by Ashley
Sutton gave a look over her shoulder as she posed one last time before walking inside the exclusive club.
Chatter filled the air as music played in the background. It was a gold digger’s dream to be in a room filled with so many connections. Every major sporting league was in attendance, as well as entertainers. Sutton thanked God she and her sisters weren’t easily impressed.
Even some of the most successful women ended up tricking when this much money was in one room. They reduced themselves for attention. Sutton saw it happening already all around the room and the night had just begun. It was a contest of clout. Who wore the least amount of clothes? Whose weave was the longest? Whose ass was the fattest? It was a silicone and pussy contest. Classless was in style, but Sutton knew better. She and her sisters were timeless.
Without any effort at all they pulled the eyes of every man they passed. Sutton didn’t even smile as she walked by the crowd. Friendliness was an invitation for communication. She had zero kick it for these men. She didn’t need their compliments or their time. She was there for one reason alone, to scope out August Sinclair, and as she looked around the room, she wondered how she would make an intentional meeting appear incidental.
* * *
“It must be a hell of a feeling having two of the top ten picks on your roster. Congrats, my man. That’s big business. Black-owned sports agency competing with the big boys.”
West nodded at the two-time Pro-Bowl quarterback and lifted his crystal tumbler in acknowledgment. “It’s just a good day. Makes it seem like none of the bad ones came before it, but trust a lot of work went into building this night,” West stated.
“A lot of play too,” the quarterback said as a random woman slid into his lap. His hands immediately rounded to the woman’s behind. “A lot of play, indeed. Best perks of the job.”
West smirked, but he was unamused as another one of the groupies in the suite tried to enter his space. “I’m good,” he said.
“Big bro always so serious!” August shouted, holding his arms out while gripping a bottle of champagne in both hands. “We’ve got to celebrate! You have these owners eating out of the palm of your hand. West Coast is really taking off. I remember when that used to be you out there on the field.”
“That was before I knew the real flip was in the skybox, not on the field. NCAA made millions off my jersey sales and I didn’t see one dime,” West complained. “Tearing my ACL ended my career, but it made me wise up.”
“You know the game. You understand the player’s side of things, West. It’s why I’ll never switch representation. Congrats on the new blood,” the quarterback said.
West nodded, raising his glass to tap the bottle August held up and the glass of his client before taking a sip.
“If you gentlemen will excuse me,” he said.
West eased through the crowd and slipped out the door to the private room, mixing in with the chaos of the nightclub. This wasn’t really his scene. He was far removed from bottle service and random women in nightclubs, but he knew this celebration was hard earned. His sports agency might be his second priority, but he wasn’t blind to the fact that the other men in the room had awaited this moment their entire lives. It was a night to commemorate. He took the metal stairs up to the second floor and slipped out onto the rooftop. He was grateful to the high winds that kept everyone else inside. He just wanted to take a moment to himself and celebrate his way. A good cigar would mark the occasion and a little solitude would allow him time to process the night’s wins.
* * *
Sutton looked around the room of athletes. They were young, eager, and waiting for her to spend some of the multimillion-dollar checks they had just received. She watched the young women in the room attempt to make a good impression on the young stars, and she shook her head because they had it all wrong. Their game was backward. Instead of Sutton asking for them to spend money on her, she would make them need to step it with her. Gold digging was retro; the new hustle was to be useful to a man. To be an asset. Men treated women like cars, trading them in to move on to the next ride every so often. Sutton didn’t want to be a toy to a man, whether personal or professional. She was the license they carried that allowed them to purchase their toys at all. She helped secure the bag and then protected it at all costs; they didn’t need to know she was also the one making them feel like their careers were at stake.
“Here! Have a drink!” Luna shouted over the music, passing Sutton her martini glass. “You look uncomfortable!”
“Just not my thing! I prefer boardrooms to bars!” Sutton shouted back. The music was so loud a normal conversation was impossible.
“This is their boardroom! Athletes do business over bitches and bottles!” Honor shouted across the table.
“Facts!” Luna added, laughing.
“These ballplayers are fun and games, where are the big fish?” Luna asked.
“Soho House has so many private rooms. August Sinclair could be anywhere,” Ashton answered.
Sutton was so uptight that she felt like her awkwardness was visible. Thighs clenched tight, hands folded in her lap, and body rigid, her entire demeanor screamed she was out of her element. She was beautiful, but the knitted brow and tight-lipped scowl was a natural deterrent for any man in the club who even thought to look her way. She knew her sisters were in their element, but Sutton just couldn’t get into the vibe. It was too hot, too loud, and too social. She just wanted to retreat to her hotel suite, finish off her bottle of red, and get into the September issues of Vogue and Black Enterprise she had waiting in her bag. This crowd made her uncomfortable and she couldn’t hide it. When a guy she recognized as a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills leaned over their booth to whisper in Honor’s ear, Sutton knew it was time for a bathroom break. The LaCroix sisters attracted men wherever they went, and she knew they were about to turn their section into the hot spot of the night. Sutton grabbed her drink and stood from the table.
“Where are you going?” Ashton screamed over the music.
“I need to take a call. Don’t worry about me. Have fun. Keep your eyes open,” Sutton reminded them as she stepped away from the table. The line to the bathroom was irritatingly long so she bypassed it, going up the stairs behind it. She didn’t know where they led until she burst out of the steel door. The air hit her, and Sutton sucked it in gratefully.
“Hey catch that—!”
Before the man could finish his sentence, the door closed, echoing in the night.
Sutton pulled on the door. Locked.
“Shit,” she muttered. She pulled again, this time harder.
“It’s locked,” the man behind her said.
Sutton blew out a sharp breath. She grew irritated by the simplest things. Being locked on a rooftop with a strange man was not on the night’s agenda.
She pulled out her cell phone and attempted to dial.
“Too many buildings. No service,” he said.
She sucked her teeth. “Great,” she responded. For the first time she looked in his direction.
Wow, she thought, taken aback. It was the second time she had seen him. It was hard to misplace a face like his. He was brooding and handsome, standing in the night’s shadows as cigar smoke corrupted the air around him.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, so you must be following me,” she said.
A lighthearted chuckle fell from his lips.
“You’re saying seeing you at Lathan Naples’s event and here all within a few days is all by chance?” she asked.
“Important people often seem to fill the same room, Ms. LaCroix,” he answered.
“How do you know me?” she asked.
“I’m a black man in business. I like to keep up with other black people making waves in business. I’ve seen the write-ups. You’re doing your thing.”
“My thing? Is that what I’m doing?” she asked.
“Apparently, that’s all you’re doing. You’re wound up real tight, baby.”
&
nbsp; Sutton scoffed, shaking her head as she turned back to the door and knocked. “Hey! Open up!”
“No one can hear you,” he stated.
“Ugh!” Sutton groaned. “This is not my night. I knew I should have stayed in. Rowdy-ass crowd and now this.”
“It’s that bad?” he asked.
“I’m stuck on a rooftop with a stalker. I’d say it’s terrible,” she said.
He smiled but didn’t reply as he continued his smoke. He was enjoying it. She could tell by the way he hummed a bit when he inhaled.
“If I hadn’t been trying to escape the bottle popping contest in there, I would have never come up here,” Sutton answered sarcastically.
“It’s just a bunch of niggas with new money,” West answered as he looked at the exhibit in front of him. “The check ain’t even cleared and they’ve already blown hundreds of thousands on bullshit.” He shook his head and rubbed both hands down his head.
“Can’t expect the conditions of someone’s mind to change just because their status does. A day ago, they were struggling college students,” she said.
His eyes froze on her, not long, but long enough to recognize her words had affected him.
“Maybe,” he answered. “Or maybe they’re just stupid as fuck.”
She scoffed, then laughed. “Or that,” she said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just needed some air. I don’t remember hating noise this much. When I was twenty years old, I would be with all the shits. Guess I’m getting old. I’m normally in bed at this time of night.”
“Lucky bed.”
She pulled her neck back, stunned. His forwardness had taken her by surprise. He smirked, licking full lips before focusing his brooding stare back on the skyline.
The way he continued to smoke the diminishing cigar as if he hadn’t said a word made her peer at him in wonder. He was hard to read, and she was almost sure that was intentional. His suit was tailored and not just a brand name pulled off a rack at Neiman’s. It was bespoke, one of one, designed personally for him. The cigar he smoked was Cuban, authentic, and hand rolled. She picked the scent right out of the air as he blew the smoke out into the night. Tattoos peeked above the collar of his shirt and up the back of his neck and the intensity of his presence … That alone—along with the aura, the stature—screamed his authority without him having to speak one word.
She smiled stubbornly, looking away because she shouldn’t be this flattered. Her cheeks flushed as he bit his bottom lip and then ran his tongue across it. Sutton didn’t know if he was moving slowly or if time had stood still, but the nigga was a walking fantasy. Powerful and paid; subtle yet dripping in luxury. He wore his crown well. She had to admit that much.
“I never met a pretty girl who complained about being in a room full of money,” he said.
“Money doesn’t buy access to me. If it did, nobody in this building would be able to afford my vig,” she said.
“You sure about that?” he asked, turning to face her.
“Positive,” she said.
“Everybody has a price,” he countered. “It’s the first thing I learned in business. Niggas on the block, men in suits sitting across the boardroom, beautiful women on rooftops … even if it’s expensive, there’s a price.”
“Not really, but okay,” she answered, not at all affected by his arrogance. Men with money had the hugest egos, but he wasn’t boasting, just speaking from experience. His affluence had made rules bendable. Right and wrong were an illusion put on those who couldn’t afford to change the definition. Sutton was familiar with the way the world made exceptions for men like him.
“A hundred thousand,” he said.
Sutton laughed, shaking her head. “I spend that in Hermès.”
He was amused. His eyes glistened and he scoffed playfully. Sutton was no average woman. Everything about her was an elevated experience very few men could say they had ever indulged. With just the time they had spent talking, this man had already been given more than most.
“What?” she asked.
“Not many women stand by their word. They say it to say it, to dismiss feeling cheap, to put up a façade of respectability,” he answered.
“The type to say, ‘I don’t normally do this,’ knowing all along they’re going to do the shit?” Sutton asked, smiling.
“That exact type,” he confirmed.
“Yeah, wrong girl,” she said. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“The opposite, actually. It’s low-key refreshing,” he answered. He sat on the edge of the cement ledge and peered at her curiously, taking one last puff of his cigar before snuffing it out and placing it inside his inner jacket pocket.
“So business is your thing? That’s surprising,” he said.
She frowned. “How so?” she asked.
“The room full of wasted potential in there should explain why I’m surprised. A girl like you—”
“A woman,” she interrupted, correcting him.
He paused for a beat, taking the time to look her up and down before settling on her eyes. “Indeed,” he agreed. “My mistake. Women who look like you don’t normally do what they don’t have to do.”
“So attractive women lack work ethic?” she asked. “That’s not chauvinist at all.”
He smirked at her sarcasm. “They work, they just work niggas, not jobs,” he answered. “Crazy part is they don’t even know they’re the one with the leverage. Women can be bought; it’s their greatest flaw.”
“Not all women,” she fired back proudly. “There are some women men just could never afford. The money might be right; but in order for a man to really be rich, to really be able to afford to have his way, he’d have to have finesse. He’d have to be so used to money that he never even mentioned it; that he no longer saw the purpose of it.”
“Where are you from?” he asked, curious as to where her ideologies originated from.
“Miami.” Sutton bit her tongue after the truth slipped from her mouth. It snuck out too quickly to chase it back. He didn’t need to know background information. It made her traceable. It was his aura. It demanded the truth and nothing else. His authority was passive, but present, and Sutton was intrigued.
“Sutton LaCroix from Miami,” he said, mulling it over, going inside his head, making assumptions about who she was. She was sure all of his assumptions were wrong.
A random couple pushed open the steel door, bursting out into the night.
“Hey, my man! Hold that door! It locks behind you,” he said. He then turned his attention back to Sutton.
“You can’t be bought. I believe that,” he said, nodding. “So why don’t you give it to a nigga for free?” He rose and Sutton watched him walk back into the party.
He left behind the scent of his cologne, a key card to his hotel room, and a business card.
WEST SIDE MANAGEMENT
WEST S. AUSTIN
CEO
She picked it up, taken aback. No man had ever been so forward with her and oddly it hollowed her gut. It had been a long time since a man had given her that feeling. That giddy, sick intrigue that made her heart quicken.
She picked up the key. Four Seasons.
She placed the key back where she had gotten it from and went to find her sisters. Arrogant ass, she thought.
The party was going strong inside and she quickly found them at a table of football veterans. All the groupies in the building had their sights on the newly inducted NFL stars. The LaCroix sisters knew it was the established players who had the biggest salaries and they weren’t looking to fill their beds. Events like this were for networking. She was certain they would walk out with a slew of potential clients.
She walked over to the booth and leaned down to whisper in Honor’s ear.
“I’m going to head out. Y’all be safe and keep Ash on a leash. One of these niggas show a little weakness, and he’ll wake up with his bank account on empty messing with her.”
Honor laughed. “I got it. You sure you don’t
want to stay?”
Sutton shook her head and blew her other two sisters kisses before heading for the exit. Her car was waiting curbside as instructed and she slid inside, feeling relief as soon as she was behind the dark tint.
“Back to the hotel, Ms. LaCroix?”
* * *
“There’s our boy,” Ashton said as she watched August step out onto the second-floor balcony. He overlooked the main floor as women flocked behind him. Ashton recognized two all-star players beside him, but somehow the white boy was the center of attention. People liked him. His charisma mixed with unlimited pockets made him the life of every party.
“Talking business in a nightclub is a sure way to ruin a deal before we even get started,” Gadget said. “Now that we’ve laid eyes on him, let’s find out where he’s staying.” Gadget pulled a small GPS tracker from her makeup compact. She opened her palm to show the small device to her sisters. It looked like a random button.
“We slide this in his jacket pocket, and we’ll be able to see where he’s staying without having to follow him—down to the room number. We’ll send a girl to him, underaged of course, and when he realizes he’s had sex with a minor, we’ll have him exactly where we want him.”
“Who’s up?” Ashton asked.
Honor slid out of the booth, taking the button into her hand, and crossed the room.
It took her ten minutes just to get to August. Every few steps Honor took, a new man stopped her. She was offered six drinks and a marriage proposal; that last one she found charming, but she graciously declined it as she made her way to August.
“Excuse me, can I get by you?” she asked as she waited for him to turn her way.
