by Noire
I started grinning as soon as Selah opened the door, and the instant she saw me standing there in all my cute bubblegum pink, an explosion of light just brightened up her eyes.
“Sable!” she squealed and threw her arms around me and held me real tight. “Praise God! Thank Him, thank Him! It’s so good to see you, baby! I missed you so much! Oh, I’m so, so happy you decided to come back home!”
All I could do was grin and nod. The last time I’d seen Selah Dominion she was crying her eyes out in the back of her limo as her, Barron, and Dane dropped me and Bunni off at the airport so we could fly back to New York. My pockets had been full of loot so I was kinda feeling myself that day, and even though Selah’s tears had dripped all over my guilty conscience, I damn sure didn’t feel bad for breaking up outta Texas and leaving her behind.
But everything was different now. I was broke as hell again, and I needed to plant myself real deep in Selah’s heart again in a hurry. I could tell how bad she had missed me just by how tight she held me, and I played that shit up like a pro.
“I really missed you too,” I lied as I pushed my face into her breasts and let her smother me in her toned arms. Selah’s perfume was a light but expensive scent that reminded me of Halston, and the fabric of her white dress was so crisp that I knew it had to have cost a grip. When she finally let me go I saw that it was a high-end design by Dior, and I knew it had set her back more cream than most black folks made in six months.
She took my hand and pulled me deeper into her room. Her spread was sick and gigantic, with huge windows and high ceilings where four ornate gold fans all spun in the same direction. I thought about the night that Selah had read my phony DNA report out loud to the entire family. She had been so damn happy to have her little girl back that she’d gotten tore-down drunk and asked me to spend the night with her in her bed.
I had slept with Selah that night. I let her hold me and clutch the ugly little ducky doll baby of Sable’s that she had held on to for all those years. And when we woke up the next morning I had felt real shitty for perpetrating such a big fat fraud on such a nice lady, but hey. I was a con-mami and a grifter. What the hell did she expect a hood chick like me to do?
“You know I wanted you to come back here, Mink,” she said, calling me by my right name. Her voice was real serious as she kicked off her jeweled Dior croc sandals, and a worried look entered her eyes. “But not under these conditions. After you left it was almost like all the fight seemed to go out of Viceroy. He had been doing so good while you were here! But then all of a sudden he just stopped communicating with me, and I just couldn’t seem to reach him, you know what I mean?”
I nodded my head, but on the real I was seriously thinking some other shit. The last time I’d seen Viceroy he was laying up in a hospital bed wrapped up like a mummy. One of his eyes was covered with a bandage, and the other one was bigger than a hardboiled egg. Selah had stood next to me and had a long conversation with him like he could hear and understand her, but I had caught a fucked-up vibe from that old man, and blown up or not, I sensed a slick old gangsta laying there underneath all that crusty gauze.
“I heard,” I said, faking sympathy. “And that’s why I came back as soon as I could get a flight. I felt like the right place to be was right here with my family,” I lied real smooth outta the side of my neck, “and I just didn’t want to miss out on any more important moments with y’all.”
Selah melted behind that lil slice of bullshit talk, just like I knew she would.
“Oh, Sable. Baby, there were so very many moments that you missed.” Her eyes glistened with tears, and she took a deep breath before giving me a small, sad smile. “I wish I could put them all in a great big basket and tie a bow around it. I’d give you the gift of the memories that were stolen from us when I lost you, and I hope you’d find enough forgiveness in your heart to accept it from me.”
Please don’t start that crying shit, I thought as her misty eyes turned into waterfalls. The last thing I wanted was for Selah to take another guilt trip halfway around the world behind the fact that she had been toasted up outta her skull when Sable got kidnapped. I mean I definitely felt for her, and I felt for her little girl too, wherever the hell she really was, but my role was to get up on the Dominion dough, and get it the best way I could.
“I already told you,” I said in a sweet-little-white-girl voice as we sat down together on a plush sofa. “I forgive you, and whatever happened in the past, I think we should leave it there. I’m just happy to have a family who loves me right now. That’s all.”
Selah took my hand and I could see her tryna pull her shit together and get a grip on her emotions. Even though I knew she really, really believed I was Sable, it was still kinda crazy to me, this insane and intense love she seemed to have for me when she didn’t even know shit about me. Especially when you consider the fact that her and Viceroy had adopted Sable when she was just a few days old, and the girl had been snatched when she was almost four.
I just didn’t get it. Was four years enough time to get your heart so wrapped around a damn kid? Especially one that wasn’t really yours? I had lived with my mother for thirteen damn years, and she had pushed me right outta her very own ass. And still, she had never been as bent over me as Selah was over Sable. I felt kinda jealous over that.
“You’re right,” Selah said finally. “You are home with family, and we do love you. All of us do. And that’s why it’s so important that you have a chance to visit with your father while there’s still time. We’ll be flying down to Houston the first thing tomorrow morning. Let’s just pray that things don’t get any worse for him until we get there.”
I sat with Selah and listened to her chatter on and on about how good a man Viceroy was, and how her kids had been blessed to grow up with a father like him. The only thing I knew about the man was what I had read on the Internet and what I had heard from other people, and if you let Dane tell it Viceroy wasn’t nothing but an old G. He had been born and raised in the slums of Houston, and even though he had always been smart and ambitious, the grime of the streets ran thick through his blood.
I’d found out that Viceroy had built his family fortune by stepping on the neck of one of his good friends, and after making some shrewd and cunning oil deals, he had stockpiled himself a major share of crude oil and became one of the country’s major connects. Shit, what his hustling ass had done was no different than what any good kingpin in the drug world would do. Start out small, shit on ya friends, annihilate your enemies, and then gain control of your market and watch the dough roll in.
Matter fact, I was willing to bet that Viceroy had done damn near all the grimy, illegal shit he banned his kids from doing in the terms of his trust fund. There was no way his hands could be squeaky clean, because a self-made dude like him who did bizz with rich white boys just had to be dirty all under his skin. Selah was originally from Brooklyn so I knew she could get gully too, but she had trained herself to look and sound real sophisticated, and I figured that was part of Viceroy’s ploy to dust off his gutter image.
But whatever. For a rich Brooklyn chick Selah was real easy to like, and if I wasn’t such a hardcore con-mami and she wasn’t such a soft and easy mark, I woulda really been into her. So, while Suge was handling his bizz and Bunni was off banging Dane every chance she got, I tried to spend a little bit of time with Selah.
I stayed up under her for the rest of the day, and it tickled the shit outta her when I went up to her room real early the next morning and climbed up in that big old bed with her. We laid around and watched mad episodes of Survivor and some of the other reality shows she had taped, and then we called downstairs and ordered up breakfast in bed and ate like crazy. Both of us had a thing for cinnamon French toast so we got our plates stacked real high. I got mine with turkey sausage, and Selah got hers with some of that nasty corned beef hash that came outta the can. That shit was hood as hell but she loved it!
I kinda liked what I had going on a l
il bit too. You woulda thought I had been raised with boo-coo money the way I fronted like I wasn’t straight-up gaga over how the Dominions was living. I could actually picture myself getting used to having endless dough and every little thing I wanted brought to me at the snap of my fingers. Between all the good get-high Jock and Dane kept on supply, and that good wood that Uncle Suge was plunging me with, I was starting to think, fugg grimy-ass New York! I could get real comfortable down in hot-ass Texas!
I had already spun Selah all kinds of fairy-tale lies about my life in New York, and when we were done eating our French toast we got comfy on her big bed and she started telling me about her childhood in Brooklyn.
“My father was a longshoreman and a big-time gambler,” she confided. “He raised us in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. We lived in a cold little apartment on Broadway. Right over a Chinese restaurant, with the el speeding past my bedroom window twenty-four hours a day.”
It turns out that Selah was the oldest child. She told me she had grown up with her brother Digger, who was stank Pilar’s father, and a sister who was a whole lot younger than her.
“Oh you got a sister?” I asked. “I always wanted me a sister. What’s her name? Why isn’t she around here?”
I saw her lips get tight and a hard look fall over her face.
“She is around,” she said and flung the plush comforter offa her as she got outta the bed and walked toward the bathroom. “Somewhere.”
I was quick to catch on to the change in her temperature, but I knew better than to push her. Instead, I filed the words Shady Sister under Selah’s name in my mental Rolodex and tucked it away just in case I needed to whip it out and use it one day.
“You know,” I said softly when Selah came back from the bathroom. As a Harlem con-mami I was well schooled on the art of give a little, get a lot. People would usually let their guard down some if you gave up a bit of juicy dirt on yourself first. “I wasn’t telling you the whole truth when I told you about my past. I left out some of the juicy parts.”
I saw a bolt of tension shoot through her and a worried look clouded her eyes. “What do you mean? What weren’t you honest about?”
I shrugged and pulled the covers up under my chin, and tried to look all sweet and innocent in the face.
“Just . . . stuff. Mostly about my childhood, you know? I mean, I was too embarrassed to come down here and tell you all the crazy things that happened to me when I was a little kid. But now that I know you’re gonna love me no matter what my life was like in the past, it’s a lot easier for me to share my secrets with you. You get what I’m sayin’?”
Selah walked over and sat down on my side of the bed. Tears sprang to her eyes and her bottom lip actually trembled.
“You can tell me anything, baby. Anything. And I promise not to judge you. Ever.”
I hated to twist the knife in her open wounds, but me and Bunni were on a money-making mission and Mizz Mink had a job to do. I knew Barron was gonna try to make me look bad, so I wanted to dish my dirt to Selah first so she could be prepared for all the foul shit she was bound to hear.
“Well,” I started, “my life wasn’t nowhere near as happy as I tried to make you believe it was. I was raised around winos peeing on the stairs, dope fiends shooting drugs in the hallway, rapists tryna catch young girls alone in the alleys, and there was more petty thieves living in my project building than roaches,” I said, telling her the whole truth for once.
“Day in and day out there was a whole lotta grimy stuff going on all up in my face, and by the time I was ten or eleven I had seen so much that my eyes were already about ninety-years old.”
Selah looked straight-up horrified at the words that were rolling outta my mouth, and I took a deep breath and went in for the kill. “You know, sometimes when a child gets hurt when they’re real young it can leave a mark on their soul that only love can erase. And if the child never gets the kinda love and understanding she needs, then those marks can have a lot to do with the decisions she makes later on, you know?”
Selah damn near leaped on me and crushed me in her arms. I didn’t know exactly what I had said that was so damn slick, but whatever it was I could tell she really liked it.
“Oh, Mink!” she cried and moaned. “Baby, truer words have never been spoken. We all do things when we’re hurting that we regret later. Lord knows I have, so Mama understands. Mama understands!”
I held still while she cried big tears and got to rocking me and patting my back with her delicate fingers. She was treating me just the way I always thought a mother should treat her daughter, and even though I wasn’t used to being hugged on by no woman, I sat there and took it because on the real tip, it didn’t feel that bad at all.
CHAPTER 11
The door to Selah’s suite was open just a crack when Barron walked up, but what he saw through that little slice of light was more than enough to piss him off.
Mink!
Scandalous hoochie! Why the hell was she back in Texas, and what the hell was she doing up in Selah’s suite? Funking up the joint! Hugging all over his mama with her tiny little pink dress hugging all over her bombastical ass! He watched as Selah walked into the bathroom, and then his eyes jumped right back on Mink. Barron took a slow, deep breath. Fuckable bitch. The sexy thrust of Mink’s hips fucked his head up, and all the nasty words he wanted to spit at her got stuck somewhere near the tip of his rising dick.
She raised her arms and yawned and stretched.
Barron’s blood pressure shot up as she arched her back. Damn that bitch was hot. She was like a virus and she gave off some kinda voodoo scent. There was something about her body that turned him way the fuck on and kicked up vapors in him whether he wanted it to or not. Out of all the girls he’d boned, including his cousin Pilar, Mink was the only chick who had ever rode him in his sleep. He had fucked Mink in all kinds of delicious ways, and in a hundred different positions. He’d shivered through countless erotic dreams where he’d be sliding his hard meat way up in her guts and licking out the deepest parts of her pussy, and he’d wake up with his dick jerking and spurting into his sheets, cumming like a muthafucka, and embarrassed as hell. Barron had no idea why his body was so sexually aroused by the sight of Mink LaRue when the rest of him couldn’t stand to be anywhere near her ass.
His dick jerked, and he stuck his hand in his pocket and squeezed it tight.
“Cut it out,” he whispered under his breath as he tried to push back his hateful lust. He adjusted the thick piece of meat in his pants, then walked boldly into his mother’s bedroom.
“Mink,” he spit coldly, like he hadn’t been eye-fucking her up the ass two minutes ago. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Her plump titties jiggled as she spun around and flashed him a sexy little grin. Her eyes darted toward the bathroom where Selah could be heard running water in the sink.
“Hi, Barron. I’m sorry it took me so long to get here but I caught a flight as soon as I heard.”
Barron frowned. “Heard what?”
“Heard your ass got kicked to the curb!” She busted out laughing. “Man, where’s Carla? Why you let your kissing-cousin Pilar scare that white girl off? I thought y’all was gonna have a great big Texas wedding?”
“Shut your ass up!” he barked. “Don’t worry about me and Carla. Worry about your damn self, okay?”
“Barron?” Selah called his name as she came out of the bathroom pressing a washcloth to her eyes. “Hey there, son. Were you yelling about something? Is everything okay?”
Barron covered her questions up with concern. “What happened, Mama? What’s wrong with your eyes?”
She waved her hand and gave him a small, reassuring grin. “Nothing, baby. I just got a little emotional, that’s all. I’m just so happy to have Mink back at home that my feelings got the best of me. Happiness will do that to you, you know.”
Barron wanted to knock Mink on her ass as she stepped up on his mama and gave her a great big hug
while shooting him a sly, devious smile. “Well, if having me here makes you so happy, Mama Selah, then this time I might stay for a long, long time.”
“Yo, see there? You talk shit about a gold-digger and she slides right under the crack of your door,” Barron said as he strode into his uncle Digger’s plush backyard. It was hot as hell outside and Pilar was chilling alone in the Jacuzzi. She had an icy drink in her hand and some smooth R & B cuts were flowing from the outdoor speakers.
“What are you talking about?” Pilar lifted her alligator-framed Moss Lipow sunglasses and pushed them up high on her head. She had on a skimpy cream-colored Martinique string bikini, and the tops of her breasts were puffed out like fresh-baked corn muffins.
“I’m talking about Mink,” Barron said as he loosened his tie and unbuttoned his starched designer shirt. He kicked off his imported leather shoes and set them up on a beach chair, and then unbuckled his belt and let his tailored pants fall down around his ankles. He took off his watch and peeled off his socks, and then stood there posted up in his sky-blue silk drawers looking like one big chocolate-covered muscle.
“She’s back,” he said as he lowered himself into the bubbling water next to his cousin. She passed him her drink and he guzzled the whole shit down in one gulp and then said, “I walked into Mama’s room today and damn if she wasn’t standing there.” Looking sexy as fuck, he wanted to add.
“That bitch,” Pilar said, feeling her stomach clench into a knot. “You know why she came back. She ran through all her money and now she’s broke again.”
“Damn right.” Barron nodded. “Broke as a joke. Why else would she bring her ass back down here?”
Pilar shrugged and narrowed her eyes. “Maybe somebody told her to come back. Maybe Dane or Uncle Suge got with her. She might have heard about the board meeting and the vote that’s coming up.”