by Noire
“We’re having a little Texas barbeque today for some friends and family,” she said as she gestured toward all the workmen outside who were cutting grass, setting up tables, and positioning ice chests.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I hope I’m not intruding or anything,” I said quickly, using my best white girl voice and pretending like I had some manners. “I thought the lab was gonna be open today. I didn’t even think about the Fourth falling on Thursday and businesses closing down on Friday to celebrate. I guess I should have tried to get a hotel room anyway. New York is just a little bit too far to do a round-trip in one day.”
Selah smiled and said the words that I had practically pushed into her mouth. “It’s no problem. Since you’re here now you might as well stay. It’s a big house and we have plenty of room. Actually, you came at the perfect time. Since most of the family will be here this afternoon it’ll be a good opportunity for you to meet my children.”
I grinned happily. Ya damn skippy I wanted to meet the rest of the crew. After all, they’d gotten their sweet little hundred-grand inheritance, and I was damn sure gonna get mine too!
CHAPTER 13
“Now that looks damn good on you,” Nellie Marciano gushed as her friend Pilar Ducane modeled a bright yellow Dolce & Gabbana dress that hugged her scrumptious curves and highlighted the best features of her firm, luscious body. “I wish I had your breasts,” Nellie complained and gripped her flat chest with both hands. “Raheem loves big tits. I’m gonna have to find a good plastic surgeon.”
“Oh, these babies are real.” Pilar cupped her firm knockers and admired herself in the mirror. “They’re all mine.” She turned around to check out the precious booty and was satisfied with the way it rounded out the back of the tight dress.
Pilar was out doing some early morning shopping with two of her white girlfriends, Nellie and Vicky. Their fathers were all moguls in the oil transportation industry, and Pilar’s father, Digger, had actually introduced Nellie’s father to the business and sold him his first fleet of trucks.
The three girls had just hit NorthPark Center, which was one of the ritziest malls in Texas. They were only in their first store and already their arms were loaded down with merchandise. Pilar had picked out a bangin’ Fourth of July dress to wear to the barbeque her aunt was having later that day, and she’d found the perfect red and white bikini to complement her caramel skin tone and show off her curves.
Her adopted cousin Barron, aka Bump, was gonna be at the barbeque with his blond fiancée, Carla, and Pilar wanted to give him a hot visual to remind him of what kind of ass he could have been banging if he was engaged to her instead of that bony chick who had hooked him when he was a star football player in college.
Pilar was in a so-called serious relationship with a fat financial analyst named Ray, but Bump was her dream man, and even though her father and his mother were sister and brother, Pilar knew nabbing a husband like Barron could set her up and bankroll her for life.
And bankrolled was definitely what Pilar wanted to be today. She’d been shopping with her friends for forty-five minutes and she had picked up all the highest-priced shit, which was only right since out of the three of them her father made the most money.
Her arms overflowed with thousand-dollar skirts, crazy expensive dresses, belts and earrings that cost more than the average man’s weekly salary, and the shoes she planned to buy were all to die for.
“Just put it on my account.” Pilar waved her hand as their personal shopping representative rang up her merchandise totaling six thousand, two hundred and forty-one dollars.
“Absolutely,” the young lady said as she punched a few numbers into her register. Pilar and her girls were chatting away as the shopping rep peered closely at her screen.
“Er, excuse me, Miss Ducane, but there must be a problem with our system. Your account has a hold on it. The computer won’t allow me to input any additional charges. I apologize. It must be some kind of glitch.”
Pilar smiled at the girl sweetly. “If there’s a problem with your system, darling, then why don’t you go find someone who can fix it?”
Pilar grinned wickedly at Vicky and Nellie as the rep hurried off. But minutes later the girl was back with her manager, who quickly checked the system then tried to pull Pilar discreetly off to the side.
“Pardon me, Miss Ducane. Can I speak with you privately for a moment?”
Pillar wasn’t having it. “What’s the big problem? I’ve been shopping here for years and I spend a lot of damn money in this store!”
“I understand that, Miss Ducane, and I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. But Sheila is right. We’re unable to add any additional charges to your account until your current balance has been settled. However, if you’d like to pay for your merchandise by credit card, I’d be happy to personally complete your transaction.”
Hater! Pilar gave the woman a real deep look. This old bitch was embarrassing her in front of her friends on purpose.
“Here!” She slipped a platinum American Express card from her wallet and flung it at the manager. “I hope you know this is gonna be the last damn time any of us shop in your store!”
She fumed as the woman processed her transaction. She could feel Nellie’s and Vicky’s eyes crawling all over her back, and she wanted to turn around and fuck both of their snobby asses up.
“Miss Ducane”—the store manager wore a grim look on her face as she handed Pilar her card—“again, I do apologize—”
“Don’t fuckin’ apologize to me. Apologize to whoever owns this raggedy joint because business is about to get bad for everybody around here! You can keep your apologies, honey. Just get my shit wrapped and bagged so we can get the hell out of here!”
The manager grilled her. She’d spent years catering to rich bitches like Pilar, and it always felt good when she was in a position to stick the toe of her shoe up one of their spoiled asses.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to apologize again, Miss Ducane. I won’t be able to ‘wrap and bag’ any of this merchandise today, because unfortunately your credit card has also been declined.”
“What?” Pilar nutted up, ready to cause a scene to hide her embarrassment. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!”
Hot shame flashed through her body. She swung her arm wildly and swept everything off the counter. Thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise hit the floor, including the items that had been on display and half the clothes that Nellie had set up on the counter too. Pilar lifted her feet and stomped all over that shit before she pushed past the manager and stormed out of the store.
Speed-walking back to her car, she wanted to kick some ass! How could her father let this happen to her? With the current oil crisis going on she’d known her father’s business was having a little trouble, but he’d told her not to worry because he had it all under control!
Pilar tossed her valet stub at the parking attendant, then snapped her fingers for him to hurry the hell up and bring her freshly-detailed Lexus around. Nellie and Vicky must have stayed back at the store to pay for their new clothes, which was good because Pilar was too ashamed to face them. The only reason she had asked them to go shopping in the first place was because it gave her a boost when she out-spent their asses!
She climbed behind the wheel of her ride and floored it out of the parking lot. Something was going to have to change in her life, and real damn fast too. If her last name had been Dominion instead of Ducane this kind of shit would have never happened. This was gonna be the last damn time she shopped with Vicky or Nellie too. She’d been way too humiliated and her pride wouldn’t let her face those snobby bitches again. At least Vicky had turned away and pretended to be interested in a purse when the drama went down, but that blue-eyed NFL groupie Nellie had been down Pilar’s throat the whole time. She reminded Pilar of Barron’s flat-assed fiancée, Carla. Neither one of those greedy white chicks deserved the rich black men they had!
CHAPTER 14
Bunni’s ass was awestruck. Our rooms were separated by some pretty French doors, and she ran straight through my suite and dove face-first on the four-poster king-sized bed in her room.
“Look at this shit!” She got on her knees, then stood up on the bed and started jumping up and down like a little kid.
“Calm ya ass down!” I told her. “Don’t be acting like you never saw a bed before, Bunni. Damn.”
I was fussin’ at Bunni, but on the real I was open too. I’d seen a lot of nice houses in magazines, but I had never been inside a real live mansion before, and everything in here was just like I had imagined it would be in my dreams.
All the furniture went together. The bed actually matched the dressers and the night tables, and everything had been polished until it glowed. The carpet was fuckin’ luscious. The spreads matched the sheets, the blankets, and the drapes. The set-up was completely perfect, and it was exactly what I had always wanted.
I was tiptoeing around my room scared to touch anything, while next door Bunni was wildin’ out like she was back in the hood.
“Mink! Girl, did you see the bathroom? Check out that shower! These mofos are rich! Even the toilet seat is beast!”
Our suitcases were delivered to our rooms by a couple of servants, and they brought up a tray with fruit, cookies, doughnuts, and cake too. Me and Bunni decided to take a shower and change into some different clothes. We went to our own bathrooms, and when we were done we met back in my room to pick out our outfits for the barbeque.
Of course Bunni was bent on showing off that camel toe. She chose a pair of white satin jeggings that rode low on her curvy hips and stopped right below her knees. The pants showed every bit of her bomb-ass shape, including her monkey, and she set them off with a silver and black belt, a lime-green tank, and some matching jewelry. She sprayed her locks down with water and scrunched them around with her hands, then pushed her hair back with a cute lime-green headband. She put on some mascara and lipstick, and she was set.
I tried to approach my gear with a little bit more thought. I knew my choice in clothes could be weird and over the top, and since I was tryna make a good impression I suppressed my natural desires and decided to play it safe and sexy. I wanted to give the Dominions a hint of what I was packing, but not the whole thing. I chose a stark-white halter dress that Peaches had boosted from Neiman Marcus. It was cut low enough in the front to show a little cleavage, but not so low that my rack was jumpin’ out atcha.
The dress tied behind my neck and exploded in a V down my back. It fit kinda loose, but the tapered waist made it clear that I had a big ass without making my booty look ghetto. I decided to wear a platinum-white wig that was bobbed in the front and long in the back. It was so white it matched my dress perfectly, and when I added some dangling Jerome Berrion chrome earrings and a pair of matching chrome snake bracelets that wrapped around my arms almost up to my elbows, everything came together just right.
Or almost just right.
Something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I dug into my jewelry bag and took out a sparkly diamond necklace that looked like a doughnut. It dangled on a thick silver chain, and it looked real dope when I fastened it around my neck.
Hell yeah. I grinned as I looked in the mirror. My shit was set.
I was itchin’ to get up in the crowd that had started to gather in the Dominions’ huge backyard, and I went to get Bunni outta her room so we could bust up on the scene and start us a little trouble. Bunni’s joint was trashed. She had left shit everywhere, just like she did when she was back in New York in her own damn crib.
“Girl, ain’t you gonna pick some of that stuff up off the floor?” I shook my head. “You gonna have these rich people thinking we cluckin’ like chickens.”
Bunni checked her hair in the streak-free mirror and shrugged. “Shut up, Mink. As long as we get that loot I don’t give a damn what these people think.”
I didn’t like the way that sounded. Bunni was known to sabotage shit when she got too salty, and I didn’t put it past her to fuck up our grand entrance just because she was mad at me. I needed Bunni to be down in order to pull this off, and Bunni knew it, so I bit my tongue and followed my girl downstairs.
New York City had been hot and sticky, but the Texas heat was dry as dust. Me and Bunni walked down the grand staircase and went out back. A lot of people had already shown up and they were already sitting at tables with big umbrellas and being served colorful drinks by a staff of waiters and waitresses in fancy uniforms.
We walked down the stone path to the pool area where mad little kids was running around laughing and spraying each other with water guns. The music was blasting and teenagers were getting their swag on. A sweet hickory scent was in the air, and three split-barrel barbeque grills were smoking Texas-style.
“Mink.” Selah stood up to welcome us. She was sitting at a table that was covered by an umbrella so damn big it looked like a flying saucer. “Nice dress. Come on over here so I can introduce you and Bunni to some of my family.”
She led us over to a long table where a bunch of people sat around grubbing.
“Everybody, this is Mink LaRue and her friend Bunni. They’re visiting us from New York. Mink and Bunni, everybody here is family. They’re either part of the Ducane clan from Brooklyn, where I grew up, or they’re Dominions from Houston where my husband Viceroy was raised. Either way, they love to eat and they came to party!”
Uh-huh. I knew it! I laughed inside as I checked out her crew and listened to some of their convo. All that Oreo-ass bougie shit she had put out in them online video clips was a real front. These folks were hood-rich. They had money out the ass, but the street was in their blood. Most of them looked deep-ghetto, and they were getting busy playing spades and bones, and a few thug-lookin’ fools were shooting Cee-Low up against a big chest full of ice and making that “ahht!” sound every time the dice rolled over and hit the ground.
I smiled real cool and shook everybody’s hand as we were introduced. A few of the older women hugged me and complimented me on my diamond doughnut. I recognized some of the closer members of the family, and I was able to match a lot of faces to the names I had already read about on the Internet and memorized.
“This is my oldest son, Barron,” Selah said as we walked up to a dude who looked like a younger version of that buff chocolate nigga Terrell Owens. Dude was even finer in person than he had looked in his pictures. His body was beastly, the kinda cut-up physique you expected to see on a star football player. He got up to shake my hand and we caught a whiff of each other’s flow. I wasn’t surprised when he put his arm around Selah and pulled her close to him like I was some kinda ghetto vampire out to suck his mama’s blood.
“Unh!” Bunni grunted behind me. “Nigga fine!” she whispered with her lips damn-near on my neck. “Get ’em! Get ’em! Shit, y’all ain’t related! Y’all was both adopted!”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I gave him a soft smile. I had read all about Barron Dominion and I wasn’t tryna throw no suspicious vibes his way. GQ had done a spread on him, and I knew he was the tight-ass lawyer type. I had seen pictures of him on the Internet with his skinny, snow-bunny girlfriend, and I damn sure wasn’t surprised. He was the oldest of the Dominion children, and like Bunni said, he had been adopted just like Sable.
“And your name is again?” Barron barked as he shook my hand real loose like I had cooties on my fingers. I wasn’t even pressed. This nigga probably already knew just as much about me as I did about him.
“My name is Mink,” I repeated. “Mink LaRue.” I turned and smiled at Bunni. “And this is my bes
t friend, Bunni Baines.”
Barron looked at us like he wanted to throw both of our gutta asses on the hot grill and drown us in barbeque sauce. “Yeah. Uh-huh.” He sized me up with his sexy dark eyes. “Good to meet you too.”
Selah grabbed my hand and walked us around the pool and picnic areas so we could meet the rest of the crew. Little kids was running around everywhere. Black ones, white ones, and Asian ones too. It looked like Selah and Viceroy had a whole lotta family and friends, and between the Dominions and the Ducanes, the whole rich-ass posse was getting it in.
Their hood relatives from Houston had turned out by the vanload. There was a crew of thuggish-lookin’ teenagers chillin’ over on the other side of the tables listening to the kinda music that made pole professionals like me and Bunni wanna strip outta our clothes and make it rain all up in the joint.
Selah introduced us to Barron’s fiancée, Carla, who was real pretty and real friendly. She said hi and gave me a simple little white girl smile, and something about that smile made me like her right away. I figured most of the clear folks running around were probably her family members, and I spotted an older white woman who I could tell was her mother.
Then Selah took us over to meet her two real kids. Her son, Grayson, who everybody called Jock, and her daughter, Fallon. They were the two youngest Dominions, and even though one was seventeen and the other was eighteen, both of them were about to be seniors in high school.
I checked out the son, with his Viceroy-lookin’ self. I’d smoked enough weed to know a dro-head when I saw one, and Jock looked high as hell. He was tall and cute and pressed out in his gear just like the young’uns who slung rock on the corners in Harlem. He was adorned in hood shine and sagging, and his fitted was turned around backward over a red doo-rag. Jock didn’t really pay me no attention, but he zeroed in on Bunni’s camel toe right off the bat, and them smoked-out eyes of his stayed on her twat the whole time we was being introduced.