by K'wan
“Good luck with that. New York can be a hard place to survive, especially for out-of-towners,” Pearl told him.
“So I keep hearing, but I’ve been getting along famously during my stay here. From what I can see, New York is just right for a sporting young man like me. I might even take up permanent residence so I can see more of you, Ms. Pearl … lots more.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. This is just a drink—not a date,” Pearl said, checking him.
“But of course. Besides, when I take you on an official date, it won’t be to no bar,” Diamonds said confidently.
Pearl raised an eyebrow. “Okay, Mr. Presumptuous. Hypothetically speaking, if we did go on an official date, where would you take me?”
Diamonds pulled her stool closer so that they were eye to eye. “Anywhere your heart desired.”
Pearl gazed into his inky-black pools and found her own reflection staring back. His gaze was almost hypnotic, and she found that she could look nowhere but at the beautiful creature sitting across from her. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but Diamonds’s were looking glasses, and Pearl was ready to play Alice and tumble as far down the rabbit hole as he was willing to pull her. Her mouth went dry to the point where she could feel her tongue thickening, and Diamonds’s thick lips were the only things that could quench the all-consuming thirst that had just overcome her. She leaned in to sip from the well of Diamonds, but before she could take a sip, their connection was broken.
“Should’ve known all I had to do was look up a random skirt to find you.” A woman slithered up beside him. She was wearing a tight black-and-white-striped dress that frayed just above her knees. On her head she wore a black wig that had white highlights running through it. She ran her zebra-print acrylic nails down the back of Diamonds’s neck while giving Pearl a challenging look. She was marking her territory.
“Quit cock-blocking, Vita.” A taller, slightly lighter-skinned version of Diamonds joined them. He was wearing baggy jeans and crisp Jordans, and at least five gold chains lay on the chest of his white T-shirt. Tied snugly around his neck was a black bandanna.
“You tend to your dick and I’ll tend to mine, Goldie!” Vita hissed and then turned to Pearl to give her a dismissive look.
“You need to tuck them fangs and remember your place,” Diamonds told her. His voice remained even, but no one missed the threat in his words.
“And you need to tuck that wayward dick of yours and remember what we’re here to do,” Vita spat. She made sure to shoot Pearl one last dirty look before storming off through the crowd.
“I’ll go see about her,” Goldie offered, and went after the zebra.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to cause any problems between you and your lady.” Pearl eased her stool back to put some distance between her and Diamonds.
Diamonds glanced back in the direction Vita had gone in and shrugged. “I got no more claim on Vita than a man hustling on the same corner every day. He’s on that corner so often that he knows it better than anyone else, but he can’t produce a deed to prove ownership.”
“Is that a nice way of saying you’re just fuck buddies?” Pearl accused. “Look, I’m digging you and all that, but I don’t do side-bitch drama.”
“Call it what you need to, Pearl. Me and Vita got history, but nobody got claim to this heart. I’m a free agent who does what he wants, and what I want is to get to know you.”
An older man wearing a sour scowl on his face slid up behind Diamonds, shadowed by a brute sporting a thick beard and a bald head. The brute eyeballed Pearl like he was praying rape was legal, while the older man whispered something into Diamonds’s ear. Whatever he said seemed to darken Diamonds’s mood.
“Pearl, as much as I would like to spend the rest of this night and the next convincing you that I’m a genuine soul, I got something I need to attend to. Before I go, let me leave you with this: I’ve never been good at games, so I don’t play them. You can either come out with me and see for yourself how sincere I am about what I say, or you can write me off and I’ll grow to be that old man who tells his grandkids stories of the one who got away.”
“I ain’t no home-wrecker,” Pearl said seriously. Diamonds was talking a good game, but hers had to be better.
“And I ain’t no fraud,” he shot back.
The older man cleared his throat, reminding Diamonds that they had something to do.
“Duty calls,” he continued, “but you go on and wrap your brain around what I said, and we’ll take this conversation up at another time.”
“So is this the part where you ask me for my phone number?” Pearl asked, thinking she was two steps ahead of him.
Diamonds cracked a sly smile. “Pretty lady, there’s a difference between being pressed and being sincere. I fall into the latter category. If it’s meant to be, it’ll be, and our paths will cross again soon,” he capped, and walked off.
Pearl stood there for a few minutes, trying to figure out exactly what had just happened. She had always considered herself a smart girl and able to run game with the best of them, but Diamonds had successfully screwed her head on backward. As she watched him strut cockily away, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to run up on him and say all the things she would’ve had he not turned the tables, or take him into the bathroom and fuck him. He was cocky and borderline arrogant, but there was also a magnetic quality about him that drew her like a bee to honey. Had it not been for the bitter bitch Vita, there was no telling what would’ve gone down between them. He thought he was saying something slick when he spat his little game and pimped off with his boys, but what Diamonds didn’t know about Pearl was that she always had the last word.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“That’s a dangerous game you’re playing,” Hank told Diamonds as they moved through the club.
“What you mean?” Diamonds asked.
“Poking a hornet’s nest with a stick. You know you ain’t right for pressing up on that broad while Vita’s in eyeball’s distance.”
Diamonds waved him off. “I’m free to do me, and Vita’s free to do her. I’m not her man and she ain’t none of my girl.”
“Then maybe you should stop making her feel like she is,” Hank said slyly.
Diamonds stopped and turned to face Hank. “Since when did who I’m fucking become your business?”
“Since who you’re fucking started affecting our business,” Hank shot back. “You been dicking that girl down since she was old enough to take a grown cock, so don’t act like you don’t see that same starry look in her eyes that everyone else does. The difference is, we also see the evil looks: that glint in her eyes that says that every time she catches you dirty, she inches just a wee bit closer to getting up the courage to kill you. Diamonds, you know I know how the game goes, but that’s a young girl with a fragile heart. The last time she went off the rails over you fucking that girl in Dallas, her head was so scrambled that she almost blew the whole damn job!”
Diamonds cringed, thinking back on the incident. Vita had caught him fucking some broad he’d met in the club, and it ended up being a bad situation. She didn’t say anything when she initially found out. She waited on it, and during a siege they were laying to a trap house in Dallas, she decided to take her revenge and try to blow Diamonds’s head off in the middle of a job. Buda managed to wrestle the gun from her hand before she killed Diamonds, but her bullshit allowed the dudes they were moving against a chance to regroup, and they ran Diamonds and his crew off. That was one of only three jobs that had gone bad. It was Vita who blew it, but Diamonds who had pushed her to it. “I’ll talk to her. Everything gonna be cool,” he promised.
“You’d better. The next time, she may slit your throat in your sleep instead of trying to shoot you while we’re on a job. If you know like I know, you’ll either stop parading your bullshit in front of Vita or let her go,” Hank warned.
Diamonds understood Hank’s point of view, and the old-timer was right, but it was Diamonds’s
ego that wouldn’t allow him to completely cut Vita loose. He had started quietly sleeping with Vita since right before she’d graduated high school, and by the time she’d blossomed into womanhood, he had molded her in his image. He was smart about it, never officially committing to her but constantly dangling the possibility. So long as she had hope, she would always be loyal.
“What’s up with you and brown skin anyhow?” Hank nodded in the direction they’d just come from.
Diamonds looked over his shoulder at Pearl, who was just entering the VIP with her friend. He caught her looking back at him. “Her.” He smiled. “I don’t know, but I got a serious hankering to find out. She feels special.”
Hank shook his head. “Man, you got a serious weakness for pretty bitches. It seems like you fall in love with a different one in every city we mob through.”
“Those other times weren’t love, but a need to get my dick wet. This is a different kind of situation,” Diamonds told him. “I ain’t gonna front like I wouldn’t dick her down if I had the chance, but I wouldn’t mind getting to know her either. She feels right.”
“You got all that from spending a few minutes with the broad?” Hank didn’t believe it.
“Sometimes that’s all it takes. You ain’t never heard of love at first sight?” Diamonds questioned.
“Of course I have. How do you think I met my ex-wife?” Hank questioned. “I knew I loved her from the first time we said hello, which is why it hurt all that much more when I found out she was a scandalous bitch. I spent a whole week wallowing in my own piss and self-pity before I was able to crawl out of that funk, and trust me when I say, you don’t want no part of that kind of heartache.”
“So you mean because of one bad experience, you’ve closed your heart to the possibility of love?” Diamonds asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Hank confirmed. “In this life we live, the only things we can afford to love are this paper and this power. Anybody who tries to stretch his heart beyond that is inviting disaster.”
“With that kind of attitude, you’ll likely never know the endless possibilities of true love. What good is having the finer things if you don’t have anyone to share them with? I know most of these broads ain’t got nothing but larceny and ambition in their hearts, but that don’t mean there aren’t some good ones out there. Who’s to say Pearl might not be the one for me?”
“Vita,” Hank replied. “Regardless of what you think you might be feeling toward this young chippie, Vita ain’t gonna never sit idle and watch you give some random chick what she’s been working to earn for all these years, especially some bitch who looks young enough for you to get locked up over.”
“Hank, you act like I’m a long time removed from high school just because I didn’t graduate. I figure I probably got her by a few years, but how young can she be if she’s up in a gangster bar, hanging out with gangsters? Big homie, I ain’t saying I’m trying to jump her bones fresh out the gate, but that’s somebody I think I need to know. When you get a minute, I want you to find out all you can about Ms. Pearl. Now, on to more pressing business. You have any luck getting us that meeting with the owner of this hole-in-the-wall?”
“I stepped to the manager twice, and he keeps saying he ain’t in yet. Quiet as kept, me and Goldie spotted his car when we cased the block. I think they playing games.”
“I might hide too if I knew a king cobra had just slithered into my place,” Diamonds said. “We new faces, so I expected him to be suspicious, which is why I called TJ.”
Hank frowned. “What you call him down here for? His vote don’t count in this collective.”
“No, it doesn’t, at least until I say otherwise. TJ is local and familiar with the natives, so they might be less suspicious of him. Either way, this conversation is going to happen tonight.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Hank’s tone was laced with sarcasm.
Diamonds cocked his head and glared at Hank. “OG, we known each other too long to hold our tongues. You got something you feel like you need to get off your chest, go on and spit it out.”
Hank glanced around to make sure no one was listening before speaking his piece. “Dawg, what the fuck are we doing here?”
“Exploring a business opportunity—what else?” Diamonds said as if his motives were pure.
“Don’t be funny. You know what I mean. You promised the team a night out to unwind, yet we find ourselves in here trying to make a move, a move I advised you against, I might add.”
“We always on the clock, Hank. Money don’t take days off and neither do we,” Diamonds said as if it were that simple.
“Need I remind you of our current position in all this? We just wiped out an associate of the Mexican cartel, a big-time player in Harlem, and took damn near his whole crew along for the ride. We did all this on the word of your cousin and with a suspect green light from a guy we don’t even know if we can trust yet. And now, less than twelve hours later, you wanna try to put the squeeze on another power player who was never in the plans to begin with? Why do you even need me to tell you this isn’t a good idea?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Hank?” Diamonds laughed as if the whole thing were funny. “Nah, but I see what you’re saying, and under normal circumstances, I’d agree, but what I’ve found during our stay in New York is that it’s anything but normal. Things in this city move fast, and sometimes you gotta improvise. Right now we got the element of surprise on our side, and we need to use it to our advantage. Some parties we’ll get invited to, and others we just gotta show up unannounced and convince them to let us in.”
Hank frowned. “I hear that shit, but what if this gate-crashing mission goes to the left and we’re called to task for our bullshit because you wanted to jump the gun? You know every member of the crew is ten toes down for whatever you need us to do, but we don’t have enough friends in New York yet to go to war over a piece of property that probably ain’t worth the blood that’ll be spilled to take it.”
Diamonds shrugged. “Fuck it. We been playing with the odds against us all our lives. What makes this any different? We came to this city to bleed it, and that’s what we’re gonna do. If you got cold feet and wanna step off, I can respect that. You’ve put in enough work to where nobody would question it if you wanted to retire early, Hank.”
“Lil nigga, you know better than that. I been with you since the beginning, and I’m gonna be with you until the end. All I’m saying is, we need to pace ourselves and not jump too far out the window too soon. You’ve come in here with this ol’ great offer to make, assuming he’s going to go for it, but what if he doesn’t? Pops is very well liked in these notorious circles, and people may not turn a blind eye to him going missing like we hope they’ll do with Pana. We ain’t got nobody’s blessing on this one.”
“Blessing? Since when we start lining up to take communion for the sins we commit in the name of survival?” Diamonds hissed. “New York ain’t like Texas, or even Miami. The only thing niggas up here understand is persistence and violence. I’m damn good at both, so I plan to capitalize on them. This old man has something I need, and I intend to make my play for it. Anybody who got a problem with that, you tell them to go get a pistol and step to me properly,” Diamonds capped, and walked off, leaving Hank standing there.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
They called it the VIP area, but it was more like a section of the bar that had been roped off from the main area. There was a sectional couch, two standing tables, and just enough room in the center for a few people to dance if they liked.
From the way Sheila had made it seem, they would be the main attraction, but there were at least a half dozen girls lingering in the VIP already, with easily that same number waiting outside the rope, hoping they could gain access. Not that Pearl was worried, but none of the girls she saw looked like they posed much of a threat. She could tell from the low-end gear, synthetic hair, and the heavy stench of cheap body spray that they were bottom-feede
rs and hardly in the same weight class as Pearl, or even her friends, but they were thirsty, and that would give them a leg up if guys started choosing.
Sheila was standing just beyond the rope, a drink in her hand, and staring over at Boom while he whispered into the ear of some girl with too much stomach for her halter top. The longer Boom talked to her, the tighter Sheila’s face got. She looked ready to blow a gasket at any second and looked fit to lose it when someone called Boom’s name and drew his attention away from the girl he was talking to. Boom’s posture seemed to straighten at the sight of whoever was calling him, so Pearl followed his line of vision to see who it was.
Much to her surprise, it was the guy she had spotted earlier, popping bottles and carrying on. When Pearl had initially seen him, she assumed that he had been standing on a chair or possibly a table, but now that she was in proximity of him, she realized he was just that tall. He had to be at least six foot six, and he sported a mess of thick dreadlocks and a beard that looked like it had never seen comb or shear. One of his eyes seemed to drift, making it hard to see where he was looking. He was by no means a handsome man, but he draped himself in high-end fashion to compensate for it. The heavy jewels and head-to-toe Louis Vuitton outfit screamed money, and it was all authentic. Pearl had been bathed in designer since she’d come into the world, so she knew quality when she saw it.
Pearl watched intently as the tall dread crossed the small space and greeted Boom with a handshake before pulling him in and patting his back. They spoke briefly amongst themselves before Sheila interjected herself into their conversation. Boom gave her a disapproving look, but if she noticed, she didn’t seem to care. The Jamaican rum they’d had on the way over had her on her gangster shit. Sheila went back and forth between the two men, batting her eyes and spitting game. Every so often she would glance over to the corner Pearl and Marisa had settled into. Whatever she was saying drew a mischievous smile from the tall dread, and the next thing Pearl knew, she and Marisa were being waved over.