She’d spent about ten minutes in her watery paradise when she was suddenly interrupted by an intruder in the hotel bathroom. She heard the door open and opened her eyes to find Scott towering over her, dressed in his first-rate three-piece suit and clutching a lit cigar in his hand. He glared at her, invading her space. She stared back.
He tossed the knot of money at her, but she refused to catch it, and it landed in the tub and sank to the bottom. It was the five grand she’d given to Trans.
He moved closer to Layla while she lounged helplessly in the tub. All she could do was watch his movement. She watched him take a seat at the edge of the sunken marble tub, his eyes ice-cold toward her. She could hear others in the next room moving about, most likely his thugs and goons that were there for his protection. Suddenly she felt like she needed some protection of her own.
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” he said, locking eyes with her.
Layla remained silent. She had nothing to say to him. She wanted to get out of the tub and wrap a robe around herself, but the water by some means became a barrier for her. She didn’t move. She sat there and returned her own hardened gaze.
“You think I wouldn’t find out? I own these niggas, so when you go behind my back to pay a nigga to execute Penelope, did you actually believe he would have the balls to go through with it?”
“I don’t know what you talkin’ about,” she replied, playing stupid.
“Don’t fuck with me, Layla! You’re lucky I don’t drown your ass in that fuckin’ tub right now,” he said with a tight jaw. “But listen to me clearly, as I’m gonna say this to you once and in clear English. If anything happens to Penelope—I don’t care what it is—I’m gonna blame you and I’m gonna come after you. And it will personally be me, no one else, with my own two hands.”
Layla stayed silent. The corners of her mouth turned downward in an intense scowl at her husband.
Scott scooted closer to her, his eyes burning into her. “Don’t fuckin’ push me, bitch. You don’t wanna be on my bad side.”
“So that’s it, Scott? Huh? Her life is worth more than mine? I’m the mother of your six kids, been there for you since day one, and you choose that bitch over me?”
Coldly, he replied, “If something happens to her, then something will happen to you.” He quietly lifted himself from the edge of the tub and exited without looking back at her.
Once Scott was gone, she could no longer control her emotions. A few tears trickled down her face, and she huffed and puffed with rage. She lingered inside the tub, feeling hurt and betrayed by her husband all over again.
30
It was the third cigarette Layla smoked within an hour, and she downed another drink. Lucky hated to see her mother in such a sad state. She watched Layla sit in her living room in silence and mope over her father’s actions. The two ladies had had a detailed conversation that night. Layla felt her daughter was the only person she could trust and talk to. The men in her life were all against her, while Lucky understood her pain.
Layla became transparent in front of her daughter. Though she was a gangster bitch, she still had feelings, she had needs, and she still loved her husband. Both women were highly perturbed by the men in their lives, with Lucky thinking about her troubles with Whistler. But Layla felt disrespected. She’d paid a man to do something, and he went running back to Scott. How dare her underling betray her?
Layla felt she should’ve gone to Lucky first to take the mistress out. She would have done it without hesitation. She told Lucky about Meyer, and that Scott had threatened her.
At first, Lucky was annoyed with Meyer’s action and angry about Scott’s threats. Her brother could have gotten the murder done on the low without Scott knowing. Luna would have easily done it for Meyer. The two men were inseparable, and it seemed like Luna was becoming more of a brother to Meyer than Bugsy.
Second, it was a bitter pill to swallow to hear that her father threatened to kill Layla over some bitch. Lucky knew that her mother could exaggerate sometimes and was known for going over the top with things, but the tears in her mother’s eyes flowed non-stop. And although her mother had said to never let a man see you sweat, and don’t cry over a nigga, she was contradicting herself tonight.
Lucky knew that her father would lay down his life for his family, but she thought Penelope was clouding his judgment. She had always hated Penelope and probably hated her even more than her mother did.
***
Lucky remembered when her male classmates used to come to the house to study, which was really a make-out session. The boys used to gawk at Penelope. They were stuck on her beauty and hung onto every word she spoke in her Spanish accent. Even her brothers were gaga over the bitch, but Lucky saw right through her.
Corey was Lucky’s crush before Whistler came into the picture. She remembered Corey so vividly. He was tall, lean, and in excellent shape. He was light-skinned with hazel eyes, had short, dark hair, and waves that spun like a top. Lucky wanted him to be her first, but he wanted no parts of Lucky, even though she was a beautiful young girl. He used her to get to Penelope. She would catch Penelope brushing up against him when she thought no one was looking. And the seductive smile she aimed at Corey pissed her off. Whenever Lucky confronted Penelope about it, she would say, “Me no understand. No speak English.”
Lucky believed the bitch understood every word spoken in the house. She knew for a fact that the bitch was manipulative and dangerous, and now she had her father caught up in her web of deceit and sex. It made her furious to know her father put his seed into that bitch.
***
With the night still young, the two women talked and drank, until Layla finally fell asleep. She took comfort on Lucky’s plush couch, an empty bottle of vodka near her reach. Her father had her mother stressed out and transitioning from wine and champagne to vodka and Scotch.
Lucky felt the urge to do something about the trouble. She was gradually watching her family fall apart. Three of her siblings were dead, her father and mother were at each other’s throats, Meyer was becoming estranged from everyone, and there had been an attempt on Scott’s life. So much was happening, but the king of the family had his head so far in the clouds with pussy, he couldn’t see he was about to crash and burn soon. If something wasn’t done immediately, they would lose everything that everybody had worked so hard for.
Early the next morning, Lucky left her mother passed out on her couch and left her building. She climbed into her Benz truck and drove to the scrap yard her father owned in Coney Island, Brooklyn. It was one of her father’s headquarters, a place where he liked to hang out and take care of business. She steered her Benz truck into the cluttered area of junked cars and machines and left it parked in the center of the property. Seeing his Escalade parked in the yard told her that her father was there also.
Lucky swung open the driver’s door, and her “red bottoms” quickly hit the dusty, rocky pavement. As she marched toward the trailer, her father’s bodyguards watched her every movement.
One of them said to her, “He’s busy right now.”
“I don’t give a fuck what he’s doing,” she answered. “I need to see him.” She pushed her way through the men and charged into the trailer.
Inside, Scott was holding court with some men, all of them dressed in dark suits.
Lucky glared at her father seated at the head of the table in his high-back chair, cigar in his hand like always. “I need to speak to you in private.”
Scott looked at his daughter coolly and said, “Gentlemen, excuse us for a moment. Let me have a moment with my daughter.”
Each man lifted himself from his chair and departed from the room, and the door closed behind the last man.
Lucky stood across the room from her father, who stayed seated in his chair, eyeing her daughter stoically.
“Why are you fuckin’ choosin�
�� that low-brow bitch over my mother? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Watch your mouth,” Scott warned her.
“Fuck that! You need to get rid of that foul immigrant bitch! She ain’t shit. Just kill that bitch and her baby, and go back to Ma.”
“Lucky, I’m warning you. Watch your tone,” he said sternly.
Lucky refused to listen to her father’s warning. “Fuck that bitch!” she yelled. “If you don’t get rid of that bitch, I’ll do it myself and cut that bastard out of her fuckin’ stomach!”
Scott swiftly moved like he was the Flash, launching himself out of the chair and charging toward his daughter with such quickness. The back of his hand came across Lucky’s face with such tremendous force, he knocked her clear across the room.
He stood over her, ready to strike her again.
Blood trickled from Lucky’s lips as she was on the floor. She was in shock. Though the slap hurt, Lucky didn’t flinch. She glared up at him, seething. “Go ahead, nigga. Hit me again.”
Scott stepped back from his daughter. She was pushing him to a dangerous point.
In eighteen years, with all the temper tantrums, missed curfews, backtalk, and promiscuity with the boys, Scott had never put his hands on his daughter.
Lucky stood to her feet like she was a soldier, her face coiled into a deep scowl toward her father. She stood near him with hard-staring eyes that didn’t blink, and she shed no tears. He had crossed that line. Now she knew where she stood with him. Scott stared back, and there was dead silence between them.
Lucky backpedaled toward the door, and before she left the building, she said to him, “I’m done with you! You put your hands on me for that bitch. I see you now. I see you.”
Scott remained quiet.
Lucky stormed toward her car.
The goons outside were curious about the commotion inside. They knew that father and daughter had a falling-out.
Lucky climbed into her vehicle and slammed the door shut. The engine started, and she shifted the Benz into drive and sped away from the area. Immediately, she got on the phone with her mother and told her everything.
“He’s fuckin’ dead to me!” Lucky screamed into the phone.
31
It was time for Layla to play chess instead of checkers, and for her to think about a future without her husband by her side—a future where she might even be at war with him. It was time for her to holler checkmate. Scott would never anticipate her next move. He wanted to play daddy with Penelope, then so be it. But the day he put his hands on Lucky to honor his mistress’ name was the day he dug his own grave.
The drive to Garden City, Long Island was a quick one due to the light traffic on the LIE on a Sunday morning. Alone, Layla steered her pearl-white Range Rover through the suburban streets of Garden City and parked in the parking lot of a storage facility on N. Franklin Street, a commercial street flooded with numerous businesses.
Dressed in blue jeans, white sneakers, and a white ball cap with her long hair flowing from the back, Layla climbed out of the truck and strutted toward the facility. She tossed a smile at the three employees present and greeted them with a polite, “Good morning,” and went about her business. She traveled farther into the facility, walking by numerous storage lockers, and stopped in front of one of the larger units. It was secured with three padlocks and a security system. It was the only storage unit with cameras on it twenty-four/seven and its own alarm. Briefly, she checked her surroundings before she undid the locks and punched in several numbers into the keypad to disarm it. With that done, she lifted the rolling gate, stepped into the unit, and closed the gate back down behind her. The light came on, interrupting the darkness of the unit, and in front of her was a pallet covered with a blue tarp.
Layla removed the tarp to reveal an abundance of cash stacked on the pallet. She knew how much it was—fifty million dollars. It simply sat in the unit untouched and unknown to everyone, except for two people: her and Scott. It was supposed to be for emergencies only.
Six years earlier, Layla had implemented an “out” plan. If their empire crumbled or came under fire from the feds, they would need money and a new identity. It was likely that all their legit assets would be frozen and their properties seized. Layla had seen the nightmare happen far too often to many individuals in their line of work. She’d seen kingpins fall into ruin and despair because they had no escape plan and no access to their capital because of federal seizures of their accounts and anything in their name. She’d seen lawyer’s fees in the millions, where the clients were still found guilty and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Their lives could be turned upside down overnight, and then what?
It was a nightmare that Layla was prepared for. She wasn’t going out like that. She would not be scrambling for cash and paying lawyers with borrowed money, and desperately searching for a way to protect her empire and provide for her family. So instead of laundering all of his illegal money, and putting everything into legit businesses that most likely would be scrutinized and audited by the feds and IRS, she’d convinced Scott to set some aside and keep it stored away for a rainy day. They had enough cash to live through a hundred rainy days.
The money was safe in this storage unit. They owned the building and the company through a straw purchase. They wanted no paperwork linking them to the building via forensic accountants. The staff was on standby twenty-four/seven, and the entire area was outfitted with closed-circuit security. The unit was air conditioned, and the bundles of cash had been shrink-wrapped to protect it from the elements while sitting on the pallets.
Layla took a deep breath, her eyes fixed on the mountain of cash. The kids weren’t even aware of it, and she was sure that Scott had forgotten about the money or thought she wouldn’t tamper with it. Scott’s net worth was over three hundred million of legit cash and tens of millions in assets. So why would he worry about the fifty million hidden and secured in one location for years?
She lingered at the storage unit for one hour until two 18-wheeler trucks pulled into the parking lot. The drivers descended from their big rigs and met with Layla. They knew who she and her husband were and how violent and dangerous their organization was. She gave them specific instructions, making it clear to the drivers and two other men that there were to be no errors while dealing with and moving the money.
Five million was strategically placed into each of the steel barrels and loaded onto the trucks, twenty-five million apiece on each rig. Layla made sure not to put all of her eggs into one basket. It took a while to load both trucks with the money for the thirty-five-hour drive to Florida. The tractor-trailer drivers were paid twenty-five thousand dollars each, and the rigs would be followed by a car. Layla wasn’t taking any chances.
32
Deuce sat in the back seat of the Durango, with Jimmy and a lieutenant named Neal seated up front. They were in the Wilmington neighborhood of Cool Spring on N. Van Buren Street, a one-way residential block decorated with long-standing attached homes with steps leading to the front porches. The area was quiet. Deuce kept his eyes fixed on one particular house as he smoked a cigarette. They sat parked across the street and three houses down from the location, trying to remain inconspicuous.
“How did you find out about this place?” Deuce asked Jimmy.
“Now, Deuce, you know me. I find out about everything. They can’t hide anything from me. I’m Jimmy, nigga, and I got eyes everywhere.”
“My nigga!” Deuce had a hard time concealing his excitement.
Deuce took a pull from his Newport. The place they were watching was one of Scott’s drop-offs for significant amounts of money. It was the main stash house in the city. From there, the money would travel north to New York City. There could be from hundreds of thousands to a few million inside the house.
The home was unassuming, well taken care of, and quiet. The front porch was barren of any outdoor
furniture, and no goons were lingering outside. The West organization purposely kept the exterior thug-free, but they did have several small cameras placed on the location to watch everything coming and going. The front and back doors were reinforced with steel, the blinds were always drawn, and in the backyard were two pit bulls.
Deuce and Jimmy knew that though it looked simple on the outside, the interior was nothing to play with—guns, armed men, security safes, and mostly everything reinforced. But they didn’t plan on breaking in. They wanted to watch the operations of the location; the more information they had, the better.
“I wanna know everything about this muthafucka,” Deuce said. “Even the color of his piss. He fucks wit’ me, we gonna fuck wit’ him.”
They’d waited over an hour, and everything was quiet. Their plan was simply to watch and learn. It wasn’t easy tracking down the stash house. It took bloodshed, violent intimidation, and torture for people to talk. It also took surveillance and the help of crooked cops.
“We follow the money, and we get our hands on this muthafucka and everything he’s close to,” Deuce said.
Jimmy nodded. “No doubt.”
“Sergeant Connelly is definitely on the money. I think fear motivates that pig more than money does.”
Jimmy laughed. “I thought pigs don’t sweat.”
“Well, this pig does. He knows the consequences now if he decides to go against me. But y’all niggas stay on this,” Deuce said. “I gotta be somewhere soon.”
Jimmy nodded.
Deuce pulled out his cell phone and made a phone call. Into the phone, he said, “Come get me. You know where.” He hung up.
Deuce finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. “What about this nigga’s twin sons? We on them niggas too?”
“Meyer is an unpredictable muthafucka. He’s everywhere. But word is, somebody tried to take Bugsy’s ass out last week.”
Mafioso [Part 2] Page 17
