The Diamond Empire--A Novel

by K'wan

  “You gonna stop trying to play me.” He laughed as they strolled through the parking lot.

  “So, how does Pearl feel about me coming to her little party tonight?”

  Knowledge shrugged. “No clue, I haven’t told her yet.”

  Asia stopped short. “Are you freaking kidding me? How do you think Pearl is going to feel when she sees you walk in with a staff member from her school on your arm?” Asia was studying to be a chef, but it was the board of education that paid her bills. During the day she worked as a security officer at Pearl’s school, which explained why Knowledge always seemed to know what Pearl was up to. Asia was his eyes and ears during school hours.

  “Honestly, I don’t care. The only reason I’m even going is out of respect for Big Stone,” Knowledge said.

  Asia was about to say something when Knowledge’s cell phone rang. It was his trap phone, so Asia already knew it was a business call. “Speak,” he answered the call. His face took on a dark expression as he listened. Whatever news he was receiving wasn’t good.

  “Everything okay?” she asked once he was off the phone.

  “Nah, baby. I’m gonna have to take a rain check on lunch. I’ll drop you off at the crib, then be back in time to pick you up for the party.” He opened the passenger door for her. “You know Big Stone likes his bad news delivered in person.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Pearl sat at the make-up counter at Rouge Salon, wearing a disinterested look as the cute older woman on the other side beat her brown face to a flawless glow. Elaine, who was the owner of the full-service salon, usually attended to Pearl personally whenever she came in, but Elaine was out for the day so Pearl had to settle for her stand-in, a slightly older woman whom she had never seen there before.

  Sandra had initially turned her on to Rouge, which was right in her backyard, but Pearl had never given it a second look. Sandra and Elaine went back to their days on the fast track, so when Elaine finally got it into her mind to go legit and open the salon, Sandra did what she could to help steer business her way. It was a relatively new shop but was becoming very popular. Pearl had been skeptical at first, but after she saw how Elaine and her girls had laced her it became her spot from there on.

  She raised her hand to run through her hair, as she often did when she was stressing about something, then remembered that she’d had it cut a few days prior. Her friends had been shocked when they saw the new look and her father almost blew a gasket, but Pearl didn’t care. It was her hair, and she wanted a change. Absently, she scrolled up and down through her phone’s call log, briefly pausing every time she came across a number that she hadn’t used in over a week. Part of her was tempted to hit call but her pride wouldn’t allow it. Pearl didn’t chase men, even ones she thought she loved.

  “A guy or money?” The woman behind the counter snapped her out of her daze.

  “Excuse me?” Pearl wasn’t sure what she meant.

  “You’ve got a look in your eyes like something is weighing heavy on you, so I figure it’s either a guy or money,” the woman explained.

  “Who are you, my therapist?” Pearl asked defensively.

  “I didn’t mean nothing by it, honey. You just look like you needed a compassionate ear. No disrespect.”

  “You worry about my face and let me deal with my personal life,” Pearl suggested with a roll of her eyes.

  “Could you be any more of a bitch?” Marissa cut in. She was seated at the next table with a younger girl working on her face. Marissa was a gorgeous dime of Cuban descent. Her skin was dark and smooth with cocoa undertones. Her thick black hair was braided into tight knots, which she would let out right before the party and let her curls hang.

  “What you mean?” Pearl asked as if she had no clue what she was talking about.

  “I mean you sitting there looking like somebody kicked your dog, then getting all snippy when she asked you about it.” Marissa rolled her neck. “You’ve had that puppy-dog-ass expression that’s been plastered across you face for the last few hours, and that sour-ass mood is starting to spill over, so you might wanna get it in check.”

  “My fault, Marissa. I guess I’ve just got a lot on my mind,” Pearl admitted.

  “The only thing that should be on your mind is your birthday party tonight. This shit has been the talk of school and the streets,” Marissa reminded her.

  “Belated birthday party,” Pearl corrected her. Pearl’s birthday had come and gone nearly a week prior, but without the fanfare she had been hoping for. She’d had a small dinner celebration with her family and a few friends, but there was to be no party … at least not then. Something was going on in the streets that had her father nervous and he put the whole family on lockdown. It was only after they attended the funeral of one of Pearl’s best friends that her father finally relented and agreed to the party in an attempt to pick her spirits up.

  “Better late than never,” Marissa said.

  “You’re right, and I’m trying to get as excited as everyone else about it but…” Pearl’s words trailed off. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel the same without the whole crew being there.”

  Marissa’s mood darkened a bit. “Yeah, I can’t front. It ain’t gonna be the same without Sheila there with us.”

  Sheila had been a member of their little quartet and one of Pearl’s closest friends. A week prior she had convinced Pearl and Marissa to sneak out to a party some older guys she knew were throwing at a bar in Harlem that belonged to a local gangster they called Pops’ Brown, who Pearl would find out later was an associate of her father’s. Pearl wanted to leave early, but Sheila and Marissa insisted on keeping the party going with the guys. Before Pearl left she and Sheila had gotten into a nasty argument and said some cruel things to each other. The next day Pearl would get the horrifying news that Marissa was in the hospital and Sheila was dead. A freak fire had broken out in the bar. Marissa was lucky enough to make it out with minor injuries, but Sheila had gotten trapped inside with some of the other partygoers when the building went up. Thinking about the things she had said to Sheila and would never be able to take back made Pearl want to cry, but she had spent too much money getting her makeup done to ruin it and didn’t have time to start the process over again.

  Pearl let out a sigh. “I wish I had just made both you guys leave when I did. Then maybe Sheila would be with us tonight.”

  Marissa motioned for the makeup girl to pause the brushing of her lips and turned to Pearl. “Mami, you should know better than that. If you had to try and force either of us to leave it’d have only made us want to stay more. There’s nothing you could’ve done about what happened that night, Pearl. Let it go.”

  Marissa was right, but it didn’t stop Pearl’s mind from toiling over a series of what-ifs. The party definitely wouldn’t be the same without Sheila, but there was the absence of another that also weighed on her.

  As a girl Pearl had enjoyed reading stories about love at first sight and white knights who swooped in to make honest women of damsels, but to her they were little more than entertainment. Her father had seen to that. Big Stone didn’t raise his kids to look at life through rose-colored lenses; he allowed them to see the world for just what it was. There were no happy endings for little ghetto children unless they went out and wrote them themselves. That’s exactly what Pearl thought she was doing when Diamonds walked into her life, writing her own happy ending. This was not to be. Diamonds was gone, and so were his empty promises. His parting gift to her was a jewel that she would carry close to her from then on: Be careful how freely you give your heart.

  “You ladies about ready to go?” Power’s voice drew Pearl from her thoughts. He’d been in the same spot for the last hour while the girls got their makeup done, sitting on a wooden chair guarding their dozen or so shopping bags. Power was a pale young man with a stocky build, and ocean-blue eyes. With his golden-blond hair, which he always rocked in cornrows, Power could’ve easily passed for white, but he was actually bi
racial, inheriting most of his father’s features, but hardly any of his mother’s.

  “Chill out, P. It takes time for a lady to get her face flawlessly beat. We shouldn’t be too much longer, though,” Pearl assured him.

  “Cool. I don’t mean to rush you, but I promised Knowledge and your dad that I’d have y’all back to the house by a decent hour,” Power explained.

  “Right, just doing your job.” Pearl rolled her eyes and turned back to let the woman finish her makeup. From the corner of her eye she could see Marissa giving Power a hungry look. “Don’t even think about it,” she whispered, reading her friend’s mind.

  “What?” Marissa asked innocently.

  “Don’t what me like I don’t know what you’re thinking, slut!” Pearl teased her.

  “C’mon, don’t act like the thought of jumping his bones has never crossed your mind!” Marissa accused. “That blond hair and tight-ass body.” She fanned herself. “I don’t usually go for white dudes, but he can get it.”

  “Power isn’t white. He’s black and Puerto Rican,” Pearl informed her.

  “Get the fuck out of here!” Marissa looked from Power to Pearl disbelievingly. “Papi,” she called to him, “te gusta este tono de lápiz labial?”

  Power pondered it. “The red lipstick looks good on you, but I think a darker shade would play better on your skin.”

  Both of the girls burst out laughing, leaving Power with a dumbfounded expression on his face, trying to figure out what the joke was.

  “So I meant to ask you earlier, what’s with all the extra security today? I don’t mind having Power’s fine ass hanging around, but I spotted some unfamiliar faces in front of your place when I came to meet you this morning. Is everything cool?” Marissa quizzed.

  “Girl, just some hood shit.” Pearl waved her off as if it were nothing. “I overheard Knowledge telling my dad the other day that some big-time dealer they knew got killed. So my dad being the paranoid person he is felt like we needed added security until things cooled off.”

  “Is that why you got a bodyguard? Are we in danger?” Marissa asked nervously. She had known Pearl’s family for years, and the Stones put the G in “gangster.” She could remember times when she was little, how Pearl’s dad, Big Stone, would creep to their house late at night to pick up her father, Tito. Every time Tito came back from one of Big Stone’s midnight rides it would take him days to get over whatever they would see or do on those trips.

  “Oh nah, we’re civilians and the real niggas respect that,” Pearl assured her. “Power is with us because I finally told Knowledge about Devonte.”

  “That nut-ass nigga who was stalking you?” Marissa gasped. Their other friend Ruby had told her the story about the older guy Pearl had been sleeping with who didn’t know when to back off.

  “Yeah, do you know he had the nerve to pop up at my house one night?” Pearl shivered thinking about the night Diamonds dropped her off on her block and Devonte had been there waiting for her.

  “Ruby told me! Mami, I would’ve been scared shitless,” Marissa admitted.

  “Shit, I was. If it hadn’t been for Stoney there’s no telling what might’ve happened to me that night,” Pearl said seriously. Stoney was her little brother. He stumbled upon them as Devonte was trying to force Pearl into his car and backed him off with a gun.

  “Yo, I can’t even picture Stoney holding.” Marissa laughed. She knew him as the thin, basketball-playing kid who loved to try and feel her butt.

  “Neither could I until I saw him shooting at Devonte’s ass. I think I was more afraid of him going to jail for murder than I was of Devonte dying,” Pearl said. “I could never forgive myself if my brother threw his life away over some hood rat shit I started.”

  “I feel you, Pearl, but we both know that shit is in your blood. Y’all are Stones. Stoney is a good kid, but he’s at that age where he could go either way. Keep your good eye on him, Pearl.”

  Pearl didn’t know how she felt about Marissa’s delivery, but she couldn’t argue with her assessment. She and Stoney were third generation in a family that had been breaking the laws of New York state for nearly a century. They attracted a certain element and it attracted them.

  “Anyhow,” Pearl changed the subject, “after what happened, Knowledge insisted that I have somebody shadow me when I’m too far from home. He didn’t trust any of the other guys to do it so he called in Power.”

  Marissa cut her eyes at Power. “He must be as dangerous as he is handsome if Knowledge trusts him enough to guard the princess.”

  “I haven’t known him that long, but word on the street is that back in the days he was a real beast out here. Him and Knowledge came up together, but Power got out of the life after he came home from prison. He’s a square now, just doing a favor for his friend.”

  Marissa shook her head. “I can’t even get one dude of Knowledge’s caliber to look my way, and here you got two of them that’s willing to lay down and die for you. You’re a lucky girl.”

  Pearl shrugged. “If luck is what you wanna call it. People on the outside looking in always think shit is sweet because we got cars, money, and power, but all this comes with a price, even for those of us who ain’t in that life. You have no idea what it’s like to live in the Kingdom of Stone.”

  A half hour later the girls were all made-up and ready to go. The woman who had done Pearl’s face had laced her. She looked radiant by the time she raised up from the chair. Pearl felt so bad about how she had spoken to her that she gave the woman a fifty-dollar tip and a sincere apology. “I’m sorry for the way I snapped at you earlier,” she said and slid the bill across the table.

  “It’s okay, sugah. I was your age once and I can still remember my first heartbreak.”

  “And what makes you think it was my first?” Pearl asked curiously.

  “Because the pain is still fresh on your face. After you’ve had it happen to you a time or three, each one will hurt less and less.”

  “So how did you get over your first heartbreak?” Pearl asked.

  “That’s a complicated question with an even more complicated answer. My first true love was an older man who was originally from Trinidad, but had been living and hustling in New York for a few years. By the time I met him I had already had a kid from a previously failed relationship, but he didn’t seem to mind it. Him and my son got along pretty good, probably because he was always buying him things.” She laughed. “My man was real free-hearted with money because he was sure getting plenty of it. He was a drug dealer, but trying to go legitimate. He had this idea to create his own slice of Las Vegas on the East Coast by building a casino in Newark. I think his vision was what I loved about him more than that sexy-ass body and them long dreadlocks. He was the first man I ever met, including my daddy, who ever encouraged me to dream. When I was with him I believed that anything was possible because he told me it was.”

  “Damn, sounds like he had some powerful game,” Pearl said.

  “Yeah, he had game, but it was more his presence than anything. Tom was a man who when he entered a room you felt him long before you saw him. Now I ain’t no fool; when you meet a man who was handling like mine was, it’s expected for him to have women on the side. It bothered me some, as it should’ve, but I accepted it because I was queen. It was all like a dream to me, and I got my wake-up call when I told him that I was pregnant.”

  “Wasn’t he happy?” Pearl asked.

  “Happy enough to tear my heart out and stomp on it. Turns out that I wasn’t his queen, his wife was.”

  “Wife?” Pearl clasped her hand over her mouth in shock.

  “Yup, a wife and three kids that I didn’t know anything about. I was so love-struck that I even offered to play second place just to hold on to a piece of the lifestyle he had given me. He told me that having it get out that he had gotten one of his mistresses pregnant wouldn’t look good to the men he was trying to get into business with. I was getting rid of the baby willingly or forcefully
, but my bastard wouldn’t stain his good name. After that he shoved a bag of money into my hands and had one of his flunkies escort me to the abortion clinic.”

  “Did you get the abortion?” Pearl asked. The minute the question left her lips she realized how insensitive it must have sounded. “Sorry.”

  “No need to be,” the woman assured her. “I came close. I didn’t wanna get rid of my baby, but sitting in the car with that killer, I didn’t reason I had a choice. Then God stepped in. The man Tom had sent to take me to the abortion clinic pulled over and told me to get out. I don’t know what caused him to defy his boss and let me go, but I didn’t question it. I did as he ordered and got my ass out. With the hush money Tom had given me, I packed up my son and disappeared to New Jersey. A few months later I had my second son.”

  “What a piece of shit he was for trying to force you to kill your baby!” Pearl fumed.

  “I’ve called him that and much worse over the years. Eventually I was able to get over my hate for the man who had crushed my soul. I let that grudge go and left it to God to sort out. The point of me holding you hostage and telling you my story is so that maybe it’ll help you with what you’re going through. The ones who claim to love us the most are the ones who hurt us the worse. The weak bitches curl up and die behind it, but those of us who are strong always bounce back. I was able to get over my Thomas, so you’ll be able to get over whatever loser has done you wrong too.”

  Pearl smiled. “I needed to hear that … thank you. Listen, you really hooked me up today so I’m gonna ask for you again the next time I come in here.”

  “Thanks, but this was a one-shot deal for me. I’m friends with the owner, Elaine, and she asked if I could help out because they’re short-handed today. I just came in to make some quick cash,” the woman informed her. “But I do freelance work, makeup and hair. For the right price, I even make home visits.” The woman took a business card from her pocket and handed it to Pearl. “My name is Carla. Just give me a call whenever you’re ready.”