Viceroy might have looked weak and frail, but the ghetto streets were still running deep in his blood, and underneath his tailored smoking pajamas his nuts were just as big and hairy as they had always been.
“Bad info? You call this here shit bad info?” he said, glaring at Barron as he held a sheet of paper in the air. “I just got faxed a copy of the minutes from the board meeting that
you
called last week!”
Barron's eyes got big as shit.
“Boy”âViceroy was so pissed off that his hands shook and spit flew outta his mouthâ“you called
my
fuckin' officers together so they could vote me outta
my
position and knock me off
my
fuckin' block?”
Barron shook his head real fast.
“You think you doggish enough to snatch a bone away from me, Barron? You think you
hard enough
to go head-up against a hustler like me and try to put your paws on something that's
mine
?”
Barron felt a chill run down his spine. “No, Pops! No!”
“You mean
hell
naw!” Viceroy barked from between his clenched teeth. “I'ma tell you right now, you don't even wanna
think
that shit, Lil Bump! I
bite
pups like you for lunch, baby boy! Trust what I'm saying. You don't even wanna try it!”
The raging anger that was radiating off his father was so hot and out of the blue that Barron was having a hard time catching his breath.
“Yo, nobody tried to take nothing from you, Pop!” he insisted. “We worked our asses off trying to do everything the way we thought
you
would have wanted us to do it!”
“And how the hell did y'all do that? By sitting around in a goddamn Holy Roller circle praying for my black ass to
die
?”
Barron raised his hands slightly in the air.
“Hold up. Now calm down, Popsâ”
“Fool, is you crazy?” Viceroy exploded, and tried to come up out of his chair. “Don't you tell
me
to calm the fuck down, Bump! You wanna tell me something?” he demanded as he reached behind his back and grabbed a small stack of papers from the cushions of his chair. He held them up high in the air. “Then tell me what the hell you was gonna do with
this
?”
“I . . . I . . . I . . . ,” Barron gasped and stuttered like a little kid when he recognized the copies of Mink and Dy-Nasty's test results from Exclusively DNA.
“Since when do you hide shit from me,” Viceroy blasted, “especially when it comes down to
my
family and
my
fuckin' money?”
Barron's eyes got big as hell.
“We wasn't tryna hide nothing from you, Pop! I swear to God we wasn't! You was knocked out, man! I was gonna run the whole thing down to you right off the bat but the doctors said not to put too much on your plate at one time!”
Viceroy's eyes got narrow as he cupped his hand behind his ear and wigged out on his son. “Excuse me? What was that? You didn't wanna put too much on my plate? Fuck them doctors! Who the fuck are you trying to
handle
, Barron? Don't you know I'm from the
hood,
son? I came up out there in them goddamn
gutters
! Didn't nobody give me
nothing
! I hustled for mine in the trenches! Scrapped for it, fought for it, and scrambled for it! Don't you know a nigga like me been grubbin' off a big plate
all my life
?”
Barron threw up his hands and stood there with his mouth wide open. He glanced at his mother for help but Selah couldn't call it either. She was stunned by the words that were rolling out of her husband's mouth. He sounded gritty as hell. Just like he used to sound thirty years ago. Like he had never left the streets of Houston and was still living the thug life in the projects and scratching his way out of the crab barrel just to survive.
Even the look on Viceroy's face was pure hood. It was like that bump on his head had reverted him right back to the old hooligan he used to be, and that smooth, polished front he had worn to keep up his high-class image was now a wrap. No, Selah hadn't heard her man get down this gutter in a very long time, and he had never,
ever,
blasted on their sons like this before.
Never.
But Viceroy was still burning on fire as he clenched his lips and grilled all three of them at the same time.
“See, I know what I gotta do now,” he muttered, his eyes darting from one of them to the other. “Yeah, I know
exactly
what the hell I gotta do! I'm about to switch up my will and restructure that trust fund! I'm about to kick all y'all out from under my nuts! Y'all fools damn-near ran my business into a black hole while I was laying up in here. Goddamn profits are way down and expenses are way up!”
Viceroy glanced down at the DNA results he still clenched in his fist.
“And this right here.” He shook the papers in the air again. “This bullshit
right here
? Man, I spent thirty fuckin' years keeping my hands clean and my shoes shined! And the minute I close my eyes y'all let these two . . .
cash cows
get up in my house and shit all over my good name!”
“Daddy, I
swear
,” Barron pleaded. “All I was tryna do was figure out which one of them was really Sable,” he explained. “We knew one of them was lying but we didn't know which one!”
“Fool! Both of them are lying!” Viceroy exploded, and then he keeled over and grabbed his temples and squeezed his eyes closed as he clutched his head between his trembling palms.
“Pops!” Barron shrieked, and jetted to his father's chair. But Dane had already beat him to the spot, and all Barron could do was stand there and watch as Dane eased their frail father into a sitting position and wiped a few furious flecks of drool from his lips.
Selah grabbed a glass of cold water from the nightstand and tried to get him to drink some, but Viceroy shook his head and shoved it away.
“Let's get one thing straight right now dammit,” he said, going hard again as he caught his breath. His sunken eyes swept over his wife and sons in a rage. “Both of these goddamn scam artists are frauds!
Both of their asses!
There
is no
DNA match for Sable out there because Sable is
dead
!”
Selah shrieked and clapped her hand over her mouth.
“She's dead, dammit! She is DEAD!”
“B-b-but those are the original DNA results,” Barron insisted, pointing at Mink's and Dy-Nasty's papers, which were still clutched in his father's hand. “Both of them came back a match for Sable so we made 'em both take the test again andâ”
“You's a goddamn
idiot
!” Viceroy spit. “Do you know how many pieces of that paper money can buy? I can get a DNA test to say
any damn thing
I want it to say!” Viceroy stared Barron down and there was no hiding the hood contempt that was in his eyes. “I'm disappointed in you, son. I'm damned disappointed 'cause I
know
I schooled you better than that!”
“But, Popsâ”
“They suckered you, Barron! They ran a scheme on you and you folded under the pressure, son! You let them two trifling gold diggers grab hold of your nuts and twist you up! But I know one thing. By the time I get outta this hospital you better have both of them greedy bitches outta my goddamn house or I'maâ”
“Viceroy!” Selah barked. “That's enough, goddammit! What the hell is wrong with you?
Bitches
? You wanna call
me
a bitch? Do you wanna call Fallon one? Hell no! And those girls aren't
bitches
either! Now, one of them is Sable. Our daughter. Our
baby
! And I don't give a damn what you say, I'm not gonna stop until I find out which one it is!”
The look Viceroy gave Selah should have knocked her to her knees.
But instead it brought the Brooklyn out of her and pissed her the fuck off.
“
Muthafucka
. . . ,” Selah spat with her jaw clenched tight. “Who the hell are you looking at like that? Yeah, you heard what I said, and I damn sure didn't stutter! I'm gonna find Sable. I'm gonna
find
my child! And if you hadn't been out there fucking around with that jailbait piece of ass then we probably wouldn't have lost her in the first damn place!”
Barron and Dane turned toward their mother with a stunned look of complete shock on their faces. Selah had
never
gone off on Viceroy in front of them. Never. They were used to seeing her cry and beat herself up over Sable all the time, but they had never,
ever
, heard her put the blame on their father before. But Selah wasn't bullshitting. All traces of her lady-like cool had disappeared, and the hard streets of Brooklyn glinted in her eyes.
Looking like a shamefaced old dog, Viceroy held up his hand and pulled back on some of that beef he was spitting.
“Uh-uh, Selah,” he told her. “Don't even go there. This ain't the time and it damn sure ain't the place. Let's leave the past in the
past
, a'ight? I'm tryna deal with what's going on right
now
and find out why the hell Barron let those two slum bunnies take him for a ride! No son of mine could be that damn stupid. No damn son of mine!”
His words cut across the room and slashed Barron like a knife, and Selah felt her son jerk like his nuts had been sliced off.
“Oh, is that right?” Selah stepped forward and put her hands on her hips and asked her husband coldly. “Well, I thought no damn
sister
of mine could be that stupid either.” She smirked. “But after that little head-on-heels party y'all fuckers had going on in your office the day Sable was kidnapped, I guess I was wrong.
Remember
?”
Selah locked eyes with Viceroy and dared him to get brand-new. She'd tear a hole in his damn throat, fuckin' with her Barron like that! Shit, bumped damn head or not, it was time for this fool to get shut
down
!
Viceroy's lips trembled like he wanted to spray off at the mouth again, but Selah eyeballed him a warning and dared him to pounce. She would fuck him straight up!
After a second or two she saw the fight go out of his eyes and she pulled back a little bit too. Oh, it was still going to go down between them, but Selah knew Viceroy was right, and with their sons standing there looking shell-shocked this was neither the time nor the place.
Besides, she knew exactly how nasty Viceroy could be and how deep his sharp tongue could cut. And no matter what those damn doctors had said, she wasn't about to blame everything on his head injury either, because underneath all that smooth, glossy shine her husband wore when he was in public, Viceroy was a cutthroat, ruthless snake right down to his ghetto bones! Hell, you didn't steal a profitable oil company out of the back pocket of your best friend and swindle your way into a billion dollars and not have some hoodlum in you!
When it was time for them to leave, Viceroy waited until Barron and Dane were almost out the door and then he called Selah back.
“Hey baby,” he said softly, and waved her over to his chair.
Selah stared at him cautiously. She didn't know what bag her husband was about to come out of, but the doctors had warned that his moods might swing, and besides, the look in his eyes had changed. They looked calm and serious. Sensuous and intense.
Selah took the hand he had extended her and let herself be pulled close to his chair.
“Look, I'm sorry, baby,” Viceroy said, gazing up at her with an apology in his eyes. He reached for her waist and pulled her down into his lap. “I don't know what got into me. I didn't mean to go off on you like that.”
“V-Viceroy,” Selah stuttered as her fluffy ass sank down into his groin. He was so skinny she could feel his thigh-bones poking through his flesh. “It's okay, dear,” she said, shifting her weight so that she was turned halfway toward him. She stared into his dark, handsome face and reached up and ran her hand over his smooth, freshly-shaved jawline.
“You've been through a lot, Viceroy,” she soothed him. “It's all right. The doctors warned us that it was going to take a little time for things to go back to normal. Let's just take everything slowly, okay?”
Viceroy nodded and Selah saw something else creep into his eyes.
“I think some things are already back to normal,” he whispered thickly.
His hands slid down her shoulders and gripped her hips and he thrust his pelvis upward in an obscene humping motion.
Selah stiffened.
“Viceroy,” she said sharply. She went to pull away and he grabbed her hips and gripped her even tighter as he pumped his bony hips up at her. “I'm not sure this is a good idea. I'm pretty heavy. I put on a couple of pounds after your accident, and it's too soon for you to be doing this type of thing anyway. Let me get up, baby. I don't want to hurt you.”
“What? You still don't think I can handle you, huh Selah? Come on, baby,” he whispered as he slow-grinded his hips and nuzzled his nose into her cleavage. His hands roamed over her breasts and hips like he was a horny teenager. “I'm a man, baby, and we both have needs. It's been a real long time, Selah. You feel this shit? I'm back in business now!”
Selah paused in place as he dry fucked her and squeezed on her titties. She reached between their bodies and felt for his crotch. And just as she expected, his bone was soft and limp.