He lowered his chin to his chest and shook his head. “The crazy thing is, your mama knew that you were mine too. But she didn’t want April to know, because they had become best friends.”
I sat back on the bench, in disbelief. I mean, like I said, I knew that we had some similarities, but not enough to make me question whether he was my father or not. “So Fiona and I are sisters?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Wait. I’m confused. If I’m your daughter and she’s your daughter, that means we’re sisters.”
“I told you I always felt that Fiona wasn’t mine. The way April was moving back then, she and I barely had sex. She was always in the streets, getting money. Only thing she’s ever loved more than herself.” He blew out a breath and wiped his hand over his face. “I did a DNA test on the both of you. Yours came back positive, and Fiona’s . . . Although she wasn’t mine, her blood still had my family’s DNA running through it.”
“Your family’s?”
“Yeah . . . family. I have a brother named Pedro, who only comes around when money is involved. Ruthless-ass muthafucka. Would kill his own mama if the price was right.”
“So you’re saying Fiona’s dad is your brother? And you are my dad?”
Max just looked at me without saying anything, and we sat in an awkward silence for a minute. My emotions were flying all over the place, the strongest one being hurt. Hurt that my mother had never told me, despite all the years I had asked her, who my father was. Hurt that Maxwell had never said anything to me when he had the opportunity to do it. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes, but I was not about to let them fall. All this time I had thought I didn’t have any parents left, when in fact I had one.
Maxwell reached out to touch my hand again, but I snatched it away. A remorseful look crossed his face, and I could tell that he regretted keeping this information from me for so long.
“Why now, Max?” I asked, my voice cracking, my tears at bay. “Why tell me this now?”
“Because . . . I needed you to know that backstory before I told you what I really called you up here for.”
“What more is there for you to possibly tell me?”
His brow rose as he leaned forward on the bench, his fingers crossing in front of him. “You have no idea.”
* * *
I drove like a bat out of hell from Corcoran, trying to make it back to L.A. in record time. The shit Maxwell had just told me had my blood boiling like crazy. And it wasn’t the part about him being my father. That situation didn’t have shit on what I had found out from Maxwell about that two-faced, jealous-ass, backstabbing bitch Fiona. All this time, I had thought that, that scum-bucket, bottom-feeding ho was my friend. Come to think of it, Aunt Bree had always tried to warn me about her, but I guessed when someone showed you only what they wanted you to see, you believed it. Best friends. When, in actuality, we were cousins. And to think that Cowboy, my own brother, had had more than just sisterly thoughts about me.
I pressed my foot down on the gas pedal and prayed that the highway patrol was already done with its quota for the day. I needed to get back to L.A. fast and take care of this bitch before she tried to bring any more harm my way. I tried calling Aunt Bree a few times, but her phone kept going to voice mail. And when I called Roman, Kason had just woken up and needed his diaper changed, so he told me that he would call me back. I thought about calling my granny and asking her about any of the things Max had said about being my father, but that was a conversation that she and I needed to have face-to-face. The only other person left with whom I could share my thoughts about this bitch Fiona was Viktoria. Hopefully, she wasn’t in court and could pick up her shit. After pulling my phone out of the glove compartment, I dialed her number, and surprisingly, she picked up on the first ring.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Vik. Sorry to be calling you like this, but are you busy?”
“Hey, Mel. I’m not too busy. Just looking over some case files and listening to Marques ramble on about something.” She paused for a moment. “Are you okay? You sound like you’re crying.”
I looked in the rearview mirror at my red eyes and noticed the tears, which I hadn’t even realized were falling down my face. “No, I’m not,” I lied.
“Where are you? Do you need me to call Roman?”
“I’m on the freeway right now, headed back to L.A.”
“From where?”
“Corcoran State Prison.”
“What were you doing there?”
After blowing out a breath and licking my lips, I ran down everything that Maxwell had told me about Fiona, Cowboy, April, my mom, and some chick name Julia, whom my mom had met during that short time she skipped town while pregnant with me. According to Maxwell, while my mother was living up north, she met this Julia chick, who introduced her to scamming men for money. When my mother came back to town, she and Julia basically picked up where they had left off with their little jack girl schemes. It wasn’t until they added April to the equation that they started killing men for larger amounts of money. For a while, they were doing good, until Maxwell and Mom started messing around again. When April found out, she disappeared, leaving Fiona and Cowboy with Maxwell, and Julia went off on her own.
The kicker to that whole story was that Fiona blamed me for everything. She blamed me for losing her father, for April walking out on her and Cowboy, for being homeless and broke, and for robbing her of her childhood. The funny thing was, we had been in the same boat. My granny hadn’t been making any type of money to really take care of me, and with Bree away at college, Granny had basically robbed Peter to pay Paul in order to care for me, so it wasn’t like my life was any better than Fiona’s. And there had been many nights when I would let Fiona sleep at the other end of my twin-size bed, such as when she and Cowboy ran out of money to stay at a motel. And there had been times when I gave her my lunches at school, just so that she could fill her belly with something.
She and I had both lost a lot on the day that my mother died, but I hadn’t blamed anyone for shit. Then I’d found out that she was behind the attack that had put me in the hospital. That she was the one who had set the whole thing up, just to get more money out of Roman. That bitch’s time was up. Fuck loyalty, fuck friendship, fuck any type of love I had ever had in my heart for her. Fiona was dead to me now, and I had a bullet with her muthafucking name on it.
Viktoria blew out a breath. “Damn, Mel. I think you should call Roman before you do anything else. My cousin may be a businessman, but he’s with the business, if you get what I’m saying.”
“Girl, Roman wouldn’t hurt a fly. That’s what I love so much about him. Totally different from the men I used to date.”
“You keep telling yourself that. I know my cousin, though, so you should just give him a call. Run it by him and then go from there.”
After we hung up, I thought about what she had said, but this was some shit I needed to handle on my own. Fiona had the game fucked up if she thought shit was about to go down like this. Checking the clip of my Beretta 84 with the black-lace handle, a gift Proof had given me for my birthday a few years ago, I thought to myself that Fiona just didn’t know who she was messing with. Her life was ending today, and anybody else who was in on this shit . . . I had a hot one for them too.
Fiona
Someone had been knocking on my front door for the past ten minutes, adding to the massive headache I had. I was hoping that whoever it was would eventually get the picture that I didn’t want to be bothered and would leave me the fuck alone. So much shit had me stressing the hell out, and I didn’t know where to start in terms of alleviating some of it. My mother was starting to become a real pain in my ass, making me regret ever wishing that she and I would reconnect one day. The shit with Melonee wasn’t going as planned, but I was sure I’d be seeing her sooner than later.
Bree’s ass was already dead in my book, and then Benji wasn’t returning any of my calls or texts. I’d gone by the mo
nstrosity he called his bachelor’s pad after I came from the hospital, but he and that bitch Carmen had left for some kind of vacation, according to his housekeepers. I had tried calling his phone a few more times after that and had kept getting sent to voice mail on the first ring. When I’d asked April if she had heard anything from Julia since the last time we met, she told me her results were the same as mine: no answer when she called Julia’s phone. Something in the pit of my stomach was telling me that something was going on, but with my lust for money, I just wouldn’t leave well enough alone.
I eased my sore body down into the bubbly water in my deluxe spa tub and was instantly relieved of the pain radiating through me. After laying my head back against the tiled wall, I closed my eyes and slowly sank deeper into the hot water. It had been a few days since the fight I had with Bree, and I was still feeling the effects of it. The splint I had to get for my two fractured fingers had taken a little getting used to, but I was handling it well. The doctor had said I had to wear it only for a few weeks, and then I’d be back to normal. The bruised skin on my arms, legs, back, and sides was healing much slower than I would have liked, but at least I could cover up the black eye I had with a much-heavier coat of foundation. I shook my head and smiled when the lyrics of Nipsey Hussle’s song “Bullets Ain’t Got No Name” started playing in my head.
Pull the trigger, shoot that nigga. Make sure that you get him, ’cause bullets ain’t got no name.
The funny thing was, the bullet I had for Bree most definitely had her name on it and would be planted right between those pretty little hazel eyes of hers. Thinking about that song had my mind drifting to Proof for a second. I rubbed my hand over the small bulge in my belly, wondering how he would feel about my pregnancy if he were still alive. With the way Bree had stomped on my sides and my stomach, I had thought I would miscarry, but I didn’t. The doctor had run a few tests while I was at the hospital, and it had turned out that the baby wasn’t harmed.
In any normal situation, the expectant mother would’ve been overjoyed to receive such news, but with me, it had been a different story. When the nurse had tried to hand me the sonogram, after making sure everything was okay, I’d refused to take it. There was no need to look at a picture of a baby I wasn’t going to keep. Having a child right now would slow me down tremendously, and quite frankly, I didn’t think that being a mother was in the cards for me. With April as my example of what a mother should be, it was pretty safe to say that this baby was better off being sucked out and disposed of than being born to me.
I guessed with so much shit on my mind, combined with the soothing hot water and the couple of pain pills that I’d taken, I must’ve dozed off, totally forgetting about the insistent knocking at my front door. When I awoke and picked up my phone to look at the time, two hours had passed by, the water in the tub had turned cold, and my body had started to ache again. I positioned myself to get out of the tub but stopped when I felt a presence in my bathroom. When I pulled the shower curtain back, I wasn’t surprised to see my uncle Dro sitting on my toilet, skimming through the latest copy of Blackhair magazine, which I had picked up from the store earlier. A toothpick was hanging from his mouth, and he was dressed in all black, like he normally was. The smell of whatever cigarette brand he smoked hovered in the air, making my stomach queasy. The nigga smelled just like an ashtray, the same way Cowboy’s house had smelled when I last went over there.
He twirled his toothpick around in his mouth a few times before he laid the magazine down on the sink and turned his attention to me. Voice low and raspy, he said, “Your boy hasn’t coughed up that additional fifty K I asked for. Where’s my money?”
I rolled my eyes and remained in the cold water and tried to cover my body up as much as I could with the shower curtain. The lust in Uncle Dro’s eyes was very apparent as he gazed at my feet, legs, and thighs, which were still exposed. “I don’t know. I’ll make sure to ask him about it whenever he answers one of my calls. Seems like you’re not the only one he’s been dodging.”
“What does him dodging your calls got to do with my money? I told you that I wasn’t playing about that shit the last time I was here, Fiona.” He licked his lips and trained his eyes on my breasts, which were covered by my arms and a bit of the shower curtain. He squinted his eyes a little as he tried to get a glimpse of my bare breasts. “If you can’t get my paper right now, I’m more than willing to take other forms of payment until you can.”
“Nigga, are you serious? Other forms of payment? Like what?”
He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, “You know what I’m talking about.”
When it finally registered with me what he was actually hinting at, my anger level went up ten more notches. Was this bum-ass leech really propositioning me for sex as a form of payment? The fuck?
“Nigga, I’m your fucking niece.”
“Whose pussy is just like any other bitch’s in this world. You bleed once a month and give it up to any nigga who pays you any attention.” He looked down at my belly. “And from the looks of things, you fucked around and let one of these bitch-ass muthafuckas nut in you. But I’m cool with that. Pregnant pussy is better, anyway.”
I shook my head in disgust. This muthafucka really had me and life fucked up if he thought I was so desperate that I’d let him fuck me just to pay off a debt. My father’s warning not to reach out to my uncle after I’d asked him for my uncle’s phone number started playing in my head. That was one of the times I should’ve listened but hadn’t.
“Dro, you need to get the fuck up out of my house with that bullshit, or else.”
He smirked, an evil glint in his eyes. “Or else what?”
“Or . . . or . . . else . . .” I fumbled with my words. “I’ma call the police.” The second those words slipped from my lips, I knew that Uncle Dro didn’t believe me by the smile that formed on his face. I couldn’t threaten to kill him, because the gun I had hidden in my bathroom was underneath the sink, which he was sitting right next to. If I went to reach for my piece, he would most definitely see what I was going for.
“Call ’em,” he taunted, voice low and threatening. Leaning over the tub, Dro snatched the shower curtain from my grasp and then wrapped his hand around my throat. “By the time they get here, I’ll be gone. But not before doing you the same way me and that dumb-ass brother of yours did your friend.”
“My brother? What the fuck are you talking about?”
Uncle Dro’s grip tightened around my neck, and my hands automatically flew up, causing my breasts to fall from behind my arms. A low moan seeped from his lips as he watched my titties jiggle freely while my hands struggled to loosen his grip.
“Who do you think I took with me that night to do the job? How do you think I got in and out undetected? Past the security system and surveillance cameras? Who do you think raped your friend and got a piece of some of the sweetest pussy he ever had, according to him? I always thought the nigga was gay, but I was wrong.” My uncle Dro laughed. “The boy is backward as fuck. He couldn’t stand to watch me beat the fuck out of her, so he left out of the room, but he didn’t have a problem sticking his dick in her bloody and bruised body. How ironic is that shit?”
Was that why Cowboy thought Mel’s baby was his? So he was the other person Uncle Dro had taken with him that night. But why hadn’t he told me? When I had told him about the plan to set Roman up, Cowboy had been with it, until I told him that Melonee was a part of it too. The nigga had actually nutted up on me and had threatened to fuck my whole life over if I went ahead with it. Nah, Dro’s ass was lying.
“I don’t believe you,” I managed to say through gasps. “My brother thinks the world of that bitch. Even though he knows how I feel about her.”
“Well, you don’t have to believe me, and I don’t give a shit about what he thinks. Especially when his thinking can’t make my fifty K appear. Now, either give up some of that pussy, which I know is as good as your mama’s, since the apple d
oesn’t fall too far from the tree, or start asking God to forgive you for all the sins you’ve committed over the years. Only way he might let you into heaven, if you think about it.”
Letting my uncle fuck me was not and would never be an option. And to just sit here and let him kill me wasn’t going to work, either. Thinking quickly on my feet, I grabbed the Dove body wash I used and squirted it in his eyes. When he fell back, I jumped out of the tub and hopped over him, falling right on my ass in the process. I tried to get up but slipped again because of the wet tile floor, this time catching myself on the toilet.
“Bitch!” Uncle Dro yelled, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. “I was giving you the chance to pay off some of your debt, but now I’ma take that pussy, and I want my money before the night is over.”
Making sure I stepped on the bathroom rug this time when I got up, I was able to get a head start toward my kitchen, where I planned to grab the gun I knew was in the refrigerator. I had just reached for the handle of the fridge to open it when the hair on the back of my head was pulled with so much force that I felt my head hit the floor before the rest of my body. I was seeing stars, moons, and horseshoes when I tried to open my eyes, to no avail. The moisture I could feel slowly spreading beneath the back of my head had to be blood, but I was too dazed to reach back there with my hand and see. Uncle Dro’s heavy body sliding on top of me was the only thing I could feel, and when I tried to push him off me, I was rewarded with a blow to my face.
God must’ve been looking out for me, though, because before Uncle Dro could even unzip his pants, there was a loud knock at my front door.
“Fiona!” Melonee yelled. “I know your bitch ass is in there. Come open the fucking door. You think Aunt Bree beat your ass the other day . . . ? Bitch, you already know I have hands, and I owe you this for all the bullshit you’ve been doing.”
The Black Widow Clique Page 31
