Sexy Little Liar (25 page)

Read Sexy Little Liar Online

Authors: Noire

BOOK: Sexy Little Liar
11.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Selah woke up out of a deep sleep. She'd been tossing and turning with her body burning up. She'd been dreaming about her missing ring and how she had lost it. Her sheets were sweaty and she couldn't go back to sleep. Leaving her suite, she padded through the expansive mansion in the darkness. She knew every inch of this house because it had been specially built and designed just for her.
Downstairs, she entered the kitchen and turned on the lights. Pushing a button on the coffeepot she set it to brew, and then she stared out the back window and waited for it to be ready. It was almost dawn and the sun was trying to peek out from the early-morning clouds. Someone had left a light on in the pool house, and a child's rubber raft was still floating in the large swimming pool.
Selah thought about the two girls who were sleeping upstairs, both claiming to be Sable. One of them was surely lying, and the pain of that lie had stirred up some long-dead emotions that she had tried to bury a long time ago. But the past never stayed buried.
She thought about her ring again, and then about her missing daughter.
She pictured the flash of guilt on her baby sister's face as Viceroy's pearl-colored cum dripped from her lips.
It didn't mean anything. I swear. I was just helping him, that's all. He needed it. He needed it.
Selah sighed and shook her head. It was all such a dizzying loop. If she hadn't gone to his job that day she wouldn't have caught her husband mouth-fucking her sister. And if she hadn't caught Viceroy with her sister, she wouldn't have lost Sable. And if she hadn't lost Sable, then she wouldn't have lost her ring. And if she hadn't lost her ring, she wouldn't be driving herself to Dallas at noon on Wednesday to see the funny-looking man who had given her the very best dick she had ever had in her life.
It was funny the way so many things got tied together in life. How no action was really independent of the next one. Selah watched the sky as she waited for the coffeepot to give her its signal, but when a sound finally came it didn't come from the kitchen, it came from the front door.
Frowning, she glanced at the clock. Five ten a.m. The doorbell rang again, and gathering her bathrobe tighter, she headed across the house to answer it.
“Yes?” she called out nervously. She clicked on the parlor lights and looked outside. A police car was in her driveway with its flashing red and blue strobe lights on.
“Can I help you?” she asked as she opened the door.
Two uniformed policemen stood there.
“We're sorry to bother you at this hour, Mrs. Dominion, but we need to speak to your son, Barron. Is he at home?”
“Why, yes,” Selah answered. She peered past them. “His car is here so he must be upstairs in his suite. What's the problem?”
“There's been an accident, ma'am,” the older officer informed her. “And we need to speak to Barron. May we come in?”
“Of course,” Selah said as she stepped back to let them enter. “But I'm telling you, Barron is upstairs,” she said as she closed the door and turned around. “He's upstairs aslee—” The word got stuck in her throat as her and the two officers stared at the thing that was stretched out cold on the sofa, a rose-colored miniskirt hiked up his thighs and his business hanging down low on his leg. One hand was flung over the top of the couch, and the other hand was resting on his stomach. Bright lipstick circled his lips like somebody had colored it on a clown. His eyebrows had been shaved off and dramatically drawn on and arched with a pencil, his cheeks were colored in deep red rouge, and the prettiest shades of eye shadow had been blended in above his lids.
“Barron!” Selah shrieked and ran to her son. She tossed a pillow over his crotch and slapped him on his painted-up cheeks. “
Barron!
What happened, baby? Wake up, son. Tell me what the hell happened?”
Barron opened his eyes and looked around slowly. He blinked a few times like he was trying to focus.
“What in the world happened to you?” Selah wailed. “Baby what is going
on
?”
Barron licked his lips. They felt crusty and sore. He opened his mouth to answer his mother, but when it became obvious that he couldn't speak, one of the police officers moved forward and spoke for him instead.
“Mr. Dominion, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say, can and will be used against you in a court of law . . .”
CHAPTER 25
B
arron spent seven whole hours wearing a rose miniskirt in a downtown Dallas bullpen before one of his lawyer friends came to get him out. By then he had slept his drugged-up high off and was ready to kill some fuckin' body.
“Here you go,” said Jeff Rivera, a Hispanic dude he'd gone to law school with as he passed Barron a clean handkerchief. As with every DUI and suspected hit-and-run case, those fools at the courthouse had suspended his driver's license so Jeff was giving him a ride home. “Try to clean up a little bit before we get there. You got mascara all over your nose, man.”
Barron snatched the cloth and dry-scrubbed his face until it burned. Whoever had painted him up had done a damn good job and he didn't even wanna think about what his mug shot looked like.
But the embarrassment he was feeling right now wasn't shit compared to what the public humiliation was gonna be when this drama got out, and it was gonna take some deep cash and an entire public relations cleanup team to make this kind of shit stain go away.
Jeff had brought Barron some clothes to ride home in, and the thought that his moms had seen him wearing makeup and a bra straight fucked up his heart. He was gonna have a lot of explaining to do, and while he was busy feeling sorry for himself, there was a ten-year-old little Mexican boy sitting up in the hospital with a broken ankle and it was all Barron's fault.
“So that kid I hit is gonna be okay, right?” Barron cut his eyes at Jeff and asked. “It was just his foot, right? The rest of him is cool, huh?”
Jeff nodded. “Oh, yeah. He's gonna be good. He's a little day laborer. He was crossing the street with his father to catch a job when you hit him. Yeah, you fucked up his ankle, but it coulda been a whole lot worse, you know? I already arranged to pay his hospital bill, and later on today I'm gonna go see his father and offer him a few dollars to compensate for the boy's lost wages. Don't worry. As long as we can keep this out of the media then everything should be okay.”
Barron squeezed his eyes shut tight. He had never been in trouble a day in his life, and he wasn't sure if anything would ever be okay again. He had no memory of hitting the boy, or of crashing into any of the three parked cars the cops claimed he had smashed up either. All he remembered was getting nice at a party, and then driving through a fucking video game. It was one of those pinball machines with bumpers and bells. He was riding in the big silver ball, and people had been screaming and cheering as he bounced off the swinging gates. Everything else was a big long blur . . .
He glanced out the window as the car sped toward the Dominion Estate, where all kinds of problems were waiting for him. Fallon, Mink, Dy-Nasty, Pilar. His shit was getting raggedy. It was falling apart. He was trying to do too much, and he couldn't have gotten arrested at a worse time.
Damn! Barron slammed his hand down hard on Jeff's dashboard. Damn! Damn! Damn!
 
Selah was highly pissed off as she walked out of the Omni Hotel in downtown Dallas the next afternoon, which was also happened to be the headquarters of a prestigious oil firm called Ruddman Energy. Her stride was quick as she crossed the large lobby, and dressed in a hip-hugging Dolce & Gabbana dress she looked a whole lot younger than forty-eight.
She smoothed her hair back as she pushed through the revolving front doors and waved impatiently for the valet to bring her Mercedes around. She had driven herself into the city, and it had been a big waste of time because the old-ass fool she came to see was still playing childish games.
“Selah!
Selah!
”
She heard him calling her, but she damn sure wasn't about to answer him. This fool had brought out the New Yorker in her, and no matter what had gone down between them in the past, she wasn't the same woman she was back then, and she wasn't burning on fire for vengeance anymore either.
“Selah!”
She walked off a few paces and suddenly he grabbed her arm from behind.
“I'm sorry, Selah. I didn't mean to upset you. Come back upstairs and let's talk about it, okay?”
“There's nothing for us to talk about, Rodney! Not a damn thing. Why are you trying to come back in my life? Why now? First you steal my brother Digger away from my husband, and now this! I didn't come here to
fuck
you
,
Rodney! I came for my ring and you said you'd give it to me!”
He pulled her close and stuck his nose right under her ear. She heard his sharp intake of breath and then he whispered, “After all these years I can still remember how good you smelled. How sweet your pussy tasted. I remember how you sounded . . . the noises you made when I put my—” He sucked his breath in between his teeth and moaned, “. . .
ssss ahhh . . . oooh yes
. . .
go deeper, baby . . . ahhh, baby, yes . . .
”
Selah hauled off and slapped the shit out of him.
It was a Brooklyn move, and it happened so fast that almost nobody saw it. Almost.
“Stay the hell away from me, Rodney. You hear? Just stay the hell away from me!”
Fat, greasy, frog-looking Rodney Ruddman, CEO and president of Ruddman Energy and arch-enemy of Viceroy Dominion, touched his face where Selah had slapped him, and then he blew her a kiss and laughed.
“Now that hurt a little bit, but it's okay. Come back and see me sometime, Selah. Let me take care of you. Even on his best day Viceroy could never make you feel it the way I do. Remember, you can still get this if you want it, baby. You can get it anytime you want it.”
 
Life was about to get a whole lot worse for Barron before it got any better. The mansion was pretty quiet when Jeff picked him up for his court date on Wednesday. Dane had taken all three ghetto trolls on a shopping trip at NorthPark Center, and Selah had taken the Mercedes and driven herself into Dallas to have lunch with an old friend.
Barron had an appointment to meet with the judge presiding over his case, and Jeff had assured him that everybody involved was interested in making this thing go away.
“Even the boy's father?” Barron had asked him as they got off the elevator and headed toward the judge's private chambers.
“
Especially
the boy's father,” Jeff told him. “For two hundred thousand dollars.”
Barron looked at him. How many fuckin' grapes were those people planning to pick that day?
Forty-five minutes later the two men had met with the judge and they were in the elevator riding back downstairs. Jeff had been good to his word, and after giving Barron a strong talking to about the dangers of irresponsible drinking and driving, Judge Halley, who was a personal friend of Viceroy's, and whose campaign for office had been heavily funded by Dominion Oil, poured the young attorneys a drink as they sat around and discussed local business and politics.
“Look, the chief of police is gonna try to bury this, but keep your head down and stay out of trouble,” the judge warned Barron as he was leaving. “We should be able to keep this away from the media too, but make sure you don't give them anything else to throw at you. No more scandals, you understand?”
No more scandals.
Barron breathed a sigh of relief as Jeff pulled out of the private parking garage. They'd gone two blocks and stopped at a traffic light when Barron saw something that kicked him straight in the nuts.
It was Selah. His mother. She was coming out of the Omni Hotel with a man, and it damn sure wasn't his father Viceroy. Hell no. It was Rodney Ruddman, CEO of Ruddman Energy. Rodney was Viceroy's main competitor and sworn enemy. Barron watched in silence as Ruddman grabbed Selah's arm and his mother stormed away from the man. She looked angry in a way that he had never seen her look before. In a womanly way. And when Rodney reached out and grabbed her again and pulled her close to him, bending to whisper something in her ear, Barron exploded inside.
What the fuck?
His blood started boiling and he was itching to jump outta the ride and fuck that old bastard up.
But the light had changed and the car was on the move again. Barron turned around and put a crook in his neck as he tried to keep his eyes on them. He coulda sworn he saw Selah swing on Rodney and slap the shit outta him, but they were too far away now and he had blinked too, so he couldn't be sure.
Barron yanked his cell phone off his belt as Jeff turned the corner. He hit Selah on speed dial and cursed as her phone went straight to voice mail. He stuck his finger in his left ear and turned slightly away from Jeff as he spoke in a low tone. “Hey, Ma, it's me. Um, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I thought I just um, saw something . . . um, I thought . . . Call me back. I'm just checking to see if you need me, okay?”
He hung up and tried to process what the fuck he had just seen. His mother and his father's business competitor coming out of an upscale hotel in the middle of the day. That nigga had put his hands on Selah. And not like he was trying to handle her neither. Nah, the way Rodney had pulled her close and stuck his nose in her neck said a whole lot about their relationship. There had been an understanding in that move. Some familiarity. Like dude had yoked Selah up before. Mama had hauled off and slapped the shit outta that old man! What the hell was up with
that
?
Barron's heart pounded as rage circulated through him.
He didn't wanna believe what his logical mind was telling him, but what else was he supposed to think? His father was laying up in the hospital about to fade out on the world, and his mother was out here fucking around with his enemies? And in broad daylight? He closed his eyes and tried to calm his breathing.
No more scandals
. Ya got that shit right! He thought about his mug shot. The last thing his family needed was another goddamn scandal. With all the drama going on in their lives they couldn't take not one more thing. Barron knew what he had to do. He was gonna have to shut
everybody
down. Make everybody crawl around on a real low profile. Because lately, every last one of the Dominions had been on some brand-new kinda shit, and if the board found out what
he
had just been through . . . well, the board just better not find the fuck out!

Other books

Gun Lake by Travis Thrasher
Tender Loving Care by Greene, Jennifer
Critical Impact by Linda Hall
The CEO Gets Her Man by Ashby, Anne
Nine Women by Shirley Ann Grau
DELUGE by Lisa T. Bergren
African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441) by Solomon, Barbara H. (EDT); Rampone, W. Reginald, Jr. (EDT)
A Dead Man in Barcelona by Michael Pearce