Games Divas Play (A Diva Mystery Novel) (5 page)

I clutched my stomach, which was suddenly tied in knots. Hot tears streamed down my face. Marcus was scheduled to leave for a game against Miami the
next day.

“Bitch, who is this?” I screamed into the phone. “Who are you? Are you fucking my
husband?”

The woman laughed and then hung up the phone. Blind with rage, I punched desperately at the buttons and redialed the number. This time her voice mail picked up, and I continued to scream into the
receiver.

“You fucking bitch! You stay away from my family!” My screams must have awakened Marcus, because just as I was redialing the number, he ran into the closet and grabbed the phone from me. The panic on his face let me know immediately that he knew he w
as caught.

The next six months of our marriage were a nightmare. We went to counseling, and we talked to our pastor. Marcus swore he would stop seeing other women, and I spiraled downward into a deep depression. From the outside, we looked like the happy NBA couple. I continued my duties as president of the National Basketball Association wives organization, and Marcus continued to play the best season of his career. The only people I confided in were Nia and another NBA wife I had grown close to, Jacqueline Herman. I could tell Nia wanted me to leave Marcus, because she said just that at the end of all our calls, but Jacqueline encouraged me to stay. Married for ten years to Michael Herman, Marcus’s closest teammate, Jacqueline was far more pragmatic. She shared her own stories of betrayal and how she and Michael somehow made it work. One such story left me breathless. A famous Hollywood actress that I loved in all her romantic comedies had showed up at their kids’ holiday program demanding that Michael come out and leave his family and be with her. Humiliated in front of the other parents, Jacqueline had demanded Michael have the woman removed from their school by the police and that he take out a restraining order. Jacqueline was uncertain at that point if they could ever work things out, but somehow she said
they did.

That’s when I learned about the Road Code that some of the basketball wives and their husbands adopt. This rule essentially meant that what happened on the road stayed on the road, and that part of their lives never entered into the family home. No phone calls, text messages, accidental pregnancies, no STDs, no gossip on the blogs, and absolutely no falling in love. When the players were home with their families, they devoted their attention to their wives and kids. Some wives, she told me, had even gone as far as to create legal agreements that triggered steep financial penalties if the Road Code was broken. I told Jacqueline I didn’t think I could live like that and knowingly share my man with ot
her women.

“First of all, you’re not sharing your man,” Jacqueline told me. “You’re protecting your family. If you wanted a faithful husband, you should have married Joe Postal Worker instead of a fine-ass basketball player worth millions of dollars. That man’s walking around with a target on his back, and these scandalous chicks, who are throwing panties at him left and right, will stop at nothing to get him. And because he’s a man who thinks with the wrong head, sometimes he’s going to slip up. It’s just sex with them, and it doesn’t have to mean anything more. Your husband loves you, but at the end of the day, he’s a man—and being a man who’s a professional athlete takes it to a whole n
ew level.”

I didn’t know if I could accept the Code and that Kareem could be the one facilitating these hookups as they traveled around the country. Marcus and I continued to go to counseling and meet with our pastor to discuss our problems. We took a vacation to Fiji, and things seemed to get better. I saw that Marcus was really trying and he was sorry he had hurt me. But last year I started to get that nagging feeling again that something was going on. The blogs were littered with pics of him at nightclubs while on the road, and there were always groups of women hanging in the background. He always reassured me that nothing was going on and that the women were just hoping to catch the eye of one of the singl
e players.

Yeah, right. How dumb do I look? I wanted to s
ay to him.

I managed to sneak a look at his cell phone again but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I told Jacqueline about my suspicions. That’s when she told me that Marcus likely had a sec
ond phone.

“After they get caught the first time, that’s what they do,” she said, chuckling. “They’ll get a second phone and only take it out when they are outside the home or completely away from you. He might keep it in his car, in a bag, or even have a friend or his agent carry it. If you happen to come around when he has it on him, he’ll pass it off to one of his boys or Kareem. Part of the Road Code is that you never have to see the calls or text messages. He’ll never put it in your face, so maybe he’s living by the Code and you don’t even
know it.”

I thought about confronting Marcus but couldn’t bring myself to hear the truth. I buried my anger and focused on my charity work with the Wives Association and raising our son while Marcus burned up the courts and took his team to the play-offs. New endorsement offers came in, and his star was burning brighter than ever. A nasty divorce could possibly put that all in jeopardy. And as Jacqueline pointed out, half that money was mine, so I needed to protect it in case at some point I decided
to leave.

Then the dead cheerleader turned up in the desert, and everythin
g changed.

One girl in particular had begun to show up in the background of the photos of Marcus on the road. Her name was Kalinda Walters, and she was one of the new Phoenix Lasers dancers. And while the team organization had very strict rules about players and dancers interacting (mostly driven by jealous wives trying to protect their territory and frustrated coaches trying to keep their players focused on the court), this twenty-something firecracker seemed to play by her
own rules.

Marcus assured me nothing was going on with the nubile dark-haired beauty with the green eyes and DD breasts, but I felt like something was
n’t right.

One of the reports contained gruesome details about the dancer’s murder and the state her body was in when she was discovered: her cinnamon-brown skin had been carved up with jagged knife wounds, indicating that she had been tortured before a single gunshot to the head had ended her life, her long black hair was matted with dried blood, huge black flies swarmed the body, and maggots had started to harvest their eggs in the op
en wounds.

The Phoenix media jumped all over the murder of the sexy young dancer. Although there wasn’t any hard evidence, they really worked themselves into a frenzy when they found out that detectives had questioned several of the Laser players, including Marcus, after finding their numbers in her cell p
hone logs.

Marcus denied any involvement with the girl, but the whispers persisted and swirled for months, both in the papers and online about a possible affair with Kalinda. Marcus assured me that nothing had happened bet
ween them.

The case went unsolved for several months with the police at a dead end. That’s when the trade talks began. Marcus’s free-agency contract was up, and everyone knew New York wanted him badly, but the team owner, Davis Jennings, was an ultraconservative business tycoon who abhorred scandal. Kareem and Marcus’s publicist, Desiree Deevers, worked overtime squashing anything linking the dead dancer to their multimillion-dollar client. Nothing could be allowed to kill this deal. Marcus had always talked about playing for New York and wanted to get this deal done quickly. There was no more talk of the cheerleader. But in checking Marcus’s history on his laptop, I saw that several times over the past few days he had logged onto GoldenGoddess, the personal website of a popular Los Angeles groupie Jacqueline had told me to watc
h out for.

We both couldn’t wait to get to
New York.

But for very differen
t reasons.

No more ch
eerleader.

And no mor
e threats.

The press conference finally ended. After answering questions for more than an hour, Marcus was exhausted but kept his smile bright as we left the stifling room of reporters. He confidently answered all of ESPN’s questions about how he planned to lead the team to a championship, artfully spoke to
Sports Illustrated
about how excited he was to work with Coach Townsend and the current team roster, and he deftly avoided any questions from Deadspin about the “drama” he was leaving behind in Arizona. I saw Desiree in the corner jotting down the names of reporters bold enough to try to bring their questions around to that dead whore, and I knew she would have them banned from any future interviews with Marcus and the
franchise.

Marcus and I were escorted out by a security team through the bowels of Madison Square Garden to the loading dock where we slipped into the back of the waiting
limousine.

“Congratulations, my darling,” I said as I relaxed my jaw, which ached from having a fake smile plastered on my face for the past hour, and sank into the soft buttery black leather seats. I turned to Marcus to kiss him on his cheek as the car pulled out from the underground garage and began to make its way through the heavy city traffic. “You’ve always wanted to play in New York, and now it’s
official.”

“Thank you, baby,” Marcus said, taking my hand and absentmindedly kissing it as he looked out the car window. “We’ve got a lot to do to get settled. You ready to look for
a house?”

“Not really, but we have to get settled and get Damon i
n school.”

“Yeah, little man’s got to get into school, and we don’t want to live in the apartment forever. At least we’re out of the hotel
, though.”

When we first got to New York, we stayed at the Four Seasons hotel for several weeks, but as part of Marcus’s deal with the Gladiators, we were offered a penthouse loft in Tribeca to live in until we found a home. It was beautiful space fully furnished, and I, too, was glad to be out of the Four Seasons—but it wa
sn’t home.

“I’m going to start looking next week,” I said, taking in the scene outside the tinted windows as a bike messenger whizzed by, nearly clipping the limousine driver’s side mirror. Marcus picked up the interior phone to speak to the driver, Alex, and told him to drop him at the Four Seasons and then to tak
e me home.

“Aren’t we both going back to the apartment?” I asked. I had hoped the three of us would spend the day together, exploring the neighborhood and perhaps taking Damon to the Natural History Museum to see the
dinosaurs.

“Uh, sorry, babe. Kareem set up this meeting with these guys from China who want to discuss some business opportunities for my brand overseas,” he answered quickly. “They are going back tomorrow, so we have to me
et today.”

“Oh, OK. I guess we’ll see you lat
er, then.”

“Yeah, hopefully not too late. These cats might want to have dinner though, so I’ll let
you know.”

As the car pulled up at the door of the hotel, I grabbed Marcus’s arm before he could step out o
f the car.

“Try not to be too late, honey. We want to see you, too.” I looked into his dark eyes as if they could show me if he was telling me the truth. But I could no longer read
his eyes.

“I’ll try, baby,” he said as he leaned in and kissed me quickly on the cheek before stepping out of the car. I saw Kareem grinning, at the curb, as he walked over to clap his boy on
the back.

“Hey, V.,” he said as he leaned down to speak to me. “Don’t worry, I’ll have your boy home soon. Unless he wants to go out and celebrate that big fat Gladiators contract I got
for him!”

Marcus and Kareem dapped each other up with broad smiles across all of their
features.

“I know that’s right, man. You did the damn thing on that big fat contract,” Marcus said to Kareem. “We did it, baby. We in
New York!”

Before I could tell Marcus again that Damon and I really wanted him to come home early tonight so that we could celebrate as a family, he and Kareem turned away to walk into the hotel. As I pushed the button to raise the car window, I saw Kareem slip something in Marcus’s hand as they walked through the door of the hotel. A phone. My sto
mach sank.

Suddenly I got that all-too-familiar feeling in my stomach as Alex began to steer the car downtown. It was a pain that seemed to indicate that our fresh start might be turning into the same old thing, and I wasn’t willing to let that happen. Pulling out my cell phone from my cherry-red Dior handbag, I dialed the only number that could help get my marriage back on the ri
ght track.

CHAPTER 3

Laila

D
amn, I’m a s
exy bitch.

Naked except for a thin lacy wisp of a black Agent Provocateur thong covering my freshly waxed kitty, a matching demi-cut bra, and six-inch fire-red studded Christian Louboutin suede platform pumps, I finished rubbing in the Carol’s Daughter Sparkling Body Butter on my toffee-brown body before I prepared to position my glistening self for my camera phone. Slipping one of the satin bra straps off my shoulder, I pinched my dark cocoa nipples so that they stood at attention through the delicate French lace as if they were waiting for his hungry lips. I ran my hands through my dark brown curls, causing the long layers to frame my face with the amber and blond highlights my hairdresser put in this morning. I let the left side of my hair fall sexily over one of my hazel-g
reen eyes.

Wearing the New York Gladiator colors of black and red, I was officially ready for my close-up. I grabbed my phone from the bathroom counter, placed one hand on my hip, and with my pinky finger, pulled up the side of my thong and positioned the camera to shoot. After reviewing the shot, I clicked forward, found Marcus’s number, and typed:
Your “Welcome to New York” Present
and press
ed “Send.”

Marcus King will be mine. And judging from the immediate response to my text, it was going to happen sooner than
I planned.

MK:
Damnnnn, baby. U got me horny as hell lookin at ur sexy
assssss!!

Laila:
Well, why don’t U come get some of this brown suga. Lap dance? Shower sex? However
U want it!

MK:
R U
in NYC???

Laila
:
Yessssss

MK:
U got my soldier hard as a brick! Meet me at Four Seasons at 6:30. Ask for my man Christian at the desk and he’ll
hook U up.

Laila:
See U soon

MK:
And make sure U wear that sexy shit U
got on now

It was only 4:00, so I had time to take care of a little business before I got pleasured. I pulled up the number of Miki Woods, the fast-talking, Emmy-award-winning Glam Network executive in charge of programming who’d been stalking me about doing a reality show. Over the last few weeks, she had been putting on the hard sell to get me to at least consider shooting a pilot. Her concept was kind of hot. It would be the first-ever interactive web-based real-time reality show called
Whatever Laila Wants . . .
with the tagline “She’s Every Man’s Fantasy and Every Wife’s Nightmare.” It would follow my life as I build my “modeling career,” party in New York City, and look for Mr. Right. Viewers would get to interact during the show through the show’s website. Miki was blowing up my phone, salivating over the opportunity to be the first to capture my rumored relationship with New York Gladiator Marcus King. Showing Miki our X-rated text message exchanges over the past few weeks had only whet her appetite even more, and it was getting my offer price close to seve
n figures.

“Hey, Miki, it’s Laila,” I said when her assistant, Tyra, patched my call through to
her boss.

“Hi, Laila!” Miki gushed into the phone. “How are you? Did you see the press conferen
ce today?”

This chick ain’t even slick, but I decided to play with her. Maybe I could even turn this seven-figure deal i
nto eight.

“Press conference? What press conference?” I as
ked coyly.

“Marcus King’s first press conference as a New York Gladiator. Every local news channel carried it live. This is big new
s, Laila.”

“Oh yeah. He told me he was doing something like th
at today.”

“Now, Laila, let’s cut to the chase. You know Glam Network wants to do this show with you. And I promise you
Whatever Laila Wants
is going to be huge! We’ll put our entire marketing muscle behind it to ensure it’s a ratings smash, and with Marcus moving to New York, the interest in the two of you is only going to get more
intense.”

“I agree, Miki. But opening up my life to your cameras is a big step. I don’t generally like to . . . well . . . kiss
and tell.”

“I know, but we’d really be breaking new ground in the reality TV space with this
concept.”

“I don’t know, Miki. You’re really asking a lot . . .” I let my voice trail off and heard her breathing quicken, but I could tell she needed a little push to raise
her offer.

“Check your e-mail, Miki. I sent you a little
present.”

“Oh my God” she exclaimed into the phone after she opened the e-mail containing my most recent text exchange with Marcus along with my photo. “Is this from Marcus King? Are you really about to go meet him? Can I send a camera crew to
meet you?”

“Are you crazy? Of course you can’t send a camera crew. First of all, we don’t have a deal, and second of all, you can’t scare Marcus away before I get him. So back the hell up.” This nut was about to mess up everything before things really got
official.

“OK, I understand, but this is too hot! Laila, I’m willing to raise our offer to one million dollars for the first season and will include a guaranteed second-season option for two million dollars if the show hits predetermined ratings targets. I know a hit when I
see one.”

Deciding to do my own million-dollar reality show for Glam Network was a no-brainer. But I knew as soon as I signed those papers and word got out that I was doing a reality show, my married man and New York Gladiator’s new franchise player could get skittish. Admittedly, the gossip blogs were already speculating about our relationship, thanks to some well-placed tips, but an actual show could have Marcus trying to get as far away from me as possible—no matter how good my kitty kat was. So in order to have my cake and eat it, too, I’m going to have to be patient, and so are Miki and Glam Network. It will be worth it in the long run for
all of us.

“Look, Miki. I love that you believe in me and believe in this show. I really do. I promise you I’ll seriously think about it, talk to my agent, and get bac
k to you.”

“OK, I know you have to get going to the Four Seasons,” she joked. “Are you sure we can’t send a c
rew over?”

“Talk to you later, Miki.” It was
showtime.

I know I’m going to get what I want. After all, I always do. Everything and everyone I’ve ever wanted in my twenty-three years on earth I’ve gotten. I’ve been blessed with model looks and a curvaceous body made for sin, and it hadn’t been difficult for me to learn to work my charms. My mother had groomed me from day one for the good life. And while Daddy did his best to provide for his two angels, I knew that if I really wanted the life I deserved, I was going to have to get it
on my own.

Dropping out of college after two years at Howard University, I had moved to LA with my best friend, Darryl Simmons, so I could pursue modeling and he could start his party-promoting career. I never ran with chicks—too much drama and jealousy. I always got along better with guys. Most of them wanted to get me into bed, of course, and Darryl was no exception in the beginning. But once I put them in the friend box, they were only too happy to hang around, hoping I’d change my mind and give them a lit
tle taste.

Once we got to LA, Darryl and I were like kids in a candy store. We got a cheap but decent apartment, hung out all night at the clubs, and slept most of the day. Darryl hooked up with some Mexican cocaine dealers he met at one of our favorite nightclubs and started his own little side hustle with them. While drugs were never my thing, I didn’t complain because Darryl’s dealing paid for the roof over our heads, put food in the cabinets, and kept me from having to get the typical actor’s job of waitressing at some s
hit diner.

At first I really did try to make an honest go of it and made the requisite rounds of the agents and casting directors, but I found the price for signing was usually a taste of my golden kitty kat. Unwilling to get on the casting couch to audition for a tiny part in a local car insurance commercial, I quickly surmised there had to be a better way to beco
me a star.

Because we went out every night, Darryl and I started to make connections. My looks got us in the door, and Darryl’s cocaine introduced us to a whole new crowd of Hollywood actors, video directors, and athletes. I branded myself the Golden Goddess and started to get requests for video appearances and men’s magazine photo shoots. I shot a few videos for hot rappers and R&B stars. After one video where my entire scene took place in a glass shower, the calls for more videos and dates with rappers started coming in. Everyone seemed to want to work with Laila. But hooking up with rappers who just wanted to pass me around to their crew wasn’t what I wanted. Most of their money wasn’t real, anyway. Everything on the set, including their platinum jewelry, six-figure cars, and clothes, was rented for the shoot. Plus, dating a rapper didn’t have a lot of cachet and wouldn’t put me on a red carpet, in magazines, or on TV. But professional athletes were a different story. They had real paper and an affinity for beautiful wome
n like me.

Ever the budding entrepreneur, Darryl figured we needed to start self-promoting my “talents,” so he started my GoldenGoddess website, which showcased all my photo shoots, magazine covers, video clips, and my personal blog where I talked about the party life and answered reader questions. While I knew it wasn’t anything more than a site for pervs to jack off to my glossy images, we started to get a lot of traffic. The hot urban websites started featuring me, and people in the industry took notice. And then I met Marcus King and everythin
g changed.

Darryl and I had gone to the NBA All-Star game in Las Vegas after getting hooked up with tickets from one of his clients, Kareem Davis. I’d never been to All-Star before, but from what I’d heard, it was a who’s who of pro athletes and the women trying to land them. What I hadn’t counted on was the level of groupie talent, models, and actresses in attendance. Everywhere you looked, there were model chicks looking like they stepped right off the cover of
Vogue
in the lobby of all the hotels as well as tramps in barely there G-strings and pasties popping it and dropping it like they stepped off the cover of
Smooth
magazine. And all these chicks were serious about their game. Staying four to six deep in a room, they were decked out in their most scandalous gear and highest stilettos. But never the one to be intimidated by another beautiful chick, I knew I could more than ho
ld my own.

Our first event was the hottest ticket: the opening weekend blackjack party at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. When we were welcomed into the VIP area, I immediately turned my attention to the evening’s hottest attraction. Standing in a corner of the room surrounded by a group of other boldfaced-named players, Marcus King stood out. He was simply delicious. Wearing a crisp white shirt that showed off his dark ebony skin, he scanned the room, and our eyes connected. I held his gaze, smiled, and raised my champagne glass to him. He raised his own glass and smiled, his sexy lips revealing perfect white teeth. He then turned to a man standing next to him. I assumed the man was his brother because they looked so much alike and had the same gait and mannerisms. The man nodded his head to something Marcus said. I knew I had been given the approval. A shiver went through my body in anticipation of what was to come. The man turned out to be Kareem. He asked me for my number and told me to expect an important call later in th
e evening.

Now, because I was a mistress of seduction and master of the game, the one thing I knew about rich black athletes was that groupie ass was a dime a dozen, and if you gave in too quickly, you’d be nothing more than memory and story to share in the locker room. If you wanted to be more than a one-night jump-off, you had to hook them. So I played the game. When Marcus sent me a text, we had a playful and sexy exchange, but I didn’t meet him at his hotel at 2:00 a.m. as he requested. Darryl warned me that I was taking quite a chance because Marcus could have just moved on to the next chick, but I knew if I was going to be more than just a blow job, I had to play my cards right. So I didn’t sleep with him that weekend but kept in contact via text and invited him to check out my website and look me up when he was in town the following month to play the Los Angele
s Vikings.