Betrayal (6 page)

The guy laying there on the bed looked way different. His moustache was growing in, and his beard was thicker. His curly hair looked dry, but his eyelashes were still long and beautiful.

“Gino,” I whimpered. I leaned over him, and then collapsed with my upper body across his legs. In my mind I knew it was Gino. The dude I loved with everything in me. But my heart…my heart just couldn’t, just wouldn’t believe it.

“Please, ma’am,” the attendant said. He had rolled my wheelchair over to the bed, and now he urged me to sit down.

“Gino…wake up…” I whispered quietly. I pressed my cheek tight against the fading warmth of his arm.

“I’m pregnant,” I finally told him. “You’re gonna be a father. We’re having a baby, Gino. A little boy.”

I reached over and pushed my trembling hand under his still one. I was praying he would take it and acknowledge me and what I’d just said. Praying he would squeeze my fingers just one more time. But his hand never moved.

“Wake up, baby,” I urged him in a whimper. My soul was one big ball of pain, and I couldn’t tell if I was hurting more in my stomach or in my heart. “You can wake up now, Gino. I’m here. I’m right here.”

“He fought hard,” Renata whispered softly. She settled both her hands on my back and began rubbing my shoulders gently. “He fought very hard, Juicy. But he just couldn’t make it.”

“Nooo…” I moaned loudly. I shook Renata off then stretched out across Gino again as I prayed to God and kissed his cheeks and squeezed his lifeless hand. “He ain’t gone…he can’t be gone…”

Suddenly, my stomach felt boxer-punched. I gasped, then everything inside of me caved in as hot, bitter liquid rushed up from my throat.

I gagged and wretched, unable to breathe. I didn’t even wanna breathe. Renata and the attendant were all over me as they tried to get me to sit back down in the wheelchair. They called my name, held my shoulders, and patted my tear-streaked cheeks. Everything around me was spinning, but I held on tight to Gino. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t think. I was caught in the middle of another nightmare. Just another stupid crazy nightmare that would end if I could just wake the hell up.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, but when I opened them again Renata was still there. She was trying to pull me off the bed. Her face was wet with tears too.

“No, please,” I whimpered softly, clutching Gino’s muscular thigh through the sheets as I fought to hold on to the only guy I had ever loved.

“Don’t let this be true, Renata. Please, God. Don’t let this be true! I NEED HIM…” I wailed. “I need him…I need him…I need him…”

My voice grew soft and tiny. My eyes silently begged her to make this not be true.

“
I need him
.”

“He’s gone, Juicy,” was all Renata whispered, and as her words crashed down and shattered my heart, a puddle of warm liquid burst out of my coochie. I lay back against Gino’s body and gapped my legs open wide.

My bowels heaved, and I didn’t have any other choice except to bear down and push.

I need him.

There was a crazy knot bulging between my legs, then a ball of something hot and mushy slid right out of me. I was terrified. I glanced at Renata. I glanced at Gino.

And then I closed my eyes and screamed.

CHAPTER 7

Pluto couldn’t stand smart bitches, which was why he had hooked up with Monique in the first place. The only lips he wanted to see flapping on a chick were her pussy lips, and the sight of Salida all of a sudden strutting around the G-Spot tryna run the joint like a capo was starting to really fuck with him.

“We can be broke as hell, but we ain’t gotta be nasty,” she had chastised him one day as he came out of G’s private bathroom. It had been two weeks since him and Ace had come back from Cali empty-handed, and outta nowhere this broad had been underfoot 24/7. “You just take your grown-man ass right back in there and flush that toilet and wash your hands,” Salida bossed him.

Pluto had wanted to put his foot up in her ass, but instead he went back inside the bathroom and did exactly what she said.

He just didn’t fuckin’ get it. Somebody musta told Salida that since she was G’s wife she was entitled to run shit, because suddenly that bitch thought she was in control. That whipped niggah Ace had called some bullshit-ass emergency meeting and let Salida stand up there and talk shit like she was a true Queenpin. Ace had sat there staring at her like Salida was his kinny-garden teacher or something, and Pluto was stunned when his manz let it be known that he would check the first muh’fucka to get outta pocket with her too.

“I don’t know how Granite was running things when he was alive,” Salida said with her nose turned up, “but his ass is dead now and this situation is critical.”

She had spent the past week going through every single file cabinet in G’s office, and examining his computer files with a magnifying glass too.

“It’s a whole lot worse than I thought it was around here,” she said, giving Ace and Pluto both the snake eye. “You two done fucked the cut room up so bad it’s almost dry. Y’all also missed the last two payments to the chief of police, and now it’s going to cost us double just to keep the cops in our pocket.

“On top of that,” she pressed on, rubbing shit in, “since neither one of y’all were smart enough to find out who G was getting all his dope from, your lil boys on the street are running out of product and sending our loyal customers jetting over to the competition.”

She glared at Pluto. “Did you know the liquor license had expired?”

He shook his head dumbly.

“Well it did, genius. And from what I’ve learned, it takes big-time money to get it renewed under the table.”

She got on Greco next.

“I guess pussy ain’t selling at a premium no more, huh? Tell me why our girls are never fully booked? Every time I look up them hoes are watching movies, eating cookies, and running off at the mouth. This ain’t no damn sorority house! Hell, the IRS is hounding us for back taxes, and if we don’t make a payment soon we’re gonna have to walk away from some of G’s other businesses too.”

Salida paused to let that sink in, and then said, “So, we’re about to make some big time adjustments around here. We’re going to start with the cut room. It’s mine now. I’m gonna run it.” She held out a sheet of paper. “But I also made of list of some other things that are gonna have to change…”

Pluto sat there on boil as Salida spouted off at the mouth. Disbelief spread over him as she read from her shitty little list. Not only was this throwed-off bitch tryna completely get rid of the cover price at the door, she wanted to overhaul the G-Spot so that it catered to a set of young musicians, rising ballers, and come up playas and pimps.

“So yeah, we’re gonna have to kill the cover charge altogether,” Salida declared, taking a seat behind G’s great big desk and propping her slender legs up and crossing them at the knee. “That’s the only way to get customers to come back. Then once they get to liking all the new set-up we’ve got, then we’ll raise the door charge back up again. Hell,” she chuckled evilly, “we’ll double it.”

Pluto almost jumped on that bitch over the next thing outta her mouth.

“So tomorrow morning, Pluto, I want you to go get me some of those dumb-ass boys you got working half-days selling crack. Send their asses upstairs to the cut room. We’re about to turn this mutha out.”

Later that night Ace shrugged shit off when Pluto bitched about Salida’s long list and her grand plans for the cut room. Ace thought she was right on point.

“Salida’s got some real live ideas, ak,” he told Pluto as they shot a game of pool. “Times are changing, man. Me and Greco was just talking about that shit the other day. The old heads are falling off. It’s all about the tykes and the young’uns now.”

“Hell, nah,” Pluto protested ready to put Salida’s 7:30 mental ass on a bus straight back to the nuthouse. He was about to line her up in his crosshairs, and he was truly itching to pull the trigger. “She’s fuckin’ everything up,” he insisted. “That broad is tryna do too much.”

“I don’t think so,” Ace disagreed. “Look around, niggah. You see any fuckin’ body large chillin’ up in here? Bizz is bad, man. If anything we gotta do
more.
We done walked away from the bakery and the rib shack. The cleaners, the fish joint, and the check cashing place are gonna be dead in a month. Yo, Salida got a nose for sniffing out business, and I think we should let her use it.”

Pluto jumped off his stool and shook his head. “We don’t need that bitch! All we need is a big buy, ak! If we can just flood the streets with product like we used to do, there’ll be so much doe rollin’ in it’ll bust down the fuckin’ door!”

“Yeah, flooding the streets would work,” Ace admitted calmly as he lined his cue stick up and tapped his ball into a corner pocket, “but me and you ain’t got the connections to be making that kind of quality buy. If Salida wants to restock the cut room with club drugs, then I say we should go for it. We can’t dominate in every sector no more like G used to do, man. Them come-ups is getting their hands on big-time product at cut-rate prices while we over here just scraping up the crumbs. Fucking with these lil low-level suppliers is gonna cost us in the long run, ak. Our territory done already been reduced by more than half. Remember, we gotta pay them taxes and pay our crew too, my niggah. So, if Salida can run the cut room half as good as G did, then I see it as more doe in our pockets and more power to her.”

The next morning Pluto had reluctantly sent a few members of his street crew upstairs with brooms, mops, and bottles full of Lysol. The cut room was in shambles, but not a single one of those corner boys had bitched or complained as Salida worked the shit outta them. She had them scrubbing floors and washing walls like they were a crew of janitors, and she watched over them like a jailer the whole time.

Later on that night, Pluto snuck upstairs to see what he could see. Standing in the middle of a complex room that had once been a bustling, vibrant hub of drug activity brought it all to a head for him. The G-Spot was his home, and a sad realization washed over him as burning tears of rage came to his eyes.

Things were never gonna be the same again. They had gone from the mountaintops down to the grimy gutters, and if they didn’t do something drastic they risked losing everything.

The fucked up part was, as bad as he hated to admit it, Salida’s vision was probably dead on. They were gonna have to make some desperate moves just to survive, but that didn’t mean he was gonna lay down and roll over for G’s old piece of pussy, though.

Pluto figured he would play Salida’s game for as long as it took to get their cash right. But once their business was back on the map and the cream was once again stacked mile high, Salida was gonna be lined up in his crosshairs for real, and all grimy bets would be off.

CHAPTER 8

Cara. Aunt Ree. Grandmother. Dicey. Jimmy. And now Gino and our precious, unborn baby boy, too.

You would think I’d get used to losing the people I loved, but Gino’s death and my miscarriage cut me so deep that I didn’t think I was ever gonna be right again.

Back in downstairs in my own room I stretched out flat in that hospital bed and just soul-cried. I grieved so hard that I was literally trying to die. I was just begging God to take me. Begging him. I couldn’t see anything except a big black hole of emptiness where my life had once been. All that madness I’d survived in Harlem…losing Grandmother, the rapes and beatings, Jimmy blowing his brains out all over me…None of it even came close to touching what I was feeling now. Seeing Gino stretched out in that hospital bed like that…all swole up and with no life left in him. It just hurt so bad. I prayed to God to please just make my heart stop beating so I could escape my pain too.

Renata came to visit me a lot.

Most of the time I didn’t even talk to her. She still came. She would sit beside me and stare out the window, while I laid in the bed staring at the wall.

Sometimes she held my hand. Sometimes she just let me be. Sometimes I cried. And sometimes she cried too.

At some point she asked me what I wanted to do about planning a funeral for Gino. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even think about putting my man in the cold ground.

So Big Frank handled it. He called around and made all the arrangements and said The Organization would pick up the expenses.