Red Hot Liar (9781617738654) (13 page)

M
iyoko Su sat motionless by the bedside of her dying father and gazed down at him with loving eyes. At the age of fifty-four, Wally Su's body was wasting away from the ravages of stage four cancer, while his mind remained alert and strong.

The hospital room was large and serene, and as a multi-billionaire Mr. Su was benefiting from cutting-edge medical expertise and every man-made comfort that money could buy. Each morning his attendants read to him from the business sections of all the major newspapers in order to keep him engaged with the outside world, but Wally Su was dying, and the end was very near. He knew it, his doctors knew it, and his beloved daughter Miyoko knew it too.

“You must drink a little water,” Miyoko urged him gently as she held a paper cup to his lips and patted his burning face with a damp cloth. It pained her to see her once strong and powerful father reduced to such a diminished condition. His sallow skin stretched tightly across his hairless skeleton, and his muscles had long since turned to mush.

But his eyes. His eyes still burned with intelligence and awareness, and the force of his will was ever strong. Wally Su had once been considered one of the most powerful men in the state. He had graduated from the University of Texas Law School and gone to work at a premiere law firm where he learned the ins and outs of contract law from the very best minds in the nation. But it was during his tenure as a law clerk that Su formed the most lucrative alliances of his career. He had built his financial empire by trading favors under the table with those who were even greedier and grimier than he was, and now, with the last of his life hanging by a thread, all Wally Su wanted to do was to confess to his crimes and let the chips fall where they may.

“It's almost time,” he whispered to his beloved daughter. He had spent the last thirty years of his life protecting her, and he was well prepared to protect her in death as well. But everyone else who would be affected by his deathbed confessions? Too fucking bad for them. It was only right that when the tree died, its tainted fruit died right along with it.

“Are you certain you want to do this, Papa?” Miyoko asked softly. Ever since he'd met with the young black man sent by Rodney Ruddman, Wally had been restless and filled with anxiety. The young man had asked him to make his confession during the annual meeting before the election, and Wally Su sincerely hoped he would live long enough to fulfill the boy's wish.

He gazed at his daughter and his nod was painful. “Yes, Miyoko. This is something I must do. I must rid myself of this burden. I can no longer bear it, and I refuse to take it with me to my grave.”

Miyoko nodded. “As you wish, Father.” She paused and then she asked softly, “When?”

“At the annual commission meeting, right before the election.”

Miyoko raised an eyebrow.

“He'll be disqualified and he'll lose everything, you know. And it will be all your fault.”

Wally coughed painfully and then nodded. “Who cares? He's enjoyed all the riches of the world for the last thirty years, and that was all my fault too.”

 

Suge Dominion had spent his whole life doing battle in the trenches and navigating the line between the business world and the bing. He was a tried and tested G and he had a reputation for calculated thinking and swift brutality, and he had no problem slaughtering a whole army of enemies if that's what it took to protect his fam.

For as far back as Suge could remember he had been his big brother's keeper. He was a problem solver and a killer, and he had dedicated his entire life to making sure the sharks of the world didn't bloody up Viceroy's waters, and today wasn't gonna be no different.

But the frantic call he'd just gotten from his nephew Barron had caught him by surprise. His brother was running an intense campaign in a real cutthroat political bubble, so it was normal for a foe to toss a couple of grenades in their bunkers to see what they could blow up.

But this shit right here was different. The stuff Bump was talking went way beyond the realm of dirty politics. This shit here cut right into the core of the company. It rattled the foundations of Dominion Oil and sliced through the meat and down to the gristle-bone.

“Yo, we gotta fix this shit!” Lil Bump had been damn near panicking over the phone. “Not only do we have to stop Wally from testifying, we gotta make sure his documents never see the light of day. This is bigger than just Ruddman trying to get at my pops. If this shit gets out then everybody—you, me, and Mama—we could all go down!”

Suge was well-schooled in the runnings of their business, and so was everyone else in the game. There wasn't a politician in the world who hadn't gotten his hands dirty at some point in his career, or who hadn't snuck behind the bushes and gotten his dick sucked by an ugly muthafucka, and his brother Viceroy was no exception.

But shit in this game had a way of coming back to haunt you, and no matter how carefully Suge examined the current situation it was looking like his brother's dick, and the Dominion family fortune, were about to get run through a meat grinder.

Suge had a reputation as a fixer. A closer. The kind of dude you called when help was no place else to be found. Cleaning up shitty messes was what he did for a living, and he was one of the best of his kind in the game. But for the life of him he couldn't find a single way to wipe up his brother's spill this time. None of his normal go-to sources had the kind of power he was looking for, and not a single course of action he had available would lead him to a resolution that would keep his fam's gold in the safe and their necks off the chopping block.

It looked like Suge was straight outta mojo this time and his big brother Viceroy was about to be shit out of luck.

That is, until he remembered a beautiful nightmare from his past by the name of Miyoko Rose Su.

 

Miyoko Su had been Suge's boo thang back in the day, and if she hadn't been about twenty different kinds of crazy their relationship might've had a real good run. A beautiful slim goody with mad sex appeal, she'd been raised in Okinawa until her parents divorced when she was thirteen, and then she came to the United States to live with her father.

Wally Su, Miyoko's father, was a razor-sharp corporate attorney. Him and Viceroy had done a lot of shady business together in the early days when Viceroy was climbing the ladder and Wally was the county clerk. He had raised his daughter Miyoko in the suburbs of Houston, and when she was fresh out of law school and working for her father's firm, Suge had the good luck of running into her at a state dinner. The spark of attraction between them had been instant and undeniable, and Suge had snuck her into a coatroom and gotten him a piece of them drawers right there at the banquet.

Wally Su had disapproved of their relationship right from the jump. He was one of Viceroy's dirtiest cronies, and they'd gotten down on quite a few highly profitable under-the-table deals together. Suge and Miyoko proceeded to get their swerve on in a hot and very public sexual fling that had her old-school Asian father climbing the walls.

Wally Su tried to stop it. He gave a fuck about all the cash he was raking in from the Dominion fortune or about how greasy Viceroy kept his greedy little palm. Wasn't no nigger from the other side of the tracks ever going to be good enough to put his black paws on his flawless porcelain-skinned baby girl.

But Suge had been wide open on the chick and he didn't give a fuck what her daddy said. It didn't stop Miyoko neither. A part-time model for high-end designer wear, she was brilliant and beautiful and hot in the ass for him. An exotic freak in the sheets, Miyoko took everything Suge had and threw even more right back at him, and for a minute there she had him pretty much whipped too. Suge had never, ever ran into a woman whose swerve game was just as powerful as his, and the sparks they ignited in each other had felt like rockets going off in his drawers.

They had become a couple damn near overnight, and since they were forced to sneak around behind her father's back, Miyoko had to make a choice as to which one of the men in her life rocked her world: Her daddy or her
Big
Daddy.

It wasn't long before Suge's brand of sweet chocolate whip appeal got her strung out on his rhythm. The girl was hooked on him like a base-head. He had her stuttering and feening for that meat. She wanted to bounce on his dick the first thing every morning and the last thing every night. He couldn't shake her ass off even if he wanted to. She stayed hot and thirsty. She was running a fever and Suge was her Tylenol.

All that shit was cute for a couple of minutes, but then the crazies started coming out of Miyoko and Suge got a peep of her true colors. She got clingy and possessive. She had crying jags and jealous fits. Every woman who looked at him became her personal rival, and if the chick was black then she became a federal suspect. Her burning fear was that Suge would leave her for a bangin sister, and she became envious of every black woman who so much as looked his way.

The shit hit the fan one day when they were having lunch on the street at an outdoor café, and it just so happened that a fine, big-booty sister walked past wiggling her hips and looking like a delicious platter of candied yams and barbequed ribs.

Outta nowhere, Miyoko jumped out of a trick bag.

“You're fucking that bitch,” she blurted, a dark look of suspicion clouding her eyes as she watched the girl's wide hips and bubble ass sway down the street. “That's the ghetto bitch you've been fucking, isn't it?” she demanded. “Isn't it, Superior?
Isn't it?
”

Ghetto? Suge thought she was bullshitting for a second, but when he saw the rage on her face and the tears in her eyes he knew his girl was out there for real.

But then suddenly a lightbulb went on.

The pretty black girl walking by was just some random sister going about her business, but Suge wasn't one to let a good opportunity fly and he jumped all over that shit.

“Damn,” he muttered, shaking his head and looking guilty as fuck. “You got me, Lil Bit. Shit, I'm busted, baby. I'm sorry you had to find out about her this way. I'm a dirty muthafucka and you deserve way more than what I been giving you. I hate that our thing is over, but you need to gone and find yourself a better dude.”

Suge had expected the tears and he was ready for them shits, but he wasn't ready for all the rest.

“You cheater!” that nut screamed at the top of her lungs. She jumped up and sloshed a glass of red wine in his face and then proceeded to turn the whole damn restaurant out. “You're a fucking cheater!” she screeched as she snatched their plates and silverware off the table and started hurling them out into the open street. “A no-good fucking cheater!”

Suge had paid off the restaurant and sent her home crying in a taxi. He figured he was finally rid of her psycho ass and that was the end of it, but he couldn't have been more wrong. Miyoko was bent. She started stalking him. Straight up tracking his dick like a bush hunter. That crazy chick busted all the windows outta his brand new whip and cracked a carton of raw eggs all over the plush interior. She broke into his mailbox and set that shit on fire, then showed up at Dominion Oil and told everybody she was strapped with a bomb.

Muthafuckas poured out of that bitch with a quickness!

“Fix this shit,” Viceroy had warned him when her bomb turned out to be a bunch of giant peppermint sticks taped together. Miyoko's father was his ace in the hole and Viceroy needed to keep him in pocket. “Get rid of that crazy bitch and keep her ass quiet!”

But it ended up being Wally Su who put the brakes on all his daughter's bullshit. As a conservative Asian it embarrassed him to no end to have his daughter acting such a public fool, so he put his foot down on her neck. He lied and told Miyoko he was taking her back to Okinawa to visit her mother, but once he got her there he stuck her ass in a padded room for six months and threatened to keep her there forever unless she left that black dick alone and got her head right.

It had been more than ten years since Suge had last seen Miyoko, and even though their families still ran in the same ultra-rich social circles, to Suge's relief she had followed her father's orders and left him the hell alone.

But now he needed her, and he needed her bad.

Cancer was eating at Wally Su's guts from the inside out, and after making his millions the good old grimy way, his conscience was eating at him too. He was threatening to expose all of his crooked business dealings, including the ones he'd finagled with Viceroy, and Suge just couldn't let that shit happen.

So, as much as he hated to, and as bad as his gut was telling him not to, Suge was gonna have to get with Miyoko again, and he was gonna have to get with her real quick. As the former county clerk, Wally Su had registered and deposited the forged set of documents down at the courthouse like he was supposed to, but the real set of documents—the ones that matched the set that Zeke Washington had—were floating somewhere out there in the world. In Wally Su's world.

Suge could only shake his head at that yellow-bellied old bastard. He would have killed that coward if he wasn't already dying. Because for the last thirty years Su had racked up ten percent of every dollar Dominion Oil took in the door, and he'd gotten rich as fuck in the process. For thirty long years he had held those documents for ransom and kept his mouth closed, and now all of a sudden that bastard had loose lips and snaggly teeth.

Suge shook his head again. Death musta been a real muthafucka because Su was pulling a sucker move if Suge had ever seen one. The Wally Su he'd known and respected back in the day was a muh'fuckin' gangsta. An original G. Wouldn't no real slick-ass Asian mobster voluntarily stuff his own ass into a can.