Betrayal (7 page)

None of this is real,
I told myself a week later as I sat in the chapel of the same church that me and Gino had planned to get married in. I had been out of the hospital for two days, and Renata had taken me straight to her plush crib and set me up in one of her caked-up guest rooms.

This is just another one of them crazy-ass nightmares, that’s all,
I told myself. And as they rolled Gino’s casket down the aisle, I closed my eyes and pictured me and him holding hands and walking down that same aisle. Together, the way we had planned. With a wedding song playing, and all our guests smiling happily at the promise of our union of love.

This is just another bad dream that’ll go away as soon as the sun comes up.

Organ music played softly in the chapel as our friends walked past Gino’s royal blue grand deluxe coffin to pay their last respects. It was a real small crowd. Just a few people that me and Gino had met over the past few months. There was security out the ass though, and of course all the staff at The Organization had showed up to say goodbye with their families.

I understood why most of the people who had shown up for our wedding were missing-in-action for Gino’s funeral. Wasn’t no lobster and barbeque ribs being served afterward, and most of them were scared to come in case the church got shot up again. But still, for somebody as large and full of life as Gino had been, I felt like the whole place should have been packed out.

But what really hurt me to my heart was that none of Gino’s family was here to see him laid to rest. Instead, with his mother and father both dead, my man was going to be buried way out in some lonely cemetery in Cali. Where almost nobody really knew him except me.

“That’s the way it has to be,” Renata had told me when I started crying because she wouldn’t let me call Gino’s aunts and tell them he’d been killed.

“His aunts love him! They deserve to know what happened to him!”

“Tell me,” Renata had asked bluntly, “where is Gino’s mother?”

I shrugged. “I guess dead. She disappeared when Gino was just a kid. A lot of people say G killed her.”

“Okay, there’s your answer. You don’t think the people who are loyal to G might find out that Gino’s gone and come after you too? That’s the main thing Gino was worried about, wasn’t it? Protecting you?”

“But they’re his aunties. They love him,” I insisted weakly. “The least I can do is call them.”

Renata shook her head with a quickness. “You’re gonna have to trust me, okay Juicy? I know it’s hard for you to think straight right now, but please trust me. Whoever you and Gino were running from six months ago is probably still after you today. In fact, they’re probably more of a threat to you now than ever before because Gino isn’t around to protect you.”

I got defensive. Renata was real cool, but she didn’t know me like that.

“What makes you think we were running from somebody?” I asked her with my New York attitude showing. Right from the jump me and Gino had agreed not to confide in anybody about our troubles back home in Harlem. “I told you we came out west so Gino could find a job.”

“Yeah? Well, Gino told Frankie a different story, Juicy. In fact, Gino told Frank the truth about everything. But don’t worry. We’re not here to judge you. Nothing about our lives is squeaky clean either, so your secrets are safe with us. But we can’t keep
you
safe if you don’t listen to us.”

“But his family…”

Renata’s voice was firm. “I know it hurts, but you’ve gotta leave the past in the past, Juicy. You can’t tell
anybody
that Gino is dead. Absolutely nobody. In fact, you should forget about New York City and everybody in it. I did, and I’m surviving. Gino was smart enough to get you out of there. I’m sure he loved his family, but he knew better than to tell them where you guys were hiding. There was a reason for that.”

I was so hurt and weak that I just gave up. She was probably right anyway. After all that ducking and dipping me and Gino had done trying to make sure we didn’t leave any tracks leading back to Harlem, we had run smack into the same kind of trouble we had been running away from in the first place.

And now, as I watched the last few mourners file past Gino’s coffin, a big fat tide of tears flowed from my eyes.

“Juicy,” Frank said softly. He was standing over me, holding out his arm. “Come on, dear. It’s time to say goodbye to Gino.”

Somehow I reached out and clutched Frank’s warm, steady hand. My feet felt like rubber noodles as I took small, shaky steps toward the front of the room.

Dear God. You know how much I need him.

I pressed my hand to my empty stomach. My baby was gone, and my man was too. My whole body started shivering, and the closer we got to the open casket the colder the air around me got. It was like I could feel the chill coming off of Gino’s dead body. All the heat in his big heart, all the comfort and warmth in his strong arms and in his big smile, was gone.

It’s just another crazy nightmare, Juicy. Everything will be cool when the sun comes up.

But as I listened to the funeral music being played on the organ and gazed at Gino’s body stretched out stiffly in his casket, I knew that was a lie. The sun was
never
gonna come up over my head again. No matter where I went, or what I did, the sun would never, ever shine on me again.

Tears bubbled up outta me from a place I didn’t even know I had.

I need him.

They dripped from my eyes and slid down my face.

I need him.

They splattered on my breasts and wet up my hands.

I stared down at my man with anguish radiating from my eyes. Gino looked just like he was sleeping. He was dressed in a navy blue French-cut suit that he had planned to wear to a formal dinner during our honeymoon. His skin was chocolate-smooth. His wavy hair was jet-black and shiny. A sparkly diamond glittered from his ear, and the onyx wedding band I had bought for him was on his ring finger.

I moaned and gasped.

“Let it out, Juicy,” Renata whispered softly. She stood on the other side of me and used her handkerchief to wipe my snotty nose. “It’s okay to let your pain out.”

But I couldn’t let it out, and I couldn’t keep it in neither. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t think. All I could do was feel. And what I felt was a pain so deep and so fuckin’ unbearable that it nearly split me down the middle. I felt my chest tearing in two. My throat clogged. My skull throbbed and my knees gave away.

I need him!

I reached for Gino. I mean I really, really, really
reached
for my man. And the moment I touched him all my pain disappeared. The room got quiet and my whole body went numb. The coldness swallowed me up, and the last thing I felt was my knees bumping hard against his casket.

And then God was finally merciful to me.

I didn’t feel anything else. I passed out.

CHAPTER 9

“You like this shit, don’t you baby? You want it like this? Or you want me to stroke it right there?”

Marguerita Gonzales was in poon-poon heaven. Her man Dutchy Gaines was hittin’ her sweet brown pussy from every angle imaginable.

“Right there,
papi
…ooowie…oh yes!” She crawled onto her hands and knees and backed her shapely hips up to meet his powerful thrusts, “Fuck me right there…”

“I got you!” Dutchy panted, spreading her brown ass-cheeks and widening her sopping pink slit. Her small titties jiggled under his onslaught as he pounded her so good her head bounced off the wall.

“Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” Rita squealed. Her forehead was getting dented, but she was steady pumping her hips, loving her joy ride and refusing to let a little pain slow her down.

“You want me to quit?” Dutchy teased, slowing his grind. He revved his hips behind her, stirring her juices with his love stick. Her snatch was warm and soft like a fresh-baked bun. “You still with me or you need a break?”

Rita shook her head furiously.

“Don’t stop!” she moaned, pushing against him forcefully with her soft, fluffy ass. “No breaks, baby. Just fuck this pussy. Bang this pussy up!”

Rita loved the feel of Dutchy’s heavy balls slapping against her wetness, and there was no way in hell she wanted him to stop. “Keep going,” she ordered him as he gripped the base of his dick and slowly pulled it from her sucking cave. Tendrils of sweet juice dripped onto the sheets as he rubbed the erect, helmet-shaped head of his dick between her ass-cheeks and probed her sensitive hole.

Rita sucked in her breath at the tingling sensation his slippery dick created as he slid it from her wet pussy and up to her puckered starfish. Aiming low, Dutchy stuck the head in her pussy, then quickly extracted it and probed her asshole. Groaning, he swiped his dick downward again and shoved the head right back into her gaping pussy, and then he quickly withdrew and pushed gently against her back door again.

Rita began humming with glee as her asshole got creamy and wet from her sticky pussy juices. Over and over again Dutchy probed her asshole just enough to stimulate her without actually entering her, and just the thought that he might stretch her out back there excited Rita to no end.

Sensing her orgasm building, Dutchy licked his thumb, and then rubbed it around her booty hole. Without warning, he slipped it deep inside her ass while plunging his dick into her pussy at the same time.

Rita yelped as the odd sensation turned her out. Reaching between her legs, she massaged her swollen clit with two fingers as she clenched his thick thumb with her anal muscles, and milked his dick with her pussy muscles too.

“Oooow,
papi
! Yes, ouch! Oh
papi
…go deeper.”

Sparks flew through Rita’s body as her clitoris pulsated and her asshole got ruffed out by Dutchy’s finger. She swirled her hips frantically, then bucked backward to take Dutchy in deeper as his hard dick slammed against her cervix.

Withdrawing slightly, Dutchy bucked his hips and pounded his rod deeply inside her again. His pelvis smacked into her ass hard enough to break her tailbone and she loved every stroke.

Rita felt sparks shoot up her spine and out of her pointed nipples. “Ooowie, ooowie, ooowie!” she screeched. She reached up and pinched one of her breasts real hard. Electricity surged through her. She stuck her fingers between her legs and caught some of the syrup that was spilling from their bodies. She sniffed her fingers and moaned, then stuck them in her mouth and sucked greedily. The sweetness blew her mind. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her nut was just about to pop off when her cell phone jangled and vibrated on her night table.

Licking her lips, Rita slowed her rhythm for a moment.

“Fuck that phone!” Dutchy barked as he gripped her hips and banged up in her with deep, wet strokes. He rocked his pelvis from side-to-side, allowing his dick to sweep every corner of her inner cave.

The phone rang again, and when Rita strained to see it, Dutchy cupped her breasts and pulled her toward him until she was upright and on her knees. With her back pressed to his muscular chest, he inhaled the glorious scent of her sweaty hair, then bit down gently on her shoulder and sucked her soft flesh in passion.

The phone rang a third time, and as good as she was getting fucked Rita just couldn’t help it. School had just started back up and her baby sister Chub had been coughing a lot, and her other sister, Nooni, had been cutting classes and getting high. The call could have been coming from the school nurse, or maybe from a pissed-off teacher.