The Black Widow Clique

by Genesis Woods

  I laughed to break the little awkward moment I had just had. “For your information, no, I haven’t met anyone. Besides, when would I have had the time? Between dancing at the club all night and sleeping during the day, I really haven’t had much of a social life.”

  Cowboy opened his mouth to say something, but I held my hand up and stopped him before he could utter a word.

  I went on. “And before you even say it, no, I haven’t talked to any of the customers or my regulars. I would just dance for them, and that was it. I made it very clear that I wasn’t interested in a relationship, and they all respected that. Especially if they wanted to continue getting lap dances from me.”

  Cowboy looked at me through squinted eyes, then pushed his big square glasses up on his face before he stood up to his full height of six feet two. My eyes scanned his body from head to toe, and I couldn’t do anything but shake my head. All that sexy milk chocolate cuteness had gone to waste. When he finally decided to come out of the closet, he was going to break a lot of hearts.

  “Well, Mel, Fee and I have to get going,” he announced in his smooth baritone. “We’re about to go visit Pop’s for a few hours. The charity party is this Friday, at eight. Both of y’all’s names are on the list as guests. If there’s some kind of auction, Fee and I figured that she should make a huge bid to try to get Roman’s attention. Maybe outbid him on something he really wants, to get some sort of flirty dialogue going, and then Fiona can handle everything from there. Your job will be to entertain his brother Benjamin if he tries to step to Fiona again. You know how it all works after that.”

  Cowboy walked toward the door, then stopped and turned around. “Oh, and next time you have a male guest in your home, Mel, put on some damn clothes. There’s only so much I can take before my thoughts start to turn nasty. You and I both know that Proof would try to kill me if I took down his baby mama.”

  Oh shit. I guessed my gaydar was off. Cowboy’s ass had been checking me out. I pulled my wife beater down and crossed my arms over my breasts.

  “All righty then,” I said. “You guys be safe, and tell your dad I said hello. And next time, I’ll make sure to put on something more appropriate.”

  Cowboy winked at me and nodded his head, then turned back around and walked to my door. Fiona was right behind him.

  “Fiona!” I called, and she turned around as Cowboy walked out the door. “What are we going to do about our outfits for this party? I’m pretty sure this is going to be a black-tie affair, so we will need one of those fancy joints, right?”

  Being the drama queen that she was, Fiona rolled her eyes and smacked her lips. “I’m still mad at your ass for ignoring my calls, bitch, but since you know I love to shop, I guess we can meet up on Wednesday or Thursday and hit the Beverly Center to see if we can find something to wear.”

  “It’s a date,” I replied. Then I smacked her hard on the ass, nudged her out the door, and closed the door in her face before she could curse me out.

  After kicking my door for good measure and calling me a bitch at the top of her lungs, Fiona finally left.

  As I went back into my bedroom, my mind drifted back to those beautiful green eyes and that caramel-blond hair. I knew my job was to distract Benjamin at the charity event, but if red T-shirt guy was there, I didn’t know if I’d be able to stick to the script again.

  Fiona

  After being on the road for a little over three and a half hours, we finally made it to Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in the desert town of Blythe. For over ten years, my brother and I had been making this trip once a month to visit our old man, and the shit never got old. Because of my father’s current living situation, he missed out on a lot of my and Cowboy’s lives, and our one day a month was the time we all had to catch up on things.

  We checked in the car and then ourselves and waited in the lobby to be called back. I looked around at all the women, men, and children who were here to spend some time with their loved ones, and shook my head. It seemed that every year since my father had arrived here, the number of visitors had gotten higher. Some of the people sitting in here had been coming for as long as I had, while others were just now starting this ride.

  “Do you know her?” I whispered in Cowboy’s ear as I leaned over. Some chick I hadn’t seen up here before kept looking at my brother as if she was trying to place his face.

  Cowboy looked up from whatever he was doing on his Apple watch, stared at the girl for a quick second, then looked back down. He was silent.

  “Well?” I said.

  “She looks familiar, but I doubt it. If anything, she’s probably seen me in passing or knows someone who looks like me,” was his response.

  “Dude, she’s staring a hole into the middle of your forehead. I know you feel her staring at you.”

  He glanced over in her direction again, then blew out a frustrated breath. “Fee, I told you I don’t know her. And if I do, I surely don’t remember her, so she can continue to stare all she wants. I’m not checking for her or any other female right now.”

  “Except Melonee,” I wanted to say, but I kept that little comment to myself. Cowboy’s infatuation with my best friend was weird to me. I was pretty sure Mel knew how he felt, because he did everything a love-struck fool did whenever he was around her, and I did remember him hinting to her a few times that he’d be a better man for her than Proof, but she never took the bait. Melonee looked at Cowboy the same way I did, as a brother, and he couldn’t seem to understand that.

  “Man, what’s taking so long? We’re normally in the back by now,” Cowboy stated, watching a few people get called up to the receptionist desk to check in.

  “Do you see all these people in here today? I told you we should’ve left earlier.”

  “You’re the one that wanted to stop by Melonee’s place, because she wasn’t answering her phone.”

  “Like you didn’t want to go,” I said, smacking my lips.

  Cowboy brushed his hands down the front of his dark-wash jeans, then picked at the imaginary lint on the button-down white shirt he had on under his black blazer. He picked his foot up off the floor and rested his ankle on his other leg. My big brother was looking kind of spiffy. I thought that until I looked down at the Star Wars socks he had on with his suede loafers, and rolled my eyes. This boy was such a nerd.

  Thirty more minutes passed before we were finally allowed to go to the back and join the rest of the people in the visitation area, which looked like a lunchroom. After finding a spot all the way in the back of the room, Cowboy and I sat down and waited patiently for our father to enter. When he finally did, the biggest smile spread across my face, and I jumped out of my seat and into his open arms.

  “Daddy!” I screamed, damn near causing us both to fall down on the floor.

  “Baby doll, you act like you didn’t see me just last month,” my dad said with a chuckle.

  “I know, Daddy, but I miss you like crazy. I can’t wait until you’re out of here.” I grabbed both sides of my father’s face and kissed each cheek. Looking at him, you couldn’t even deny that I was his child. I was the spitting image of him. Cowboy, on the other hand, looked like our ho-ass mama.

  “What’s up, Junior?” Daddy asked Cowboy, calling him by his government.

  Cowboy stood up and gave my father a hand slap, then a one-sided hug. “Nothing much, Pops. How you feeling?”

  “Better . . . now that I get to spend some time with my offspring. What’s been going on? How are y’all? How is Mel? And how is my grandbaby?” my father asked, referring to Madison. Because he considered himself the father figure in Mel’s life, it was only right for him to claim her daughter as his grandchild.

  “We’re all fine. Just trying to make it. Madison’s little butt is growing every day. She’s almost as tall as me,” I stated, picturing my godbaby’s cute little face.

  “You act like that’s a surprise, with your short ass. Everyone is taller than you,” Cowboy quipped, and I punched him in
his arm, causing my father to shake his head and laugh.

  We sat there for about two hours, catching up and reminiscing about old times. It felt so good to see my father smiling, laughing, and just shooting the shit, like we used to do in our living room back in the day. Sometimes I forgot that these prison walls and guards were surrounding us, as it felt so much like old times. Then there was the fact that my father kept up his appearance, the same way he had when he was on the streets. He still had that smooth, blemish-free caramel-colored skin that he was known for. His curly hair was thicker than ever and cut low, and his facial hair was trimmed to perfection. He looked as if he’d just stepped out of a magazine shoot. The only thing that brought me back to reality was the green scrubs-like jumpsuit my father had on every time I came to see him. Every inmate in here walked around with that prison uniform on, I guessed to tell them apart from the visitors.

  Cowboy and our father had just started to play a hand of spades when I figured now was the right time to ask my dad for that information I needed.

  “So, Daddy, have you talked to Uncle Dro lately?” I asked sweetly, trying to butter him up.

  He ignored my question, like always, and continued to play their game.

  “Daddy, I know you just heard what I asked you.”

  “I did, but I don’t know why you keep asking me about your uncle. You know me and that nigga never really got along when I was out, and we damn sho’ don’t get along now.”

  Which was true. My father and his younger brother were like night and day. While my father liked to work for everything he got, my uncle Dro was the type to get it by any means necessary. The last time we saw my uncle was when my father was arrested for this murder charge. Uncle Dro came by the house, trying to see if my father had left any money behind or anything that he could use to try to make some money, but after he came up empty handed, he left, and we never saw or heard from him again.

  “I know that, Daddy, but I need to talk to him about something.”

  I could see my father’s eyebrow rise on his handsome face, but he never responded. Cowboy, on the other hand, stopped playing the game altogether and turned toward me.

  “What the fuck you need to talk to him about? And why don’t I know anything about this?” he barked.

  “Look, I just want to reach out to him and see how he’s doing. I can’t be a concerned niece? I mean, he is the only family we have left.” I turned toward my father. “If anything happens to you, Uncle Dro will be the only living relative that we have. Don’t you think we should at least have each other’s numbers?”

  Cowboy and my father looked at each other for a minute, then continued to play their card game as if I hadn’t just said something. We sat in silence for what felt like forever, as they played a few more hands, before my father finally spoke again.

  “I don’t know what you’re up to, Fiona, but I hope for your sake that you don’t plan on including your uncle in anything you have going on. He may be fam, but the nigga will kill you and anything else standing in his way if there is some money involved.”

  “It’s nothing like that, Daddy, I swear,” I said, with my legs crossed underneath the table.

  “Yeah, it better not be.” He gave me a pointed look, then turned back to his game. “So what’s going on with school? Shouldn’t you be graduating soon?”

  I looked at Cowboy, who just shook his head and smirked.

  “Yeah, Daddy, I have a few more semesters, and then I’ll be done.” My father didn’t know anything about the BWC, the Black Widow Clique, and didn’t need to know. He had questioned me about the packages and the money that I put on his books faithfully every month without me having a job, but I had told him that I had sugar daddies who gave me whatever I wanted, including money. Which, in actuality, was true. I had just left out the part about marrying them, then killing them for even more money.

  “And what about you, Junior? You still doing that computer stuff for that big technology company?”

  Cowboy nodded his head but didn’t look my father in the eye, which was a sure giveaway that he was lying, but if my father noticed it, he sure didn’t say anything. He just continued to ask us about our professional life, which then somehow turned into questioning us about our personal lives.

  “What about you and Mel, Junior? You guys should be together now that she doesn’t mess with that no-good nigga she got pregnant by, right?” my father asked Cowboy, with a smile on his face.

  “Man . . . ,” Cowboy replied as he wiped his hand down his face and blew out a breath. “Melonee ain’t fucking with me like that. I’ve told her a few times that she should be with me, but she just laughs it off like I’m telling some kind of joke.”

  “Do you laugh with her?” my father asked.

  Cowboy shrugged his shoulders. “I did the first couple of times I told her, but this last time I stepped to her, I was serious, and she just waved me off.”

  “Maybe you should show her. I might be better than telling her.”

  “I do—” Cowboy said, but he stopped talking when I nudged his knee under the table. Our father didn’t need to know that he was the reason Mel always found out about the girls Proof was cheating with.

  When I said my brother was a beast with this computer shit, I meant it. If e-mails, text messages, pictures, Snapchats, whatever were deleted, he could dig them up, bring them back to life, and send them straight to you as if they came from another person’s phone.

  “Just give her a little more time. She’s probably still hung up on my grandbaby’s daddy. Just keep on doing you and being there for her, and she’ll eventually come around. That’s what happened between me and her mama,” my dad said with the biggest smile on his face. Anytime he talked about Melonee’s mom, he would always get that love-struck look in his eye and have a smile on his face that went from ear to ear. Mel’s mom was his first and only true love, and no one would ever change that. Even after her death, he still had all this love in his heart for her.

  We spent a few more hours with our father before visitation was finally over. After saying our good-byes and giving each other hugs, Cowboy and I headed back to his car. Before we hit the road for another three-and-a-half-hour drive back to L.A., he warned me about Uncle Dro, and then, against my father’s wishes, he wrote down the last number he had for our uncle on a piece of paper. He told me to keep any contact with our uncle to a minimum, and then he pulled out of the prison parking lot.

  “So what do you really need that nigga Pedro’s number for?” Cowboy asked as soon as we got on the freeway.

  I looked at my brother for a minute, trying to determine if I really wanted to tell him what I needed Dro’s number for. I knew he’d be down with the money part of the plan, but the other part, he might be in his feelings about. But because he was my right-hand, and I had never kept a secret from him, I decided to tell him, anyway.

  “What I’m about to tell you may have you feeling some type of way, but in the long run, we’ll be set for life if everything goes right,” I said.

  He raised his eyebrows at me, then looked back at the road. “You already know I’m down for whatever and I’m going to always have your back. We all we got.”

  I nodded my head at my older brother and turned down the volume on the radio. If we were going to do this, I needed his undivided attention when I gave him the rundown on this plan.

  Roman

  “So I take it that the meeting with Osamu Takahiro and his colleagues went according to plan?” my father asked as he sat at the head of the dining-room table for our Sunday brunch.

  “Yeah, everything went smoothly. I had my assistant send over all the paperwork this morning. Now we just wait for them to sign on the dotted line, and then everything’s a go.”

  “What do you think made them agree to everything? Don’t get me wrong, son. I know you can run this company just as well as I did, but you almost lost their backing the first time you met with those investors.”

  I thought abo
ut my father’s question for a minute. The first time I met with Mr. Takahiro and his team, the meeting ended with neither party coming to an agreement on a return on investment they would derive if they invested their money in this new RTD international company. We could easily finance everything ourselves, but a smart business never used its own money, especially when expanding overseas.

  After I talked with our lawyers and our accountants, I was reassured that I had done the right thing by declining their offer to invest a majority of the money in the company if they could be guaranteed a 45 percent return on investment, regardless of whether the company made a profit or not. I actually started to look into other sources as far as investment went, but a week after my meeting with Mr. Takahiro, I received a phone call requesting that we have another sit-down. There was no doubt in my mind that my father was behind it. Though he had been retired for two years, he still found ways to get involved in company business.

  I shrugged. “Um, honestly, Dad, it was . . .”

  “Me, of course,” Benji said, announcing himself as he entered the room.

  Every Sunday it was the same thing with him. Brunch was always served at twelve o’clock, and he always came waltzing in at two o’clock, with whatever sorry girl he had talked into his bed following close behind him. This morning, his tail was some blond girl with the weirdest-shaped nose I’d ever seen. Then, if that wasn’t enough, her eyes were big and popped out, as if she had a scared look permanently attached to her face. She pulled a few strands of her hair behind her ear, then sheepishly waved to everyone sitting at the table before taking a seat. Her tall, superthin frame told me that she had to be some kind of model, the type of girl Benji normally went for. I just hoped that messing with him didn’t end her career before it actually started.