Red Hot Liar (9781617738654) Read online

  You got that shit right, I sniggled under my breath. Selah just didn’t know. Chief Master Grifter Peaches had taught me everything I knew about hustling and ganking. From picking pockets to running con schemes, I owed every inch of my grime game to Peaches Baines, and if it wasn’t for his ass then me and Bunni never would a made it down to Texas to steal Selah’s money in the first damn place!

  “Yeah, honey,” Peaches kept going on and on. He was sitting there in a giant lime-green skirt and batting his false eyelashes as Mrs. Katie walked around serving us our meals. “Mizz Mink done had all kinds of close calls and misadventures. Did she ever tell you about the time the cops arrested her in the Bronx on Gun Hill Road and took her down to the station? Man, by the time I got over there to get her Mizz Mink had the whole joint rocking! I mean, she put on a show up in that hizzle! She was standing on a table working her double hump game so hard that even the chief of police was sweating and screaming her name.”

  Peaches beamed proudly and grinned. “I mean that girl got some real skills about herself. One time she had this old guy from City Hall feening over her harrrd . . .” He covered his mouth and giggled. “Mink wouldn’t even let him smell it until he agreed to tap into her computer file and delete all of her old warrants and . . .”

  I zoned Peaches right on out as him and Selah cracked up at some of the crazy messes I had gotten myself into. At one point in time I woulda felt some kinda way about Peaches busting me out and telling Selah all my bizz, especially with Pilar’s floppy ears listening in, but there wasn’t no more shame in my game because I’d already peeped Mama Selah’s hoe card and she had some bony-ass skeletons in her closet too! Besides, now that I was all up in the family and they couldn’t kick me out, who cared what they thought about me? Hell, my moolah was sitting in the bank now, and it didn’t even matter if the Dominions got their hands on them old videos of me humping on a snake and giving lap dances to them four cockeyed midgets. I was paid out the ass and I was my own damn boss, and there wasn’t a damn thing from my grimy past that I had to worry about coming back to haunt me ever again! Nope, thanks to good luck and even better scheming, I was set for life. All I had to do was stay slick, rich, and black, and everythang was gonna be everythang!

  Viceroy swigged the last drop out of his miniature bottle of gin as his plush whip rolled up the long, manicured driveway. He had polished off at least six of the little shots since leaving his office, and he was good and tight as his driver stopped right outside the door to his multi-million-dollar mansion.

  Rage bubbled just under his skin as he rolled down his window and flung a handful of the empties out. They landed in Selah’s precious patch of rose bushes and disappeared as they fell down toward the thorny stems.

  “Take that, you ol’ tramp!” he slurred, flinging open the door of his limo before the doorman could rush over. He had given his old crony Bob his word that he would run for office, but he hadn’t promised a goddamn thing when it came down to putting his foot in Selah’s ass.

  He fell out of the ride, then pushed past the doorman and busted through the front entrance of the mansion like he was about to pull a kick-door and lay everybody in the joint down.

  Stumbling into the foyer, Viceroy heard sounds of female laughter coming from the dining room. He was gonna fix these cutthroat mothafuckas! All of them. They were sitting around his house spending up his damn money and stabbing him in his back at the same damn time. He was gonna show their ungrateful asses who was running shit up in his house, he thought as he jetted toward the voices with his liquor talking to him real loud. He was about to kick some ass and take some fuckin’ names!

  When he busted up in the dining room Selah, Mink, Pilar, Bunni, and that over-grown monstrosity who called himself Peaches were sitting around the table yakking their jaws. Every eye bucked and every lip paused as the big black demon that was Him filled the doorway and trembled with rage.

  “What’s the matter, Papa-Doo?” Bunni shouted when she saw the crazy-ass look on his face, but Selah was much quicker and wiser than the young hood rat and she didn’t say a goddamn thing.

  Instead, her chair scraped backward as she jumped to her feet, just one glance at the sparks shooting from her husband’s eyes enough to send her Brooklyn survival instincts kicking into over-drive.

  “You dirty bitch!” Viceroy cocked back his bandaged fist and roared as everybody at the table got to scrambling out of their seats.

  “How’d that muthafucka get your ring?” he bellowed at his wife. “How in the hell did Rodney Ruddman get your muthafuckin’ ring???”

  Selah’s mouth fell to the floor as her eyes bucked open wide.

  He knew! Dear God up in Heaven, Viceroy knew!

  “What in the world are you talking about?” she closed her mouth and played it off real cool, even though her heart had plunged deep down into her bowels. She stared at him with an innocent look on her face and tried her best to sound clueless, but she’d known what time it was the moment she peeped the murderous ghetto look in her husband’s eye.

  “Your ring, whore!” Viceroy screeched. “That black bastard sent me a picture of your old engagement ring today, Selah. So how’d he get it? You must’ve been damn near in his lap for him to get it off your goddamn finger, huh?”

  “That’s ridiculous!” she waved him off. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Viceroy!” Selah fronted, bluffing for the kids’s sake. She pointed her finger at him like a Brooklyn girl. “And don’t you call me out of my name either, dammit! Just calm yourself down and get a grip right now!” she said, trying to gain the upper hand. “You and Rodney Ruddman must be playing some real sick pissing games because nobody took my ring off my damn finger!”

  “Games my ass! Then how’d he get it, goddammit?” Viceroy demanded, panting hard as he walked up on her with raging bloodshot eyes. “Where’d you say you lost it at again?” he mocked, cupping his hand behind his ear. “What was that? You dropped it in my worst enemy’s drawers?”

  “Viceroy.” Selah sighed and shook her head like he was talking out of his ass. “That doesn’t even make any sense, honey! You’ve been drinking, dear. Come on. Let’s go upstairs and talk about this. Maybe you can take a little nap and—”

  “Tell the truth! You been fuckin’ that ugly black bastard, Selah?” he growled, ignoring her noise and creeping up on her as he got ready to make his move. “I plucked your ass outta the grimy gutters of Brooklyn when you didn’t have nothing but two pairs of panties and a raggedy slip to your name, and this is how you do me?”

  “No!” Selah shrieked, her cool all gone as she stumbled backward in terror. “I swear to God I’ve never betrayed you, Viceroy! Never!”

  Fallon rushed forward and tried to jump between her parents like a barrier, but Viceroy was hood-slick and he faked right and darted left as he jetted toward Selah. Peaches had already jumped up and was coming at him too, but Viceroy crossed him over and broke his ankles and Peaches went down like a tall tree in those ugly lime green heels he had on.

  “Mr. Dominion, please!” Mrs. Katie hollered from the other side of the table where she was still holding a hot pot of grits, but Viceroy didn’t even hear her. His mind was locked on getting him a piece of Selah’s ass, and nothing and nobody was gonna stop him.

  Until he ran smack into Mink and Bunni, that is.

  “Put ’em up!” Bunni challenged, jumping in front of Selah and going into a boxer’s stance. “First name Bunni, last name Mayweather!” she said, popping her neck twice as her and Mink posted up strong, ready to go toe-to-toe.

  “Get the fuck outta my way!” Viceroy screamed and lunged drunkenly, swiping at Selah and missing so bad he almost fell dead on his face.

  “Pound for pound, nucka!” Bunni hollered, squaring up like a champ. “You swing them paws on Mama Selah and we gone hafta go pound for pound!”

  The gutter streets of Houston rose up out of Viceroy and he lunged again, falling forward and knocking the hell out of both
Bunni and Mink. He heard their Harlem battle cries and felt their blows raining down on his back and head, but getting his hands around Selah’s throat was the only thing on his drunken mind.

  He rose up and groped for her in the middle of the fighting pile, and he was just about to clamp down on her when Mink jumped on his back and wrapped her arms and legs around him like a little monkey. The four of them went down to the ground again tussling and scrapping, with fists flying everywhere.

  Viceroy lunged forward and got his mitts on Selah and managed to twist her around backward and clamp his arm around her throat. She dropped her chin into the V of his elbow and tried to bite him through his shirtsleeve, and he yanked her by the hair then squeezed his arm tight until he was strangling her neck.

  A moment later he was jerked violently backward himself and something got tight around his own damn neck. Windmilling in reverse, Viceroy lost his footing and fell on his ass, landing dead in his attacker’s lap and taking Selah down with him.

  “Get offa her!” Peaches’s deep voice boomed in his ear as he choked the shit out of him. “Un-ass her right now, muthafucka! Un-ass her!”

  The three of them were laid out on top of each other like a stack of slid pancakes. Peaches was at the bottom of the pile with his skirt hiked up to his waist yoking the shit out of Viceroy, and Viceroy was cradled between the big man’s naked thighs yoking the shit outta Selah.

  Pilar was watching the fight like she wanted some popcorn. Bunni and Mink were on their knees cursing like guttersnipes and throwing crazy punches at his face and head, and when Viceroy saw a big one coming straight at him, he pushed his ass deeper into Peaches’s crotch and yanked Selah up in front of him like a shield.

  Pop!

  “Owwww!” Selah’s knees flew up and she shrieked in pain as Bunni’s fist smacked into her eye, dotting that shit.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow! That hurt, Bunni!”

  Even with Peaches choking the shit outta him Viceroy found the strength to open his mouth and laugh, but then he closed it again when another fist came flying at him and this one he couldn’t duck.

  Splat!

  Viceroy shrieked. Suddenly he was stone-cold sober as pain exploded in his bad eye, the one that had been swollen up bigger than an egg after the oil rig blast. He saw bright lights and he saw stars. He saw bursts of lightning and a rocket flare went off deep inside his pupil. The pain was so bad he saw a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors in the brightest and most agonizing images possible.

  He saw all that shit and more, but what he heard was the voice of his youngest daughter as she stood over him with her fist cocked back and ready to bust the shit outta him in his other eye.

  “Back up, Boy-o! You want another one? Get your goddamn hands off my mother! I hope she did mess around on you because you ain’t shit, Daddy! You ain’t shit!”

  “Fallon?” Viceroy said incredulously as he loosened his grip on Selah and came back to his senses. “Baby girl?”

  Fallon’s twisted lips and the anger in her eyes did something to Viceroy that really messed him up. Pushing Selah out of his lap, he glared at Mrs. Katie and snapped his fingers twice.

  “Go get me two servants. Two men! Tell them to grab some big baskets and bring them up to my suite. Now!”

  He pushed himself up on his knees with a look on his face that none of them had ever seen before. His eyes raked over the room and scorched everybody as they swept by.

  “You!” Viceroy turned and pointed at Peaches with pure disgust shooting out of his pupils. “I want your frilly ass the fuck outta my house! You hear me? Walking around here with ya balls dangling and ya dick print showing all through your skirt! I’m giving you one goddamn week, you hear me? One week and your ass better be gone!”

  “But Papa Doo!” Bunni wailed. “Peaches ain’t even do nothing! Selah and Fallon are the ones you mad at! Please, please, please, don’t take it out on my bruvah!”

  Viceroy wasn’t even trying to hear it.

  “Out!” he yelled, pointing toward the door. “All of y’all! Out!”

  “B-b-but what about Okrah?” Selah squeaked, holding her eye. “She’ll be here in a couple of hours! They’re filming from our garden today!”

  “Fuck Okrah! She can get the fuck out too!” Viceroy screamed as he stumbled to his feet and cast his hands over the entire lot of them. “Out, out, get the fuck out!”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Please honey, I swear!” Selah pleaded, stumbling behind her husband as Viceroy stormed through her closet stripping all her designer gear off the hangers. Instead of her being the boss bitch up in the joint and pulling all the strings, the tables had suddenly turned and now she was the one caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  “I swear to God I don’t know how Rodney Ruddman got my ring! There’s got to be some rational explanation for it,” she lied, “but I swear on my dead mother’s grave I didn’t give it to him, baby. He didn’t get it from me!”

  Viceroy moved through their suite like a hurricane with the two male servants following him silently and holding a pair of extra-large baskets in their hands.

  “Viceroy, please don’t do this!” she cried out as he ripped at her ten-thousand-dollar dresses and flung boxes of her precious jewels around like they were Cracker Jack trinkets. Their fight had been hella nasty. After leaving poor Fallon downstairs crying uncontrollably, Selah had raced up the stairs behind Viceroy as he called for two male servants and stormed up to their bedroom suite.

  “Your ass gots to go,” he growled as he filled up basket after basket, tossing her shit inside in big heaps. “You gots to get the fuck up outta here!”

  For the first time in her married life Selah felt real fear. “W-w-where are you taking all my stuff, Viceroy? Where do you want me to go? Do you want me to move downstairs? Would you like me to put my things in another suite?”

  “Hell no!” he spit. “I want you out the door! You ain’t staying not one more night under my goddamn roof, Selah! Take your ass out there to the pool house!” he demanded. “You can stay out there while I decide if you’re ever gonna be good enough to crawl up in my bed again!”

  “Oh really?” Selah turned down her lip and hit him with a blast from the past. “I didn’t pack up your shit when I caught my sister on her knees in your goddamn office! You must’ve forgotten how that low-down bitch sucked your dick!”

  Viceroy’s eyes got wide as he thought about the best head he had ever gotten in his life. “Oh I ain’t never forgot that shit! I ain’t gonna never, ever forget that shit!”

  “Viceroy!” Selah sobbed, knowing the pain and humiliation of what she was about to face was going to be way too much for her to bear. “But are you seriously putting me out, baby? I’m your wife and you’re putting me out of our home?”

  “You shoulda thought about whose wife you were when you decided to climb your ass in the sack with that grisly bastard Ruddman!”

  “I didn’t—” Selah started to lie again but then changed her strategy. “What about Fallon? You scared the hell out of her, Viceroy! Her and Jock are supposed to be flying out to their young leaders’ camp today and instead she’s downstairs crying her eyes out because of you! And what about the rest of the kids?” she wailed. “What are they gonna think when they find out you put their mother out of her home and forced her to go live in some wretched-ass pool house!”

  “The kids?” Viceroy whirled around and glared like her tears didn’t faze him one damn bit. “The goddamn kids are grown, Selah! If they got a problem with what I do in my house then they can carry their asses out to the pool house right along with you! Matter fact,” he said with a dark, crazed glint in his eyes. “I’m about to tighten up my will and put the brakes on all these muthafuckas who been up in here milking my nuts! I’m about to cut every damn body off, so the kids better learn how to start scrapping for their goddamn selves!”

  That there shut Selah right the hell up. Viceroy wasn’t bullshitting. He had never in his maddest moments threatened to
cut all his kids off financially before, and if he could do that to them then Selah knew exactly what he could do to her.

  “Baby please,” she tried one more time. “I understand you’re upset and you don’t have a lot of faith in me right now. But do you have to go about it like this, Viceroy? Isn’t there some other way we can work this out?”

  The ice-cold smirk on his face damn near cut her heart in two, and with tears of shame running down her face she hung her head and followed the servants—and all her shit—out to the pool house.

  Barron Dominion’s muscular ebony body was drenched in sweat. He bench-pressed two hundred seventy pounds of free weights as he tried to quiet his raging mind and burn off some stress. His headphones were blasting a Yo Gotti cut that fueled him to push past the pain in his muscles and embrace the steady burn. Ever since he could remember he had been a thinker and planner. From the time he was a kid he had overanalyzed every detail of every situation from the top to the bottom, and then took it back up to the top again.

  In most cases having such a razor-sharp mind was a great thing to possess, and he could remember quite a few times when his ability to think his way out of a box had saved his ass from a burning hot fire. But sometimes all that thinking could put you in a bad spot. It could overload a dude’s brain and fuck with all his circuits.

  Right now he was thinking that ever since Mink had busted up on the scene funking things up, life in the Dominion Estate had gone to the dogs. She might’ve been his sister but it was hard to forget about all the grimy lies she’d told and the underhanded schemes she’d pulled trying to get her ass next to that inheritance money. And it was even harder to believe that even after all the low-down con artist shit she’d been running, he had still wanted to bang her sexy lights out from every position possible.

  The truth was, he still had some major issues with the girl. Even though he had promised his mother he would be a real brother to her, he just wasn’t feeling the ratchet flavor that Mink had added to the Dominion family stew. She was a big shit stain on the smooth, respectable family image that Viceroy had spent his whole life building, and nowadays every which way you looked the Dominion brand was totally out of order. The last few months had stressed his mother out so bad that she had picked up the bottle and started back sipping again, and his father had awakened from his coma and come home acting like a hotheaded thug who was still scrambling for respect on the streets of Houston.