I kissed parts of Chanel’s hair and then turned her face toward me.
“What’s up, sexy man?” she mouthed. She cupped the side of my face and brought her lips to mine. When she pulled back, she smiled. “What you thinking about?” she queried.
“I was thinking about you.”
“The irony. I was thinking about you too,” she gushed, rubbing her nose against mine.
“You’re amazing. I mean that. You’re just all-woman, and that’s the sexiest shit I’ve ever seen, or known in my life.”
“Thank you, baby. You’re gonna have this smile stuck on my face all night.”
“You should be smiling. You’re all that, Chanel Norwood. I’m very proud of you and what you’ve accomplished with this club,” I told her.
Her business savvy never ceased to amaze me. Having a club as prominent as hers, with the caliber of customers she had, was beyond impressive. I’d seen many nightclubs and restaurants come and go; especially, in the Bay Area, but hers was thriving and didn’t seem to be losing steam any time soon. Evidence of her staying power, was reflected in the various pockets of clubgoers scattered about, in the general population. You could barely see through the crowds. It was that full. Before Chanel and I even met that first night, I had been to Suite 713 a few times and had never crossed her path. I knew the club was one of the “It” places to be, but didn’t know it was owned by a woman—a beautiful woman at that. I guess that night was just my lucky night.
“That means so much . . . that you’re proud.”
I rubbed her thigh, softly, watching her as she watched me. “And you mean a lot to me. I feel so honored to share my life with you.”
“I feel the same way,” she responded, rubbing her palm against the side of my face. “That fate shit ain’t no joke, right?”
“No joke at all.” I wrapped her in my arms, bringing her close, while I stole kisses. “I think this is a good time for us to get out of here, boss lady,” I told her, eager to get her home and make her body sacred ground. I swatted her lightly across her ass and she stood, and then held her hands out for me to grab.
As we made our way to the entrance, hand in hand, I heard, “What’s up, D.C.?!” over the music’s hard-thumping beat.
I whipped around to see who it was that had just addressed me, and met with three guys—one of them a boxer, by the name of Ace “Hit Man” Wilder. I never liked the dude. I felt that he was bottom of the barrel and had built his career on a bunch of shady shit. Though, I didn’t have tangible proof, myself, there had always been talk about how they’d blackmailed fighters into the ring, had even fixed a few fights. I didn’t put dirty shit past anybody in the industry—especially, his camp. Him and the rat pack he travelled with, were crooks. Known crooks.
The crazy thing was that about six years earlier, Ace and I had an exchange of words at a venue that we were both visiting. When I called him out to fight it out in the streets, he backed away, citing that he’d rather beat my ass in front of paying customers. I took that as him being the punk that he is and left it at that. All I could do was laugh in the moment, because Ace’s weak-ass knew that he was out of my league. I packed a venue, he didn’t. That was one of the reasons we had never met in the octagon. There was no way I was letting him come up off of me. Maybe if he’d fought me that day, respect might have been earned.
“Yeah, what’s up?” I said, dryly.
“You know what’s up, my dude. Don’t front.”
I cracked a smile at him to let him know that I didn’t take him seriously. I guess since he had company with him tonight, he was bold enough to approach me outside of sports television and social media.
I sized up both of Ace’s flunkies, just in case there was going to be chaos and I needed to do business. They were big guys too, but size never mattered to me. I was too confident of the heat I packed in my fists to be worried about another man’s stature. Two of them looked like their only claim to fame was bench pressing. So, while they could probably bench hundreds, they probably had no skill with hand-to-hand.
I squeezed Chanel’s hand. “Baby, go to the car,” I instructed her. I wanted her clear of any danger.
“No,” she remarked. “I’m not leaving you.”
“I need you to go to the car, Chanel,” I pressed.
“Baby, who are they?” she insisted on asking, her voice low, laced with fear. At the same time that the question poured from between her lips, she linked her arm inside mine and slid closer to my side. I didn’t like that she was nervous from the obvious tension. That pissed me off. “Baby . . .” she said, again, this time a bit louder. “Who are they?!”
Ace’s dumb-ass face opened up into a smile. “‘Baby’, huh?” he repeated, mockingly. “So, this you right here?” he queried, with a toss of his head, his eyes still on me. “The sexy-ass club owner?”
The fact that he knew Chanel was the club’s owner got under my skin—deep. It meant that he was way too much in a zone where he didn’t belong. I looked at Chanel, who shook her head side to side, then hunched her shoulders. “Do I know you?” she asked, her inquiry directed at him.
“Nah,” was his response. “We don’t know each other, sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart? Calm that shit—”
“Dario . . . no . . .” Chanel said, from beside me, still refusing to vacate.
“Aww, I ain’t mean nothin’ by it, D.C. It’s all good.”
I knew then that they were trying to make trouble. I was feeling the strongest urge to take this dude all the way out. I really wanted to put hands on him, in the worst way. But the more time I gave myself to process, the more I knew that I wanted at him because he had addressed my woman. That he knew who she was, and that he let some fuckin’ term of endearment roll from his motherfuckin’ face. And then, yeah, maybe just a bit of missing the action of the boxing ring, as well.
“Dude, what the fuck do you and your playmates want?” I shot, seconds away from smashing my fist into his prized possession. “You’ve been screaming for attention all over town. I’m starting to think you wanna ride my nut sack. Thing is, I don’t swing that way.”
“Yeah, you real funny, great white hype . . . c’ept, you ain’t all the hype no more, are you?”
“You would love that shit, huh? Unfortunately, for you, that’ll never go away. Is that why you wanna be in my company so bad? You need it to rub off?”
“Tuh . . .” He bit down on his bottom lip and folded his arms across his chest, defensively. “You cocky as fuck. Bet I could knock that smug-ass look right off ya punk-ass—”
“Listen,” Chanel interjected, “We’re enjoying our night. We don’t want any trouble. I can make sure that you and your guests receive whatever you need to make your night enjoyable.”
The whole time that Chanel was trying to reason, she was locked on my arm. Me, sensing her anxiety, helped make the decision to relax on my own ego to bring her comfort—but only for her. However, before I had a chance to allow my guard down and move on, the idiot spoke.
“That’s cute,” he said. “She must know that her man ain’t shit outside the ring.”
“Baby, let’s just—”
Cutting into Chanel’s words, I broke the link she had on me and moved her to the back of me.
“The same ass-beating that you’d get inside the ring, is the exact same one that you’d get outside the ring—that’s a solid promise,” I said, purposely progressing into his personal space.
When his two friends moved toward the situation, it was seconds before four of Suite 713’s hired security had surrounded us. Just their mere presence diffused the situation on Ace’s end.
“Sis Norwood, we have a problem here?” Kareem, head of Chanel’s security team, asked.
Kareem stood at least three inches taller than me, was probably somewhere near 300-plus of muscle. He played no games, when it came to the club. Neither did any of the staff accompanying him.
“Yes, Kareem,” Chanel responded. “I tried t
o be nice. But I don’t think they’re trained for that. I want them out of here, please.”
“Done. Let’s go, gentlemen,” Kareem instructed, his backup right by his side.
I could tell that Ace wanted to say something but he knew better than to do that if he wanted to leave in the same condition he’d entered. Somehow, though, I knew that it wasn’t the last time I’d see him and I was okay with that. After his stunt, I was actually hoping for that. Desperately hoping for it.
CHAPTER 5
Dario
“Why are you telling me to calm down, Dario?!” Chanel yelled from the passenger seat on our way to the house. She had been yelling since Kareem forced Ace and his boyfriends from Suite 713. She was pissed at me, and was making no secret about it.
“Your place or mine?” I asked, trying to bring some peace to the intense moment. Hoping that if I remained calm, Chanel would, at some point, do the same and bring it down some notches.
“I don’t care which one,” she snapped. “Whichever one we go to, we still need to talk.”
“Baby . . .”
Chanel folded her arms across her chest, in a huff, and turned to me. “You were really gonna fight that asshole, weren’t you?”
I sighed, heavily. The last thing I wanted was to bring that motherfucker home with us. When I left him at the club, that’s where I wanted him to stay—until I saw him again.
“If I had to, Chanel, fuck yeah. It was happening.”
“I don’t want you street-fighting, Dario. I don’t. I don’t!” she stressed. “People are crazy and nobody plays fair!”
“Baby, I get what you’re saying. I really do. But some shit you just can’t walk away from.”
“False! You can walk away from all of it! I need you here!” she cried. “And you’re basically telling me that if Kareem and the rest of security hadn’t been there—”
“That I would’ve fucked him up.” I pulled the car into my driveway and cut the engine. “I would’ve beat the dog-ass shit out of his ass, Chanel!” I yelled, not even realizing just how angry the situation had made me. “He was being disrespectful at the highest level—toward me and you! So, hell fuckin’ yeah, I would’ve fought his ass!”
Chanel turned away from me and faced the front of the car. She was pissed at me and I understood that, but everything that I told her about how I would’ve handled the situation, in the absence of security, was the gospel truth. He was asking for it.
“Dario . . .” she finally said, after minutes of silence.
“Yep . . .”
“Rai will never know his bio-dad because of street violence—violence that you were there for, baby. I’m just saying . . .” She paused for a couple of seconds. “It would kill me if something happened to you.”
I looked over at this woman that I loved more than I could even begin to express, and saw the hurt in her demeanor. It broke me. As much as I wanted to say to her, it just seemed like the better thing to do was to hold her. I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out of the car to walk over to her side.
I opened her door, and removed her restraint, then urged her out of the seat, toward me. When she was safe in my arms, it was when she buried her face in my chest and began to sob. Her whole body shook against me.
“You’re right, baby.” I kissed the top of her head, as I held her tight. “I should think that type of shit through a bit more thorough. I just don’t handle disrespect well. And his is at an all-time high. But I’m letting it go. I don’t even know this person, really, so it’s dumb to even give him energy.”
Chanel pulled back to look up at me, rubbing her eyes as she did. “Not just him, baby. I don’t want you getting into it with any—”
“I know. I hear you loud and clear,” I reassured her.
The problem was that not everything I was telling Chanel was the truth. There was no way I could promise her that I’d walk away from shit that had to do with her, Rai, and the rest of my family. That would just never happen. But as long as I reassured her in this moment, that was all that mattered. What it came down to at the end, was just giving the right play on words. Whatever it took to satisfy her was the goal I was trying to reach. I never wanted her worrying, just to feel safe. That responsibility fell on me and I happily accepted it.
As we walked inside to finish off our night, my cell rang in my pocket. I pulled the device out and looked at the display.
“It’s Wayne,” I announced, at the same time we walked in the front door.
“You should answer it, babe,” Chanel stated, smiling at me. “It might be important.”
“I doubt it.”
She smacked her lips. “Answer his call, Dario. I’ll be upstairs waiting, okay?”
When she walked away I watched, in awe, how nice her ass was. “Lookin’ good, girl!” I yelled after her, as I pressed the button to accept the phone call.
“What’s going on, Wayne?”
“Hey . . . uhhh . . . D.C., what’s going on, man? You got a minute?”
“Maybe. What’s up?”
“Damn, why is it like that, man? I guess since you don’t need me anymore you get all short with me,” he kidded.
“Nah, nothing like that, dude. I was just getting in the house and was about to give all my attention to my future wife.”
“Understood.”
“So, what’s going on with you?”
“I wanted to know if you had time to stop by.”
“Tonight?”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow, if you can. I had something to . . . uhhh . . . talk to you about.”
“Why do you keep with the whole ‘uhhh’ thing?”
Wayne pushed out what sounded like a forced chuckle. “No reason. I noticed I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Maybe some kinda fucked-up habit I need to work on breaking.”
“Yeah, break that shit quick because it makes you sound like you’re up to some shit.”
“Just need to talk, that’s all.”
“Okay, so I can come tomorrow.”
“Cool. Thanks, man. I’ll see you when you get here.”
“What was Wayne talking about?” Chanel asked, leaning on the banister at the top of the stairs in a see-through, barely there camisole thing.
My jaw dropped. I didn’t respond right away. I was too busy studying that gap between her thighs, imagining what it was about to feel like inside of her. Fuck Disneyland, between her walls had to be the happiest fucking place on earth. I continued my walk toward her, pulling my shirt over my head, as I made my way to the top of the stairs.
“Baby,” she giggled. “You hear my question?”
“I heard you. But my focus is somewhere else.”
When I unbuttoned my fly and stopped mid-stair to pull my jeans off, Chanel began to back up with a big smile on her face. She looked down at how quickly my tent was reacting and tried to take off running. But she wasn’t quick enough. I caught up to her and swooped her up into my arms, amid her girly shrieks. I couldn’t wait to get her into the bedroom and give her all the pleasure she could stand.
CHAPTER 6
Dexter “Dex” Jackson
Dex Jackson had never been a very nice man. It could be blamed on his rough childhood, growing up on the Lower East Side of Detroit, where the environment was as toxic as they came. The mean Detroit streets hardened him and made him their own. That was the only possible outcome. Dex had borne witness to the loss of loved ones, growing up; he’d even avenged a few of their murders with street justice of his own. He was heartless in most dealings—outside of family. Even with that being the case, there were still some family members who would go on record and say that he was the devil himself.
When Dex elevated himself from the hood, it was strictly in residence only. He was the poster boy for, ‘You can take the man out of the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of the man.’
By profession, Dex was a boxing manager to Ace “Hit Man” Wilder. By night, he was anything but professional, and sometimes his ‘hobbies’ c
onsisted of being a hitman himself. People that knew Dex for years, knew of his reputation, but people not familiar with his past, only saw surface: Six-foot-four, slim, smooth, dark, flawless skin and a head of jet-black, wavy hair. He looked good for a man of 50.
Most didn’t even know he was 50 years old, because it wasn’t how he carried himself. He preferred all the latest fashions, was well-versed on all things Hip Hop—past and present—and he also liked his women just past the threshold of ‘legal’. Not to mention, the only place that he had a visible sign of grey was at the very tip of his sculpted beard.
While standing on his balcony, dragging on one of his cigars, Dex spotted his visitors’ car approaching in the distance. About 15 minutes later, he heard his maid over the intercom announce, “Mr. Jackson, your guests have arrived and have been seated in outdoor dining.”
“Thank you, Nya, I’ll be right down.”
Dex took a final drag of his cigar, before putting it out, and making his way downstairs to greet his guests.
“What’s up, fellas?” Dex said, walking through the double glass doors.
Out of respect, both men stood to their feet to shake the elder man’s hand, then sat back down. Moments later, Dex’s cook started to fill the table with the likes of pancakes, scrambled and fried eggs, bacon and sausage patties, grits, and plenty more. There had clearly been a lot of time and care that went into preparations.
“This spread, man,” the guy named Mikhail stated, raping the feast on the table with his eyes.
In the Ring 2 Page 3
