A lot of things had changed while she was away. The fashion was different, and the people were too. Back in her time, the style icons were DKNY, Moschino, Versace, FUBU, Tommy Hilfiger, and Karl Kani, and teenagers sported one-strap overalls, crop tops, micro minis and cross-colors.
She explored the mall from top to bottom, going in and out of stores with tons of money to play with, thanks to Layla. She purchased a few eye-catching outfits from several stores and some pricey shoes too. By the end of the day, Maxine came strolling out of the mall feeling like a different woman. For the first time since her release from prison, she caught attention and brief looks from men. The red skinny jeans that highlighted her thick hips and shapely legs was only the beginning. Maxine was back in business—no longer looking forty-two, but thirty, showing off her femininity and youthfulness.
15
Central Booking, AKA “the Tombs,” on White Street in Lower Manhattan was where Layla sat detained for assaulting an officer. Twenty-four hours had gone by, and she hadn’t heard anything from Scott or her lawyer. She was still fuming. She wanted to break the jail bars in half and go after that bitch Penelope and castrate her husband, but she could only sit in the foul-smelling cell and seethe. Surrounded by lowlifes, bum bitches, and petty criminals, she wanted to get back to her life of luxury. But she also wanted revenge. How dare her husband choose his mistress over her, after she had given him twenty years of fidelity and six kids? After she’d ridden shotgun through drug wars with bullets whizzing past her head? After they’d buried three children?
Sitting in jail, Layla kept her composure the best she could. She refused to allow the other inmates to see her cry—to see her look weak. She kept her distance from everyone, daring some bitch to try her. So be it if she caught another charge. She was from the mean streets of Brooklyn. If a bitch didn’t know who she was, then she would learn the hard way.
***
Lance Broker came to see Layla right before her arraignment with the judge. He sat in the lawyer-client section of the courthouse bullpen behind the thick partition, looking like the million bucks he was worth. He had the gift of gab, clout throughout the judicial system, and a skilled legal team behind him. Quickly, he discussed the charges with Layla and assured her that his law firm was already handling it.
Layla scolded him for his tardiness in coming to her aid, and he tried to explain that he was busy with a trial. Layla knew it was Scott pulling strings—letting her stew in Central Booking for attacking Penelope.
The charges were read to Layla, and with Broker standing by her side looking like Perry Kevin, she pleaded, “Not guilty.” Her bail was set at fifty thousand dollars. She was ready to pay it right away.
Layla contacted Lucky, who posted her bail. A day later, she walked out of “the Tombs” looking like shit.
***
Layla trotted down the courthouse stairs with her Lance Broker, wanting to get far away from the area. He was speaking legal technicalities to her about the charges and once again assured her that she wouldn’t do another day in jail. Layla saw Lucky sitting behind the wheel of the Mercedes-Benz G-class, waiting for her.
“Where’s Scott?” she asked Lance, bitterness in her voice. “He couldn’t be here today? Is he with that fuckin’ whore? That nasty thot? He puts me in jail to be wit’ that bitch!”
Lance replied, “I don’t know anything about no thot, or where Scott is at the moment, Layla. My priority is your case.”
“You know what? Fuck him and fuck you!”
“Layla, listen. Let’s calm down and start thinking rationally. I know you’re upset, but this case will be dismissed.”
“Fuck you, Lance! And when you speak to Scott, you tell him I’m gonna see that fuckin’ bitch dead!” she said loudly for everyone around to hear her.
She departed ways with Lance and walked to where Lucky was parked. She hopped in the passenger seat and stared aimlessly out the windshield. Looking at her daughter was hard. Everything was building up inside of her. Her hurt drowned her like a non-swimmer.
Lucky sat and stared at her mother with bewilderment. “What happened? Daddy’s not answering his phone.”
Just like that, a few tears trickled from Layla’s eyes. She felt it all coming out of her like air from a balloon. She burst into tears, crying like a baby.
Lucky was taken aback by her mother’s sudden emotions. “What the fuck, Mom? What’s going on wit’ you and Daddy?”
Layla turned to her daughter and told her everything, holding nothing back.
“I never liked that bitch anyway,” she replied. She didn’t want another sibling—not a half sibling, and especially from some illegal immigrant who she felt trapped her father with pussy and a sad story. “He’s so fuckin’ stupid!”
Hearing about her father’s infidelity brought Lucky back to her own troubles with Whistler. She knew he was seeing another woman and didn’t want to be bothered with her anymore.
Lucky had never seen her mother like this before. She was looking weak, and Lucky didn’t like it. “Stop crying, Ma. When I see that bitch, I’m gonna handle her ass.”
“Your father’s protecting her,” Layla said.
Lucky frowned.
Scott was always a shrewd and intelligent man. How could he not see Penelope was coming for his wealth and a come-up? Why did he put a baby inside of her? Her family was going through enough already, and they didn’t need any more drama added on.
“Ma, you need to stop crying over that fuckin’ nigga,” Lucky exclaimed. “Stop it! Stop it! He ain’t worth your tears. Scott gonna be Scott, but please, don’t get weak.”
Layla took a profound and needed a lungful of air and dried her tears. Her daughter was right. The tears and woe had to end right away. She pulled herself together and regained her composure. Scott and that bitch had brought her out of her character. She looked at Lucky and said, “Never allow a man to see you sweat and go crazy over him. It’s embarrassing. They will not respect it.”
Lucky took note, reflecting on her own situation with Whistler. She was tempted to tell her mother about the affair right there but quickly thought against it. Her mother’s problems were enough for the day.
Lucky couldn’t fathom why her father would choose a side-bitch over his ride-or-die wife. She had always respected her father, but today he she saw him as a fuckin’ fool for cursing out his wife in front of Penelope and allowing her to sit in jail while he went to console his mistress.
Layla stared at her daughter with troubled eyes, and there was a secret behind her gaze. Layla felt like the past was coming back to haunt her. Her husband was having an affair and a baby with another woman. Was it karma biting her in the ass?
Layla released a deep breath and spoke. She had to tell Lucky the truth about her relationship with her father. “I used to be his side-bitch a long time ago,” she finally admitted out loud and to herself. “I fell in love with your father when he was in love with someone else.”
“It was Maxine, right?” Lucky asked.
Layla nodded.
She’d become one of Scott’s mistresses back in the days. Back then, Scott was a male whore. Maxine was his main bitch, and he did everything for her. Whatever Maxine wanted, Scott bought for her. It made Layla jealous of their relationship.
Layla fell into his trap of enticement, and they fucked behind her friend’s back. One day, she told him she was pregnant with his baby. Immediately, he made her get an abortion. Maxine couldn’t find out about it. Maxine was his true love, not her. But when Maxine told her about Sandy’s pregnancy a few months after she had her abortion, Layla became infuriated by the news. How could he allow Sandy to keep her baby when she was forced to go down to the clinic and get rid of hers? It made her go berserk. She used Maxine’s incident with Sandy to justify attacking Sandy that night.
“I was the other woman, and your father was using me f
or sex. I wanted to change that. I wanted to flip it and make him mine,” she told Lucky. “That night when I beat that bitch Sandy down, I wanted Maxine to stay and take the charge. I knew she would stay; she was weak like that. I saw it as an opportunity to get rid of the main girlfriend and another side-chick, killing two birds with one stone. And with them both gone, I stepped up and became your father’s main woman. That same night Maxine got locked up, your father and I hooked up at some luxury hotel, and we fucked for hours. Yeah, he was sad to hear about Maxine and Sandy, but liquor and drugs distracted him, and that night, I gave him some of the best sex he ever had.”
Lucky took it all in. She was surprised to hear her mother come clean about everything. It was definitely an earful, but she was glad her mother did what she had to do. If she hadn’t, then neither Lucky nor her siblings would have existed.
“I guess karma’s a bitch, right? Look at me, it’s kicking my ass right now. Scott’s fuckin’ the nanny, and now she’s pregnant. Now I’m the one who’s being pushed out the door.”
“Fuck karma! We fuck that bitch karma up and toss her ass in the sea, like we gonna do that bitch, Penelope. You’re a survivor, Ma, and you gonna do what you need to do to stay on top. You and Daddy, y’all are meant to be. Don’t let that foreign non-English speaking bitch get in between y’all two.”
Layla was ready to do something about the problem. Penelope was about to become a dead Cuban, pregnant or not. She was an interference with her livelihood, and Layla was growing tired of these intrusions on her life, her well-being, and her family.
“Let’s kill this bitch,” she said to Lucky.
Lucky smiled. “I’m down, Ma.”
16
Information was power, and Jimmy knew that all too well. Sometimes it wasn’t about muscle or firepower, but about knowing your targets—studying their movements, habits, and surroundings. Once you knew your rivals’ activities and locations, then sometimes it took subtle action to wipe them out. Jimmy knew he had the advantage on his adversaries. For the past month he’d been conducting surveillance and collecting information. Sometimes he received it the hard way, making people talk who didn’t want to talk, like Knock. Knock was a fierce and loyal soldier to his bosses. He would not give them up easily. He was a tough nut to crack, and Jimmy was somewhat impressed by his boldness.
Jimmy started with the garden shears to his fingers, cutting them off one at a time and inducing agonizing pain for Knock. Ten fingers later, the man was still defiant.
“Fuck you, muthafucka!” Knock cursed him.
Jimmy only smiled. In due time, they all talked. Some took longer than others, but he always got what he wanted from them.
Jimmy moved on to his next devious torture device, a blowtorch. The hot blue flames crisped, blackened, and sloughed off Knock’s skin. Butt naked, Knock writhed and screamed on the table he was firmly tied down to. Knock’s screams echoed throughout the concrete room, but there was no one around for miles to hear him. Jimmy worked the flames against his feet and bare legs. When he attacked Knock’s genitals with the flaming device, he was ready to talk. By then, his skin looked like melting wax, and the smell of human flesh permeated the entire room.
Jimmy was ready to pass on this newfound information to Deuce and have his boss put it to good use.
***
Deuce loathed New York City. He thought it was crowded, rude, and hostile. He also hated New York because for a long time he was at war with New York City drug dealers. New York niggas were arrogant like the Roman Empire—invading everywhere and trying to annex everything around them. They believed niggas from out of town were supposed to bow down to them and surrender their territory to them because they were from Brooklyn, the Bronx, Harlem, or Queens. Like New York City was the only city that bred killers and get-money niggas. He felt that New York had to be stopped. They were greedy and disrespectful, and the day they invaded his territory in Delaware was the day they made the biggest mistake of their lives.
He and Jimmy sat in the Ford Taurus on Church Street in Lower Manhattan. The car was unassuming, but the men inside, not so much. The evening was flouting the daylight atmosphere of the city with a descending sun. Church Street was cluttered with cars and foot traffic.
Deuce took in the bustling ambiance. It wasn’t his cup of tea. It was the far opposite of Baltimore and Wilmington. There was too much going on at one time, but he was far from intimidated by it. Business had to be taken care of, and he was the one to do it. He sat in the passenger seat puffing on his Newport and taking everything in. He took no one or nothing for granted. His eyes were transfixed on the many people moving about, the towering buildings that decorated the narrow area, and passing traffic that continuously flowed like a stream. On his lap was a loaded and unused .45 Magnum, the perfect weapon to take down a drug kingpin.
This was Deuce’s moment to decapitate the king and crush the crown he wore. Jimmy always came through for him, and he’d received the perfect intel about Scott. It took some time, but it was rewarding. The more information Jimmy gathered about Scott, his crew, and his family, the more he understood why Scott would be foolish enough to come to Wilmington and try him and his crew. The West organization had serious muscle, influence, longevity, and power. Scott felt his organization was stronger and more developed in every area, and that DMC were Neanderthals. Deuce was about to show him otherwise.
Deuce rarely got his hands dirty—he had soldiers for that—but this was personal. They’d killed his sister and tried to embarrass him on his own turf. Wilmington was his gold mine, and he had everything the way he wanted it, from having the police in his pocket to the extortion of the locals. But now many people were dead because of the drug war, and business was slow. He was losing money because of the West organization.
Deuce wrapped his hand around the barrel of the .45 Magnum. He and Jimmy were very patient men. For an hour, they sat on the city block and scoped everything, watching people go in and out of LA Fitness, nestled in the middle of the city street. They knew to get to an area much earlier than their target to spot the good and bad about their surroundings. And that’s exactly what they did. Knowing Scott was a health freak and that he liked to work out at a particular gym was a bonus. The one problem they had was, Scott wasn’t a routine person. So every day for the past week they had been watching the place, knowing he would show up one day out of that week.
A black Range Rover with tinted windows passed their Ford and double-parked in front of the LA Fitness. The doors opened, and Scott and two of his henchmen climbed out of the vehicle. Bingo! Deuce finally had a real view of the man who wanted to turn his world upside down and seize his drug operation. Now, he was about to turn the tables on his rival.
Deuce gripped the pistol tighter in his hand. The sight of Scott made his blood boil. He was eager to strike, but he remained patient. He couldn’t risk fucking things up by suddenly becoming impatient. He and Jimmy watched and plotted.
Deuce wondered why Scott came to this gym in the city. He thought the area was too busy and too open. Being the drug kingpin and mastermind Deuce was, he saw too much vulnerability in the area for a man with enemies.
Dressed in a black-and-white tracksuit and white Nikes, Scott traveled quickly inside the building. His two men got back in the Range Rover.
“We catch him when he leaves,” Deuce said to Jimmy.
Jimmy nodded. He could easily kill Scott himself, but Deuce insisted on doing the dirty work. It was a public place, but it was their only open window.
Deuce finished his cigarette and discarded it out the window. He exhaled the smoke. The gym was on the second and third floors of a four-story building, and the area was flooded with commercial businesses, vehicular traffic, and pedestrians everywhere. There were a few passing police cars, but that didn’t thwart Deuce’s deadly motives. He noticed the area had several surveillance cameras in the vicinity, including three c
ameras near the gym’s entrance.
A full hour was about to come up since Scott had gone inside, and still, there was no sign of him. Deuce didn’t want to lose his target by being too patient. Maybe there was an exit they’d missed. He knew that Scott had not come this far in the game by being stupid. But his men were still seated in the Range Rover, waiting patiently.
“I’m going inside,” he announced to Jimmy.
“I thought we sit and wait until he comes out.”
“Fuck that! I’m going in.” Deuce pushed the door open and exited the car out onto the sidewalk. Dressed in a sweat suit with a ball cap pulled low over his eyes and carrying a small duffel bag, Deuce looked like a gym member. His .45 Magnum was cleverly hidden on his person. He calmly approached the building. It was now or never.
***
Scott was breaking out in a serious sweat with his personal trainer. Tammy was a fitness guru, addressing all of his weak points and making them much stronger. Today, they were working on his cardio and his upper body strength with him having ten-minute breaks between. Scott was already a healthy and fit man, but he always felt he needed to improve in some areas. The streets were not forgiving, and he had to be in excellent shape if there came a time when he needed to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
He was paying good money to learn mixed martial arts from an instructor with three black belts who had won several martial arts competitions. Tammy was the best, and she was expensive, but the $200 an hour was worth it. She was a personal trainer to some celebrities too, and she was in top shape—slim waist, nice curves, killer abs, firm buttocks, and sturdy legs. And she wasn’t just athletic, she was beautiful too. She had skin like night and a body like Adrienne-Joi Johnson.
Another part of the workout Scott loved was the eye candy in the place. From his personal trainer to several other beautiful ladies in the Manhattan gym, they were spread everywhere.
Mafioso [Part 2] Page 10
