Hood Read online

  Xanbar pretended not to see the dark look that crossed Dreko’s face as he turned his attention back to Lamont.

  “Hear that shit? You ’bout to get some real special treatment around here and that shit is all good, but it can turn out to be a burden on you too. Niggas who been out here bucking for their own territory gonna resent your little ass coming in and hopping over they heads like that, but that’s exactly why I want you. You young and you hungry and your eyes is wide open. You looking for opportunities and you got a heart. Now you mighta slumped you two fiend niggas tonight, but tomorrow you gotta get out there and prove ya gangsta all over again. And you gone get it tested every single day too. Your name is Hood now, nigga, and you gotta be ruthless to live up to that shit. If any of them cats out there wanna know how you got your job, tell ’em to come see your boss. Anybody fuck with you, just let me know.”

  “Any of them dudes fuck with me—” young Hood’s hand shot out as he refused the dutch Dreko was passing to him. He had a junkie mother and one tree to his lips had been more than enough to last him a lifetime. “I ain’t runnin and telling no fuckin body. I’m just gone crack they ass. They’ll learn.”

  Xan nodded. That’s exactly what he’d expected to hear. This lil cat was gonna work out just fine. He’d shake shit up amongst Xan’s older crew for a minute but the noise wouldn’t last long. Them niggas out there was getting lazy on they trap anyway. They needed something to wake they asses up and keep ’em scrambling for them clients. Wasn’t nobody on no crack diet around here, so them boys need to push harder for that doe.

  Yep, Xanbar thought, snatching his dutchie outta Dreko’s hand and taking a pull. There was a time when old heads ruled the streets and all the youngsters would be on the block shook and salivating as they looked up to these older men and dreamed of becoming kingpins, pimps, and street hustlers. But not no more. Shit had changed drastically in the game, and today’s drug dealers, ballers, and come ups were eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-old kids with cold hearts, street cunning, and absolutely no compassion.

  He could use more young cats like Hood on his team. Too tender in age to get hit with any real heat from the establishment, but unparented in the world, with no family to keep ’em in check and absolutely no fear. The kind of boys whose cold hearts were invincible and who would count it a miracle if they survived past their twenty-first birthdays. Plus, these cats were economical assets too. With no kids of their own, and too young to drive a whip or rent an apartment, he could pay them far less on the dollar than he had to tear off to some grown nigga who was destined to either get knocked and locked, or leaded and deaded.

  Rising from the booth Xan slipped a curvaceous hottie named Destiny a fifty-dollar bill and told her to take young Hood in a back room and turn him out real good. The boy might could turn down a tree, but he damn sure wasn’t turning down no pussy.

  Xan was pleased with himself for giving Hood his own territory, and saw the move as a slick business decision that would pay out lovely in the future. But Dreko? Xan chuckled and shook his head. Hotheads like him came a dime a dozen and he could find ten of them to fuck up his organization any day. But this crafty lil nigga Hood was just what he needed.

  Hood’s dick had never been so wet in his life.

  It stood straight up as she licked it, jerking like it was plugged into a socket and had sparks of electricity running from its swollen head down to his balls.

  “Feel good?” Destiny giggled as she teased him, her tongue gliding along his eleven-year-old shaft with expert precision.

  A low groan was all Hood could manage as he lay on his back, pumping his dick up at her and fighting hard not to squirt. He grabbed her head and fucked up at her, not caring if he stuck his dick in her mouth, up her nose, or in her goddamn eye socket. Just as long as he hit something warm and wet.

  “Slow down,” she whispered, slapping his hand away. She cupped his balls, then opened her mouth wide and slid his whole dick inside, gripping him tight with her lips until his penis pushed against her throat. She slurped up and down, bathing his member in the warm springs of her mouth as she applied a rhythm to her sucking that was out of this world.

  Hood could have cried out loud it felt so good. It was his first time getting his dick sucked and the first time he had been up close on a naked female too. He couldn’t stop himself. His hands were everywhere. Groping her big round titties, digging into her wet slit, palming her soft, beautiful black ass.

  He was almost crazy with it from the moment she got undressed. His young dick leaked pre-cum that coated its head and dripped onto his thigh. He wanted to sample every part of her at once, and she had to slow him down as his lips pulled on her nipples and his teeth bit into the softness of her stomach.

  “We got a whole hour,” she laughed, trying to control him. She’d had young niggas full of cum before, but not like him. This cat was almost out of his mind for the pussy, and Xanbar was gonna have to pay her another fifty behind all the hickeys and welts and shit he was leaving on her body.

  “Here,” she grabbed his hand and helped him cup her swollen breast as she took him to school. “Touch it like this. Not so hard. Squeeze it gently, now stroke my nipples.”

  Hood rubbed her thick nipples until she moaned, then opened his lips as she pulled his head to her breast.

  “Suck them softly,” she breathed from her knees above him. “Yeah, now add a little tongue to it. Flick them back and forth with the tip of your tongue.”

  Sweat ran down Hood’s face but he was a fast learner. Destiny guided his head with her hands as her bomb titties swelled under his touch and her pussy began to cream.

  “Okay,” she panted. “Take care of down here now.”

  She massaged her thick clit, then slipped a finger inside of her hotness, gripping down on it as she swirled her juices. She placed Hood’s hand on top of hers, allowing him to understand the rhythm. Breathing hard, he pushed down gently on her hand as she fucked herself, his motion becoming even more stimulating than her own. Destiny didn’t protest when he pulled her hand out and replaced her finger with his own. His lips found her nipples again as she fucked up into his hand, her pussy juices spilling out and running onto the bed as his middle finger slid up into her too, filling her up.

  There was no stopping him as he grabbed her by the ass and pulled her against him. Destiny yelped as he shoved his hard dick inside of her as deep as it would go. It scraped her walls and banged against the back of her pussy with mad force, and then there was no more student and no more teacher. Hood was through with his lessons and he fucked her deep and fast, like a jack-hammer. Rolling her onto her back, he spread her legs wide, pushing her knees back against her chest. He had a direct aim as he pounded his young pipe into her softness, all kinds of crazy nonsense noises escaping his lips as he got his first taste of pussy and tried to kill it all in one session.

  Destiny rode with that shit, his dick slamming one of the best she’d ever had. Not many niggas could make her cum with just their dicks, but this one was special and she found her body convulsing twice, back to back, a record for her.

  Destiny was still naked and on her back when Hood dressed and left the room. He’d only been in the game for two minutes and already he was loving this shit. The music was still going strong and he was thirsty. He walked toward Xanbar’s booth feeling more like a grown-ass man than an eleven-year-old kid who had just conquered his first piece of ass.

  Xanbar looked up and saw him coming, and waved him over. But before he could get there a loud disturbance near the front door caught his attention. Hood strained to see through the sea of bodies, trying to figure out what was going on, and when his eyes finally focused on the cause of the commotion, he bolted toward the door, pushing through the crowd.

  He had just reached the door when he was grabbed from behind. All the good feelings he’d just experienced in that back room disappeared as pain struck him in the heart. Struggling against the muscular arms that held him back, Hood
watched as the bouncer carried his mother across the sidewalk and out to the curb, then pushed her into a car waiting outside.

  “Be easy,” Xanbar cautioned, whispering in his ear as Marjay tried to fight her way back inside the club.

  “I said let me the fuck in! I just wanna make some money in the back,” she screamed and pleaded, arms outstretched. “How the fuck I’m supposed to get my shit if y’all won’t let me make no motherfuckin money?!?”

  Hood had seen his mother on the streets and out of control before, but never like this. It had been bad enough when she was mute and wouldn’t speak, but hearing her talk like a tramp was even worse. Marjay’s coat was open and she flailed her legs, pushing her skirt up to her waist and showing her torn black panties. She was mental for real. She’d started collecting buttons around the same time she picked up the pipe, and the millions of buttons pinned to her coat rattled in the night as she screamed and cursed, fighting the bouncer and demanding to be let back inside the club.

  “You out, Marjay,” the bouncer said gently as he folded her up and placed her inside of a car driven by the guy she’d come with. The bouncer was an older cat who had grown up in Brownsville. He had known Marjay when she was looking fine and doing good for herself, and had secretly had a big hard-on for her during those good years.

  “Please don’t bring your ass back here, baby,” he told her gently, “’cause I don’t wanna hurt you. There ain’t no more work for you here no more. Not tonight, not ever.”

  A black feeling hit Hood as he visualized his mother grinding in one of those same rooms he had just come out of. Looking at her now it was hard to detect a trace of the woman she used to be back when his father was alive and they lived up in Mount Vernon. In a way, the dirty cops who killed his father had deaded his mother’s life as well, and they had almost succeeded in taking him and Moo down too.

  “C’mon,” Xanbar said, pulling him back inside. “You got an audience, man. Don’t play into this shit. Fuck around and ya street career will be over before it even gets started.”

  Hood strained angrily against the veteran hustler, the frigid night air blowing through the door doing nothing to calm the ball of heat burning in his heart.

  “Relax, nigga!” Xan whispered in his ear. “You remember what I told you, right? There’s more than one way to get ya gangsta tested out here, young Hood. That ho might be your mother, but don’t you never let these niggas know you got a sweet spot. Never. Now turn your back on that junkie bitch and slide back in that booth like a man so we can finish handling this business.”

  Chapter 7

  We the spokesmen! For the niggas who popped toast in!

  For mothers who lost sons

  And got stuck with their hearts broken!

  “DON’T TOUCH NOTHING in here that don’t belong to you,” Portia snapped as she frowned at her son, Andreko. She watched him like a hawk as he moved around the small, tidy bedroom he used to share with his eight-year-old brother, wondering how in the hell she had managed to give birth to such a monstrosity and why she couldn’t find the courage or the strength to destroy it.

  Dreko and her younger son, Drew, had different fathers, which was one reason Portia felt they were so different in their personalities. Drew’s father had been a star college athlete who collapsed and died on the basketball court of a sudden heart attack when Drew was three. He’d been two days away from signing a pro contract, but they’d never married so either way Portia was out of luck in getting any financial benefits for herself or her son. She was struggling to raise her two boys in one of the most dangerous ghettos in the nation. For the past five years she’d held down a stressful nine-to-five as a bank teller as she tried to save enough money to move them down to Alabama where the last of her family members lived.

  Dreko’s father was the exact opposite of Drew’s. Boss Dawson was a fine-ass street hustler who had intimidated her into giving up the pussy when she was fifteen. His jealous temper and controlling rages had terrified her on a daily basis and had directly contributed to the fatal asthma attack her father suffered when he jumped in to protect her during one of Boss’s countless beating tirades.

  Boss had been locked up in Coxsackie for the last ten years on an unrelated murder charge, and it wouldn’t surprise Portia if one day his son followed right along in his criminal footsteps. That was, unless somebody put Dreko’s ass in the ground first for fuckin with their child, which was a real possibility considering all the dirty shit he did out on those streets. Especially to little kids.

  Portia stared into the face of her firstborn son, seeing his father’s handsome chisled features and her own brown eyes and smooth skin. He was more good-looking than he had a right to be, considering the fact that he was little more than a twisted demon on the inside. Lately, he’d been staying away from the apartment for days at a time, which was just fine by her. On the nights he did come straggling home drunk or high, she would use her dresser to barricade her bedroom door, then put Drew in the bed with her, against the wall, and sleep fitfully with her fingers curled around the handle of the butcher knife she kept hidden beneath her pillow.

  “Where’s baby boy?” Dreko asked, digging through the small closet they shared. He pulled out a heavy sweater and sniffed the armpits.

  Portia shrugged. “Don’t worry about where Drew is. He’s straight. Just get whatever you came for and go back wherever it is you been.”

  Dreko turned and stared at his mother. She was pretty and petite, a hard working black woman who had suffered quite a few knocks in life. Something dangerous glinted in Dreko’s eyes, and even though he was only twelve Portia shrank back against the wall under his eerie glare.

  “Why you always trippin on me like that, Ma?” he asked quietly. There was a hint of innocence and pain in his voice, and for a second Dreko sounded almost like the lovable little man she used to adore before his true colors started showing. “You know me and Drew is tight. He’s my little brother, damn. You crazy with your shit.”

  “Humph,” Portia chuckled bitterly. “I ain’t the one crazy, mister nasty. You was sitting right there when Miss Newman knocked on the door and told me what you be doing to all them little boys on the back staircase. That shit is plain nasty, Dreko. How could you do something so low to them kids when you got a little brother yourself?”

  “I already fuckin told you”—Dreko exploded—“I ain’t touched none of them little faggots! They just lying ’cause their moms is crackheads who wanna get vials off me for free all the time! Ask Drew did I ever do anything to him, Ma! I love my little brother! You gone take some heroin-head’s word over your own fuckin son?”

  “But where could you have picked up that kind of nasty shit, Andreko?” Portia asked, ignoring his denial as her heart began to soften. The boy was just like his father: a liar and a thief. He was mean and spiteful and had a jealous, evil streak a mile long. No matter how long she stayed in church praying over him, the child lacked a conscience and could do anything to anybody without feeling a moment’s regret behind it. He had a demon living in his heart, that was for sure. But…he was still her child. Her first born son, and despite his perversions she couldn’t just toss him out of her heart. Not all the way out.

  “Tell me, baby. Was it in that group home they had you in? Did some of them big boys do something bad to you and get your mind all twisted around the way it is?”

  “Miss Newman is lying, Ma. How many times I gotta tell you that old bitch is lying?!?”

  “See there!” Portia bristled, furious with him all over again. “I can’t believe shit you say! The truth just ain’t in you! Miss Newman didn’t tell me about something she heard. She actually saw you! She caught you with your dick in that boy’s mouth, Andreko! She said the child was just a crying and a shaking trying to satisfy you. Ain’t no telling how you done ruined that boy’s life. He’s gone be all fucked up in the head behind what you did to him! So hell no, you can’t get nowhere near my baby. You just like your twisted up daddy an
d I’m waiting for the day when you get the fuck outta my house for good!”

  Dreko stood near the closet staring at his mother as she breathed deeply. Her face was twisted in a scowl, like he was something foul, and her brown eyes flashed in disgust.

  He could hurt this bitch. Really do some damage to her little ass up in here. For a brief second he actually saw his hand gripping her neck. Squeezing the fuck outta that shit, making her eat back all them grimy words she’d been tossing at him. He felt like banging her grill up against something hard. The walls, the floor, the windowsill, the sharp edge of a counter. Anything. Bang her up until she bled like a stomped rat.

  He could do it too. Yeah, he could.

  Portia read her son’s thoughts and moved fast. Seconds later she had ran her ass into her bedroom and slammed the door, locking it behind her as his cruel, mocking laughter filled her ears.

  The boy was crazy. Dangerous. Twisted right outta his nasty skull. Andreko was a predator and a killer. Damn right he was. Portia was his momma, and no matter what he did or how bad he was, part of her would always love him. So if she could admit to this horrible twisted side of him, then the rest of the world had better watch out. Because if Mama said it, then it was damn sure the truth.

  Chapter 8

  Do you think they hate me, ’cause they ain’t me?

  Or they just B-A-D D-O-P-E?

  HOOD LOVED HIS new job and worked a maximum grind for Xanbar’s organization on the streets of Brooklyn. He put his total efforts and concentration into learning how to manage his street workers and their cash-clientele, and above all into gaining Xanbar’s trust and confidence.

  “You runnin shit from the corner of Livonia and Rockaway over to Newport, then up to Bristol and back,” Xanbar ordered. It was Hood’s twelfth birthday and Xan had called a special meeting at Baller’s Paradise to mark off territory and introduce Hood to the rest of his team.