by Noire
“Selah!”
She walked off a few paces and suddenly he grabbed her arm from behind.
“I’m sorry, Selah. I didn’t mean to upset you. Come back upstairs and let’s talk about it, okay?”
“There’s nothing for us to talk about, Rodney! Not a damn thing. Why are you trying to come back in my life? Why now? First you steal my brother Digger away from my husband, and now this! I didn’t come here to fuck you, Rodney! I came for my ring and you said you’d give it to me!”
He pulled her close and stuck his nose right under her ear. She heard his sharp intake of breath and then he whispered, “After all these years I can still remember how good you smelled. How sweet your pussy tasted. I remember how you sounded . . . the noises you made when I put my—” He sucked his breath in between his teeth and moaned, “. . . ssss ahhh . . . oooh yes . . . go deeper, baby . . . ahhh, baby, yes . . .”
Selah hauled off and slapped the shit out of him.
It was a Brooklyn move, and it happened so fast that almost nobody saw it. Almost.
“Stay the hell away from me, Rodney. You hear? Just stay the hell away from me!”
Fat, greasy, frog-looking Rodney Ruddman, CEO and president of Ruddman Energy and arch-enemy of Viceroy Dominion, touched his face where Selah had slapped him, and then he blew her a kiss and laughed.
“Now that hurt a little bit, but it’s okay. Come back and see me sometime, Selah. Let me take care of you. Even on his best day Viceroy could never make you feel it the way I do. Remember, you can still get this if you want it, baby. You can get it anytime you want it.”
Life was about to get a whole lot worse for Barron before it got any better. The mansion was pretty quiet when Jeff picked him up for his court date on Wednesday. Dane had taken all three ghetto trolls on a shopping trip at NorthPark Center, and Selah had taken the Mercedes and driven herself into Dallas to have lunch with an old friend.
Barron had an appointment to meet with the judge presiding over his case, and Jeff had assured him that everybody involved was interested in making this thing go away.
“Even the boy’s father?” Barron had asked him as they got off the elevator and headed toward the judge’s private chambers.
“Especially the boy’s father,” Jeff told him. “For two hundred thousand dollars.”
Barron looked at him. How many fuckin’ grapes were those people planning to pick that day?
Forty-five minutes later the two men had met with the judge and they were in the elevator riding back downstairs. Jeff had been good to his word, and after giving Barron a strong talking to about the dangers of irresponsible drinking and driving, Judge Halley, who was a personal friend of Viceroy’s, and whose campaign for office had been heavily funded by Dominion Oil, poured the young attorneys a drink as they sat around and discussed local business and politics.
“Look, the chief of police is gonna try to bury this, but keep your head down and stay out of trouble,” the judge warned Barron as he was leaving. “We should be able to keep this away from the media too, but make sure you don’t give them anything else to throw at you. No more scandals, you understand?”
No more scandals.
Barron breathed a sigh of relief as Jeff pulled out of the private parking garage. They’d gone two blocks and stopped at a traffic light when Barron saw something that kicked him straight in the nuts.
It was Selah. His mother. She was coming out of the Omni Hotel with a man, and it damn sure wasn’t his father Viceroy. Hell no. It was Rodney Ruddman, CEO of Ruddman Energy. Rodney was Viceroy’s main competitor and sworn enemy. Barron watched in silence as Ruddman grabbed Selah’s arm and his mother stormed away from the man. She looked angry in a way that he had never seen her look before. In a womanly way. And when Rodney reached out and grabbed her again and pulled her close to him, bending to whisper something in her ear, Barron exploded inside. What the fuck? His blood started boiling and he was itching to jump outta the ride and fuck that old bastard up.
But the light had changed and the car was on the move again. Barron turned around and put a crook in his neck as he tried to keep his eyes on them. He coulda sworn he saw Selah swing on Rodney and slap the shit outta him, but they were too far away now and he had blinked too, so he couldn’t be sure.
Barron yanked his cell phone off his belt as Jeff turned the corner. He hit Selah on speed dial and cursed as her phone went straight to voice mail. He stuck his finger in his left ear and turned slightly away from Jeff as he spoke in a low tone. “Hey, Ma, it’s me. Um, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I thought I just um, saw something . . . um, I thought . . . Call me back. I’m just checking to see if you need me, okay?”
He hung up and tried to process what the fuck he had just seen. His mother and his father’s business competitor coming out of an upscale hotel in the middle of the day. That nigga had put his hands on Selah. And not like he was trying to handle her neither. Nah, the way Rodney had pulled her close and stuck his nose in her neck said a whole lot about their relationship. There had been an understanding in that move. Some familiarity. Like dude had yoked Selah up before. Mama had hauled off and slapped the shit outta that old man! What the hell was up with that?
Barron’s heart pounded as rage circulated through him.
He didn’t wanna believe what his logical mind was telling him, but what else was he supposed to think? His father was laying up in the hospital about to fade out on the world, and his mother was out here fucking around with his enemies? And in broad daylight? He closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing. No more scandals. Ya got that shit right! He thought about his mug shot. The last thing his family needed was another goddamn scandal. With all the drama going on in their lives they couldn’t take not one more thing. Barron knew what he had to do. He was gonna have to shut everybody down. Make everybody crawl around on a real low profile. Because lately, every last one of the Dominions had been on some brand-new kinda shit, and if the board found out what he had just been through . . . well, the board just better not find the fuck out!
CHAPTER 26
Barron’s shit was all fucked up. Nothing was going down the way it was supposed to. First he got a call from Judge Halley’s secretary. She said her boss needed to speak to Barron and Jeff on a three-way call immediately.
“That kid,” Judge Halley said quietly. “The kid you hit is going to be a problem.”
“Why is that?” Jeff asked.
“Because his grape-picking father just reneged on the deal, that’s why!”
“But he took the money!” Barron said. “He took two hundred fuckin’ grand!”
“Oh yeah? You got a receipt? His side of the story is that you offered him two hundred grand to go away and keep his mouth closed. He said he turned it down.”
Barron couldn’t believe this shit! His throat got clogged with fear as he shook his head, trying to understand where the judge was coming from. “He’s a liar! He’s a lying muthafucka! But two days ago you told me not to worry, that this thing was gonna blow over. You said the chief of police was gonna bury it!”
“He tried,” the judge said. “But after those narcotics officers got caught beating a suspect on camera, and with the big investigation on the ticket-fixing scam, the public has their eyes on every damn thing and the media has been merciless. Sorry, Barron, but you’re on your own. The chief said he tried his best to bury this thing, but Internal Affairs just dug it right back up.”
Barron was desperate. If this shit got out on the news he could kiss his law license and his whole fuckin’ life good-bye!
“C’mon, Judge,” he begged. “There’s gotta be something you can do! Is there any way at all to fix this? Any way at all?”
Judge Halley cleared his throat.
“Maybe. But it’s gonna cost you.”
A few days later Barron pulled into his reserved parking spot outside of Dominion Oil’s headquarters. Chest-high gold-crusted nameplates reading, VICEROY DOMINION, SUPERIOR DOMINIO
N, and BARRON DOMINION identified the top-three parking spots in their pecking order of importance. Right now Barron’s spot was last. His uncle Suge’s truck was parked in the second spot, the one right next to Viceroy’s, but once Barron took over for his father all that shit was gonna change.
He walked inside the sleek building with mirrored glass. A big oil painting of Viceroy loomed large on the far wall. Barron headed toward the elevators and nodded at the receptionist and the security staff. He’d known these people from the time he was just a tyke, but they all respected him as a man and called him sir whenever they spoke.
He used his key to call for the private elevator that would take him directly into the hub of business on the building’s fifteenth floor. When the doors opened, he rode upstairs with a determined expression on his face. He tapped his foot impatiently. The board was waiting for his written request for a vote delay, and as soon as he took care of this other business he would deliver it to them by hand. The elevator stopped and the doors slid open soundlessly. He exited and stepped into a very large and busy room that held the cubicles for DO’s most important staff members.
“Mr. Barron!” the receptionist at the desk called out to him. “The papers you need to sign are in Mr. Superior’s office, sir. He has them waiting for you.”
Since there were three Dominion men running the company, most of the employees addressed them as Mr. Viceroy, Mr. Superior, and Mr. Barron. That shit was gonna change too, Barron thought. With his father off the rolls, the only Dominion man who mattered would be him, and that’s what everybody was gonna have to call him too. Mr. Dominion.
Barron headed for his uncle’s corner office and pushed through the double doors without knocking. Suge was standing next to his desk and talking on the phone. He looked like big-time money dressed in his snakeskin boots and three-piece suit, but no matter what the fuck this dude wore he would always be a two-bit hustler in Barron’s eyes.
“Let me call you back.” Suge’s voice was deep as he fixed Barron coldly in his sights and spoke into the phone. He hung up, then walked over and stood behind his huge desk.
“What it do, Bump?” he asked. His voice was even and casual, although Barron thought he saw something crafty shift into the older man’s eyes.
“It do what it never did before,” Barron barked, then waved his hand impatiently. “You need a signature on those requisition orders, right? Well hand them over.”
Suge placed one thick finger on top of a small pile of papers on the center of the desk. Grilling Barron, he pushed the stack in his direction.
“Here you go,” Suge said and shot his nephew a warning look. “And Bump, do us all a favor. Make sure you sign all of ’em, okay?”
Barron frowned and picked up the stack. After skimming the top sheet, he sat the papers back down on Suge’s desk and pulled his father’s Conway Stewart fountain pen out of his suit pocket. The room was silent as Barron quickly read and signed the first three pages of paper, but as soon as his eyes ran over the last sheet he cursed under his breath and then started laughing.
“Ay, what the fuck is this?” he blurted as he eyed his uncle and grinned. “You’re kidding me, right? Yo, you must be fuckin’ joking if you think I’ma sign some bullshit like this!”
“Nah.” Suge shook his head and said quietly, “I ain’t joking man. I ain’t even fuckin’ joking. Yeah, I’ma need you to go ’head and sign that, and I’ma need you to give up them files you got on Mink and Dy-Nasty too. The originals and the copies.”
“Nigga you better come the fuck up off that purple syz-zurp !” Barron’s lips curled down with mad disrespect. He snatched the paper off the desk and tossed that shit to the floor and stomped on it. “Why would I give up my files and sign some shit like this? C’mon, now. You play too much, dude. You play way too fuckin’ much.”
Suge came from behind his desk. He walked up on Barron with a stone-cold killer look on his grill, and then he turned around and walked toward his office door.
“Oh, you gonna sign it,” he said, closing the door and flipping the lock. He flipped the overhead lights off too, and the natural light from his floor-to-ceiling windows was the only thing flooding in. “Believe that, son. You gonna sign it.”
Suge picked up a remote control from his desk and pushed a button, and at the far wall, a movie screen slid down from the ceiling. He pushed another button and an overhead projector hummed and then cast a light beam on the white screen. He pushed a third button and a video of a young white girl appeared on the screen. She was standing in front of Viceroy’s community center for underprivileged kids in Houston, and she held a squirming brown-skinned toddler in her arms.
“Dear Channel Seven News. My name is Ellen,” she said softly, “and I have a ‘Keeping Them Honest’ complaint for you. I used to come to the Dominion Diamonds center to get free lunch, tutoring, and free health care.” She walked over to the door and yanked on the handle a few times, and when it didn’t open she scrunched up her face angrily. “And now when I come here to get milk and diapers for my son don’t nobody wanna let me in! Channel Seven, Viceroy Dominion got me pregnant and now his family has shut me out and they won’t even talk to me! I’m sending you this video so you can keep Viceroy Dominion and his entire family honest!”
The screen went blank and Barron bust out laughing real loud. He laughed his ass off, and pointed at his uncle. “Is that the best you can do, you slimy bastard? You tryna smear my father’s good name in the gutter just so you can get your hands on his money? They call that shit extortion, homeboy! You can go to jail for that. But it’s all good, because you ain’t never been shit anyway!”
“Is that right?”
“Hell yeah, it is! Daddy mighta trusted ya ass, but I never did! Ever since that time I caught my girl sucking ya dick—”
“Nope!” Suge protested. “Uh-uh. Take that back, dawg. She didn’t suck my dick, homey. She was about to suck it, but she never even got one lick in.”
Barron exploded. “It don’t matter, man! You still ain’t shit! You ready to toss grime on your own brother in the name of money, man. Ga’head! Send that shit to Channel Seven! Who gives a fuck? Who’s gonna believe you anyway? My father kept his hands clean his whole fuckin’ life. Everybody knows he’s solid. His rep can stand up to this. Besides.” Barron swept his arm around the office. “He had dumb-fuck goonies like you to get down in the dirt for him, remember? That’s the only reason you pulling in a paycheck as it is, nigga! Did you forget that?”
Suge shook his head quietly. “Nah, man. I ain’t forget.”
He pressed another button on the remote and the young white teenager popped up on the screen again. Her blue eyes were now red rimmed and her face was streaked with tears. She was still holding her little chocolate baby, but this time she was holding something else in her hands. It was a sheet of paper, and when the camera zoomed in on it the words, Exclusively DNA came clearly into view.
“Channel Seven ‘Keeping Them Honest’? This is Ellen again.” She brushed her long blond hair back and sniffed. “I just want to say I’m sorry and to tell you I made a big mistake. I thought Viceroy Dominion was my baby’s daddy, but I was wrong. He’s not. I got my son’s paternity results in the mail today, and Viceroy Dominion didn’t get me pregnant after all. He’s not my son’s father.” Her voice snagged in her throat and a wave of tears spilled from her china blue eyes. “He’s my son’s grandfather!” She pointed her finger and stared angrily into the camera and blurted out, “Barron Dominion is my baby’s daddy! Please, Channel Seven ‘Keeping Them Honest’! I’m only seventeen and DNA doesn’t lie! Can you make Barron Dominion take care of his son and pay me my child support? Can you help me? Please?”
The screen went white and there was nothing but stark silence in the big, plush office. Barron felt a wave of rage rushing up from his feet, through his chest, and straight into his brain. But that’s where it stopped. Because even though he had never met this scrawny white girl in his life, and he damn sure
had never fucked her, Viceroy and Selah didn’t raise no fool. It was all about appearance and perception. Between the hit-and-run accident involving a child, being accused of paying hush money to the kid’s father, and the half-dozen pictures circulating on the Internet that showed him in a skirt with his painted lips all over some nigga’s dick, he might already be fucked. Whether this chick was lying or not, if a tape like this got leaked to the media, let alone to the board, his shit would most definitely be fucked.
Without a word, Suge picked the piece of paper up from the floor and placed it back on his desk. Using just one finger, he slid it toward Barron again.
“Sign the paper, son. I love you, Lil Bump, but I will straight fuck you up. Now sign the goddamn paper.”
Squinting in the semi-darkness, Barron bent over and reread the last line on the full-page document that his uncle had drawn up for him to sign.
And in inclusion, I hereby request that the board’s vote not be delayed, but held on the original date as scheduled. Lastly I swear and affirm that all parties to the Dominion Family Trust have been properly investigated and deemed qualified to receive their proper annual disbursements.
Taking a deep breath and using his father’s favorite fountain pen, Barron bit the bullet and signed that shit.
CHAPTER 27
“Mink.”
I was having a dope-ass dream about the money I was gonna get and I was grinning all in my pillow. We had shut Barron’s ass down, and I was locked in a big room with stacks and stacks of green piled damn near to the ceiling.
“Mink, wake up.”
The dough was banded in stacks of hundred-dollar bills and wrapped in clear plastic. I grabbed a big shopping bag and started tossing brick after brick into the bag. And when that one was full, I grabbed another shopping bag and filled it up, and then another shopping bag, and then another one and another one and another one . . .
