Proof licked his lips, then folded them into his mouth. Those gemstone-green eyes that I used to love so much stared at me so intently that I began to feel a little uncomfortable.
“Are you all right in here?” my granny asked as she slowly walked into the kitchen. Her gray eyes, which mirrored mine, looked from me to Proof, then back at me. I could see Madison’s small hands resting on her hip as she stood behind my granny, as if she was scared to look at me or her dad.
“Yeah, we good, Granny. Proof . . . that is, Jaylen and I were just having a little conversation,” I said.
Granny sighed. “Well, your little conversation could be heard all the way at the back of the house. It scared away Madison’s friend. Now I’m going to go on upstairs and take my little baby up to my bedroom so we can find some more things to wear for her tea party. I expect the both of you to have whatever it is you were arguing . . . talking about hashed out and over with by the time we get back downstairs, you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied.
When Proof didn’t answer her, my eyes traveled over to where he was standing behind the island in the middle of the kitchen. His fingers were interlaced and his hands sat on top of his head as he looked up at the ceiling and swayed back and forth.
“Uh, Jaylen, I know you heard my granny talking to you,” I said.
His gaze traveled from the ceiling to Granny. “Ms. Regina, I heard everything you said, and I apologize for disrespecting your house and yelling.”
“It’s okay. Just make sure you don’t do it again,” Granny said. “And for the record, I totally agree with what you were saying.” She side eyed me. “I told Melonee that too. Either piss in the pot or get up. You can’t do both.” She turned her attention back to Proof. “And you, Jaylen, you have to be okay with whatever choice Melonee makes. If she decides to get up, you can’t do nothing but respect it and let her go, because trying to hold her in place when she really doesn’t want to be there isn’t going to do nothing but push her farther away. Let her go. If she comes back, then you know it was meant to be. If not, you gotta move on, just like she did.”
My granny looked at me one last time, gave a quick head nod, then turned around and headed upstairs, with Madison following right behind her.
“Look, Jay—”
He cut me off. “Naw, your Granny is right. Maybe it is time for me to let you go. It’s clear that what we used to have is in the past, with no signs of it ever coming back.”
“Jaylen—” I began, but he cut me off again.
“We good, Mel. My bad for even coming at you like that about the stripping thing. From now on, our conversations outside of work will be strictly about Madison and whatever it is that she needs. I won’t question you about any of your jobs or what you’re doing behind closed doors with future targets. Because you’re my child’s mother, though, I will always have your back, so if you need me, call me. Other than that, you won’t have to worry about any heat coming from over this way.”
I nodded my head. “Thanks, Jaylen. And I promise not to hit you with any of those late- night ‘What you doing?’ and ‘Are you busy?’ texts again.”
We shared a laughed before he walked around the island to where I stood and hugged me.
“I’m about to get up out of here to meet with the rest of the crew. Cowboy has some information for us about dude’s security and shit. Be careful at the club, and don’t go getting your ass beat by some Ronnie- and Trix-looking bitches because you wouldn’t let them get a taste of that goodness between your thighs.”
I pushed Proof off me and socked him in his rib cage. “Boy, you already know how I get down. I’ma be Diamond Jr. in that bitch if any of those hoes try to test me.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. I’m about to go say bye to my baby. Before I head out, you need anything?”
I watched as Proof’s eyes scanned my body lustfully; then he licked his lips.
“Naw, Madison is good. She doesn’t need anything.”
He nodded his head, smirked, then went upstairs to say bye to our daughter. After washing the few dishes in the sink, locking the door when Proof left, and making another pitcher of raspberry iced tea for the tea party, I joined my granny and Madison on the pink bedsheet in the middle of the living room and spent time with my two favorite girls. I was going to enjoy this little time I was spending with my baby as much as I could, because come next week, I’d be on another one of my extended vacations from them both, and I didn’t know when I’d be back.
Fiona
“Okay, so tonight you’ll be waitressing in the VIP section up top. The redhead who normally works it called out again. Something about a stomach virus or something of that nature,” said Raul, the owner of Club Decadence, as his dark eyes stayed focused on my little bit of cleavage that was barely visible, thanks to the black tank top I had on. “You think you’ll be okay up there?”
I nodded my head. “Yeah, I think so. I shadowed Molly for a few hours last week, and I think I seen enough.”
He squinted his eyes a little, then placed the stub of cigar he’d been holding between his middle and index finger back in his mouth. “VIP guests are top priority.” He raised one of his perfectly arched eyebrows. “They don’t pay the big bucks for all that privacy to have to wait on anything.” He narrowed his eyes and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “And when I say anything, you do know I mean anything, right?”
I said nothing in reply.
He licked his lips as his eyes slowly scanned my body up and down for a few seconds before he let out a hearty laugh. “You know, Fiona, I like you. Doesn’t seem like you scare too easy.”
“When you’ve seen half the things I’ve seen in my life, it’s kind of hard for anything or anyone to scare you.”
Which in some ways was true. Watching my father get damn near beaten to death by the police before they threw him in the back of that police car for killing Shaunie’s ex-boyfriend was the most frightening thing I had ever seen. I had sat on the edge of the sidewalk, crying my eyes out, afraid of what my father going to jail would mean for me and my brother. I’d been so distraught, I started to hyperventilate, and the EMTs had to give me an oxygen mask. I lay there for almost ten minutes, the oxygen mask on my face, terrified about my and Cowboy’s future. But when my eyes connected with my father’s in the back of that cruiser and he smiled, then motioned for me to keep my head up, something inside me changed at that moment. If he wasn’t afraid to kill for the woman he loved, or to spend the rest of his life behind bars for making sure the person who killed her wouldn’t see the light of another day, what could possibly scare me?
I ran through in my mind everything that had the potential to be scary. Does love scare me? I wondered. Shit, that emotion had left me the day my mama left us. Being broke? I had more than enough money saved up, thanks to my ex-husbands. Death? It sucked, but we all had to die someday. Going to jail? If Pops could do it with a straight face, so could I. Like I said, wasn’t too much out here that could scare me, not even doing whatever was necessary to get the attention of our next mark in the VIP section.
Yep, Roman Black and a few of his colleagues were scheduled to be here tonight for a little deal-closing celebration. One of the strippers Melonee had become close to in the past two weeks had given her the heads-up. Candy had worked at Decadence for the past five years and had designated herself the welcoming party for any new stripper who came into the fold. The chick was a bona fide cokehead, and everyone knew it. You got her to sniff a few lines, and she was giving up the goods on everyone’s business, including that of this sick bastard who owned the club.
Raul thought his Rico Suave–wannabe ass was God’s gift to women. Yeah, he had a little flavor, but his pockets weren’t fat enough for me. He didn’t even have a healthcare package for his employees, so I doubted he had any type of personal insurance policies with big payouts. Although the club was a nice spot, it wouldn’t do a thing for me if he met an untimely death.
As he continued with his lame speech and literally blew smoke in my face, I nodded my head and smiled every few seconds so it looked as if I was listening to him. Every so often my eyes would scan the entrance to the club to see if Roman and his entourage had arrived. According to Candy, whenever Roman did come to hang out, he would do so with his brother, Benjamin Black, and his best friend, Marques King.
According to the info I had pulled up online, Benjamin was Roman’s stepbrother and the vice president of Real Time Delivery, and he didn’t make quite as much money as Roman did, but he wasn’t slacking in the money department, either. I thought about switching the target from Roman over to Benjamin, but I nixed the idea when I saw how much Benjamin’s ass was in the tabloids.
Benjamin had to be photographed any and everywhere: from designer stores on Rodeo Drive to drive-throughs at Starbucks and McDonald’s. The media loved him, which was a good thing if you were part of a company that needed to stay relevant, but it was bad if you were planning to kill his ass. Paparazzi camped outside his homes, waiting to take pictures of the plethora of female vixens doing the walk of shame or of him sunbathing in the nude around the pool.
Now, as for Roman’s best friend, Marques, he was almost as bad as Benjamin, with his philandering ways. There were a few pictures floating around of his sexy ass with different socialites and celebrities too.
A trust-fund baby living off of his family fortune, made from the luxurious King Palace Resorts and King Palace Hotels all over the world, he would have been a great target as well, except for the fact that he came from a family with many members who were still living, and such men were even harder to swindle. They always had that one family member who would question the “new girlfriend’s” intentions, especially if you didn’t come from money like they did. We didn’t need anyone who had a lot of time on his or her hands to start digging into our backgrounds. I mean, if someone did look, there wasn’t really too much to find, but if somebody took the time to look carefully, he or she would be able to see a few patterns in our time line.
The light dimming in the room grabbed my attention. The loud thumping sound of some slow heavy-metal group vibrated through the speakers. A slim white leg with a seven-inch stiletto heel came from behind the curtain and bounced slowly to the beat.
“Shit!” I heard Raul hiss as he snuffed the rest of the cigar out and stood up straight, abandoning his lax posture against the bar. “I told her ass to cool it on the lines tonight. She knows we have the Blacks coming in at any moment.”
I looked at Raul for a moment, then turned my head back to the stage and almost pissed on myself. The way Candy’s high ass was stumbling to the pole had me laughing my ass off. Her long platinum-blonde wig with the Chinese bangs had shifted a little too much to the right, causing the left side of her face to be covered, while the smeared eye shadow and blush on the right side of her face could be seen clear as day. The big smile she had on her face as she twirled around the pole like a happy fairy told me that the shit I had given her a few minutes before she hit the stage was some straight fiyah. I made a mental note to thank Proof for the Tony Montana I had bought on the low from him earlier. I didn’t know where he had got it from, but whoever’s product it was had to be selling that shit like hotcakes. Especially if it had you feeling as good as Candy looked.
My phone buzzed in my apron pocket. I pulled it out and saw that I had a text from Melonee.
Bestie: Do you see this shit? LOL
Me: Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Bestie: LOL! U stupid. Did they get here yet?
Me: Naw. But be ready.
I slipped my phone back into my apron pocket, then turned to get my tray ready for my first round in VIP. Because the high rollers were the only ones in there, we had to walk through the door with a bottle of this expensive-ass cognac that was exclusively made for Club Decadence, along with a few shot glasses to whet the big spenders’ taste buds. Whenever we explained that the small particles floating around in the brown liquor were actually pieces of fourteen-karat gold, the big spenders declared that this warranted a taste of the signature drink. Once they got a taste of the smooth cognac with a hint of sweet honey, they would request a whole bottle. At ten thousand dollars a pop, the cognac was seriously overrated, but with me earning a smooth 25 percent on every bottle I sold, you know I was pushing the shit like crazy.
“Molly called out again, huh?” Lupe, the spitfire bartender, asked as she handed me a bottle of the cognac, which was called Decadence Gold.
“Yeah. Raul said she has a stomach flu or something.”
“The bitch better not be pregnant,” I heard her mumble under her breath as she turned to wipe the counter down.
I silently laughed to myself, because she and Molly killed me. Both of their dumb asses had fallen for Raul’s weak-ass game and were fucking him at the same time. A couple of nights ago, I had had to break up a fight between the two women, because Raul had slapped Molly on her ass and in return she had grabbed a handful of his dick. Instead of swatting her hand away, like I assumed he would’ve, he had just let her massage his small bulge through his pants, until Lupe had had enough of the visual and had charged into Molly headfirst.
Luckily, the club wasn’t opened yet and only a few employees saw the little catfight between the two of them. Molly actually got the best of Lupe’s ass, until I stepped in. Raul grabbed Lupe and took her to the back of the club to have a few words, while I took Molly into the kitchen to try to calm her down. It was then that I offered to pour her a glass of something to drink. Once she nodded her head, I went back out to the bar and fixed her a glass of Diet Coke with a couple of shots of rum and brought it back to her, but not before pouring some crushed laxatives in it to give her the runs. I needed her to be gone for a few days so that I had my chance to get close to Roman. I knew that if she was working, her ass wasn’t going to trade shifts with me and work my areas for shit.
I had gathered up my things and was just about to turn around and head up to the VIP section when the most alluring smell entered my nose. The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up, and my pussy began to tingle. After slowly turning around, I came face-to-face with one of the most gorgeous men I had ever seen.
Damn. Them few pictures online do not do him no kind of justice, I thought as Roman Black and his entourage made their way through the club. Even Benjamin and Marques had this aura about them that said, “We have money—and lots of it.”
I watched as the three tall, sexy men led the way into the VIP room, followed by six short Japanese men dressed in expensive, sharp business suits.
“There’s a lot of money in that room tonight,” Lupe said from behind me. “I know Candy’s going to be mad she missed this.”
I looked back up at the stage and didn’t see Candy anywhere in sight. Raul had hurried up and got her stumbling, high ass down off the stage. I knew it was more than likely that he was going to send her home or make her sit her ass down until the high passed.
“I wonder who Raul’s going to have take her spot in VIP,” Lupe mused. “You know those Japanese men love their American Barbies with blond hair.”
“That may be true, but if you ask me, a little chocolate ain’t never hurt nobody,” I said as I texted Melonee to let her know that Roman was here and that she should get her ass to VIP ASAP.
This was the first time in the two months that we’d been here that Roman had finally made an appearance at Club Decadence. If everything went according to plan, we’d be millions of dollars richer before the end of the year, much thanks to my new soon-to-be dearly departed husband, Roman Black.
Melonee
I watched Raul drag Candy’s ass off the stage, literally kicking and screaming. Whatever she was high on had her tripping way more than normal tonight.
“So it’s just fuck me tonight, huh, Candy?” Raul questioned her with his thick Spanish accent.
“What’d I do, Daddy? I was just trying to have a little fun. You know
Candy only has eyes for her Latin lover.” Her words were a bit slurred, but I knew Raul had heard everything she said.
Candy wobbled down the dark, narrow hallway until she landed on the couch in the dressing room with a loud plop. After pulling the platinum-blond wig off her head and throwing it across the room, she unhooked the clip holding up her natural brunette-colored hair and shook it out.
“I don’t even know why you wear that fake shit, when you got a head full of beautiful hair already,” Raul mumbled as he paced back and forth in front of the couch. Every time he would look down at Candy, he’d stop for a quick second and shake his head.
The black linen suit he had on hung loosely from his body but could not hide that huge python print going down the side of his leg. Fiona always said that he padded himself, but the shit looked real to me. The way he would have Candy screaming in his office every other night, before he closed up, told me he was working with a little something down there.
Now the shadow of his five-foot, eleven-inch frame covered Candy’s body completely for a second before he started to pace back and forth again.
“Can you please stop walking so much! You’re making me blow my high,” Candy said, grabbing the bridge of her nose and laughing hysterically.
Raul’s gaze went around the dressing room a few times before it finally landed back on Candy. You could tell he was thinking about slapping some sense into her but didn’t want a room full of strippers to see him do it. I could read the look he had on his face from anywhere. It was the same look my mother’s ex-boyfriend Dezmond would have on his face before he started to whip my mama’s ass.
The Black Widow Clique Page 3
