Dirty Rotten Liar

by Noire

  Suge was waiting for him near the gates of the compound, and when Barron pulled up in his brother Dane’s Hummer, Suge punched in the code and then nodded and waved him through.

  Barron parked on the paved lot right beside Suge’s massive truck, and then he got out and followed his uncle inside. This was only the third time Barron had been invited out to the ranch, and he was still in awe of the place. It was a gangster’s den. A place where dangerous men met to make crucial, cutthroat decisions. Barron stood in the middle of the large room and took it all in. The one-story ranch house was huge, and the fact that all ten thousand feet of it was spread out on one level made it seem even bigger.

  There were several underground bunkers on the property, and Barron remembered Viceroy telling him that if the shit ever hit the fan and the country came under attack he needed to get with Suge and bring the entire family out here so they could hide out in the bunkers. According to his father, there was a ventilated air supply and enough guns, bullets, food, and water stored underground to last the entire Dominion clan at least three months.

  “Goddamn, Bump!” Suge said as soon as he got a good look at his nephew. Barron had a nice round bald patch shaved in his head about the size of a quarter. “Who in the hell busted you upside your head?”

  Barron shrugged as he thought about Pilar bitch-cracking him with that wine bottle. “It ain’t nothing. I fell and nicked my head on some metal bleachers at the gym. I had to get ten stitches and a tetanus shot.”

  Suge smirked and raised his eyebrow but he didn’t press him.

  “Well come on in and relax yourself, B,” he told him as he walked over to a large, well-stocked bar up against the wall and poured them both a stiff drink.

  Barron sat down in a plush leather armchair and tried to get comfortable as he wondered for the fiftieth time what the hell Suge had brought him out here for.

  Suge looked deadlier than a muthafucka as he handed Barron a double shot of Rémy, and then he sat down across from him and tossed his whole shit back in one swallow.

  “We got us a situation.”

  There was no beating around the bush. Suge opened up on him and started laying shit down, and in that instant Barron knew exactly why his father had hired his baby brother as the leader of the Dominion war council all them years ago. ’Cause if your nuts ever got trapped in a metal vice or you woke up one day with your dick stuck in a real tight keyhole, Suge was the kind of take-care-of-bizz nigga you could call to get it out.

  Barron sat there with his stomach caving in, and even before the first words dropped out of his uncle’s mouth he knew exactly what the man was gonna say.

  “I got a call from Dy-Nasty today. There’s some bad pictures of you out there on the Internet. They ain’t suitable for viewing and we gotta get rid of ’em. But it’s gonna cost us a million dollars.”

  Barron bucked. “A million fuckin’ dollars? Are you serious?”

  “That’s the askin’ price,” Suge said calmly, and then he grilled Barron hard, checking him with the ice in his eyes. “But you already knew about them pictures, didn’t you?”

  Barron sighed, then nodded and fessed up.

  “This cat named Dopeman got me. He put a roofie or something in my drink and it fucked me up, man. That’s how they got them pictures, Suge.”

  Suge got swole. “Listen here, Bump. When a Dominion man runs up on trouble we don’t hide from that shit, you hear me? We come out here, right here to this very room, and we figure out how to kill that shit.”

  Barron hung his head low. The humiliation of getting caught on camera looking like a drag queen was bad enough, but to have that criminal-minded Dy-Nasty find out about those pictures and try to blackmail him was way fuckin’ worse.

  “That grimy skank,” he muttered under his breath. “We gotta get rid of that bitch!”

  Barron wanted to bend over and kick himself square up the ass. He’d thought Mink was a nasty scuzzball, but Dy-Nasty was a scuzzball soaked in toilet water! He never should have brought her to Texas with him in the first damn place. He should have left her right up in that cruddy strip joint where he had found her ass, but noooo. He was so busy trying to bust Mink out that he had traded ghetto for gutter and ended up getting shit on instead.

  “Dy-Nasty didn’t find those pictures by herself. Who told her? Who put her dumb ass up to this shit? I bet you any amount of money it was Mink!”

  Suge shook his head and frowned. “I don’t think so. There’s too much bad blood between them two. If I had to bet I’d say Mink would hop on your team over Dy-Nasty’s seven days a week.”

  Barron frowned. Mink was the last damn person he would’ve expected to look out for him. Matter fact, he wouldn’t count on Mink to piss on him if his ass was on fire.

  He shook his head. “We can’t pay that bitch no million dollars, Uncle Suge,” he blurted. “Hell nah, we can’t do that.”

  Barron had access to a nice hunk of money, but a payment that size would trigger an automatic audit on Dominion Oil’s accounts, and with his father out of his coma and almost back up on his feet, there’s no way in hell he could hide some shit like that.

  “Uh-uh, man,” he repeated. “We can’t do that.”

  “Hell naw,” Suge said, and shook his head just once. “We ain’t payin’ her ass shit. Look, this thing is bad,” Suge told him quietly, “but it ain’t as bad as it can get. I know where those pictures are. I had my boy sniff ’em out and he’s an expert in this kinda shit. He traced the IP address where the files are being hosted, and we about to fry that shit like a pan of bacon. In about thirty minutes my dude is gonna send a fuckin’ virus into that mainframe that’ll make them pictures disappear forever, B, but there’s still something else we gonna hafta handle, you know. We gots to handle Dy-Nasty.”

  Suge’s killer eyes bored deeply into his nephew’s, and as he ran down his gully plan, Barron saw something in his uncle’s gaze that confirmed what he had always known.

  I love you, Lil Bump, but I will straight fuck you up.

  No matter what kinda bullshit went down between them, his uncle Suge was one hundred percent down for the team. Suge loved him, and he would lay his ass all the way in the gutter for him, if that’s what Barron needed him to do.

  CHAPTER 20

  Even with all the scandalous shit going on at the mansion I still couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the drama that had popped off after Mama’s funeral. My stomach was on strike so I didn’t have no appetite at all, and I walked around the crib feeling real fucked up in my heart. It finally got so bad that I just couldn’t take it no more, so one afternoon I left Bunni up in the loft getting smutted out by Dane, and I went to my room and did what I had to do.

  I dialed my grandmother’s number justa hoping she had paid her phone bill and her shit wasn’t cut off like it usually was.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey Granny, it’s Mink. How you doin’?”

  “Mink?” she hollered. It was loud as hell up in that camp, and the sounds of a drunk party almost drowned her out.

  “Baby, what in the hell happened to you? Why you run off like that and leave us standing there like that at your mama’s funeral? You know we didn’t have no ride home! And where you at anyway? Some bad folks been coming ’round here lookin’ for you. You got any money on you? Can you run up the street and put some numbers in for your old granny, baby?”

  “I can’t!” I hollered into the phone. “I’m outta town right now, Granny, but I’ma be back soon. Is Aunt Bibby there?”

  “Who?” she shouted.

  “Aunt Bibby!”

  “Oh. Yeah, she’s here.”

  I rolled my eyes. Then why the hell you ain’t ask her to run up the block and put your damn numbers in?

  “Can I speak to her, please?”

  “Yeah, but don’t stay on my phone too long, ya hear? I got some business going on and I’m waitin’ on a real important call.”

  I twisted my lips up at that bullshit. Busines
s, hell. Granny was a LaRue. A lying-ass LaRue.

  It took Aunt Bibby forever to come to the phone, and listening to all them loud niggas partying in that cramped little apartment was giving me a headache. I was just about to say fuck it and hang up when somebody picked up the phone and said, “Yeah?”

  “Aunt Bibby? It’s Mink.”

  “Yeah?”

  I could tell by that one word that she was good and juiced up.

  “Umm, hey Aunt Bibby, can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you remember that lady who ran up on Mama’s hearse talking shit after her funeral?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who was that?”

  “What? I can’t hear a damn thing you sayin’!” my aunt slurred. “Lemme take this shit out in the hall.”

  I listened as she walked through the noisy apartment, and then I heard the front door slam as she stepped outside and into the hallway where it was a lot more quiet.

  “Awright now! Why the hell is you fuckin’ wit’ me, Mink?” she slurred.

  “I just wanna know who that lady was. You know. The one who ran up on us outside after Mama’s funeral. The one who called Mama a bitch and said she was glad Mama was finally dead.”

  Aunt Bibby started laughing like crazy.

  “Naw, naw, naw! Oh, hell naw! I know you ain’t askin’ me shit! I’m a damn liar, remember?” She mimicked me: “You’s a goddamn liar, Aunt Bibby! You’s a old bald-headed lying bitch!”

  I smirked as she laughed in my ear.

  “What?” she snapped all shitty-like. “You done finally got you some balls from somewhere? Now all of a sudden you ready to hear what’s really real? Well fuck you, Mink! Somebody go outta they way to tryta help your ass and all you do is shit on ’em! Fuck you!”

  I sighed and forced myself to chill.

  “I ain’t call to argue with you, Aunt Bibby. I just wanna know the truth about my mama. That’s all.”

  “I told you the goddamn truth,” she exploded. “I told you, I told you, I told your stupid ass! Jude wasn’t shit! She wasn’t shit, you hear me? The way she did my goddamn brother? The way she fucked around and killed my Moe like that?”

  “But who was that lady, Aunt Bibby? Why she run up there spittin’ and carrying on and talking all that shit about Mama?”

  “That lady was your aunt, Mink! Your aunt!”

  I frowned.

  “What? How the hell she gonna be my aunt? Mama was the only child, dummy! She didn’t have no sisters.”

  “Ha!” Aunt Bibby shouted, and then that drunk heffa kicked me dead in my throat when she hollered, “Jude Jackson mighta been an only child! But your real mama sure as hell wasn’t!”

  My ass was draggin’ way down on the ground.

  I was floored. Just fuckin’ devastated. Aunt Bibby had put something on me that blew my little gaming head straight up. I felt like a brand-new sherm. Open as shit. Like a tender little mark who had been getting ganked by the throat my whole fuckin’ life.

  My head was banging and my heart was in so much pain that all I could do was ball up in a knot on my bed as Bunni pressed a freakin’ ice pack to the back of my neck.

  “Girl what the hell happened?” Bunni demanded as she wiped another snot bubble from my nose and started patting my back like she was tryna burp me. She had just got back from breaking Dane’s back and found me in my room crying.

  “I called home,” I mumbled miserably. “I talked to my aunt.”

  Bunni sucked her teeth. “Did Bibby say sumthin’ slick to you? Did she say sumthin’ slick? I swear to God, Mink! If that tubby-gut hoe said sumthin’ slick outta her mouth to you I’ma bust her one when we get back to Harlem!”

  “She said I was adopted,” I muttered as my eyes leaked a whole damn river of tears.

  “Get the fugg outta here!” Bunni hollered. “First she told you that you got a twin, and now she’s tryna say you was adopted too? That bitch sure knows a lot for a dummy!”

  I coughed real hard and Bunni went from burping me like I was a baby to pounding the shit outta my back. “Hold up.” She stopped pounding for a quick second and frowned. “Was that jailbird drankin’ when she told you that shit? I bet that trick was pissy drunk!”

  I sniffled. “Yeah, she was lit. She told me Mama adopted me right here in Texas and then brought me up to New York to live. Aunt Bibby swore all out that the lady who ran up on us at Mama’s funeral was my aunt. My real mama’s sister.”

  “Your real mama? No shit?”

  I nodded miserably. “And if my mama ain’t my mama, then that means my daddy wasn’t my daddy neither.”

  Bunni’s hand froze on my back again. “What kind of trifling shit is that? So where the hell do this real mama be, and what happened to your twin?”

  I shrugged. Everything I had thought about Dy-Nasty was turning out to be true, and everything I thought I knew about myself seemed like one big dirty rotten lie!

  “Aunt Bibby said my real mama died, and she thinks the other baby got adopted right here in Texas too. But that baby stayed here.”

  “Ooooh.” Bunni had always been quick on the cap and it only took her a second to come to the same conclusion that was vexin’ me. “So if the other baby stayed down here in Texas with the Dominions, then that means she’s the one who got taken to New York and snatched up outta her stroller and kidnapped, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “Well damn! If Jude raised you, then who the hell raised your sister?”

  “It musta been that chick she be calling Pat,” I said, sniveling my ass off as I finally admitted what was crystal-clear and obvious. “That slick lady from Philly who told Dy-Nasty who she really was so she could come down here and go after her money in the first place.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “I heard Pops is going bat-shit crazy sitting up in that hospital room all day long,” Dane told us as we passed some piff around Bunni’s room. “His doctors got tired of all his bitching so they gave Mama permission to get him outta there for a little while.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, busting him a look. I was about to twist my lil lips right up because I damn sure didn’t want Viceroy coming back to the mansion and fuckin’ up my flow no time soon!

  “Ain’t he still too sick to be tryna come home already?”

  Dane shook his head. “Nah, his doctors ain’t letting him come home yet, but they do want Pops to have a little fun. He’s itchin’ to show all his business partners and associates that he’s back up on his toes, so Mama’s gonna throw him a big welcome back party at the lakeside mansion we have in Austin.”

  Dane sure had his info right because Selah confirmed it at dinner later on that night.

  “We’re having a barbeque tomorrow,” she said. “We’re all going to fly down to the house at Horseshoe Bay in the morning, and then I’m sending the jet to Houston to pick up your father and his nursing staff,” she told us.

  “Make sure you bring your swimsuits because the water is still warm and the lake is a lot of fun this time of year.”

  “Now remember, Mink,” Bunni warned me the next morning as we picked out some fly gear to take with us to Austin. “Don’t you be waving no white flag and surrendering on me ’cause this game ain’t over yet! Matter fact, its just about to get poppin’, yo! Fugg Dy-Nasty! That low-budget stripper can be Sable all she wanna be! That don’t mean we gonna clock out on the job and sleep on what we brought our asses down here to do!”

  “But the DNA results—”

  “Forget them damn DNA results! All you hafta do is convince Big Daddy Domino that you’s the kinda daughter he wanna show off to all them rich white folks he be hanging around, and Dy-Nasty ain’t! You just act like one a them real sweet cream puffs when we get out there, ya heard? Ere’thang you do betta convince that loaded mofo that he can get with this,” she said, pointing at me, “or he can get with that!” She twisted her lips up and pointed toward Dy-Nasty’s room.

  I sighed. “I don’t know, Bu
nni . . .”

  “Dammit, Mink, buck the hell up! Now, Peaches done trained you up right and you know exactly what you gotta do. You gots to get down there in Austin and work, mamacita! Lie your ass off, Mink! Be the type of Goody Two-shoes Oreo that rich old-head gangsta wants you to be! Do what you gotta do so we can get paid up in this bitch, ya hear me? ’Cause trust and believe, if you don’t, then as soon as them DNA results come back these fools is gonna kick us straight up outta here! And when they put you out I’ma need you to remember something, Mink, a’ight?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your homeless ass ain’t got no place else to go!”

  I knew one damn thing for sure. Whether we was rich or we was poor, black folks knew how to throw a beast-ass barbecue!

  The mansion at Horseshoe Bay in Austin was smaller than the one in Dallas was, but that bad-boy was still all the way live. There was food out the ass and bubbly champagne, cold brewskis, and top-shelf liquor was flowing like tap water!

  Selah had flown a bunch of her staff down real early in the morning to set stuff up, and by the time the rest of us flew in right before lunch the waiters and waitresses had a huge spread laid out. The party was a mixed bag. Vans of Viceroy’s gutterli-cious family from Houston sat out on the grass getting zooted and mingling with a whole crew of clear people from Dominion Oil who were waiting around to welcome their head honcho back from the dead.

  There were sawed-off barrel grills out the ass, and smokers full of chicken, pork, turkey, and brisket that was just’a falling off the bone. They had even set up a seafood-only grill where salmon topped with goo-gobs of butter and garlic was cooking on wooden planks, and shish kebab sticks were packed full of veggies and gigantic Texas-sized prawns.

  I was the shit in my shimmering off-white Dior summer skirt that fit just right over my hips before tapering down and flaring out again above my knees. It was comfortable and sexy, and the stylish fabric moved with me as I swayed through the crowd. I had on a pair of silver Christian Louboutin’s that had a funky wedge heel, and a plain white tank top that showed off my toned shoulders and arms and had my juicy titties looking nice and phat.