by SLMN
Mac looked at Mona strangely, she caught the look, but he quickly smiled to cover whatever had him twisted up.
“It’s nice to meet you,” he told her.
“Same here,” Mona said.
It was all very normal for the next few minutes—the four of them getting acquainted, a few stories about how they’d come up together, war stories, inside jokes and all that shit she wasn’t really part of—right up until the doorbell rang again.
Othello went and opened it.
Cash walked in with this gorgeous little Asian chick with a body like a black girl, all tits, ass and hips.
“Sushi anyone?” Cash quipped, the girl at his side giggling. There was no doubt what Cash had been eating before they rolled up.
Othello embraced Cash with a gangsta hug. “Come on in my nigga, everybody already here.”
He walked Cash into the living room, arm around his shoulder.
Mona had her back to them as they approached, still chatting away with Kandi when Othello said, “Mo. Meet my man...”
She turned around, deer in the headlights, and froze.
“Cash.”
Cash was every bit as surprised, but he kept his game face on. Inside, though, his nerves were twanging like electric guitar strings, his brain wiring lit up like a Vegas casino.
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
Hers said: You?
His screamed: What the hell are you doing here?
But outwardly, both just about kept it together, even if they weren’t exactly composed.
Mona’s voice was a little shaky when she said, “It’s nice… to meet you.”
Cash wasn’t his smooth self. The best he could muster was, “Yeah.”
Othello put his arm around Mona, proudly.
“Yeah yo, didn’t I tell you she was somethin’, my nigga? Mo, Cash and Mac, these two niggas go back with me to my Underoos days,” he laughed, truly content and happy to be surrounded by his family. Right here, in this room, were the only people in the world he could trust.
Mona and Cash stole glances while Othello beamed.
As the night wore on, they played a subtle game of eye tag.
The glances were real quick, real furtive, and they thought no one saw them.
They were wrong.
Someone did.
Kandi.
She was watching Mac at first, trying to figure out why he kept side-eyeing Mona. She was about to get in her feelings, when she noticed that Mona wasn’t looking at Mac, she was steadily stealing glances at Cash, and that nigga was returning them.
It didn’t take her long to figure out what was going on.
“That bitch fucked Cash before,” she told Mac after they walked out of the party.
She said it with absolute confidence.
That was when Mac’s brain dinged like he’d just hit three in a row on a slot machine, bells going off everywhere.
“I knew I knew that bitch! That’s how I know her! We snatched up her and her girlfriend one night at the Waffle House… fuck.”
“What you mean snatched up?” Kandi snapped with attitude, but Mac disregarded her petty jealous flare up.
“What the fuck?” He shook his head. It didn’t make sense. “Why Cash don’t just tell that nigga?”
Kandi laid her hand on his arm. “Just make sure you don’t tell him. Not yet,” she warned.
“What you mean, not yet?”
“Trust me on this. A woman’s intuition never lies.”
Kandi slipped her arm into his and leaned into Mac as they walked to the car, knowing the information would come in handy one day.
Meanwhile, Cash was thinking along similar lines.
He wasn’t even paying attention to the Asian girl as she sucked his dick on the drive home. He was normally all for the speed thrill, powering through the streets, lips wrapped around his hard dick. But nothing about this night had been normal. All he could focus on was Mona’s beautiful face.
After their one night stand, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
It was like she’d taken up residence in his fantasies.
He tried to act like she was just another fuck, but that smile, her style, her presence, the whole fuckin’ thing that was Mona, it just blew him better than an army of Asian chicks. He’d tried to call her several times, but every time she sent him to voicemail. That just made his obsession worse. He couldn’t believe a woman was blowing him off. He was the one who didn’t return phone calls; he was the one who left bitches cold and lonely without as much as a kiss goodbye. That shit didn’t happen to him. He didn’t like the way she’d flipped the script on him. He couldn’t trust the way he was feeling. But fuck, the universe was a stone cold bitch. Black fuckin’ heart and all. It was like she had just dropped off the map only to reappear on the arm of his man, his best friend.
“Baby, are you okay?” the Asian girl asked, looking up at him, precum glossy on her lips.
Cash pushed her back down as he made a left onto the highway.
‘You’re doing fine, yo,” he replied absentmindedly.
Mona was back in his life and he knew shit would never be the same again.
Aphrodite lay poolside.
She wore a two-piece bikini practically made of dental floss.
The woman was an exhibitionist. She got off showing her mature, shapely frame. From head to toe, she was definitely a dime. Adonis walked out in a pair of swim shorts that bulged with his healthy package.
Aphrodite took the time to admire his chiseled frame as he walked to the board, and climbed the ladder. He stood there for a moment, golden sun streaming down, master of his domain, then took three fast steps, bounced on the board and dove into the pool.
He swam the length twice, powerful arms cutting through the blue before he came over and rested his elbows on the edge of the pool.
“Adonis, come have a drink with your loving mother,” Aphrodite called out playfully.
Adonis rose out of the pool, water dripping down his cut muscles. Aphrodite didn’t turn away. “Don’t you mean, Adonis bring your loving mother a drink?”
“That, too,” she laughed.
Adonis’s bare feet slapped on the wet stone as he walked over to the poolside bar and poured them both a stiff one.
Glasses in hand, he walked it back, handed Aphrodite her drink, then sat sideways on the deck chair facing her.
“Have you seen your sister?”
Adonis shrugged and sipped. “Not today.”
“Hmmm, she’s been very secretive lately. I figured, if anybody knew why, it would be you,” Aphrodite watched his expression.
He knew his mother was on a fishing expedition, so he kept his face straight. There was no way he was going to breathe the fact that Mona was literally sleeping with the enemy. She had sworn him to secrecy.
“You’re just being your usual paranoid self, mommy dearest,” Adonis chuckled, trying to deflect and change the subject with humor.
Aphrodite allowed him to lead her where she wanted to go anyway. “Well, what about you? You haven’t exactly been an open book. You ready for this wedding?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he mumbled, downing his drink.
That wasn’t the enthusiastic response she’d hoped for, given the amount of money they were putting into the whole show. “Is there something wrong, baby?”
“Should there be?”
Aphrodite sat up, crossing her long, sexy legs.
“I know you, son. It’s written all over your face.” She asked the question she didn’t really want an answer to. “You do love her, don’t you?”
Adonis looked off in the distance, thinking, it depends on which her you’re referring to, but he said, “I’m marrying her, ain’t I?”
Aphrodite laughed. “Marriage doesn’t love, boy.”
“You sound like you know that firsthand.”
“If you’re asking if I love your father, the answer is yes, very much. Can we speak honestly? As adults?” Aphrodite asked, a curi
ous expression on her face.
“I thought we were.”
She smiled.
“No, baby, you were telling me what I wanted to hear.”
“What are we going to talk about?”
“Your…preferences,” Aphrodite said, flatly.
He looked at her.
“Meaning?”
“Adults, remember? Baby, I’m your mother. We are blood. You think I don’t know my own children? Believe me, a mother knows, a mother always knows, even if she pretends she doesn’t.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I know that Bianca isn’t who you really want,” Aphrodite told him straight out.
Adonis wanted to fix his mouth to deny it, deny himself, but he made a conscious decision to be bold for once in his life. To be himself.
He nodded.
“How long have you known?” he questioned.
“All your life. Haven’t you been listening? I remember that little boy you went to school with, what was his name? Oliver?”
Adonis couldn’t help but smile to himself.
He definitely remembered Oliver.
They were both thirteen.
Oliver was flaming even in grade school.
Unapologetically gay, with all of that fabulousness and flair to match.
Oliver had enticed what was deep in his adolescent mind, bringing that latent desire to the surface.
Oliver had set him free.
“Yes. Oliver.”
“You think I didn’t know what you two were doing in the attic? In your playhouse?”
“Why didn’t you tell Daddy?”
“Why do you think? Your father would’ve killed you and killed me for having you. Besides, I knew there would come a time he would leave this family and all our business in your hands. Without you, it would’ve gone to Black Sam and his son.”
He looked at her, not following. “But Uncle Sam’s son is dead. Didn’t he drown in our pool?”
Aphrodite laid back on the chair, put her shades back on, very deliberately covering her eyes before she replied, “Of course he did.”
It wasn’t what she said, it was how she said it that sent a chill up his spine.
“What do you mean, of course, ma?”
He couldn’t tell if she was looking at him or not.
Her stone expression said it all.
“You think your father is the only gangster in this family? We do what we have to do to protect ourselves, no? Black Sam is your father’s next in line. Had your father found out about you, then he would have given the crown to Kenny. So, I made sure that when Kenny came to spend the summer with us, the only crown he’d be wearing was seaweed,” Aphrodite explained flatly.
My mother is a murderer? Adonis thought to himself, trying to wrap his mind around what it took to kill a child, a friend’s son…
He’d always known she was a diva, a social creature, who delighted in entertaining some of the most powerful people in the city and made damn sure she looked beautiful while doing it. But how the hell was he supposed to reconcile that his mother was capable of killing a 12-year-old child in cold blood just to preserve her son’s birthright?
“When you run this family, you will have to do a lot more. That’s just the truth of the life you are inheriting. Tell me the truth, baby, are you ready for that?” Aphrodite asked him.
Adonis dropped his head.
“I don’t know.”
Aphrodite sat up and took her shades off again.
She leaned forward, her legs were between his.
She caressed his cheek, lovingly, almost sensually and Adonis responded, looking up at her.
He hated to admit it, even to himself, but his mother was the only woman that had any effect on his flesh. She turned him on.
Her smile said she knew it.
“Dearest Adonis, this world is about sacrifices. Do you know what a sacrifice asks of us?” Before he could answer she said, “It asks, how badly do you want what you want? How far will you go to get where you want to go? Dearest Adonis, life isn’t worth living if you don’t desire something you’re willing to give up everything for,” she explained.
She was the very voice of desire.
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to react, not only to her words, but to the fact that he felt so…. aroused. He felt his dick getting hard in his swim shorts.
Aphrodite laid back again.
“Think about what I said, sweetheart. And when you see your sister, tell her I need to see her.”
He had been dismissed.
oe Hamlet was a man of appetites. Big appetites. To satisfy some of them, he kept a mistress laid up in a skyrise apartment. The building was like something a stoned Trump had designed. She was a bad bitch in all the best ways; an ex-porn star that fucked like Mia Khalifa and looked like some Egyptian goddess stepped out of mythology. She’d played Isis in some fantasy TV show on HBO a few years back and starred in her own porn parody which generated serious bank. The bitch had a business head on her. She knew her looks were money, and by holding onto some shit back then, down the line she’d make a killing by getting into some real perverted shit that had the freaks lining up around the block, wallets and cocks in hand. She’d just done some German shit, real depraved stuff. He’d bust a nut to it more than once. That was the thing about their relationship, it was transactional. He wasn’t into ownership, walking down the street with this honey on his arm and turning heads. And he could give a fuck who else was in there doing her, that was her business. When they were together, they were together. She kept him young. Watching her riding his dick, the way her body moved beat any fucking belly dancer. And it didn’t matter how much dick she’d had, her pussy still gripped his dick and always fucked his head up and sent him over the edge.
After they finished fucking, Joe sat on the side of the bed, strapping on his watch, fully dressed while she was still naked. She slung her naked body over him, kissing at his ear.
“Do you have to go?”
“I told you, shit is hectic right now. I got a lot on my plate. But I promise, after this, we’ll get away and go somewhere nice. I know a place: black sand, azure sea, proper paradise.”
Her face lit up. “You promise?”
“I just did.”
She covered his face with kisses.
“I love you, Joe, more than you know.” She thought about it for a second. “I want to go to Bali. I saw a commercial about it and I want to go there.”
“Then Bali it is,” Joe said, standing up.
On her knees, she looked up at him. He couldn’t begin to understand how a woman like her could always look so fuckin’ innocent. It was like a magic spell that always made his dick hard.
He pulled out his black card and threw it on the bed.
“There you go. Burn it up, okay? Get a whole new wardrobe for the trip. I’ll see you next week.” She kissed him so passionately he had to pull himself away before he got lost in her lips and needed to lose himself in her body all over again.
“I love you, Daddy,” she sang as he opened the door.
“I know you do,” he winked, then walked out.
Outside the door, his bodyguard leaned against the wall, waiting.
“Ready, Mr. Hamlet?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
They got on the elevator. The damned thing was gold and diamond. He hadn’t seen anything like it in his life. It cost more than a Third World Country. The bodyguard pressed for the underground parking level. He wasn’t a great talker, but silence in elevators was always uncomfortable, so they made small talk—the usual did you see the game stuff as the elevator descended.
The thing about elevators is most people feel safe.
They think there is no way in, flying past floor after floor, staring at the only entrance to the elevator.
They forget to look up.
Joe didn’t hear the emergency hatch above his head slide open slowly, well-greased and silent.
&nb
sp; “Move and you’re dead.”
There was a moment of confusion, Joe looking at his bodyguard, bodyguard looking for the threat and not seeing it. Then both men looked up staring down the barrel of an AR-15 fully automatic machine gun that was being pointed at them by a sexy Latina chick. It was Venus.
“Don’t play with me, gentlemen. Hands up. Down on your knees,” she ordered.
They hesitated.
BBBBBRRRRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPP!
She let a few rounds loose, the sound ricocheting inside the small space as the bullets pierced the outer shell. That got their fullest attention.
“On your knees. Now. Or lay on your back in a church some goddamn where! Do it!”
They did what they were told.
Joe was calm.
It wasn’t a hit. If it had been, he would have been dead already.
“What’s this all about?” he asked, his hands laced behind his head, on his knees.
Venus dropped down through the hatch, landing lightly on her feet. Moving quickly, she relieved both men of their guns. “You’ll find out soon enough.” She promised.
The elevator door opened up to the underground parking area.
Middle of the day, pitch dark. All the lights in the underground were out save one on the ceiling, bright like a spotlight. They stepped out of the elevator.
Joe’s Phantom was surrounded by two black SUV’s.
His driver was face-down on the cement.
Finally, Joe looked into the face of his enemy’s foot soldier.
“Othello, I presume?”
Othello smiled.
“In the flesh.”
“Come to kill me?”
“You know if I had, you’d be dead already. No, I’ve come to talk and I really think you’ll be feeling what I have to say.”
Joe looked around at the other faces, people he would later come to know as Mac, Cash and Milk.
He glanced at his bodyguard, then at his watch, like he really didn’t have time for this shit, so be done with it. He said as much. “So talk.”
“Just me and you. We’ll take your car. No guns. You drive,” Othello laid down the terms.
The two men eyed one another. Joe was slightly shorter, but bulkier. He'd been a boxer. He was good with his fists. He could handle the young upstart if shit got hectic.