Secrets of a Kept Woman (Volume 1)

by Shani Greene-Dowdell

  Sheniqua said, “Great party, big T.”

  She didn’t even address my wife, just looked me up and down like she wanted to bite me. No doubt, she was looking to score a baller for the night, but that would not be me. I didn’t want any more of what she had to offer, at least not that night. Plus, I really wasn’t feeling the way that she was disrespecting Shayla up in our house. I popped my knuckles and mean-mugged her something fierce. She got the picture and quickly found herself some sense. When she walked away, I thought she had better find someone else to play with.

  Shayla just stood, giving me that look that let me know that she was not feeling the fact that women were walking around acting like they had some type of relations with me. Pulling Shayla close, I attempted to ignore Sheniqua’s statement. I said, “You just wait until all of these people are gone. I intend to show you just how much I want you tonight.”

  “Yeah, I’m about to take a swim,” she said dryly, and left me standing there holding my dick in my hand. Before the night was over, each of my boys took turns pinning a couple hundred birthday dollars on Shayla’s bikini top. And that was cool, but when Street was pinning his money he was having issues getting the pin back on. I stood on the sidelines watching Shayla’s tipsy butt wiggle around as he tried to put the pin back in the material. I didn’t know why, but I felt a little bothered by the fact that Street had his hands on my wife, and she was enjoying it. Whether intentional or not, him getting all kinds of feels on my wife’s breasts was not what was up.

  Before I knew anything, I was up out of my seat and all in his face, “What’s the situation, potna?!” I stepped up and took over the closing of the birthday pin. “Why you lingering around my wife’s shit?”

  Stunned, Street stepped back and put his hands up in the air in innocence. He was not only my kinfolks, but my number one general, down for life, but I still had issues that didn’t allow me to trust anyone where Shayla was concerned.

  I looked at Street for an explanation, but Shayla spoke up instead, saying, “Stop tripping Titus, you are about to mess up my birthday flow. He was just trying to pin some money on my bikini top. I have so much money the pin isn’t working anymore.” Her words slurred as she spoke. “Plus, we all know that no one up in here would get involved with each other’s best friend, would they?”

  Her question sounded more like an accusation. Then, she smiled at me like she knew more than what she was saying and almost seemed to enjoy watching me try to come up with a response.

  She gave Street a look that I couldn’t quite make out, and added, “You know Street wouldn’t try anything frisky with me.”

  I closed the clasp on the oversized safety pin, and said, “There you go. I got it pinned on, but you need another pin. And you’re right about Street, I lose my head about you sometimes, girl.”

  Street interrupted saying, “Man, it’s nothing like that. Just giving my little sis a gwap.” Then he turned to Shayla and said, “Don’t spend it all at Neiman Marcus, doll.”

  “Lil sis… humph,” I mumbled under my breath and kissed my wife, sticking my tongue deep down her throat, cupping her backside as I intensified the kiss. That woman was my property, and no other man should have his hands on her, ever. After breaking away from her soft lips, I sent her to get me another drink. “Babe, will you bring me another beer?”

  Dazed from a dose of that T-passion, she said, “Mmmm, yes, of course! Anything for you, babe.” Before she walked away, she turned to Street and said, “And Street? Thanks for the money, honey.” She smiled as she sashayed toward the cooler. When she was completely out of earshot, I gave fair warning.

  “I’m going to have to watch you, nigga? First you fiddling with my wife’s titties. Then you calling her doll and naming her favorite shopping spot. I ain’t got nothing but love for you, mane, but don’t think for one minute I’m slow up in this motherfucker. I know my wife is fine and top shelf even, but don’t get the lines crossed or twisted, and we can keep things copasetic between us. Keep your mind on the business at all times, mane.” Street knew when I was about the business and when I was about jokes. This matter was strictly business. Just as he opened his mouth to respond, I heard a loud pop blast in my ear. Then there was a B-d-d-d-d-d-d… POP. POP! POP!

  Screams were heard all throughout my home and on the pool patio. A flood of people ran in all directions, ducking for cover. The noise was deafening. Instinctively, I rushed to find Shayla amongst the retreating crowd and dove on top of her while reaching for the nine at my waist-side. When I got ready to aim at the offender that dared to go off popping his pistol in my mother fuckin’ home, I found that I had five guns aimed back at me. That fact alone didn’t bother me; I’d been in enough shoot outs to know how to handle myself. You don’t do what I do for a living and think you’re going to remain safe all the time. It was the two guns that were glued to Shayla’s head that gave me pause.

  Not my baby, anything but my baby, I thought. I dropped my gun and begged them not to shoot her. “Don’t shoot anyone else, man. It’s me you want, so take me instead man, please!”

  A ski-masked gentleman who must have been the leader, said, “We didn’t come for blood tonight, only to negotiate.” He pulled me to my feet, called out all of my generals by name, and assembled us in my den for a meeting. As we walked, I made note that most of the people from the party had found their way outside and into their cars to leave, while a few cowered in corners, hungry for drama and action. Despite the risk and danger, they were eager to see how everything turned out. I shook my head, my people, my people. At gunpoint, I walked ahead of Street, Tony, Yak, and Buster into my den where the armed men relayed the demands of their Atlanta crime boss, “Big Shirley.”

  Big Shirley was about to cut in on my territory, and she had sent her goons to my home to lay out her demands. Not only did they want thirty-percent off the top of any of my future profits, but also a one-point-five million dollar advance. Hearing that news, I slammed my fist on the coffee table and vehemently stated, “If you think you niggas are going to watch a nigga work for years to establish a business, and then bum rush it, demanding a million five cut plus percentages, you got the whole game fucked up! I ain’t giving you shit!”

  Even though I knew that at the moment they had the upper hand, I was ready for war. They’d see me die with honor before I spent a minute paying niggas to breathe. I was Titus to the motherfucking Wilson. And they would not live to spend hide nor hair of a nigga like T’s money. “You will have to kill me first, partner. Now, run tell Big Shirley that!”

  The leader stepped so close to me that his Tec-9 was pressing on my nose. “Like I said man, we didn’t come for blood tonight, or else you would already be oozing all over this pretty cream colored rug. However, if it comes down to it, you will pay up tonight in cash or blood, Mr. Wilson.” When he saw that I wasn’t any where near ready to be cooperative, he said, “Get his wife in here.”

  Less than a minute later, my heart dropped into my drawers when Shayla was thrust into the coffee table so hard that she bumped her side square on the corner. She screamed out in pain, and I jumped up and yelled, “You’re a dead man!”

  When I reached in for the piece in my pocket, the minion that shoved Shayla shot Buster square in the chest, and the leader used his gun to shove me back down into my seat.

  The general said, “One more Texas Cowboy move like that and it will be your last, nigga. Now you listen, and listen clearly, to the words that are coming out of my mouth. I have clear instructions to get the first million five tonight. If I don’t have it by one second after midnight, it will cost you an extra million a day and the blood of someone close to you. Ya heard me? It’s a new boss in town.”

  Visions of the scene in my den flashed before my eyes like an action flick. I saw the dark red blood bubbles forming in Busters’ mouth as his body jerked feverishly on my cream-colored recliner. Shayla’s contorted face flashed before my eyes, her eyes wincing and her body squirming in pain and f
ear. Taking a deep breath and weighing all of my options, I reluctantly succumbed to their demands. A feeling I had not felt since I moved out of Sloan Mills Projects crept up on me – a feeling of defeat. I knew that for me to reclaim my status, I’d have to regroup and hit them back twice as hard. Once the news got around that my folks were bleeding from another teams’ gun and I was paying to keep them off my ass, I’d be downgraded to a chump immediately.

  “Okay, I’ll get you the money,” I said, ready to get them out of my house, so that we could get Buster to the hospital. The politics of the game would have to wait until I could sit down and think. Right now, I had to alleviate the stress of the immediate situation. My people’s safety was my number one priority – especially baby girl. Shayla was shaken up, tears streaming down her beautiful face.

  “Good choice, young man,” he said before a big, ugly, yellow nigga and a tall, dark-skinned female-looking dude escorted me up to my bedroom’s safe. Once his duffle bags were full of cash, they left us all with our face down in the den and vanished out of the den’s side door. As soon as I heard the door close, I rushed to my gun cabinet looking for my Uzi. I was the first one to run to the door blazing a trail of bullets behind them. Realizing that they were on foot made me run even faster down to the end of my driveway busting caps left and right.

  “Die motherfuckers!” I yelled behind them, but due to their head start, they all made it to their getaway van without one casualty. “FUCK!”

  I instructed Tony and Yak to get Buster to the emergency room pronto and to call his family on their way. Shayla was instructing people on how to help her perform CPR on him, but due to the fact that he had stopped breathing and his heart was not beating, I knew that he would inevitably be dead on arrival. Losing one of my boys in my home was not sitting well with me. I couldn’t let anyone affiliated with me die on my watch – and definitely not in vain.

  It was unheard of to hit a boss in his home, assault his wife, kill one of his generals, take his money and then life goes on as usual. There were going to be repercussions, you’d better believe that. I’d been to war before, but this violation of my sanctuary like this was new to me. Whoever was responsible for this had to have a set of cajones the size of the equator. The money they could keep as a souvenir of their big night, but on everything, they would repay me in blood. Their blood would be the only source of repayment for Buster, for Shayla, and for disrespecting a nigga like T in the worst way possible.

  As I sat there stuck in a vengeful rage a few minutes after Buster’s corpse was on the way to the hospital, my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I answered quickly. “Who this?”

  “It’s good to see that we are going to have a long and lasting relationship, Titus. Or should I call you A Nigga Like T?” It was a female, and she was laughing like that comedian Pierre was on stage telling bust-a-gut jokes.

  “Who the fuck is this?” I fumed, not in the mood for the bullshit. After she stopped laughing, it sounded like she took a long tug off of a cigarette and then spoke again.

  “First, my condolences for your friend… Buster is it? Second, keep the cash flow coming just like you did like tonight, and you and your crew will be all right with no more casualties. I’ll let you keep your turf, and it will be business as usual, except we’re partners now – business partners.”

  “Let me keep my business! Partners? You got things really fucked up. I will be finding you right after I assassinate everyone associated with your no-honor-having crew. That’s a promise, bitch!”

  “Oh, simmer down, young man, before you give yourself a heart attack. We meet under, well, sort of unconventional circumstances, but trust me when I say I plan to introduce myself to you formally. Before we met though, I wanted you to feel the fortitude of my force. Feel me? To know what you are up against, so to speak. Now, as I said, thanks for making your first payment on time. Sorry it had to have blood on it, as well, but I need you to know that this is an everyday thing for me, mane. Oh, and when I say that thirty-five-percent is due at the first of every month, I mean that it is due to be paid in full at twelve AM on the first day of every month, and not a minute late.”

  “I thought it was thirty,” I said, not knowing why I was challenging how much I was going to pay her when I didn’t plan to pay her one more dime.

  “No, that price went up when you shot at my men.” She paused, and then said, “Do you see how easy it was for us to touch you in your home? Now that we know that you’ll be more prepared next time, we’ll simply come harder and when and where you least expect it. Son, I can have a thousand men swarming Lake Nesto in ten minutes, so don’t try a Queen like BS.” And with that said, all I heard was the dial tone.

  My boy Street had been listening to the entire exchange on speaker phone. He said, “That’s Big Shirley, man. BS stands for Big Shirley. I heard about her when I was doing some transactions in Atlanta, but I didn’t know she was making her way down this way. With her manpower, she can do just what she says and more. We are up against the big league with her man. I think you should pay her.”

  “Big leagues! And, nigga, what? Do you want to eat her pussy or something? I’m not about to let some bitch take by force what I’ve worked so hard for without a fight. She owes me a million five and to see her blood drip. Now, what you need to be doing is getting ready for war!”

  Chapter 23

  Rhonda

  Once again, I was back in my doctor’s office. Either my birth control pills were out of whack again or the stress of the shooting had had my stomach tied up in knots ever since Shayla’s party. I thought it could have been that I had some kind of stress ulcer with all of the things I’d had on my plate lately. Regardless of how other people think or feel about a mistress, it was hard work to love another woman’s husband. If she was your best friend, it was twice as hard. Anyway, an excruciating pain had taken over my gut, and I’d been getting more and more nauseated.

  The first time I’d came to Dr. Swanman’s office, they told me that I wasn’t pregnant, and a tiny bit of relief came over me. To be honest, I had mixed emotions about having my man’s firstborn child. Even though I wasn’t ready to face Shayla then, I had to admit that the idea of having Titus’ baby made me smile. Now that Shayla had been acting all tart, the idea had really grown on me. I don’t know – I just might like it. I smiled at the thought. It was too bad that we hadn’t had many opportunities to create a love child lately.

  Titus was barely talking to me, and when he did, all that he talked about was me staying safe. He said that he wanted me to stay out of public as much as possible so that I would be out of harm’s way. I loved the thought that he was concerned about me, but at the same time, not being with him was a serious adjustment that I wasn’t about to start getting used to.

  The only other thing that he talked about was taking this Big Shirley bitch to war. I didn’t know exactly who she was, but I could not stand her just the same. Any woman who thought that she was bad enough to fuck with T was crazy. She had no idea how raw my man could get over his ends and his family. I was itching to show Titus how dedicated I was to his game and that I could be his down ass chick, but he wasn’t giving me much of a chance. I wanted to take Big Shirley out with my hands, woman to woman, but the next morning after Shayla’s party, Titus went to Atlanta spraying bullets left and right on corners ran by her. Then she’d returned the favor on Titus’ blocks in LaGrange, Opelika, and Auburn. He was afraid that she would come after the people closest to him next, so he kept checking in on me. Sitting in the doctor’s office, the more I thought about the whole ordeal, the more my stomach ached.

  To avert my attention to something else, I picked up the latest Essence of Color Magazine hoping that another one of their articles would keep my mind entertained. I guessed I was a glutton for this type of punishment. Just like the first time I was there, the first story I landed on seemed to be directed right at me. It was entitled, Home Wrecking Mistress.

  “Go figu
re?” I said aloud, knowing it was going to be yet another article bashing the other woman. I wished that they would keep it real for once, because we all know that it takes three to cheat – the frustrated husband, his hot ass mistress, and a homely wife not doing her job at home. For entertainment purposes only, I decided to humor myself and read the article anyway.

  Home Wrecking Mistresses

  Being a kept woman turns out to have no true meaning in the big spectrum of life, especially when the outcome is emotional turmoil, spiritual death and merely existing in a realm of misplacement. When a mistress’ livelihood depends on her man’s stolen time from his wife, she is not living a life of her truest potential…”

  The last line jumped up and slapped me in the face. Was I missing out on my blessings, as the article stated, because I was coveting my best friend’s husband? I had always thought that I could never find anyone as perfect for me as Titus, but how could I know for sure? I had never given anyone else a chance, really. Since high school, I had been messing around with Shayla’s boyfriend, and later her husband, on the down low. I toyed with the idea that there was a man out there that was better for me – a man of my very own – that I would never meet, because I was spending all of my time with Titus. The thought sent my stomach back into knots, and I pushed it out of my head.

  Or could it be that I was already spiritually dead before we had even started fooling around? On the inside I struggled against a feeling of nostalgia, reminiscent of feelings I had as a child. As a little girl, I yearned for affection and love from my mother when love and affection towards me were the last things on her mind.

  Mama was a lively and vibrant lady who worked hard but never seemed to be able to get ahead. When she wasn’t working long hours to provide for us, she seemed to get her only source of enjoyment in life by being in the company of different men – many different men. Many of her boyfriends would end up being one-night stands that I hated to see come and go from her bedroom in the wee hours of the morning. That vision haunted me for years afterwards.