Dirty Rotten Liar (8 page)

“That's enough,” she said, jumping out of his lap as she tried to hide her disgust. Selah had the type of pussy that craved power, and it was power that had attracted her to Viceroy from the start. His loose, flaccid penis didn't do a thing for her. It just made him seem weak.

“Damn,” she said, smoothing her clothes down. “You just survived a horrible accident and woke up from an extended coma, Viceroy. The last thing you should be thinking about right now is
fucking
.”

Her husband grinned as he shot her a cold look.

“That's right. And it's the last thing
you
better be thinking about too. Remember that!”

W
e landed at DFW airport and I got off that plane walking like a trauma victim and looking like a stomped rat. I had fidgeted and twitched in my seat the whole damn time we was flying, and every time I dozed off and started to get a little sleep I'd get hit with a flashback and wake up crying in a cold panic.

“You're safe, Mink. You're gonna be okay,” Bunni told me over and over again, shhh'ing me and stroking my hair like I was her pet poodle. She had gotten the yardage I'd stashed outta that nasty toilet bowl plunger and met me at the airport with a couple of stuffed suitcases, and then we had jumped our asses on the first thing smoking down to Dallas.

“Just hold on, girlfriend,” she said. “We about to get you straight, Minkie-boo, and ere'thang is gonna be okay.”

I didn't know where the hell Bunni was getting that lie from but I could understand why she was telling it. My ass was all the way on the ground. I hadn't felt this low since the day when I was thirteen and that jogger had pulled me wet and screaming outta Mama's car as it sank to the bottom of the cold Hudson River.

Right now my heart was all twisted up and my emotions were all over the map. I kept going back and forth between grieving over Mama's death and being scared shitless that Gutta was gonna hunt me down and kill my yellow ass.

“You prolly depressed or some shit, Mink,” Doctor Bunni called herself diagnosing me, and the bad thing was, I kinda felt like she was calling it right.

“Losing your mama and finding out about all her lies, then having that big gorilla fool jumpin' all over you like that . . . hell, my ass would be depressed too.”

Getting my behind kicked in by Gutta had been a hurtin' thang, but it was definitely a beat-down that I'd had coming. As a certified con-mami of the highest order, I was well versed in the code of the streets, and by all rights that crazy nigga coulda
killed
me for fucking over his moolah like that. And sadly, there was something inside of me that wished he had just taken me out and gotten my miserable life over and done with!

“I know it's gonna be hard for you to go right back to work,” Bunni warned me as we inched our way outta the terminal step by little tiny step. Gutta had tried his best to stomp my tailbone into itsy-bitsy pieces, and I could still feel his boot hammering on me back there with every step I took. “But we back in Texas now, Mink. You gonna hafta pull yourself together boo-boo so we can get back on this grind,
okay
?”

Bunni could go 'head with all that. I couldn't answer her and I couldn't even look at her. The only thing I could do was keep my eyes on the floor dead in front of me and concentrate on swinging my right leg around in a way that didn't make the bones in my lower back crunch together and scream bloody murder.

“Mink, did you hear what I said?” Bunni asked as she gripped my arm to steady me.

I felt kinda bad for iggin' her. My girl was already lugging all the shit she had packed for us in two bags, and here she was tryna hold my busted ass up too.

“I heard you,” I muttered. “I just don't know what more you want me to do, Bunni. I'm done. Can't you see I'm done?”

For once the God's honest truth was coming outta my mouth.

And I was dead serious about that shit too. I knew I had a role to play if I was gonna keep ganking these rich Texas folks and get my hands on that three hundred grand every year, but it seemed like all the greed and all the gusto for the game had gone right outta me. My mama's lies had put my hustle on a block of cold ice. My heart wasn't in scheme mode like it usually was, and I could understand why Bunni was worrying so hard about me.

“C'mon,” she said, stopping dead in the middle of the terminal so she could fix my hair and straighten up my clothes. She had brought me a pair of tight jeans and a red low-cut shirt to change into at the airport, then made me throw my jacked-up funeral dress in the trash.

She frowned and grilled me for a hot second, then dug around in her purse and came out with a balled up piece of tissue.

“Here,” Bunni said. She licked the tissue and got it wet, then held it out to me with her lip all turned up. “Hit that right nostril real quick, why don't ya. Uncle Suge is outside waiting for us and you gonna be lookin' real stupid walking out that door with all them crusty boogers stuck up in ya nose.”

 

Uncle Suge was waiting right outside where Bunni said he was gonna be, and the minute I saw him posted up like a big black stallion standing next to his silver-bullet monster truck, I felt some kinda way inside.

I had missed me some of him, but for once I didn't give a damn whether I looked delicious or not. Suge could take me or leave me just like I was, but since I knew Barron was gonna toss my orphan-ass outta the mansion just as soon as them DNA results came back, I reached out for Suge like he was a chocolate-covered homeless shelter.

“Hey sexy,” my Texas dude growled hungrily. He pulled me into his big strong arms and started attacking my lips like he was starving for me.

I winced and moaned out loud as he squeezed me tight and my sore bones got to crackin'. He pulled back a lil bit and stared down into my eyes.

“You okay?” he asked, eyeballing my swollen lip and all my bruises. “What the hell happened, baby?”

“I . . . umm . . . our taxicab got into a little bumper bender on the way to the airport,” I lied. “It wasn't that bad, but I was sitting up front and forgot to put on my seat belt and did a face-plant into the dashboard. Bunni and the cabdriver didn't get not one scratch. But I'm good, baby. I'm good.”

Suge gave me a doubtful look. “You want me to swing you by the hospital so you can get checked out?”

I shook my head too quick and almost cracked my neck. “Umm, no. I'm okay. For real. I just need a hot bath and a double shot of yak-daddy and I'll be okay.”

He nodded and pulled me closer to him. “Did everything go okay with ya boss?”

That's when I lost it. I just couldn't help myself when I hiccupped and two fat tears slid from my eyes.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Suge rubbed my back gently. He sounded real surprised to see me crying.

I pressed my face into his chest and wiped my two little tears on his shirt, and then I looked back up at him and tried to smile a lil bit.

“Nah, my boss didn't make it. She passed,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “She was almost gone by the time I got there, but at least I got home to see her in time.”

I sniveled again, then glanced at Bunni and she had an evil look plastered on her grill that said,
Get a grip, dammit! Ya shit is slippin'!

I wiped my eyes and shrugged. “I guess me and her was kinda close for her to just be my boss, but that's a long story. I'll tell you about it one day.”

Suge used his big ol' thumbs to wipe my eyes, and I sniffed as he leaned forward and pressed his lips lightly to my nose.

“I'm sorry to hear that, baby,” he said as he opened the front and back passenger doors so me and Bunni could hop in his truck, “but I got a story to tell you too. Actually, I've got some news for you.”

I paused with my foot up on the running board. “Oh really?”

He gave me the “hold up” sign as his phone sounded off on his belt. He took it off the clip and glanced at the screen, and then put it right back on the clip without answering it.

“That was Barron. I'll get back with him later.”

“So what's your news?”

“Well what do you want first? The good news or the bad news?”

My shot-out ass only hesitated for a real quick second.

“Gimme the good news.”

“A'ight, well, the good news is, Barron signed the letter I drafted up for him, and the board had their meeting. They agreed to open up the trust fund and activate our annual payments, and Barron is up at Dominion Oil headquarters right now getting the final paperwork signed.”

Bunni screamed real loud and started holding her belly and winding her hips and singing, “Buh-buh-buh!
Baby
, I'm a rich bitch! Yah-yah-yah,
baby,
I'm a rich bitch! A rich bitch!”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “The damn money ain't in our hands yet, Bunni! Barron is just taking care of the paperwork, girl, dag!”

I turned back to Uncle Suge. Uh-huh. My dumb ass just had to go 'head and ask.

“So what's the bad news?”

Uncle Suge's grin fell right off his face.

“The bad news is, the DNA tests still ain't back yet. Yours or Dy-Nasty's.”

I shrugged. “So what? The board already voted, though, right? That means we're in there and me and Dy-Nasty already agreed to split the money fifty-fifty, so what's the problem ?”

Suge sighed and shook his head. “The problem is, I dreamt your results came back a positive match and Dy-Nasty's came back negative.”

“
And
?” me and Bunni both spit at the same time. “What's so bad about that?”

Uncle Suge looked grim. “Well, I got with my bookie and put a little cash on that dream. I bet fifty grand on you to win and Dy-Nasty to lose.”

“Yeah, and what happened?” my dumb ass asked.

He stared at me for a quick second and then said, “Your horse stumbled right out the gate and broke his damn leg. They had to put him down right there on the track.”

“Well damn! So what about Dy-Nasty? What happened to her horse?”

Uncle Suge shrugged and patted my arm.

“Sorry, baby. Her horse won. That sucker came in first place.”

 

Soaring high in the sky on the short flight from Houston to Dallas, Barron listened to his uncle's phone roll to voice mail, and then he stretched out in a corner lounge seat feeling shook like fuck.

The rage his father had displayed when Barron walked into his hospital room had hit him right in his heart and he didn't know if he was ever gonna get over that shit. Barron couldn't stop hearing the gutter noise rolling off Pop's tongue as dude barked on him like he was just some little stray nigga he had run into on the streets.

As tight as him and Viceroy were, and with all their closeness, their respect for each other, and that special bond of father-son love they used to share, it had all been shaken in just one fucked-up conversation. And no matter how many medical excuses Selah came up with to justify what Viceroy had said, the grimy level of disrespect in his father's words had knocked Barron off his feet and it hurt.

“Blame it on his head and not his heart,” Selah had begged her son over and over as they rode in the limo on the way back to the heliport.

“Nah,” Barron had mumbled. “Pop knew what he was saying. He just spoke his true mind, that's all.”

“Your father has a
brain
injury, Barron. It's not like he just walked past a rock and stubbed his damn toe, you know. The brain is a very fragile organ. The doctors warned us that his mood might be off and his personality might not be the same as it used to be. They expected this and we should have expected it too. Don't take it personal, baby. The doctors say it might take a little time, but they believe your father will be himself again one day. We just have to do like they said. Be patient and take it slow.”

Barron understood where Selah and the doctors were coming from, but it didn't make it any easier for him to stomach that shit, though. He had distanced himself from Dane and Selah and grabbed a blanket and went to sit in the way back of the jet. He'd tried to take a nap, but that shit wasn't happening and all he could do was lay back and stare at the ceiling and second-guess the hell outta his every move.

On the real, Barron had never really expected his father to come up outta that coma in the first place, and now every single thing that he had done, every single decision that he had made since the day Viceroy got hurt, was being examined under a magnifying glass in his mind.

He mentally replayed his actions over and over, searching for any fucked-up steps he mighta taken that his pops could zero in on and then smash him over the head with.

Yeah, the messed-up night that he'd gotten drugged in that frat house was gonna be a problem, and the DUI he'd been slapped with and the little kid he'd run over was going to be a real bitch to explain too. But the biggest issue fucking with Barron's head right now was the twisted-up sex thang he had going on with Pilar.

He would've been better off sticking with his white girlfriend, Carla, because there was no way in fuck his father was gonna be cool with him splashing his dick around in family coochie and mashing it up with Pilar.

No way in hell! Barron could see it now. Viceroy would lunge at his throat like a pit bull on a kitten if he found out his son was tapping his first cousin's ass! All that “adopted” shit didn't mean a damn thing in the Dominion house. Family was family,
period
, and the Dominions weren't the type of black people who played that kissing-cousin shit.

It was gonna be hard getting Pilar off his dick, and Barron knew she was gonna buck and bitch and act a real live fool, but he didn't have no other choice. He had to clean his shit up and clean it up fast.

Yeah, Barron sighed. He reached under the blanket and gripped his balls and gave them a squeeze through his pants. That pussy was good and he was gonna miss it like a muthafucka. But Pilar had to
go
.