Mafioso [Part 2]

by Nisa Santiago

  He walked into the quiet home. It was dark, and it was late. He undid his suit jacket and trekked up the spiral stairway and headed toward the main bedroom. The door was ajar, and he peeked inside and saw that Maxine was asleep. He grinned. For a short moment, he stood at the door in the darkened hallway and watched her. She looked fresh and alluring. He couldn’t look at her any longer without touching.

  He walked into the room and placed himself against Maxine, and his sudden presence startled her. She jumped up and was ready to attack him, not knowing the face for a moment.

  “Chill, baby. It’s me.”

  “What are you doing in my bedroom?” she exclaimed.

  “Your room? That’s cute,” he said with quiet laughter. “I came to see you.”

  There he was, face to face with her, and smiling like everything was okay between them. Max wanted to punch him in the face, but she didn’t.

  Smiling, he reached for her and grabbed her wrist. He wanted to pull her closer, but she resisted.

  “You look beautiful . . . more beautiful than I remember you,” he said.

  She remained quiet.

  “I missed you so much,” he said.

  She stared at him deadpan. If he missed her, then why didn’t he come to visit her? Why did he coerce her to take the fall for Layla?

  “You’re not going to say anything?”

  “What is there to say?” she said.

  “You and Layla are the best of friends again, I see.”

  “We’re just catching up.”

  “I find it ironic to see you here.”

  “Well, I’m here. Do you want me to leave?”

  “No, I wanna catch up too, on lost time.”

  She chuckled. “Lost time? I did hard time.”

  “Yeah, lost time,” he said with a lecherous grin, his eyes intense and piercing.

  Max felt vulnerable around him in her T-shirt and panties. She wanted to cover up and walk away, but she didn’t. She found herself rooted on the bed right next to him, and his touch against her skin had paralyzed her.

  “Let me make things up to you,” he said.

  “And how are you gonna make it up to me?”

  “I’ll show you,” he replied with confidence.

  “You wanna fuck me tonight?” she said.

  “You know I want you.”

  Max wanted to take as much away from Layla as possible, and what better way than to fuck her husband, the same man Layla took from her? After all, he was hers before he’d married Layla. It was perfect. She could have Scott eating out the palm of her hands. Prison had taught her a lot, and she was putting her knowledge to good use.

  She leaned back on the bed, indicating to him she was his for the night. She wanted him inside of her.

  Scott hovered over her lustfully, removing her panties and stripping away his clothing. Her legs spread, and he eagerly slammed himself inside of her, feeling all of her womanhood grip him. He grunted from the intense feeling she gave him, already feeling her pussy milking his dick to come.

  Maxine forgot what he felt like, how big his dick was, and how vigorously he used to fuck her. The man hadn’t lost his touch.

  They had explosive sex. When it was all said and done, it was Scott who had to rethink all his moves.

  “Damn!” he muttered.

  40

  Layla noticed that Scott had been spending more time in Florida. She wasn’t complaining, assuming that he’d finally come to his senses and cut off Penelope. He must have realized she was his ride-or-die wife and that she would do anything for him. Lately, she’d been floating on cloud nine, feeling like her husband was back in her life. But once again, their sex was lacking. But what else Layla noticed and gloated about was the constant bickering between Scott and Maxine. They couldn’t be in the same room with each other without squabbling. Layla saw they despised each other, and she loved it. She believed that Maxine hated Scott for everything he’d done to her and had been more forgiving toward her. With Christmas right around the corner, Layla felt cheery about having her husband back in her life, Penelope out of the picture, and Scott and Maxine hating each other. It was her early Christmas gift.

  Lucky was against everything going on, but Layla told her that she and her father were working on mending their relationship. Lucky warned her not to trust him, that he was still a dog. And she forever warned her mother to get rid of Maxine. To her, it didn’t make sense. If she was working on her marriage with Scott, then why have the former girlfriend around? Lucky felt that her mother was setting herself up for disaster.

  ***

  Max felt in charge. Everything was going smoothly between her and Scott. It was her plan to pretend they didn’t like each other when they got around Layla, but behind closed doors, they would passionately fuck each other’s brains out. She sucked his dick like a porn star and threw her pussy at him like an animal unleashed from its cage. Scott ate her pussy out like it was dessert and fucked her as if she would be his last fuck. But now, wanting to rewrite the program, she had to change things up.

  It was after midnight, and she was expecting Scott to come by tonight for his usual dosage of sex and good loving.

  He was on time, walking into the house with anticipation of having another great night of sex with her. She sat in the living room, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt. When he came to her, she pulled away from him, her look hardened and unfriendly.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

  “Not tonight,” she said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  He laughed, thinking she was joking. He wanted her badly tonight, but she continued to resist, making him angry.

  “What the fuck is your problem, Maxine?” he barked.

  “Everything is my problem—this entire setup with us, this sneaking around. I was meant to be your woman, your wife, not your mistress. But you left me to rot in jail while you got my friend pregnant and married her. You gave her six kids, a luxurious life to live, and what do I have to show for myself? Huh? What do I have? You know what I have? A father who died while I was in prison. I couldn’t even attend his funeral. And I have a mother with one foot in the grave and a fuckin’ federal record. I have nothing, Scott, but you want me. You need to really show that you want me, that you really love me like you say you do. I don’t want you part-time anymore.”

  She knew her threats were a gamble, but she saw her opening and knew it was time to go for it.

  Hearing Maxine break it down, all the foul shit done to her, Scott felt some remorse. She didn’t deserve it. She had a bright future ahead of her, and it was all snatched away. She had always been smart and ambitious, and she came from a good family. There was always something about Maxine that Scott loved. She had that innocence about her he still saw, even after her time in prison. There was a slight change, but that simplicity in her character drew him in deeper. And the way she fucked him had him obsessed. It was time to correct things. And, besides, he was never in love with Layla.

  ***

  The shock on Layla’s face when she saw Scott and Maxine walk through the front door together was clear as day. The two looked too comfortable around each other, and Maxine had a smirk on her face that immediately rubbed Layla the wrong way.

  Scott looked at Layla intently, his eyes already showing her that whatever he had to say wouldn’t be good.

  “You need to sit down,” he said to Layla.

  “Fuck that! I don’t need a fuckin’ seat. What is this shit about?”

  “I’m divorcing you,” he said.

  Layla was dumbstruck.

  “I never really loved you, Layla. I just tolerated you all this time.”

  Those words cut her deeply. And there was Maxine, standing beside him with that annoying smirk. Layla wanted to rip it off her face.

  “And I never loved Penelope; she was just a
good time . . . some young pussy I got caught up in. Y’all bitches were just placeholders. I thought I could be happy with y’all, but I wasn’t.”

  To hear the love of her life, a nigga she’d been fucking with since she was eighteen, tell her she was just a placeholder for the next bitch, and that bitch being Maxine, made her furious. A fuse ignited inside of her, and she charged toward Maxine, ready to crush her with her bare hands, but Scott quickly intervened, coming between them. He grabbed Layla, holding her back.

  “I’ma fuck that bitch up!” Layla shouted. “I trusted you! I brought you in my home and looked out for you all this time, gave you money, and you do this to me?”

  “He wasn’t yours to have in the first place,” Max shouted back.

  “Bitch, he will always be mine. You couldn’t handle him twenty years ago, and you can’t handle him now,” Layla screamed. “That’s why he sent your ass to rot in prison, bitch! Let me go! Let me go!”

  Layla desperately wanted to sink her teeth into Maxine. Her eyes flared with rage, and she was almost foaming at the mouth. There was no way Maxine was leaving her home without an ass-whipping. But Scott held her tight, preventing it from happening.

  “Get the fuck off me! I’ma kill that bitch!” Layla screamed.

  “Let her go,” Max said calmly.

  Scott glanced at Maxine, knowing she couldn’t be serious.

  “Let her go,” Max repeated in the same calm tone.

  Scott released his hold on Layla, and she went charging after Maxine like a discharged bullet, ready to tear her nemesis apart. But it was Layla who caught the shock of her life. She was quickly struck with a left hook by Max—a hard, dizzying blow. But Layla kept coming, and the two women grappled at each other’s clothing and hair.

  Max was the more aggressive one, repeatedly punching Layla in the face while having a fistful of her hair. Layla shouted obscenities at Maxine, as she felt herself losing the battle. Max’s grip on Layla’s hair tightened, as she controlled her movement, and then in a swift motion, she brought Layla’s face down sharply on her bent knee and broke her nose. Layla hollered from the pain, blood flowing down her face.

  With blood gushing from her nose and clearly embarrassed, Layla angrily shouted, “Get the fuck out my house! Both of y’all! Get out!”

  Scott had heard and seen enough. He saw red with Layla, and the audacity of her trying to kick him out of his own house. “Your house?” he replied. He smacked Layla out of the blue and grabbed her roughly by her clothing and dragged her to the door.

  She fought, kicking and screaming, but Scott was adamant in throwing out the trash. He tossed her out the door by her hair, and the car keys and her purse followed. Layla yelled and cursed at him.

  Maxine just stood there and watched it all. Everything was working out perfectly.

  That same night, Scott and Max made love in the main house. But she refused to fuck him in the master bedroom. In contrast to the earlier scuffle with Layla, she continued to play innocent and harmless, and she had Scott eating out of the palm of her hand. Her character and her pussy worked like voodoo on him.

  41

  It all felt like it was coming to an end for Layla, but she’d planned for this day. She called each of her kids and told them what had happened, and not one of them was shocked.

  Lucky said, “I told you so,” but Layla didn’t want to hear it. She wanted revenge on Scott and Maxine.

  ***

  While eating breakfast with Scott in the kitchen and acting like she was on her honeymoon with him, Maxine casually asked him, “Why would you keep so much money on the compound?”

  Confused by her statement, he asked, “What money? What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

  “In the three-car garage, the house built for Lucky. There’s tons of money in steel drums placed on pallets in the garage, maybe millions.”

  Immediately Scott removed himself from the kitchen and hurried to the location. Max followed him. He opened the garage and saw only empty pallets, but he noticed the disturbance in the garage, and the skid marks the pallets had made. Right away, he got on his cell phone and planned to fly to New York City to confirm his suspicion.

  Several hours later, Scott and Maxine were back in New York. At once he had the chauffeur drive them to the storage unit in Garden City, Long Island. It’d been a while since he visited the place. He hurried toward the storage unit, with Maxine following right behind him, and immediately he knew something was wrong. When he opened it up, there was nothing. The fifty million dollars was all gone.

  “That sneaky fuckin’ bitch!”

  Max felt betrayed too. She wanted a piece of the money, but instead, she got Scott. Maybe he was a much bigger prize.

  Scott was enraged. He called Layla’s cell phone, but it went straight to her voice mail. He left her an angry, threatening message. He didn’t care that she was his wife and the mother of his kids; he was ready to put the bitch six feet under. His composure gone, he thrust his fist into the gate and put a dent in it. “I’m gonna kill that bitch!” he shouted.

  “Baby, calm down,” Maxine said.

  Scott continued to fume. He was close to putting a contract on his wife’s life. Fifty million dollars was no drop in the bucket, and he’d killed men and women for a lot less than that. There was no way he could allow Layla to disrespect him like that.

  Max was in his ear, calming him down. “There’s another way, baby. No bloodshed. We can come at her subtly and make sure she has nothing left. And I’ll help you. I’m here for you.”

  “What you got planned?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Something easier, a way to get your money back. But first, you have to do something for me.”

  “And what’s that?”

  ***

  At Maxine’s behest, Scott ended his relationship with Penelope. He would not stick around for the remainder of her pregnancy. He stood there coldly in her living room on a Sunday afternoon and frankly told a very pregnant Penelope that their relationship was over, and he was with someone else who he would soon marry.

  Penelope was confused and appeared devastated by the sudden news. “Did I do somethin’ wrong, Poppi?” she asked him.

  “You can keep the apartment, and my child will be well taken care of. You don’t need to worry about anything.”

  In tears, Penelope tried to hug him and kiss him, but he pushed her off and away from him.

  “Keep it simple, and don’t touch me.”

  “Now I can’t touch you? I’m carryin’ your baby,” she cried out.

  “And like I said, you and my child will be taken care of. But you and I, we’re done.”

  He turned and marched out of the apartment, and the door slammed behind him.

  Once he was gone, Penelope stood up and wiped away her crocodile tears. She was glad he was gone. She giggled. “Good riddance.”

  Scott was a strategic come-up for her, and getting pregnant was the icing on the cake. She didn’t have to worry about cleaning toilets, cleaning homes, cooking anyone’s meals, or tending to anyone’s children. The way she was living now was paradise.

  She rubbed her belly, feeling her baby kicking and moving, and she smiled. The baby wasn’t even Scott’s. She was pregnant by his son, Meyer. The two had been carrying on a hush-hush relationship for years, and no one was any wiser.

  Everyone believed Meyer was sweet on the stripper, Lollipop, but the truth was, his heart belonged to Penelope. It burned him up inside when his old man went after what he believed was his woman. But Meyer kept quiet about it and allowed the affair to happen. He couldn’t let his feelings be known. It was one reason he was so angry and violent in the streets. He felt insulted by his father in so many ways, but there wasn’t anything he could do to Scott. He was the boss, the big man in charge of everything, and his father.

  When Layla had called him t
o do the hit on Penelope, it tore him up inside. There was no way he would let that happen. He told everyone in the organization they better not lay a finger on her, especially if his father didn’t sanction the hit. And if he did, Meyer would have gotten involved. But everyone believed he was concerned about Penelope for two reasons: she belonged to his father and she was carrying his sibling. They didn’t understand Penelope meant everything to Meyer.

  With Scott out of her life, Penelope felt she could finally move on with her own life. She wanted to come clean about everything. She wanted Meyer in her life. She loved him dearly, and she knew he loved her back.

  Happy about her future, she picked up the phone and dialed Meyer. When she heard Meyer’s voice on the other end, she immediately told him everything that had transpired with his father.

  “I want to tell him about us,” she said.

  “No, you can’t do that,” he said quickly.

  “Why not? He’s not with me anymore, he doesn’t want me, and besides, this is your baby, and I love you, Meyer.”

  “Penelope, that wouldn’t be wise. Just fall back and keep your mouth shut.”

  “No! I’m tired, Meyer. I’m tired of hiding our relationship and being in people’s shadow. When I have this baby, I want you in the delivery room with me, not him.”

  Penelope despised Scott. He had taken advantage of her when she worked for him, using his powerful position to throw himself on her and take what he wanted. It was borderline rape and sexual harassment.

  She had chemistry with Meyer. While everyone saw him as a violent, murderous monster, she saw a man who could make her laugh and didn’t judge her, unlike Scott, who used her for sex.

  “Penelope, listen to me clearly, you do this, and it will be a mistake. I’ll be at your place in a few hours so we can talk in person. But don’t do anything stupid or irrational. You might fuck around and get us all killed,” he said. “You don’t know my fuckin’ father.”