Sexy Little Liar (11 page)

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Authors: Noire

BOOK: Sexy Little Liar
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He chuckled behind me. “Hell yeah. I missed
you
. So don't you leave me no more,” he growled as his curly moustache nuzzled my ear. “Matter fact”—he turned my face toward him and kissed my lips—“your sweet ass better not never leave the state of Texas again.”
 
Me and Uncle Suge stayed in his truck talking and kissing for a little while longer, and then he dropped me off around the front of the mansion and promised to get up with me later. I went upstairs and took another shower and then laid down on the bed, and some time later my head was floating on my plush pillow when Bunni busted up in the room disturbing my damn peace.
“Mink, get up. Your play-daddy's main squeeze is back from tricking off his moolah. You gonna prolly wanna go check her out.”
“Wh-what?” I squinted through one eye and lifted my head up off the pillow. “Bunni, what in the hell are you talking about?”
“Damn.” She sighed. “Take you outta the hood for one damn day and all of a sudden you don't speaka no English no more. I
said
Selah is back from shopping. She just went upstairs to her room, so you need to get up there and get your ass to work.”
I sat up and wiped the drool off my face. My eyes burned and felt gritty from too much weed and not enough sleep, and I blinked real fast until they stopped hurting.
“A'ight,” I said, dragging my ass up out the bed. “I'ma go see her.”
I went into my private bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. Even the bathrooms in the Dominion mansion were beast. The counters were made of beautiful granite, and the cool floors were tiled in natural stone. The mirror sparkled without a single streak on the glass, and all the faucets and sink fixtures were done up in gold.
I pulled my shit together, then changed into a cute pink summer dress with one slim shoulder strap, and took my hair down out of the bun I had stuck it in before I laid down. I was the queen of crazy, outrageous wigs, and I owned the entire funky-elite Glama-Glo collection. But I knew Selah liked seeing me in a certain innocent light, and part of my hustle involved making sure the mama bear of the Dominion clan thought of me as her sweet little long-lost cub.
I untwisted my natural curls and let my dark hair fall down my back, then I finger-combed it until it lay soft and wispy around my shoulders, making me look like somebody's sweet angel. A little pale-pink gloss on my lips, and a stroke or two of mascara, and I was ready to be about it. I slipped my feet into a cute pair of pink and black sandals, and then I set off to see how deep I could get into Selah's motherly little head.
I walked up the carpeted stairs and crossed the mansion to get to the west wing of the house. Everything about this joint screamed
moolah
, but the suite that Selah and Viceroy shared could only be described as ten tons of gwap and a shit-load of glamour rolled up in one big knot.
Their doorway was deeply recessed, and a spray of colorful fresh-cut flowers grabbed hold of my eyeballs. That thing was so damn big and pretty it looked like it had taken somebody hours to get all of those different kinds of flowers into such a dizzying pattern. There were two big gold knockers on the highly shined double cherrywood doors, and I lifted the one on the right and gave three tiny knocks. Not the kinda nigga-knockin' folks did when they were bammin' down your door in the projects or nothing, but just three quick little polite knocks that said,
Somebody is here to see you
.
I started grinning as soon as Selah opened the door, and the instant she saw me standing there in all my cute bubblegum pink, an explosion of light just brightened up her eyes.
“Sable!” she squealed and threw her arms around me and held me real tight. “Praise God! Thank Him,
thank
Him! It's so good to see you, baby! I missed you so much! Oh, I'm so,
so
happy you decided to come back home!”
All I could do was grin and nod. The last time I'd seen Selah Dominion she was crying her eyes out in the back of her limo as her, Barron, and Dane dropped me and Bunni off at the airport so we could fly back to New York. My pockets had been full of loot so I was kinda feeling myself that day, and even though Selah's tears had dripped all over my guilty conscience, I damn sure didn't feel bad for breaking up outta Texas and leaving her behind.
But everything was different now. I was broke as hell again, and I needed to plant myself real deep in Selah's heart again in a hurry. I could tell how bad she had missed me just by how tight she held me, and I played that shit up like a pro.
“I really missed you too,” I lied as I pushed my face into her breasts and let her smother me in her toned arms. Selah's perfume was a light but expensive scent that reminded me of Halston, and the fabric of her white dress was so crisp that I knew it had to have cost a grip. When she finally let me go I saw that it was a high-end design by Dior, and I knew it had set her back more cream than most black folks made in six months.
She took my hand and pulled me deeper into her room. Her spread was sick and gigantic, with huge windows and high ceilings where four ornate gold fans all spun in the same direction. I thought about the night that Selah had read my phony DNA report out loud to the entire family. She had been so damn happy to have her little girl back that she'd gotten tore-down drunk and asked me to spend the night with her in her bed.
I had slept with Selah that night. I let her hold me and clutch the ugly little ducky doll baby of Sable's that she had held on to for all those years. And when we woke up the next morning I had felt real shitty for perpetrating such a big fat fraud on such a nice lady, but hey. I was a con-mami and a grifter. What the hell did she expect a hood chick like me to do?
“You know I wanted you to come back here, Mink,” she said, calling me by my right name. Her voice was real serious as she kicked off her jeweled Dior croc sandals, and a worried look entered her eyes. “But not under these conditions. After you left it was almost like all the fight seemed to go out of Viceroy. He had been doing so good while you were here! But then all of a sudden he just stopped communicating with me, and I just couldn't seem to reach him, you know what I mean?”
I nodded my head, but on the real I was seriously thinking some other shit. The last time I'd seen Viceroy he was laying up in a hospital bed wrapped up like a mummy. One of his eyes was covered with a bandage, and the other one was bigger than a hardboiled egg. Selah had stood next to me and had a long conversation with him like he could hear and understand her, but I had caught a fucked-up vibe from that old man, and blown up or not, I sensed a slick old gangsta laying there underneath all that crusty gauze.
“I heard,” I said, faking sympathy. “And that's why I came back as soon as I could get a flight. I felt like the right place to be was right here with my family,” I lied real smooth outta the side of my neck, “and I just didn't want to miss out on any more important moments with y'all.”
Selah melted behind that lil slice of bullshit talk, just like I knew she would.
“Oh, Sable. Baby, there were so very many moments that you missed.” Her eyes glistened with tears, and she took a deep breath before giving me a small, sad smile. “I wish I could put them all in a great big basket and tie a bow around it. I'd give you the gift of the memories that were stolen from us when I lost you, and I hope you'd find enough forgiveness in your heart to accept it from me.”
Please don't start that crying shit,
I thought as her misty eyes turned into waterfalls. The last thing I wanted was for Selah to take another guilt trip halfway around the world behind the fact that she had been toasted up outta her skull when Sable got kidnapped. I mean I definitely felt for her, and I felt for her little girl too, wherever the hell she really was, but my role was to get up on the Dominion dough, and get it the best way I could.
“I already told you,” I said in a sweet-little-white-girl voice as we sat down together on a plush sofa. “I forgive you, and whatever happened in the past, I think we should leave it there. I'm just happy to have a family who loves me right now. That's all.”
Selah took my hand and I could see her tryna pull her shit together and get a grip on her emotions. Even though I knew she really, really believed I was Sable, it was still kinda crazy to me, this insane and intense love she seemed to have for me when she didn't even know shit about me. Especially when you consider the fact that her and Viceroy had adopted Sable when she was just a few days old, and the girl had been snatched when she was almost four.
I just didn't get it. Was four years enough time to get your heart so wrapped around a damn kid? Especially one that wasn't really yours? I had lived with my mother for thirteen damn years, and she had pushed me right outta her very own ass. And still, she had never been as bent over me as Selah was over Sable. I felt kinda jealous over that.
“You're right,” Selah said finally. “You are home with family, and we do love you. All of us do. And that's why it's so important that you have a chance to visit with your father while there's still time. We'll be flying down to Houston the first thing tomorrow morning. Let's just pray that things don't get any worse for him until we get there.”
I sat with Selah and listened to her chatter on and on about how good a man Viceroy was, and how her kids had been blessed to grow up with a father like him. The only thing I knew about the man was what I had read on the Internet and what I had heard from other people, and if you let Dane tell it Viceroy wasn't nothing but an old G. He had been born and raised in the slums of Houston, and even though he had always been smart and ambitious, the grime of the streets ran thick through his blood.
I'd found out that Viceroy had built his family fortune by stepping on the neck of one of his good friends, and after making some shrewd and cunning oil deals, he had stockpiled himself a major share of crude oil and became one of the country's major connects. Shit, what his hustling ass had done was no different than what any good kingpin in the drug world would do. Start out small, shit on ya friends, annihilate your enemies, and then gain control of your market and watch the dough roll in.
Matter fact, I was willing to bet that Viceroy had done damn near all the grimy, illegal shit he banned his kids from doing in the terms of his trust fund. There was no way his hands could be squeaky clean, because a self-made dude like him who did bizz with rich white boys just had to be dirty all under his skin. Selah was originally from Brooklyn so I knew she could get gully too, but she had trained herself to look and sound real sophisticated, and I figured that was part of Viceroy's ploy to dust off his gutter image.
But whatever. For a rich Brooklyn chick Selah was real easy to like, and if I wasn't such a hardcore con-mami and she wasn't such a soft and easy mark, I woulda really been into her. So, while Suge was handling his bizz and Bunni was off banging Dane every chance she got, I tried to spend a little bit of time with Selah.
I stayed up under her for the rest of the day, and it tickled the shit outta her when I went up to her room real early the next morning and climbed up in that big old bed with her. We laid around and watched mad episodes of
Survivor
and some of the other reality shows she had taped, and then we called downstairs and ordered up breakfast in bed and ate like crazy. Both of us had a thing for cinnamon French toast so we got our plates stacked real high. I got mine with turkey sausage, and Selah got hers with some of that nasty corned beef hash that came outta the can. That shit was hood as hell but she loved it!
I kinda liked what I had going on a lil bit too. You woulda thought I had been raised with boo-coo money the way I fronted like I wasn't straight-up gaga over how the Dominions was living. I could actually picture myself getting used to having endless dough and every little thing I wanted brought to me at the snap of my fingers. Between all the good get-high Jock and Dane kept on supply, and that good wood that Uncle Suge was plunging me with, I was starting to think, fugg grimy-ass New York! I could get real comfortable down in hot-ass Texas!
 
I had already spun Selah all kinds of fairy-tale lies about my life in New York, and when we were done eating our French toast we got comfy on her big bed and she started telling me about her childhood in Brooklyn.
“My father was a longshoreman and a big-time gambler,” she confided. “He raised us in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. We lived in a cold little apartment on Broadway. Right over a Chinese restaurant, with the el speeding past my bedroom window twenty-four hours a day.”
It turns out that Selah was the oldest child. She told me she had grown up with her brother Digger, who was stank Pilar's father, and a sister who was a whole lot younger than her.
“Oh you got a sister?” I asked. “I always wanted me a sister. What's her name? Why isn't she around here?”
I saw her lips get tight and a hard look fall over her face.
“She
is
around,” she said and flung the plush comforter offa her as she got outta the bed and walked toward the bathroom. “Somewhere.”

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