by Bianca
“I know; you told me. Look, Tai, you are about to be thirty, and it’s time for you to settle down and have kids. He’s not the only rich nigga, girl. I’ll have Mayhem hook you up with one of his rich clients. I mean…” she said and trailed off.
I shuddered at the word client.
“You mean, what?”
“Frank’s rich.”
“Is he?” I asked in a mocking tone, making her laugh. “Listen, forget Frank, forever.”
“I don’t hold grudges…” Mayhem mocked me.
“I don’t hold grudges. I don’t have to like you just because I don’t hold grudges. Girl, my crazy and Frank’s crazy won’t work together. We’d end up killing each other,” I said and laughed.
Olena watched me while I applied my new liquid lips from The Crayon Case by Supa Cent. I blinked a few times and smiled at how dope I did my makeup.
“Aye, Mayhem, tell Malice to tell Kam I’m coming for her,” I said and laughed.
“Ahhh!” Olena screamed, scaring Pier and making him cry. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said and bounced him.
“Olena, what the fuck!” Mayhem scolded her.
“I just got a bright idea. Taiwan, you can come back and work at KaePaints with Kam. I’m sure she could use a hand. I mean… Kam stay backed up at Rich Cutz. She be busy from sunup to sundown. It won’t be the money you are getting paid from the old guy, but I’m sure you could get on and start doing celebrities makeup like she does. You know the other day, she had the Block Girls in the shop, and the week before that, she had them Instagram girls Brittany, Jakel, and Miaaah in there.”
I hadn’t even thought about that, and I liked Kam. She was such a sweet girl and still had a heart of gold after everything that she had been through.
“I kind of like that idea,” I told her.
Right when Olena opened her mouth, Romero appeared in the mirror, and Olena saw him and rolled her eyes.
“Well, your master is back, so I’ll let you go. I’ll see you at Club Woo next week. I can’t wait to see you,” she said and hung up the phone.
I tried not to smile, but that was funny to me. Olena hated Romero, and she didn’t try to hide it.
After she hung up, I sprayed my setting spray on my face, got up, and walked right by him. I went in my closet, hung my robe up, and started to put on my jumpsuit. I heard Romero whisper under his breath, but I ignored him. I wasn’t going to wear any underwear or bra with this jumpsuit. My titties weren’t big, so I really didn’t even need a bra at all. Looking at Olena’s titties, I needed to have some damn kids because the twins had literally given her a set of twins that I sometimes wished I had.
“You look nice,” Romero said as I stared in the mirror at myself.
I rolled my eyes at him and walked back to my vanity. I sat down and pulled my bonnet off my head and grabbed my favorite long curly wig from Buttah Baby Hair. I pulled it on and made sure it was secure before I started brushing the bouncy ass curls.
“Did you hear what I said?” Romero asked me.
“After I slip on my shoes and grab my clutch, I’ll be ready,” I told him, ignoring him.
I slipped on my shoes, grabbed my clutch, and stood at the door, waiting for him.
“You’re mad about something,” Romero said once we were in the back of his car.
Turning toward him, I said, “Romero, why didn’t you tell me that you had sons?” I asked.
He looked at me with a shocked look on his face.
“I’m sorry?” he said and cocked his head to the side.
“I said, why didn’t you fucking tell me that you had kids?” I spoke a little louder.
The moment I got loud, the window started slowly letting up, separating us from the driver and the head of his security detail. A lump started to grow in my throat when I saw him messing with the knot in his tie with his right hand and rubbing his left hand on his knee. I wasn’t sure if he was about to hit me, but I was looking around to see if there was something that I could use to protect myself from him. If he tried me, we would be like Ike and Tina up in this bitch.
“In your contract, it said that you are not to ask questions about my family,” he spoke lowly.
I chuckled a little before replying. “Romero, we ain’t had no goddamn contract in years. Don’t fucking play with me. The only reason I’m asking questions is because your wife decided to let me know that you would never marry me, and you can’t have any kids after your sons. So—”
“You were talking to Essie? You’re getting really bold, Taiwan, and I don’t like it,” he hissed.
“Romero, Essie was talking to me. I was minding my own goddamn business, and she jumped out from behind the trees like she was going to attack me,” I said.
“Let me handle her.”
“And you answer my question!”
“I don’t have to answer to you, Taiwan. Remember that.”
I nodded my head and started laughing.
“I’m glad you said that, Romero,” I said.
The moment I got on that plane by myself, he’d better keep that same damn energy. I had already planned my leave. When I got back to my house, I was going to book me a plane trip to the States, and I was going to have an Uber pick me up from outside his damn gates because there was no way his guards would let an Uber driver come on their grounds.
“Taiwan, what does that mean?”
I didn’t reply to him. I just kept looking straight ahead until we stopped at the Balmain store. Not waiting for the driver to get out and open the door for me, I opened the door and jumped out. I stalked in the store with an attitude because I was just ready to find me a dress and go back to my house and have Romero leave me the fuck alone. Since he pissed me off, I was going to stay in Chicago for two weeks instead of the one week that I had planned to.
“Ma’am, are you looking for something specific?” a lady came over to me and asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes! My thirtieth birthday is coming up, and I need to be the baddest woman in the party. All I know for sure is that I want silver with a lot of sparkles. Back out. Boobs out. Ass out. Naked and fly,” I told her, making her smile.
“Actually, I have the perfect dress for you. Come.” She ushered me to the back of the store.
I turned around and saw Romero was in the front of the store on the phone, with his hand covering his mouth. I was sure that he was probably cursing Essie out and didn’t want anyone reading his lips. I didn’t care about him cursing her out because I was still pissed that he talked to me that way in the car.
Once we were in the back of the store, she took my measurements and led me into a dressing room. She handed me two dresses to start with, and they were so pretty. The price tags on both of them were over fifty thousand dollars, and my heart started beating so fast because I couldn’t wait until the day I could afford a fifty-thousand-dollar dress. I tried on the first dress, and I didn’t quite like it. It was cute, but it didn’t show enough cleavage, but if I didn’t like any of the other dresses, I would definitely choose this one.
The second one was damn near perfect. It was a strapless dress with my cleavage out and a very deep V in the back that stopped right at the top of my petite ass, and the dress stopped right in the middle of my thighs.
“Oh my God! This dress is perfect,” I whispered, and I did a small circle.
Just as I was getting ready to take the dress off, the door came open, and a short white lady that I had never seen in my life, tried to get in the room. She was wearing a god-awful auburn wig and tattered clothing. She definitely didn’t belong in the Balmain store.
“I’ll be out in a moment,” I told her.
“Shhh,” she said and pushed her way in my room.
Before I could start screaming, she pushed me against the wall and put her dirty ass hand over my mouth. She placed a finger over her lips, and she slowly removed her hand from my mouth and got on the seat where her feet wouldn’t show under the bottom. She took the backpack off her ba
ck and placed it in her lap. She pulled a tablet out and started typing on it.
“Wh—”
She placed her finger on her lips, and I zipped my lips. She held up the iPad, and I started reading the words on it.
My name is Alicia Taylor.
I nodded my head, and she scrolled down. She had a PowerPoint ready for me. It was almost like she had been stalking me and waiting for me.
I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Santiago Cartel has been under surveillance for almost five years.
“Cartel,” I mouthed, and she nodded her head and then switched the slide.
I know who you are Taiwan Dalton. From Chicago. You’re his mistress, but to everyone else, you’re his assistant.
“Miss,” the sales lady called out, making me jump. “Is everything okay?”
“Y-yes. I kind of like this dress. Can I try the other two?” I asked her.
“Sure,” she replied.
Romero is a bad and dangerous man, Taiwan. You’re in danger being with him.
Holding my hand against my chest, I started to hyperventilate.
“Calm down,” she mouthed.
The motions she did with her hands were telling me to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. After a few moments of deep breathing, the lady came and handed me the dresses over the door, and I took them from her.
“I don’t know anything,” I mouthed, which was the God honest truth. Romero never talked about his business with me. As far as I knew, he got his money from a trust fund when he turned twenty-one years old. He never told me anything.
If you help me, I’ll get your brother’s jail sentence shortened, Tristan Dalton.
The tears started to pool in my eyes because I loved my big brother to death, and the system took him away from me on his eighteenth birthday. I was fifteen years old, and I just wanted to go to his birthday party at the hotel. Because he loved me to death, he told me that I could come and stay for forty-five minutes. After the forty-five minutes was up, he told me that the cab was waiting for me downstairs. He walked me downstairs, but he stayed in the lobby, and just when I was getting ready to get in the back of the cab, this old ass white man grabbed me. He was dragging me to his car, but Tristan ran outside and started beating his ass. Tristan whooped his ass so bad, and even when his body went still, Tristan kept kicking him in his head, and even when I tried to stop him, he pushed me down. He was so angry.
It took the cab driver and another person that saw what happened to get Tristan off the dude, and even with the testimony of both the cab driver and the bystander, they gave him the maximum they could of thirty years in prison. He’d already been in there for fifteen years. He didn’t even let me come see him because he said that he didn’t want me to see him like that. Caged like an animal. The last time I saw him was on my eighteenth birthday, when he told me not to come see him anymore. He’d write and call when he could.
Think about it. I’ll be seeing you soon is what the last slide said before she placed everything back in her backpack. I looked in the mirror and dried my eyes because I didn’t want Romero to notice. I was shook because this was my first time hearing of the Santiago Cartel. In the contract, I was not supposed to ask him anything regarding his life, and so far, I’d stuck to it, and even when I did sneak a question or two in there, he never answered.
She turned her head so I could take the dress off and put my jumpsuit back on. I didn’t even try on the other two dresses, but I grabbed them and went out to the front of the store.
“Ah, did you find everything okay in there?”
I squinted my eyes, and it was like she knew what was going on, so I nodded really quickly.
“Great. Which one did you choose?” she asked and walked behind the counter.
“Th-th-this one,” I stuttered and placed the one I wanted on the counter.
I grabbed my hand with my other hand to try and stop it from shaking, but it was so hard. Romero belonged to a cartel. I’d watched enough movies to know what they did in cartels and how they tortured people.
“Calm down,” the lady at the counter wrote on a piece of paper.
I looked toward the door and saw that Romero was now standing outside the store on his phone with his driver and security standing next to him. He saw me looking at him, and he walked in the store just as he was hanging up his phone.
“Did you find everything you wanted?” he asked me and placed a kiss on my temple.
I nodded my head quickly, and he pulled his wallet out his jacket.
“Would you like some jewelry?”
I shook my head no because I wanted to get as far away from this damn store as possible.
Romero paid for the dress, and I watched her while she placed the dress on the hanger.
“You are going to look so beautiful, Taiwan,” he whispered in my ear.
“Thank you,” I replied.
Once we were back in the car, I couldn’t even look at him the same anymore. The only thing was on my mind was the fact that this lady rolled up on me and asked me if I could help her take him down. When he grabbed my hand, I jumped a little.
“You okay?” he asked me.
“Yeah, I am.”
I needed to get it together before this man became suspicious and killed me. I couldn’t stop getting myself in bad situations.
Frank
A few days later.
I was chilling in Mayhem’s mancave when he brought up what he was doing this weekend. He told me that Taiwan was coming to celebrate her birthday at Club Woo, and she invited me and Alex to attend her party, but I didn’t want to. I felt like it would be disrespectful to take Alex to the party of a woman that I had fucked. Alex wouldn’t want to go anyway because she was such a homebody. It was hard to get her out the house to do anything. Everything between us was pretty cool, but it still bothered me a little that she had gone in my safe but didn’t get any money. Who the fuck went in a safe and not took anything? For the life of me, that story wasn’t adding up, but I didn’t have shit to go on but my gut feeling.
“Bro, you straight?” Mayhem asked me as he passed me the blunt.
“Yeah, I’m good. How long Taiwan gon’ be in town?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrow, but I waved him off because I knew that he was thinking some crazy shit, but I was over that. Well, at least until that notification popped up on my phone telling me that TaiDFashions had posted a picture on Instagram. Just because I’d never fuck her again didn’t mean that I didn’t like to look at her. I opened the picture, and the brown ass girl already had a hundred thousand likes on her picture. I guess I wasn’t the only one with my notifications on for her. She was standing by the pool with a black one-piece swimsuit on with some type of reflective shades on. The swimsuit was definitely too damn small for her fat ass pussy because the seat was getting ready to get swallowed up by her pussy lips. I wasn’t sure what she was advertising this time: the shades, the swimsuit, or her pussy. Her legs were so toned up like all did was run. Noticing the arrow on the picture, I realized that she had posted more pictures. This picture was of her sitting down with her legs wide the fuck open. Her pussy was so damn fat. On this picture, she had her dogs, Angel and Flash, sitting next to her. Them panther looking mothafuckas looked like they ate flesh for food.
“Frank, nigga!” Mayhem yelled my name, making me look up at him in a panic.
“What, nigga?”
“What got you hypnotized like that?” he asked me.
“Nothing, fam,” I replied.
Moments later, Olena’s voice came over the intercom. “Daddy?”
He got up and walked over to the intercom and pushed the button to answer her. “Yeah, mama.”
“Can you look at Taiwan’s Instagram right quick, and tell me if you would let me post a picture like that on my birthday?”
He pulled his phone out his pocket and clicked on the screen a few times. He looked at me and smiled and then pushed the button on the intercom
.
“Hell mothafuckin’ naw. You know better than to ask me anything like that,” he told her.
“You’re no fun. Bye.”
Laughing while shaking his head, he said, “I get it.”
I waved him off and got up to fix me another drink. I opened the refrigerator, and a picture frame fell, and the glass shattered. I squatted and started picking up the larger pieces of glass to throw them away. I picked up the picture, and it was a picture of both Mayhem and I when we were seventeen years old. We both had on matching Adidas tracksuits, black with white strips. Mayhem had on a pair of black Adidas, and I had on my boots. It was the day that both of our lives changed forever. I would never forget it.
“Aye, bro! Pause for the picture,” he told me. “Malice, come take this picture, lil’ bro,” he told him and handed him the throwaway camera.
Mayhem and I had been homies for the last few years, and I still hadn’t told him about me being born Chaz Bourne. His family had low key taken me in like I was one of their own and never questioned anything that I told them. His dad was cool as fuck, and his mom was even cooler. She didn’t care that we both had dropped out of school to start working for his dad. We actually dropped out of school last year when we were sixteen. We skipped school one morning and went into dad’s office and told him that we were ready to start working for him. Korupt stared at us for a moment before he told us that he didn’t think we were ready yet and had us doing crazy ass shit to prove that we were ready for the street life.
Being with Mayhem and his family literally took my mind off my home life. Ricky was the worst guardian ever, and I still hadn’t told Mayhem and his family where the random scars on my body came from or why I was so skinny. I ain’t want them to look at me different or have sympathy for me. I liked things just the way they were. Ricky had a strange way of being a guardian. When I first told him that I was dropping out of school, he asked me was I selling drugs, and I told him that I wasn’t. I mean, I wasn’t at the time. This nigga threw me in a cold ass room, playing loud ass music… the same music over and over again with flashing lights. It was the worst. He left me down there for a whole week with no food and only a glass of water every twenty-four hours. I was delirious when I came out of that hole, and I told him that I was planning on selling drugs, and that was when he beat me like I was a random nigga off the streets. Of course, I was fighting back, but he was much stronger and faster than me. That wouldn’t be the last time he locked me up in that hole to get some type of truth out of me. The more I started to withstand the hole, the longer he would leave me down there.