t a politician in the world who hadn’t gotten his hands dirty at some point in his career, or who hadn’t snuck behind the bushes and gotten his dick sucked by an ugly muthafucka, and his brother Viceroy was no exception.

  But shit in this game had a way of coming back to haunt you, and no matter how carefully Suge examined the current situation it was looking like his brother’s dick, and the Dominion family fortune, were about to get run through a meat grinder.

  Suge had a reputation as a fixer. A closer. The kind of dude you called when help was no place else to be found. Cleaning up shitty messes was what he did for a living, and he was one of the best of his kind in the game. But for the life of him he couldn’t find a single way to wipe up his brother’s spill this time. None of his normal go-to sources had the kind of power he was looking for, and not a single course of action he had available would lead him to a resolution that would keep his fam’s gold in the safe and their necks off the chopping block.

  It looked like Suge was straight outta mojo this time and his big brother Viceroy was about to be shit out of luck.

  That is, until he remembered a beautiful nightmare from his past by the name of Miyoko Rose Su.

  Miyoko Su had been Suge’s boo thang back in the day, and if she hadn’t been about twenty different kinds of crazy their relationship might’ve had a real good run. A beautiful slim goody with mad sex appeal, she’d been raised in Okinawa until her parents divorced when she was thirteen, and then she came to the United States to live with her father.

  Wally Su, Miyoko’s father, was a razor-sharp corporate attorney. Him and Viceroy had done a lot of shady business together in the early days when Viceroy was climbing the ladder and Wally was the county clerk. He had raised his daughter Miyoko in the suburbs of Houston, and when she was fresh out of law school and working for her father’s firm, Suge had the good luck of running into her at a state dinner. The spark of attraction between them had been instant and undeniable, and Suge had snuck her into a coatroom and gotten him a piece of them drawers right there at the banquet.

  Wally Su had disapproved of their relationship right from the jump. He was one of Viceroy’s dirtiest cronies, and they’d gotten down on quite a few highly profitable under-the-table deals together. Suge and Miyoko proceeded to get their swerve on in a hot and very public sexual fling that had her old-school Asian father climbing the walls.

  Wally Su tried to stop it. He gave a fuck about all the cash he was raking in from the Dominion fortune or about how greasy Viceroy kept his greedy little palm. Wasn’t no nigger from the other side of the tracks ever going to be good enough to put his black paws on his flawless porcelain-skinned baby girl.

  But Suge had been wide open on the chick and he didn’t give a fuck what her daddy said. It didn’t stop Miyoko neither. A part-time model for high-end designer wear, she was brilliant and beautiful and hot in the ass for him. An exotic freak in the sheets, Miyoko took everything Suge had and threw even more right back at him, and for a minute there she had him pretty much whipped too. Suge had never, ever ran into a woman whose swerve game was just as powerful as his, and the sparks they ignited in each other had felt like rockets going off in his drawers.

  They had become a couple damn near overnight, and since they were forced to sneak around behind her father’s back, Miyoko had to make a choice as to which one of the men in her life rocked her world: Her daddy or her Big Daddy.

  It wasn’t long before Suge’s brand of sweet chocolate whip appeal got her strung out on his rhythm. The girl was hooked on him like a base-head. He had her stuttering and feening for that meat. She wanted to bounce on his dick the first thing every morning and the last thing every night. He couldn’t shake her ass off even if he wanted to. She stayed hot and thirsty. She was running a fever and Suge was her Tylenol.

  All that shit was cute for a couple of minutes, but then the crazies started coming out of Miyoko and Suge got a peep of her true colors. She got clingy and possessive. She had crying jags and jealous fits. Every woman who looked at him became her personal rival, and if the chick was black then she became a federal suspect. Her burning fear was that Suge would leave her for a bangin sister, and she became envious of every black woman who so much as looked his way.

  The shit hit the fan one day when they were having lunch on the street at an outdoor café, and it just so happened that a fine, big-booty sister walked past wiggling her hips and looking like a delicious platter of candied yams and barbequed ribs.

  Outta nowhere, Miyoko jumped out of a trick bag.

  “You’re fucking that bitch,” she blurted, a dark look of suspicion clouding her eyes as she watched the girl’s wide hips and bubble ass sway down the street. “That’s the ghetto bitch you’ve been fucking, isn’t it?” she demanded. “Isn’t it, Superior? Isn’t it?”

  Ghetto? Suge thought she was bullshitting for a second, but when he saw the rage on her face and the tears in her eyes he knew his girl was out there for real.

  But then suddenly a lightbulb went on.

  The pretty black girl wa
lking by was just some random sister going about her business, but Suge wasn’t one to let a good opportunity fly and he jumped all over that shit.

  “Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head and looking guilty as fuck. “You got me, Lil Bit. Shit, I’m busted, baby. I’m sorry you had to find out about her this way. I’m a dirty muthafucka and you deserve way more than what I been giving you. I hate that our thing is over, but you need to gone and find yourself a better dude.”

  Suge had expected the tears and he was ready for them shits, but he wasn’t ready for all the rest.

  “You cheater!” that nut screamed at the top of her lungs. She jumped up and sloshed a glass of red wine in his face and then proceeded to turn the whole damn restaurant out. “You’re a fucking cheater!” she screeched as she snatched their plates and silverware off the table and started hurling them out into the open street. “A no-good fucking cheater!”

  Suge had paid off the restaurant and sent her home crying in a taxi. He figured he was finally rid of her psycho ass and that was the end of it, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Miyoko was bent. She started stalking him. Straight up tracking his dick like a bush hunter. That crazy chick busted all the windows outta his brand new whip and cracked a carton of raw eggs all over the plush interior. She broke into his mailbox and set that shit on fire, then showed up at Dominion Oil and told everybody she was strapped with a bomb.

  Muthafuckas poured out of that bitch with a quickness!

  “Fix this shit,” Viceroy had warned him when her bomb turned out to be a bunch of giant peppermint sticks taped together. Miyoko’s father was his ace in the hole and Viceroy needed to keep him in pocket. “Get rid of that crazy bitch and keep her ass quiet!”