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BOOK: Natural Born Liar: The Misadventures of Mink LaRue
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CHAPTER 36
 
“S
o we have a deal, then?”
Digger Ducane stood up and accepted the hand that was being extended to him.
“Absolutely.” His returned the firm grip of Rodney Ruddman, president of Ruddman Energy and chief competitor of Dominion Oil.
“I can’t thank you enough for this opportunity, Mr. Ruddman. I’ll need just a couple of weeks to tie things up at Dominion Oil, and then I’ll be ready to take over your new in-house fleet.”
The grin on Rodney Ruddman’s greasy face disappeared. He was a stocky, cigar-smoking businessman. Not much to look at. But if ever there was a crafty, conniving, gutter-crawling snake, then Rodney was it.
“Hold on now, Digger,” he said and toked on his expensive cigar. “I just made you a junior partner in Ruddman Oil. A company man. You’re not telling me you need to take two weeks off to go work for my competition, now are you?”
Digger back-pedaled real quick. “No, I’m not talking about working for them, sir. I’m an independent contractor for DO, not an employee. I just need a little time to close out some accounts and tie up a few loose ends. That’s all.”
Ruddman sat back in his oversized office chair and crossed his fat arms. “You know, Digger, when you brought me your business proposal I thought you were committed to moving up the ladder and making some real financial gains. I know Viceroy is your blood family, and he’s in a bad way right now. Mrs. Ruddman and I pray for him every night. But, perhaps I was wrong to offer you this position, and maybe this isn’t a good time for you to make such a critical move. You may not be ready to jump in with the caliber of power players we have here at Ruddman Energy. How about we reconsider the offer and discuss it again at another time?”
Digger almost shit on himself. A junior partnership at Ruddman Energy was exactly what he needed to get his money right, and he wasn’t about to let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity get away from him.
Small businesses were drying up in record numbers all over the damn country. With the high interest rates at the bank and more than half of his credit line being cut, Digger’s private transport fleet was going down faster than a two-dollar whore.
Contracting his tank cars out to Dominion Oil was no longer a profitable enough business venture. He needed corporate backing, the kind that Ruddman Energy could provide, and the security of having a large, regular paycheck coming in each and every week grew more and more attractive as his reserve funds dried up.
“No, another time won’t be necessary,” Digger assured him, and he was relieved to see the light come back into the man’s shifty little eyes. “You’re right. There’s nothing really pressing that I need to tie up at Dominion Oil. In fact, there’s no reason for me to go back to their headquarters at all. I can be here by seven sharp tomorrow morning. Six-forty-five if you’d like me to come in early.”
Digger knew he was about to shit on a twenty-five-year relationship with Viceroy Dominion, but his back was against the wall, and right now he had no other choice but to get under the covers and make some real nasty moves with his brother-in-law’s competition.
 
“Digger,
nooo
,” Selah wailed as she stormed into her brother’s kitchen holding the business section of the
Dallas Morning News
. She tossed the paper right down in his plate of grits, and the headline stared up at him in bold, accusing letters.
DIGGER DUCANE JOINS RUDDMAN ENERGY AS CONGLOMERATE’S NEWEST PARTNER
“Please tell me you didn’t. I know goddamn well you didn’t!”
“Yes, I did, Selah! What the hell did you expect from me?”
“I expected your ass to be
loyal
, that’s what! To show some goddamn appreciation for the man who dragged your ass out of that Brooklyn gutter and made you a millionaire! Viceroy did more for you than Ruddman
ever
will. He’s the one who got you started in this business! Look at how he set you up!”
“Oh, he set me up all right. He set my ass up to fall! Open your damn eyes, Selah! Times are changing. The economy is fucked up all over the world! You ain’t never paid a bill in your life, little sister. You sit up there in that big-ass mansion and you don’t even have to think about money because everything is handed to you. Well ain’t nobody handing me
shit
! I gotta get out there and get mine!”
Selah’s eyes narrowed. “By biting the hand that fed you all these years? How low-down is that, Digger? Viceroy would have given you the shirt off his back if he knew you needed it, and you know that. If you were in trouble then he should have been the first person you turned to, not that toad-looking freak Ruddman! Not him! He’s Viceroy’s
worst enemy
! You could have gone to
anybody
except him!”
“Is that right? Then tell me why after more than twenty goddamn years your husband has never offered me a seat on the company board, huh? Every damn Dominion on this side of Houston sits on that board and has a voting share of the stock. When the money comes rolling in, every last one of y’all feast. But what about me and Pilar, huh? She’s your
blood,
Selah, and I can’t even buy my baby a goddamn pair of shoes without my fucking credit card melting!”
Selah’s eyes narrowed. She was calm as she stared at her brother quietly. “Okay. Do whatever you have to do, Digger. But I’m gonna need you to remember something that I’m sure you’ve probably already forgotten.”
“Yeah?” her brother said flippantly as he tossed the newspaper out of his plate. “What’s that?”
“Viceroy isn’t dead yet.”
CHAPTER 37
 
U
ncle Suge came to pick me up for lunch the next day just like he promised, and I couldn’t wait to take another ride in his monster truck. Bunni had spent the night up in Dane’s little pussy palace, and when I went up there to get her she told me she was still tired and to come back later.
I had thrown on some sexy gear and waited for Suge to show up, and now that he was here I was ready to hit the streets with him and see what his shit-talkin’ ass was all about.
His truck was beast! I felt like I was jumping up on a damn bronco when I tried to get up in that thing, and I almost twisted my ankle tryna look cute in my purple Prada heels.
“Careful,” he said and gripped my elbow to steady me. I grabbed a hold of his beefy shoulder and his muscle was so hard I felt like I was rock climbing. He helped me slide inside, and then he ran his eyes from my shoes all the way up to my hair, pausing to check out the way my legs looked beneath my purple Prada flare skirt.
I sat there and posed for his fine ass. Bouncing tits, smooth legs, hot coochie, and sweet perfume, I was a prime purple package and I knew it. I had ditched my Glama-Glo wigs for the soft, curly look of my own hair, and everything about my body and my gear was just perfect.
“So where we going?” I asked as he peeled up outta the driveway so fast he left half of his tires on the ground. This nigga was wild. Big, swagged out, and sexy as fuck. He rode with one hand at the top of the steering wheel and the other one propped up on his door. I couldn’t help but notice how his thigh muscle flexed when he stomped down on the gas. All that power turned me on, and he coulda been taking me to a snake farm and I still woulda wanted to go.
“We’re going to the races,” he said. He gave me a slick glance, then chuckled. “I gotta see a man about a horse.”
I’d seen a couple of pit bulls chasing behind each other, and I’d even watched the kids on my block race bikes up and down the sidewalk in the summer, but I had never been to a horse race before and I was cool with that.
We jammed some old-school R & B while we rode, and Suge surprised me when he started singing along to a slow cut. His voice was deep as hell, and all that bass he was pushing had my nipples hard and my panties wet!
He cooled me right off, though, when he started talking about money.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Cash was my favorite subject, and I could smell a dollar bill tucked away in the deepest corner of a nigga’s wallet. But I didn’t wanna be that stuck-up chaser named Sable today. I was having too much fun being Mink.
“You know Barron’s riding your ass, right?”
I gave him the side-eye to see if he was tryna be funny, but he was still chewing on his toothpick and his expression hadn’t changed.
“Yeah, I know. But I’m not worried about that dude. I can’t help it if he doesn’t like me.”
“Oh, I think he likes you,” Uncle Suge chuckled. “He likes the hell outta you. But he definitely doesn’t trust you.”
“That’s cool,” I laughed too. “’Cause I don’t trust his ass neither.”
“You know, if for some reason my brother doesn’t make it Lil Bump is gonna try to cut you off, right? That nigga is crazy over that trust fund. Three hundred grand every year is a lotta money to get up off of for a man like him. He ain’t gonna hand it over just like that. His pride and his ego just ain’t gonna let him.”
“But if my DNA test—” I blurted out, and then caught myself. “
When
my DNA test results come back proving I’m Sable, then the money is mine, right?”
“Not if Barron can find a way to stop you from getting it. He’s about to have full control over at Dominion Oil, and that means he’s gonna be in charge of the trust fund too. All he has to do is get a little dirt on you and bring some bullshit charges up to the board. They’ll review it, and if they feel like something you did violated the terms of the fund, you’re out, baby girl. All the way out.”
“But that shit ain’t right!” I whined. “If the trust fund is for all the kids in the family then Barron shouldn’t have that kind of power!”
“You wanna see power? Let me show you something.” He glanced in his rearview mirror and his tires screeched as he cut across three lanes of traffic. I bounced all in my seat as he drove his big old truck up over the curb and into the grass and made a U-turn across the center lane of the highway.
“What’s wrong? Why we going back?”
“We’re gonna make a little detour baby. Uncle Suge’s got something big he wants to show you.”
 
We pulled up outside of a big mirrored-glass building that had the letters DO cut into a huge mound of pretty grass. The initials were also on a gigantic sculpture right outside the front doors, and a sparkling gold sign across the awning said
DOMINION OIL
in shiny black letters.
A doorman in a blue uniform greeted Suge like he was the king of Texas or some shit. He was an old black dude, probably about sixty, but he perked up when he saw Suge coming and dapped him out like he was from the hood.
We walked inside a lobby where a huge picture of Viceroy took up a whole damn wall. There were two armed security guards posted up by one of those body scanners you see at the airport, and when they recognized Suge they snapped to attention like soldiers and started yes-sirring him half to death.
Suge showed them both some love, then he took my hand and led me around the security station and past a desk where a young white receptionist sat.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Dominion,” she said, jumping to her feet and grinning all over herself.
“What’s good, what’s good.” Suge smiled and motioned for her to sit back down. We rode a private elevator up to the fifteenth floor, and it opened inside of a real big office with another reception desk and about a million cubicles sitting off behind it.
Suge moved like Black Jesus through that joint. White men in three-piece suits were breaking their necks to bow down to him, and I had to sneak a quick look at his feet to make sure that nigga wasn’t walking on water.
He introduced me to everybody as a family member from outta town, and for the first time in my life I had a bunch of high-powered white people up in my face who weren’t tryna put me in jail.
We walked up to an office that had a wood-carved nameplate on the door with real twenty-four-karat gold letters embedded in it.
“What in the hell ... ,” I whispered. I had never seen anything like it, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out to trace the glittering letters with my pointer finger.
The nameplate said
SUPERIOR DOMINION,
and I gave Suge the crazy look.
“Superior?”
“Yeah,” he laughed and pushed the double doors open. “That’s me.”
I felt like I was in a whole ’nother world when I stepped inside. Everything I’d seen in the building so far had been cold as ice, but Suge’s spot was truly beast. It was a corner office, and both of the outside walls were completely made of blue-tinted glass. The floors were done up in some real shiny dark wood, and it was the exact same color as his desk.
He had a winter-white rug on the floor near a plush, cocoa-colored leather sofa, and that baby was so big and fluffy it had probably come off the backs of at least ten polar bears.
I closed my eyes and took a real deep breath.
“Yummm ... ,” I moaned happily. “I ain’t
never
taking my ass back to New York! I can just
smell
the money up in here.”
Suge laughed and put his arm around me. He pulled me close to him, and with my titties pressed against his chest, he slid his hands down my back and cupped my ass.
“Nah, that ain’t no money you smellin’ up in here, girl. What you’re smelling is something people like us call
power
. Now you better find a way to make sure don’t nothing come up outta your past to fuck up that trust fund for you, baby girl, ’cause trust me, Bump’s office is ten times bigger than this.”
 
We left the Dominion Oil headquarters and hit the racetrack. Suge told me women were his bad-luck charm whenever he got around horses, and he almost never brought a female with him when he went out to gamble. I told him I wasn’t his ordinary chick, and that me and Lady Luck were tight like that.
The racetrack was a lotta fun, but it was hot as hell out there with all those stankin’ horses. I loved animals but I wasn’t used to the mess they made. The jockeys were walking a few stallions around in the grass getting them stretched out, and my lips got straight twisted every time a big pile of hot doody fell outta one of their asses.
I let Suge go through his little speech about how to calculate the odds on a horse bet, but that nigga must didn’t know. Miss LaRue had grown up with a gambling daddy, and I’d spent more time in grimy little number holes than a little bit.
He wanted me to play it safe and go with a straight bet, but I shrugged him off and went with a place and a show. Suge had box seats reserved up in that baby, and I jumped up and down just like a white girl as we screamed for our horses to win. Neither one of my horses did a damn thing, but Suge bet big and he won big too. He treated me to lunch at the restaurant right there at the racetrack, and we ordered lobster and tossed back bubbling champagne like the big-timers we were.
I kinda hated for our day together to come to an end, and I wondered where Suge’s woman was ’cause I knew a swole nigga like him sho nuff had one.
“You ready to head back?” he asked me, and I could tell by the way he said it that he was testing the waters and feeling me out.
I threw him a hot-pussy look and batted my fake eyelashes. “I’m ready for whatever you got.”
He chuckled. “You think you can handle this here, little girl? They don’t grow ’em like this up in New York, baby. This is Texas, darling. Everythang down here is a whole lot bigger.”
“Hmph,” I spoke with mad confidence because I was sexually experienced and well trained in my craft. “The bigger the better Suge-Daddy. The bigger the better.”
BOOK: Natural Born Liar: The Misadventures of Mink LaRue
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