by Noire
When we pulled up on the block and he parked the ride, I turned to him and swallowed hard. “Peaches,” I said softly, “you gonna see about Mama while I’m gone, ain’t you? You gonna look out for her, right?”
He nodded and turned his hand over and wiped away my tears with his big old ashy knuckle. “You damn right I’ma look out for her, Mink. And I’ll kick all of them muthafuckas’ asses up in there if they don’t treat her right too.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said, feeling some kinda way inside. Here I was about to jet my money-grubbing ass outta town and get my hustle on by pretending to be somebody else’s damn daughter while my own mama was layin’ up in a nursing home all by herself for twenty-four hours a day. “One day I’ma get my mama up outta there,” I swore under my breath. I knew I sounded stupid, like a little kid who still believed in fairy tales, but I couldn’t help it. “Hell yeah. One day I’ma stack enough bank to set my mama up lovely so she can live the rest of her life around people who gon’ treat her right.”
Peaches touched my arm, then leaned over and kissed me on my forehead. “I believe you, Madame Mink. Word up. I believe you.”
CHAPTER 9
It was black as midnight when we left New York, but by the time the plane zipped to about a million other cities and then touched down at DFW International Airport, the sun was rising high in the summer sky. The last time me and Bunni had rolled in to Dallas we’d been slumming so hard we barely had enough ends to scrape together to pay for a taxi, but when we walked out of the terminal this time a big, bronco-busting Texas-sized truck was waiting outside for us and my play-uncle Suge Dominion was posted up and leaning against the bumper.
Superior “Suge” Dominion was a six-foot-five big chocolate banga! This nig had my mouth wide open and my pussy moist as fuck. He was Viceroy’s smooth, criminal-minded younger brother, and his gutter game was all day long and all night strong. Suge was one of them real tall and beefy-built gangsta cowboys. Everything about him was big and thick, and I do mean everything. We had a sizzling hot sex thang going on between us, and hitting the sheets with him was like wrestling with an alligator. I loved that shit!
“Uncle Suge!” I hollered and ran over and jumped right up in his rock-hard arms. He cradled my soft booty in his big hands and I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist and squeezed my thighs, happy to see him again and wishing he could fuck my lights out right where we was standing.
“Wus good, Mink baby,” he said in his deep Houston hood-drawl, nuzzling my neck and tickling my skin with his curly black moustache. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he palmed my ass and held me like I weighed about two pounds. “Umph . . .” he grunted sexily and pushed his nose down into the cleavage between my ta-tas, sucking up my fumes. “You smell real sweet, baby girl. I missed your fine ass.”
He lifted his head and licked my chin, then pressed his mouth to mine and let his hot tongue snake into my mouth. I met him head up, thrusting my tongue into his mouth too, and sucking all over his gorgeous cocoa-pop lips.
“Yuck!” Bunni hollered from behind me. “Get a damn room, why don’tcha! All that face sucking and tongue twirling y’all doing looks nasty as hell!”
Me and Suge both laughed, and when he went to put me down I pressed my titties to his chest and made sure my entire body rubbed against him as I slid down his front. He tossed our suitcases in the back of his silver monster-truck, and then held the door open as me and Bunni both climbed in the plush front seat. His Ford truck was a custom-designed beast, and it smelled like straight-up luxury inside. The first time me and Suge ever kissed had been inside his truck, and the last time we fucked had been right here on this same front seat with me leaking mad puddy juice everywhere!
“So what’s been happening down here in The Big D?” I giggled and asked Uncle Suge as he pushed his silver bull-buster toward the Dominion Estate. I was sitting in between him and Bunni, and he drove with one hand and rubbed all over my thigh with the other one. “Who you been chillin’ with since I left?”
“Viceroy,” he said, and frowned. I knew Uncle Suge was real close to his brother, and I could tell how bad he was hurting because everything about him changed when he said Viceroy’s name. He took his hand off my leg and put it back on the steering wheel. “The doctors are getting kinda worried. All this fuckin’ money we got and them clowns can’t do a damn thing for him.”
“I’m so sorry,” I lied with a straight face. “I thought he was getting better when I left.”
Suge nodded. “He was going up and down for a good minute. But he’s pretty bad off these days. He’s just a shell right now, baby girl. It’s almost like he’s not even there.”
I touched his arm like I had some sympathy. “Yeah, Dane told me. That’s why I came back. I kinda wanted to be here if he . . . you know, just in case something happened to him.”
“Well it’s a good thing you came back, Mink. My brother might not pull through this time and I hate to say this shit, but if Viceroy bites the dust then me and Dane are gonna need you to help us kick the dog shit outta Lil Bump.”
The gates to the Dominion Estate were closed when we pulled onto the property, and when Uncle Suge clicked a button over his rearview mirror, those babies slid open real wide, the way a good stripper does when she spreads her legs on a nice hot pole. We rode down a manicured tree-lined strip, and my eyes feasted on the sight of the ice-cold mega-mansion that sat at the top of a long, circular driveway.
“We’s home!” Bunni hollered, sounding all country-ghetto, and I couldn’t help but grin right along with her. After slummin’ around in the grimy Harlem projects and the pissy stairwells and polluted hallways, it felt real damn good to be rolling up on some highly polished luxury. I peeped the Bentleys and the Rolls-Royce parked in the driveway, and the Mercedes and Dane’s bangin’ Hummer were both up under the awning. Off to my left, I could see the Diva Dominion Business Jet sitting off in the distance under an aluminum-top awning all its own.
Right off the bat I noticed that Barron’s ultra sleek 2012 Maybach Landaulet was missing, and I was glad his tight, stuck-up ass wasn’t around to be a buster on everybody’s mood.
Durant, one of the young security dudes, musta heard the gate open because he came outside in his hot little uniform holding his walkie-talkie and tryna look real important. I giggled like hell when I thought about how he had tried to shoo me and Bunni the hell off the property when we drove up in a yellow cab looking broke and sexy and trying to crash the Dominions’ Fourth of July barbeque. Bunni had been rocking a pair of coochie-cutter shorts that made that nigga drool all over his shiny little silver badge.
“Baby D!” Bunni screeched and hopped outta the truck before Uncle Suge could even put it in park. She ran across the wide driveway and jumped all over the security dude, hugging and kissing him like they went way back.
“A’ight, now.” Uncle Suge chuckled as Bunni’s tits and booty jiggled all over the poor young’un. “Don’t hurt him, Bunni. The boy’s got a job to do, so don’t hurt him now.”
Something was jiggling in me too as I looked up at the beautiful house that was so damn big my eyes couldn’t take it all in at once. There were butterflies in my stomach that were flipping and fluttering, and making me wonder what the hell I was doing coming back here to dip my greedy little fingers in these folks’ honey-pot once again.
The first time I’d bust up in the mansion everything had been just a big game to me. A hustle. A challenge. A great big con that if I could pull it off, was supposed to solve all my cash-flow problems and leave me sitting pretty for a good minute. But this time it was different. It wasn’t a simple hit-it-and-quit-it type of thang no more. I didn’t have a problem lying or manipulating or scheming to get what I needed outta life, but some kinda way this whole grimy caper had turned into building relationships and fuckin’ with other people’s feelings. I guess it felt harder this time because I knew these people now, and they thought they knew me too. Especially Selah.
Two
servants came out to get our suitcases outta the back of the truck and I turned to Uncle Suge and stepped up on him real close.
“Thanks for coming to pick us up from the airport.”
He looked down at me and nodded, then touched the brim of his dope Stetson hat. “You can ride with me anytime, baby.”
“Am I gonna see you later on tonight?”
His sexy eyes twinkled and the grin he flashed me made my thick nipples ache.
“You wanna see me?”
“Hell yeah I do,” I told him, and I said that shit real bold too, ’cause Mizz LaRue had no problem telling a nigga what she wanted.
Uncle Suge nodded again, and I could tell by the hungry look in his eyes that if we hadn’t been standing outside his brother’s house in broad daylight he woulda snatched me up and stuck his tongue down my throat. He probably woulda tossed me back in his truck and fucked the shit outta me too.
Biting his lower lip like he was holding himself back, he tapped me lightly on my ass and turned away. “I’ll call you later. It won’t take me long. Maybe an hour or so, okay?”
I grinned and nodded. “ ’Kay. I’ll be ready for you. Later.”
One of the servants told us that Selah and Fallon had gone out shopping but that didn’t stop me and Bunni from invading the joint. The mansion looked even better inside than I had remembered. Everything about it was sleek and shiny and expensive as hell. The parlor had glistening marble floors and high ceilings. A light floral scent was in the air, and I could smell the polish they had used to shine the countless end tables and leather furniture.
“Miss Dominion, your suites are ready,” an older servant named Big Grownie, who I remembered from our last trip, swished her wide hips into the room and told me. Like the security dude Durant, she was dressed up in a monkey suit too, but hers was a big black dress with an apron and a lacy white bib-thingy on the front, and she had on a pair of hot-ass stockings that put her thick thighs on loudspeaker with every step she took.
“How you doin’, Miss Grownie!” I said and hugged her with mad respect like I did with all the older black women I knew in the projects. “You doin’ all right today?”
She smiled at me and looked all shy, but she looked happy too as she hugged me right back. “I’m doing just fine, baby,” she said, coming up outta that subservient shell that the Dominions and all their millions of dollars had her in. “It’s good to see you back.”
Bunni tried to pull a slick one. She jetted up the stairs in front of me and tried to take the room that I had stayed in the last time we were here.
“I got this one!” she hollered and jumped on the bed just like a big-ass kid.
“Uh-uh, Bunni!” I fussed. “Hell no. Same, same baby. This was the room they put me in last time, and this is the one I’m staying in this time too!”
“Why you always gotta get the best shit, Mink? Huh?” she pouted. “Why’s it always gotta be about you?”
Here we go again, I thought as my girl twisted up her lips and shot daggers outta her eyes. Bunni could get real stank and funky sometimes. If she got pissed off and salty for the slightest little reason, then she would throw a bone in a plan regardless of the consequences. I smiled at Miss Grownie real quick, and then I pushed Bunni inside her room and slammed the door behind us.
“Don’t start none, won’t be none, Bunita!” I pointed my finger dead in her face. “It ain’t all about me! But it ain’t all about you neither! Now, your ass is just as broke as minez is. We came back down here to get this dough real quick so we can get paid and get the hell gone. It don’t really matter who sleeps in which room. I’ma need you to just go along with the program so we can get up on this loot, okay?”
Mad or not, I saw two gigantic dollar signs flash in Bunni’s eyes, and they were even greener than the contact lenses she was styling.
“I don’t know why you tripping, Mink,” she smirked. She shrugged her shoulders and turned away from me, switching her bowlegged ass around my room before heading into hers. “You can keep your old funky-ass room! This one over here is better any damn way. I just wanted to see what you was gonna say.”
“Really?” I shrieked, giving her a shitty look. “All that drama and that’s the one you really wanted anyway? The rooms are just alike, Bunni!”
She bust out laughing and bent over and unzipped her suitcase. “Girl, shut up. We ain’t gonna be stuck up in these rooms any damn way. We came here to put in work, goddamn it. Now let’s get after it.”
Neither one of us had slept a wink on the airplane and we were tired and hungry as hell. The maids had put out a tray of crackers and pretzels in our suite, but we wanted us some real food, so after taking our showers, me and Bunni went downstairs to the kitchen to see what kinda grub we could munch on until Selah and Fallon got back home.
The Dominions had a cook named Miss Katie, and she was one of those old black women who fixed almost everything from scratch. We sat right in the kitchen with her as she hooked us up some grits, turkey sausage, and fried eggs, and me and Bunni both had a slice of homemade pineapple upside-down cake when we finished eating our food.
With my stomach nice and full, I hit Dane on his cell phone to see what he was up to. During the summer when he wasn’t in school, Dane chilled in a private little fuck-pad above the Dominions’ ten-car garage. He sounded sleepy when he answered the phone, but he told me and Bunni to come right on up anyway.
Bunni acted a pure-ass fool as soon as he opened his door.
“Oowweee! Dane-Daaaane!” She pressed all up against him and meowed his name over and over, sounding just like an alley cat in deep heat. Dane stood there naked except for a pair of low-slung basketball shorts. His eyes were red like he was already smoked-out and zooted. His ebony dreads looked sleek and freshly twisted, and his smooth chocolate skin and crazy muscles sent Bunni over the edge. By the time she finished molesting the nigga, running her hands all over his chest and grinding her fur mound all up on his thigh, Dane was grinning and he had a big piece of wood rocking up the front of his drawers.
“Get y’all fine asses up in here!” Dane said, adjusting his bone and then reaching out to hug me. We followed him inside his cute loft apartment that was five times bigger than the crib me and Bunni lived in with Peaches. There were two real big bedrooms and two luxurious bathrooms, a loft, a living area, and a kitchen that the servants kept on jam.
Dane Dominion was a regular ol’ dick swinger. He was one of those rapper dudes who wasn’t never gonna grow up, and at twenty-four years old he was still in college and still running around town DJ’ing at clubs and parties. Dane was street smart, and he kept him some kinda hustle going, but his main grind was getting high, laying tracks, and banging all the lil groupies and honeys who lived in his college dorm.
From the first day we met, me and Bunni had been vibing with Dane right off the bat. He wasn’t nothing like I thought a rich dude would be. Not only was he all about partying, smoking trees, and getting tipsy just like I was, Dane had treated me real righteous when I bust up in the joint claiming I was a long-lost family member. He had accepted my word that I was his sister Sable, and left it at that.
“What’s going on?” I said as the three of us went into his large bedroom. Dane hopped up on his elevated loft bed, and me and Bunni both took off our shoes so we could get up on there with him.
“Yo, hold up.” I hand-checked Bunni before she could fly off into parts unknown, and then I grilled Dane with my nose in the air. I waved my hand toward his blankets and said real snooty-like, “Your shit is proper up in there, ain’t it? I mean, I hope you ain’t been hot-sheeting no freaky-ass chicks ’cause I ain’t tryna land in nobody else’s puddle, ya heard?”
Dane laughed. “Nah, baby sis. I got it nice and fresh for y’all. Word, I ain’t bounced nobody around in at least two hours.”
Dane pressed a button on his console and a sick beat under DJ Kay Slay blared through the expensive studio speakers that were positioned all around the room. He
reached up on his headboard and pulled down a stick of yay rolled with Big Bambu, and he passed it over to Bunni so she could spark it up.
“It’s a good thing you brought your ass back down here,” Dane said as the three of us puffed, passed, and grooved to the sounds. “Bump is tryna get extra with his shit, for real.”
I shook my head. “Look, Dane, I get everything you told me, and Uncle Suge even says the same things, but y’all know Barron can’t stand my ass. How is me being down here gonna help everybody get paid?”
“That’s the easy part,” Dane said. “All you gotta do is show up. Show up at the board meeting with the rest of us and let it be know which team you’re batting on and we should be set.”
I took a deep toke on the joint and squinted through one eye. “How you figure?”
“Check it out,” Dane explained. “Like I told you before, Pops is sliding fast. The doctors don’t know how long he’s gonna be able to hold on. But even if he does manage to make it, there’s almost no chance in hell that he’s gonna get back to a point where he can run the business again. And that’s where Barron comes in.”
I nodded. “Right, I get that part. If your—I mean if our father can’t do his job no more, then Barron gets to take over the company.”
“Yeah. But not only does B get to run the company, he gets two shareholder votes on the board, and that means he can take control of all the money too. And that includes the family trust fund that Pops started. He organized it so all of us could get three-hundred-thousands yards a year for life, but if Bump gets his finger on that trigger we could all end up with our pockets shot full of holes.”
“And how am I gonna be the one to stop him?”