Dirty Rotten Liar Read online

  For the first time I was able to take a look around, and what I saw shocked the shit outta me. There were mad hundred-dollar-bills laid out everywhere, like a big green load of laundry that had been spread out to dry. The scent of Tide laundry detergent was all over the place, but the smell of gasoline was strong in the air too. I thought about some crazy shit that I had seen on the news.

  A car full of money had blown up in Harlem a couple of days ago. They said some white nigga had been driving around with damn near a million dollars in his whip when a crowd of hoes jumped on him and beat his ass down to the ground. Ol’ boy had scrambled behind the wheel and tried to jet, but his gas tank blew up and mad dough rained down on the streets of Harlem like a gift from the ghosts of every drug kingpin who had passed.

  The TV cameras had been on that shit. Niggas had swarmed all over that whip, damn near killing each other tryna scoop up all that half-burnt cheese. And now, stretched out on the cold floor and sniffing gas fumes, I didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that Gutta had washed him some of that loot and stashed it away in this warehouse.

  My brain was steady calculating the sum of all that dirty money when somebody banged real hard on the door. The dude who was standing watch over me looked up and frowned.

  “What up?” he barked.

  “It’s me!” some chick said all happy-like. “Open up dammit!”

  “Me who?”

  “Stop playin’, nigga,” she giggled, “and let me in!”

  Dude got right up on the door as he unlocked that shit. He opened it just a crack, and even with all them gas fumes in the air the sweet smell of Pure Poison by Dior at a hundred smacks a bottle still rushed into the small room.

  I tried to peer through the door crack, but from where I was laying the only thing I could see was a big foot and a long, sexy calf. The foot was perched in a hot-pink open-toe stiletto, and I heard bracelets and jewelry tinkling out the ass.

  “What the fuck—” was all dude got out, and then I heard a smashing sound and the door busted open wide.

  “Fool!” I heard a grown man growl, and the next thing I knew Peaches’ big gorilla ass was up in the room. He swung his muscular arm and bashed dude in the face with his gat, and when dude stumbled and reached for his busted grill, Peaches kneed him in the mug and slammed his burner down on the back of dude’s head hard enough to crack his skull.

  Ol’ boy hit that concrete floor like a dropped rock, and I was already up on my knees by the time Peaches scurried over and reached for me.

  “Get up, Madame Mink!” he growled as he stepped over dude and yanked me to my feet. “We gotta get the fuck outta here!”

  He had that shit right! I forgot all about the pain in my bones as I held on to P’s strong arm and he half-carried my broke-down tail outta that warehouse and back through the alley as we hauled ass toward freedom.

  CHAPTER 7

  Die, Viceroy, Die! Dy-Nasty thought wickedly as she fantasized about all the fly shit she was gonna buy when that trust fund paid out and she got her three hunnerd large!

  She had been laid up in the crisp king-sized bed with her fake mama watching reruns and eating Ritz crackers outta the box when a call from the hospital down in Houston came in and messed every damn thing up.

  Selah had sounded shook right off the bat, and Dy-Nasty was all ears as her fake mama hit the PAUSE button on the remote and clutched the blanket up to her chest.

  “Oh my God!” Selah’s voice was screechy and high-pitched. “What do you mean my husband’s condition has changed drastically? Did something go wrong with one of your new procedures? Please, just tell me. Are you trying to say his life is in danger? Okay. Okay, yes! I understand. Yes! Yes, of course! I can get there right away. Just let me alert my pilot and I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Selah slammed the phone down and jumped straight outta the bed.

  “We have to get to Houston,” she told Dy-Nasty breathlessly as she scurried toward her huge closet filled with endless shoes, jewelry, and designer clothing. “Something’s happened to your father. It must be pretty bad, because they won’t tell me anything over the phone.”

  Dy-Nasty rolled her eyes behind Selah’s back and checked herself before she could suck her teeth out loud.

  We gotta get to Houston? She thought, twisting her lips up real stank. We?

  Fuck a damn Viceroy!

  Why in the hell did she have to go? That old rich gangsta didn’t need her to be there so he could die! Besides, she hated flying on that scary-ass jet, and she wasn’t even tryna get up outta his big old comfy bed!

  Dy-Nasty was scandalous and greedy but she wasn’t no fool. She had been performing like a muthafucka up in that mansion while Mink’s stupid ass was gone to New York, and she wasn’t about to fuck herself up now that she was just days away from hitting the jackpot of her gutter life!

  Maids, drivers, credit cards, every luxury in the world had been at Dy-Nasty’s grimy little fingertips ever since the moment she’d kicked Barron in the face at that strip club in Harlem. And now that the board at Dominion Oil had finally met, and her tight-nut “big brother” Barron had gone to get the final paperwork signed, she was ready to collect her three hunnerd bills and get the fuck up outta Texas!

  She pushed the plush blanket back and poked her lip out. Instead of actin’ funky like she really wanted to, she made all the right noises and said all the comforting shit that Selah needed to hear as she jumped her frauding ass outta that bed and threw on her gear like she was rushing into a bank to throw a bucket of water on a burning stack of cash!

  Since Jock was at football practice, Fallon was at the beauty parlor, and Dane was prolly somewhere getting high and digging up in some college girl’s twat, Dy-Nasty went ahead and played her role as the dutiful daughter and held Selah’s hand as they flew down to Houston in the Dominion’s private jet.

  They landed at a local heliport and then hopped in a limo for the short trip over to the hospital. A team of doctors rushed out to meet them as they pulled into the private parking area, and their faces looked so stone-cold serious that Dy-Nasty figured Viceroy’s black ass had already kicked the bucket.

  The doctors whisked them inside the building without saying a word, and after dropping Dy-Nasty off in the waiting room, they escorted Selah down the hall to the intensive care unit.

  “Die, you old muthafucka, die!” Dy-Nasty whispered under her breath as she plopped down sideways in a chair and propped her feet up in the seat next to her. She sat there twirling a few curly strands of her brand-new weave around her grubby little fingers as she fantasized about the three hundred thousand big ones these fools was about to deposit in an account for her. She giggled inside as she thought about that meeting they’d had at Uncle Suge’s house and the fifty-fifty deal that she had cut with Mink.

  Sheiit! Dy-Nasty laughed her ass off. Fifty-fifty hell! If that dumb Harlem broad was counting on getting half of that moolah when she got back to Texas, then that bitch’s big head was sho’nuff bumped!

  Dy-Nasty pulled out her phone and started texting back and forth with plottin’-ass Pat back in Philly. Pat was a master fraudster, and Dy-Nasty loved that chick with all her heart! Between the two of them they was gonna blow the City of Brotherly Love right off the map when she rolled back in town with all that Dominion cash!

  Dy-Nasty couldn’t wait to get her ass back home and get out there on the hot Philadelphia streets. Her name was gonna ring some real big liberty bells when she switched her booty up on the block with cream oozing all outta her pores, but first she had a sweet lil Dallas hustle she needed to handle and a few more Texas two-steps she needed to make!

  Selah felt frozen inside as she walked down the hallway flanked by the stern-faced crew of doctors who were about to lay some real heavy news on her about her husband.

  “I must tell you that your husband’s mental status has changed drastically, and so has his appearance,” Viceroy’s chief neurosurgeon said as he led her down the long hall towa
rd her husband’s private ICU room.

  “We wanted to call you sooner,” Viceroy’s chief internist added, “but we had to be sure his condition was permanent and that there were no other treatment options left.”

  “Please don’t be alarmed,” the neurologist soothed her, “but as you might recall, you granted us permission to proceed with any treatment we deemed necessary in Mr. Dominion’s care and recuperation.”

  Selah nodded as she listened to the doctor trying to cover his wide-open ass. She knew the deal. They had fucked up. After all those experimental treatments with stem cells and placentas and monkey brains and whatnot, the doctors had fucked up, and now they were trying to prepare her for the hot human mess she was about to see when she stepped inside that room.

  She took a deep breath.

  Twenty-five years. She had been with Viceroy for over twenty-five long years. A few of them had been pretty good, and a whole lot of them had been pretty damn bad. But none of that mattered right now. After living with a man for twenty-five years the thought of losing him forever was hard as hell. In the back of her mind Selah had been prepping herself for life as a single woman ever since she got the news of Viceroy’s accident and found out the extent of his injuries. For months he’d been hanging on by a thread, with every slight improvement countered by several backward steps. Selah had thought she was ready for the inevitability of losing him, but now that the time was here, maybe she wasn’t.

  The closer they got to his room the shorter her breaths became. Her throat felt like it was closing up and her heart felt swollen in her chest.

  Selah gripped the surgeon’s hand tightly as they pushed through the door of her husband’s room. And the sight that greeted her as she stepped inside was enough to buckle her knees and send a small scream tearing from her throat.

  “Hey, baby,” Viceroy croaked in a voice that sounded like it came out of a cold, gravelly grave.

  Her man was sitting up in bed, with a slew of pillows propping his frail body in place. “Damn. What the hell took you so long to get here?”

  CHAPTER 8

  Barron Dominion walked down the long executive corridor at Dominion Oil’s headquarters, kicking himself up the ass all the way.

  The DNA results on Mink and Dy-Nasty still hadn’t come back yet. Pilar had jumped all in his shit for signing the papers that gave the board permission to hold a voting session without having those results in their hands, but there wasn’t shit that Barron could have done about that.

  And now, once the board signed off on the final documents today, there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do to stop that sexy Harlem scam-artist from getting her paws on three hundred hunks of sweet Dominion dough each and every year, either.

  The last paragraph of that fucked-up letter that Suge had made him sign flashed like a strobe light in Barron’s head.

  And in conclusion, 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.

  Fuck!

  The board members his father had appointed to watch over his stash were a crew of oil-grubbin’ gangsters who robbed the country blind with one hand and thumped the Bible with the other one. Barron knew them old jackers would’ve chewed his black ass down to the bone if they ever got some dirt on him.

  His gut got tight again as he mentally replayed Suge’s blackmail videotape of that skank-ass white chick claiming he was her baby daddy!

  Channel Seven Keep 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?

  Barron had been telling the God’s honest truth when he swore to Pilar that he had never even met the bitch, and he had damn sure never fucked the girl, but Viceroy Dominion hadn’t raised no fool. When it came to money, Barron knew the truth didn’t matter, especially in the eyes of a board like the one his father had set up. If they’d found out about him running over a kid and getting a DUI they would’ve kicked his ass out of the trust fund in two seconds flat.

  And those pictures?

  Barron’s gut clenched again and he turned off his cell phone as he approached the door to the conference room. He would’ve been ass-fucked if the board members had peeped those shots of his nuts hanging out of a skirt and his lips all over some random dude’s dick!

  He was sweating all underneath his five-thousand-dollar suit by the time he opened the door and stepped into the huge room where a group of powerful businessmen were seated around a large, oblong table. The body of rich white men, some old enough to be his granddaddy, rose to their feet out of respect for Barron’s title as he approached the biggest chair at the head of the table.

  Barron paused for a few moments as the men all stood up and clapped as they beamed and smiled at him. He knew it was all fake love, but on the real tip it didn’t matter how torn-out his asshole was—he was still the acting CEO of one of the largest and most profitable oil companies in the country, and every last one of these old bastards better recognize that shit too.

  “Gentlemen,” he said in a deep, commanding voice, motioning for them to take their seats so he could get down to business. “I trust everyone is in good business spirits today. The last time we met we voted to have my father, Viceroy Dominion, declared incompetent to make sound legal decisions and to carry out his primary business responsibilities here at Dominion Oil.”

  Barron cleared his throat and extracted a folder from his briefcase, and then he took a few sheets of paper off the top.

  “Today’s meeting will serve as a finalization of that vote. We have our staff notary public standing by to record your votes and notarize your signatures, and Hank”—Barron passed the document to a middle-aged man on his left whose family owned the biggest law firm in Texas—“if you could review the top document quickly and then sign it and pass it around the table, we can conclude this order of business and get on with the rest of our day.”

  Barron felt small as shit. His father had clawed his way up out of the trenches of the ghetto and built his business from the dirt up. Barron wanted to smash the shit out of something as he sat there watching the piece of paper that would end Viceroy’s reign of power get passed around the table from greedy old white hand to greedy old white hand.

  The oil rig accident had been bad enough, but all the shit that had gone down afterwards had been Barron’s fault. Sitting there in his father’s chair, he couldn’t help feeling like a total fuckin’ failure.

  And he had failed too. Big fuckin’ time. Viceroy had trusted him with billions of dollars in cash and assets, and all it had taken was two dirty rotten liars, Mink LaRue and her crusty-toe look-alike Dy-Nasty Jenkins, to run up in the Dominions’ lives and fuck everything up.

  Barron’s chest felt tight as he thought about those two scandalous bitches. The one from Philly was gonna be easy to get rid of. His boy Frankie Gaines had dug up enough shit on her to bury her out in a cow pasture. And the other one, the one who came to Barron’s bed every night and sexed the dog shit outta him in his dreams, well, she had run back to Harlem to see about her so-called boss.

  Boss hell. Barron allowed himself a small chuckle inside as he thought about the hunk of cash he had wired to New York. He wasn’t gonna have to worry about Mink much longer, though. Because if Gutta was good to his criminal word and he gave Barron his money’s worth, then Mink was gonna get real wet when her ex-convict boo tied a cement block around that greedy bitch’s neck and sent her floating to the bottom of the East River.

  “Viceroy! Oh my God!” Selah rushed over to her husband’s bedside as tears fell from her eyes. “I thought you were . . . I thought . . . Thank God you’re awake!”

  She squeezed him tight and planted kisses all over his face, and then she perched her slim body on the edge of the bed and cried into his shoulder as Viceroy stroked her back a
nd tried to soothe her.

  “I’m okay, baby,” he murmured over and over. “It’s all right. I’m okay.”

  “But I was so scared,” Selah moaned as she cried. “I prayed for you every minute of every day, and I tried so hard to keep the faith, but the doctors said . . . they made me think . . . they said you might not be able to talk or walk or even think for yourself again!”

  “Well them fools were wrong.” Viceroy soothed her and leaned over to kiss her forehead. He had been pretty busted up in the explosion and had lost a lot of weight, but when he smiled at Selah, she saw the same old devilish dude who had knocked her off her feet all those years ago.

  Fresh tears ran from Selah’s eyes, but they damn sure weren’t for her husband.

  “Don’t cry, Selah,” Viceroy said in a deep voice. He lifted a shaky hand to wipe her tears away. “The time for crying is over now, baby. I’m back and I’m about to be better than ever. It’s gonna take a helluva lot more than a little rig blast to stick a cat like me in a goddamn coffin.”

  Selah nodded and pressed a big wad of tissue to her eyes, but the truth be told, Viceroy had picked a real bad time to decide to wake his ass up! It was almost like he had gotten some kind of vibe while he was knocked out. Like somehow he’d peeped the love jones that was going down between her and his arch-enemy Rodney Ruddman and had woken up to throw some ice-cold water on their red-hot flames.

  Selah suddenly felt stupid as hell for slapping Ruddman in the face in downtown Dallas. They had been right out on the street, and she never would have done something like that if she thought Viceroy had the chance of a snowball in hell of waking up and being in his right mind. Selah knew she was a high-profile figure in an elitist oil town. She was gonna have to be way more careful. Any Joe Blow with a cell phone camera could have filmed her little dust-up with Rodney and posted it on YouTube for the whole world to see.