Girls From Da Hood 10

by Treasure Hernandez

  Sitting up on her knees, she unstrapped her bikini top. Her breasts fell out of the top, arousing Royce and keeping his dick brick hard. She then stood up and unstrapped the bikini bottom, but the moment she tossed it to the side, her cell phone rang. She tried to ignore it, but knowing it was Kemo, she couldn’t.

  Royce was stuck in a trance, looking up at the light, faded landing strip of hair running to her clitoris.

  She straddled him as she reached over and grabbed her bag. The phone was screaming when she pulled it out, as she took a second to get herself together before answering it.

  Royce could feel the tip of his dick rubbing up against her entry point. His heart was pounding. He wanted to sample the good stuff, but when he went to grab her waist to push her down onto his dick, she jumped up and began putting her bikini back on, the whole time still talking to whoever it was on the other end of the phone.

  “I gotta go. I’ll call you later,” she said as she headed out the door.

  Royce didn’t even have a chance to ask her about was going on. He just sat there in the bed, looking at the clear fluid from Danielle’s pussy on the tip of his dick.

  Sanaa sat in her suite stuffing the last stack of money into the money machine. The numbers were looking good from the night before, despite Kemo shutting down the blackjack table. She made fifty grand off the hotel rooms alone, and then pulled in twenty-five grand from the bottles of champagne she sold, plus ten grand from the regular bar she set up in the ballroom. The only people who were able to get into the pool area and the ballroom were those who had room keys. Everybody else had to pay a backdoor access fee of fifty dollars, except for women, who got in free. Backdoor access pulled in fifteen grand easy. The casino, like always, was the money train. It pulled in two hundred and seventy grand before 4:00 a.m. Three hundred and seventy grand was the take, and tonight they expected to do better numbers, due to the local rap artist who would be making a guest appearance.

  An unexpected knock at the door quickly caught her attention. She reached for the large chrome .50-caliber Desert Eagle on the table and proceeded to the door. Only three people knew she was in this room, and if it wasn’t any of them, it was going to be a problem. She waited for the second knock, which was a secret one they all knew. The series of taps confirmed that it was safe to open the door. When she did, Sleepy was standing there with a smile on his face.

  “Where’s Royce?” he asked, entering the room.

  Danielle walked through the door of the hotel room, and the first thing she saw was several stacks of money sitting on the bed. It was more than what she’d expected him to come up with. Kemo walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around him. He had just gotten out of the shower.

  “Where was you at?” he asked with an attitude, having been back in the room since five o’clock.

  “I was out getting an outfit for today,” she lied, unaware that Kemo had been there waiting for her. “I see you did good last night,” she said walking over and grabbing a stack of twenties off the bed.

  “Yeah, I hit ’em for about three hundred racks,” he bragged, popping the top on the bottle of Ace he had sitting in a bucket of ice.

  He started to snap on Danielle for being out so late, but he took into consideration that she was a party freak. He didn’t really need her for anything anyway. As he made his way over to the bed, he caught a glimpse of the two bruises peeking out from under her bikini. The concealer she had applied earlier to the bruises was wearing off. Earlier the bruises appeared yellow and pink due to the concealer, but now the dark blood on some of the bruises were rising to the surface again. Her swimming had caused the blood to flow faster, and also caused the bruised blood to rise.

  “What happened to you?” he asked, nodding at the bruises.

  Her heart dropped to her stomach. She had forgotten about them when she changed into the two-piece bikini in Royce’s room. It was too late for her to try to cover them up, so she did what she did best: lie.

  “I got into a little altercation in the ballroom,” she said, reaching for the bottle in Kemo’s hand.

  He looked at the bruises a little closer, and when he walked over to Danielle, she got nervous and dropped the bottle of champagne onto the bed. She quickly picked it back up, mainly to knock Kemo upside the head with it if she needed to. He walked up and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

  “Nervous?” he asked, reaching for the bottle.

  “What da fuck!” Danielle slightly yelled, looking down at the bed.

  Kemo was about to flip on her until he too looked down at the money on the bed. The ink was starting to smudge some of the bills the champagne had fallen on. Danielle reached down and grabbed some of the money, lifting it up to her face. They both stood there in shock, watching the ink rub off on Danielle’s finger.

  Kemo grabbed another stack of the money and poured some Ace on it. The ink started running off in seconds. He poured the rest of the champagne onto the rest of the money, getting the same results. Silence took over the room and both of them just froze, looking down at the money. There wasn’t a word in this world that could describe the rage boiling inside of Kemo as he looked down at all his hard work fading away.

  The afternoon came fast, and it wasn’t long before the scorching heat had crowds of people flocking to the pool area of the hotel. The DJ had already started blasting the music, so the party was officially on and poppin’. It was a repeat of yesterday, but even better. Girlfriends called their girlfriends, and dudes called their dudes, which meant that the place was packed.

  Joi sat next to the lifeguard station checking her schedule for the day, making sure everything was going to run smoothly. She couldn’t afford any fuckups, with all the money at stake. It was the last day of the hotel party, and possibly the ending of the first million dollars in counterfeit money they had changed over.

  “I need twenty bottles of Moët and forty bottles of Ace on ice like yesterday,” she directed one of her workers. “Is all your staff here?” Joi looked up and asked the lifeguard who was sitting on his deck chair.

  “Yeah, we’re good,” he replied at the same moment he was blowing his whistle at a nigga trying to get in the pool with a bottle of champagne.

  Joi was so engrossed in her preparation she didn’t even notice Ariana entering the pool area. It wasn’t like Ariana blended in with the rest of the women, having on a pair of jean capris, a white T-shirt, and a pair of Air Max sneakers. She had on no disguise, no glasses, no nothing, just Ariana in the flesh.

  At first glance, Ariana couldn’t spot Joi through all the women that were there, but then it happened: Joi poked her head out from behind the lifeguard’s chair. Ariana’s heart pounded at the sight of her. She pulled the 9 mm from her back pocket and covered it with a towel as she made her way around the swimming pool toward Joi. Water splashed everywhere from people diving in the pool, but Ariana kept her eyes on Joi like a lion watching his prey. Twenty yards away, and Joi still didn’t have a clue of what was about to happen.

  Although Joi wasn’t paying attention, the lifeguard next to her happened to glance over and see Ariana walking up from the side of the pool. He could tell by the look she had in her eyes that Ariana was up to something. Once the towel dropped and the gun was exposed, he knew for a fact that it was about to get ugly.

  The sound of his bare feet hitting the ground grabbed Joi’s attention. She turned back around to see what in the hell he was running from, and froze like she had seen a ghost.

  She had trouble registering the fact that she was looking at Ariana coming toward her, and was raising a gun up to aim and shoot.

  The first shot woke Joi up, bringing her out of her daze. The bullet hit one of the legs of the lifeguard’s deck chair, right in front of Joi’s face. The crowd of people barely heard the gun go off over the loud music, but when Ariana began letting off multiple shots from the 9 mm, everyone caught on to what was happening.

  Hearing the bullets hit the leg
s of the chair and knowing she could hide behind it no longer, Joi dove into the water, Prada bag still on her shoulder. She swam underwater straight into the crowd of people who were screaming and trying to get out of the pool. Ariana kept firing, trying her best to hit Joi while she was underwater. Bullets whizzed right past Joi’s body in the water, just inches from hitting her.

  A woman getting out of the pool took one of Ariana’s bullets to the back. Another woman was hit in the chest right next to Joi, when she came up for air. Ariana dropped the empty clip, reached in her pocket, and grabbed another one.

  While she was slapping it into her gun, Joi unzipped her Prada bag under water, reached in, and grabbed the . 45 ACP. She hoped that the gun would still work, as she turned down the safety latch. She brought the gun from under the water, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. The pin hit the back of the bullet and ejected a hot lead ball in Ariana’s direction going a million miles per second. The bullet knocked a chunk out of the vinyl tile right above Ariana’s head. The .45 roared, sending several more bullets Ariana’s way.

  Ariana wildly returned fire as she ran down the side of the deck toward the exit. Another one of her wild bullets hit a woman on the side of her head. Joi tried desperately to hit Ariana, knocking holes in the wall right behind every stride Ariana took toward the door.

  It was pandemonium as people scattered out of the pool. Joi had to move the lifeless body floating in front of her to the side, so she could get out of the water. She climbed up on the deck, far from being done with Ariana. As everybody poured out into the lobby, so did Joi, looking for any signs of Ariana. She had spotted her trying to get on the elevator and wasted no time barking the .45 at her.

  The crowd in the lobby dropped to the floor when they heard the shots.

  Ariana returned fire, taking off for the staircase.

  “Put the gun down,” an armed off-duty police officer yelled, pointing a gun at Joi from across the lobby.

  She spun around and fired several shots at him until her gun cocked to an empty chamber. She took off running through the hotel lobby for the exit door, and if it weren’t for the fact that one of her bullets hit the off-duty cop in the hand, he would have taken off after her.

  While sitting in the room contemplating what to do, Kemo could hear footsteps racing past his door. He grabbed his gun from the bed and cautiously proceeded to the door. He cracked it open, only to see more people running past. Danielle jumped out of the chair to join him at the door.

  “Yo, what’s goin’ on?” Kemo asked one of the females who was running by.

  “They downstairs shooting,” she screamed as she continued to flee to her room down the hall.

  Kemo looked up and down the hall and could see that people were getting their shit and leaving. “Get ya shit,” he told Danielle, pushing her back into the room.

  She scrambled around the room grabbing her things while Kemo bagged up the funny money. He walked over to the window, which had a view of the pool, and he could see a body floating in the water surrounded by blood. It looked like another body was lying on the deck, face down. He knew that it was definitely time to exit stage left, which he and Danielle quickly did.

  Sanaa had walked over and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler when she noticed the loud music in the pool area had stopped. She walked over to the window and peeked out of it. She closed her eyes and reopened them, to make sure she had really seen what she thought she’d seen. The female’s body was still face down in the water and a crowd of people was gathered around the second body on the deck. She couldn’t believe what she was looking at. Listening a little closer, she could hear sirens approaching the hotel.

  “Come look at this,” she told Sleepy, who was putting the last bit of money into the duffle bag.

  “Oh shit,” he said looking down at the pool. “It’s time for us to go,” he said as he grabbed Sanaa by the arm.

  There wasn’t a stutter in her step as she threw her things in a bag and headed out the door in a flash. Sleepy was right with her, toting the large bag of cash. As she walked down the hallway toward the elevator, she made a phone call to the pit boss to shut down the whole casino.

  When Sanaa got onto the elevator, she hit G for the ground floor, but when it got to the seventeenth floor, the elevator stopped. The doors opened, and standing there waiting to get on was Ariana. Sanaa looked up and met her eyes. Sleepy was shocked as hell to see her standing there himself. Sanaa looked at her, then looked down at the gun in Ariana’s hand.

  Flashbacks of Ariana shooting up her car raced through her mind. She reached, but struggled to get the large . 50-caliber out of her bag, and as she wrapped her hand around the grip of it, the elevator doors started to close. Ariana looked like she was about to shoot Sanaa, but a swift, stern look from Sleepy made her change her mind.

  That didn’t stop Sanaa from getting the gun out and firing several shots through the door as it closed shut. The large bullets ripped through the door, almost hitting Ariana, who got out of the way in the nick of time. The elevator filled with gun smoke as it continued to go down. Sanaa tried to stop the elevator at the next floor, but Sleepy stopped her.

  “Yo, we ain’t got time for dat,” he said, putting the bag of money around his shoulders. “We got to get da fuck out of here.”

  The elevator stopped at the lobby, but when the doors opened, they could see police coming through the front doors of the hotel. Sleepy quickly pushed the B button for the basement, stopping some of the screaming guests from trying to get on. Sanaa jumped on the phone without saying a word to Sleepy. She was trying to contact Joi, and then she thought about the two bodies in the pool. Joi not answering the phone only made things worse.

  “I gotta go back up there,” Sanaa said, pushing the G button, then passing Sleepy her gun.

  “What you mean?” he shot back when the doors opened to the basement.

  “Look, it’s my party. It’s either I deal with this now, or let them come to the club and start snooping around,” she said, thinking about the cops. “Plus, I still gotta find Joi and get Royce from out of his room.”

  Sleepy couldn’t argue with her. He didn’t have the time to, because his window of opportunity for getting out of the building safely with the money was fading away.

  “Call my phone as soon as you get a chance,” he said stepping off the elevator.

  Royce got off the elevator on the lobby floor where everything was still crazy. Police were everywhere, and people were still pushing their way out of the side doors. He just stood by the elevator and looked around at all the chaos. The sound of the elevator next to him reaching the floor caught his attention. When he looked over to see who was getting off, it was Sanaa.

  “Damn, sis, what da fuck is going on?” Royce asked.

  Sanaa couldn’t even think straight enough to answer him as she headed for the swimming pool. All she could think about was if it was her girlfriend lying face down in the water. Ariana was the main source behind all this, so it was very possible that Joi could be dead. She couldn’t believe that Ariana was still alive, and neither could Royce, once Sanaa told him.

  “Thank God,” Sanaa mumbled to herself after seeing that neither of the bodies was Joi.

  What she did notice was the Prada bag floating in the water. It looked just like Joi’s, but before Sanaa had the chance to fish it out of the water, the police were forcing her away from the crime scene.

  Royce was still shocked that Ariana was alive, but what was even more shocking was to see Danielle leaving out of the side door with Kemo. He’d remembered Kemo’s face very clearly from the robbery, and more specifically from the two bullets he put in Danielle’s chest. He stood there and watched them leave out the door, but before they exited, she looked back and locked eyes with Royce. The crowd behind her pushed her out of the door before Royce could say anything.

  Chapter 16

  Sanaa, Joi, Royce, and Sleepy all sat in Sanaa’s office trying to get some understanding about wha
t was going on. The one thing they all could agree on was the unexpected guest crashing the party. Joi still couldn’t believe that she was alive, when she had sat and watched Ariana take what she thought was her last breath. Joi couldn’t even look Sleepy in his eyes, thinking that he might have known about the baby. Sleepy, on the other hand, just played it cool, opting not to even get involved in the conversation they were having about Ariana. Sanaa insisted on his word though.

  “So you think you can talk to her, li’l bro, to see if we can bring this to a peaceful resolution?” Sanaa asked Sleepy, knowing that he felt some type of way about the whole situation.

  “If you was her, would you wanna talk?” He looked hard at Joi when he spoke. “Left for dead by you, and then shot at by you today, you two do the math,” Sleepy said, pointing at Sanaa and Joi.

  “I swear, I thought she was tryin’ to kill ya dad,” Joi began. “You know what; I don’t have to explain nothin’ to nobody. I did what I did, and whenever I see Ariana I’ma blow her fuckin’ head off,” Joi snapped back, tired of walking on eggshells around Sleepy.

  “Look, everybody just calm down,” Sanaa yelled, slamming her hand on the table. “Now, Ariana is just gonna have to deal with the consequences of her actions if she so chooses to pursue Joi. And let’s not forget that everybody in this room is family, and we cannot allow for an outsider to come in and break this family apart, I don’t care who it is,” she said to everyone, but directed her last statement to Sleepy.