“You heard me,” Justice said. She turned to face the girls, disdain evident in her exotic features. “If you don’t know, lemme enlighten you. Insanity is when you constantly do the same thing, but expect to get different results, different outcomes.”
Precious and Virgin exchanged heated looks and rolled their eyes while twisting up their mouths as if they were sharing the same thought:
Yeah we know what insanity is. This Chinese looking, Kimora Lee wannabe bitch is the one insane. Sittin’ up here lecturin’ a bitch when it’s niggas out there spendin’ that dough.
“I said that to say this: Every time I spend my hard-earned money to bring new faces up in here so my customers won’t get sick from seeing y’all same tired ass faces every night, you two always seem to be in the way. Tryin’ to do all you can to make the featured girls as uncomfortable as possible. I don’t understand you two.”
Justice pointed toward the door. “It’s enough money out there for a hundred girls to eat and y’all wanna fuck that up every chance you get. You are the only two that hate like that! Y’all are just like cats pissin’ on a spot to try to claim turf!”
Justice’s slanted eyes bored into the girls.
“I’on know what you talkin’ ‘bout ‘cause I ain’t—” Precious started, but Justice cut her off.
“You know
exactly
what I’m talking about, Precious! And I can do without your funky ass attitude right now.” Justice’s voice rose. “I got eighteen girls who dance here nightly, along with ten I fly in every weekend from different cities. Tell me why I need you two?”
Precious and Virgin looked at one another, dumbfounded. Justice calmly sat back down and began tapping her French manicured nails on her desk awaiting a response. Silently she waited to see what type of justification the girls could come up with that would keep her from banning them from the hottest strip club in Chicago.
After a long uncomfortable silence, Precious responded, “So, you wanna play
that
game, huh?” She arose from the sofa and slowly approached Justice’s desk with a devious grin.
She and Justice locked eyes, then Precious stated in a whisper, “You think a bitch don’t know how you used to get your money back in the day in Carolina?” She waved her arms around as she looked about the spacious office. “A bitch know how you ended up with all this. Bitch, a hustle is a hustle and I ain’t knockin’ that. But I guess
nothing
was outta your realm when it came to gettin’ dough, huh? Maybe not even murder.”
Precious smiled devilishly as she read the look in Justice’s eyes.
“So, Lucy Lu, you might wanna be mindful of who you threaten the next time you open your mouth ‘cause you neva know who might know what you think they don’t know, feel me?”
Justice stammered, “I—I don’t know what you talkin’ about. You need to get outta my office and outta my building before—”
“Oh, I think you do know what I’m talkin’ about. But that’s gonna just be between the three of us . . . for now.” She looked back at Virgin and winked. “But right now, me and Virgin got a couple of VIPs lined up out there. So we gonna finish out the rest of this night . . . and tomorrow night . . . and the next night . . . and the night after that, and . . . well, you get the idea.” Precious scowled at Justice, then turned to Virgin. “You ready to finish gettin’ this money?” Just that quickly, the tables had been turned a whole 180 degrees.
“No doubt,” Virgin replied as she arose from the sofa and headed for the door with Precious right behind her.
When Precious reached the door she turned to look at Justice and winked. She joked “Holla at ‘cha later, Killa.” The sarcasm was thick.
Then they were out the door.
Toni was standing outside the door waiting for the girls to exit. As soon as they came out, Toni went in.
“How much time you give them to get their shit and get out?” she asked Justice. Then she noticed the look on Justice’s face. “Girl, what happened?”
Justice buried her head in her desk and ignored Toni's question. After a few moments, Justice raised her head and stated a weak, “They’re staying.”
“What?”
She looked at Toni. “Lemme think for a minute. Come back in thirty minutes and we’ll talk.”
Reluctantly, Toni left the office. As soon as the door was closed Justice’s mind began reeling. She tried to come up with scenarios as to how the two girls could possible know her secret.
After about ten minutes of pondering over this, she came to the conclusion that the two girls couldn’t possibly know what they were talking about. They had to be speculating on rumors. This wasn’t the first time Justice had heard about her past of setting niggas up to be robbed, but it was the first time the word “murder”
had been mentioned.
Speculation or not, Justice decided that she couldn’t take the chance of letting those two bitches keep that secret dangling over her head. She opened her desk drawer and looked down at the .9mm she kept stashed there for protection. She picked it up and had flashbacks of the day she’d killed J. T. Never in a million years would she have thought that she would have to pull the trigger again to take a life, but the way she figured it, she had no choice.
CHAPTER TWO
Girl, don’t you know these bitches tried me last night,” Justice spoke candidly into her Bluetooth earpiece. She was sitting on the sofa in her spacious living room talking to her best friend, Sapphire.
“Who was it this time?” Sapphire’s voice blared in her ear.
“That Amazon bitch, Precious and her lil’ sidekick, Virgin,” Justice replied while reducing the volume. “Bitches aiming at my pedestal . . .” She paused for a moment because her other lined beeped. She checked her phone and saw Toni’s number. Since Toni was running the club tonight, Justice decided she should take the call because it may have been about something important. “Lemme call you back in a minute. That’s Toni.”
“Okay, but make sure you call me back so we can plan your trip. My mama is so lookin’ forward to seeing you and I am too. Girl, it’s been like forever.”
Sapphire’s mother had recently been hospitalized because of her cancer recurring and her health was slowly deteriorating by the day. Justice had promised Sapphire she would come to visit for a week or two while her mother was incapacitated.
“I know, right. Tell your mama I said hey and I’ll see y’all soon. Luh you, girl.”
“Luh you too, sis.”
Justice clicked over and listened as Toni spoke. After a few minutes into the conversation, Justice realized the call wasn’t about anything important. She scowled as Toni let the latest gossip fall from her lips with rapid speed. “Giiiirl, you ain’t gonna believe what happened at the salon today . . .”
For the next five minutes Justice was held hostage by Toni’s gossip and fruitless information. She tried several times to end the conversation, but to no avail. Toni didn’t get the hints. Finally, frustration overwhelmed Justice. “Is everything okay at the club?” She cut Toni off.
“Everything is fine, I got this,” Toni stated with confidence.
Justice sucked her teeth and shook her head as if she were standing before Toni. If anything, she knew that Precious and Virgin were up to some fuckery and Toni was too passive to check their asses if need be. She contemplated on going to the club to check on things for herself but tonight she was just too tired to do so.
“Good. But listen, I gotta go. Call me if you need me.
Only
if you
need
me.” Justice put emphasis on her words to drive her point home.
“Oh, okay boss lady. I’ll holla at’cha later. Enjoy your night off.”
“I’m trying to,” Justice replied with the greatest amount of sarcasm. Then the call ended.
Justice sat on the sofa and looked around her home. Her residence was on the ground floor of a large turn-of-the century home in the southeast section of Hinsdale that had been transformed into a series of quaint condominiums. A nice fireplace with a large Victorian-style mantle dominated the living room. Bookshelves filled one wall. Every urban novel ever published resided on those shelves. She was an eclectic reader, if her collection of literature was any indication.
She rose from the sofa and went to the window to look out at the night. Ever since she had moved back home from North Carolina, Justice had become a person of the night. Her daylight hours were few and she often utilized those hours for sleeping. For some reason, the darkness seemed powerfully soothing to her, like a gentle cascade of warm water on a brutally freezing night.
She walked into her spacious bedroom and sat on the large Renaissance bed. She picked up a frame from her nightstand with a photo of her mother in it. As she observed her mom’s full-blooded Filipino features in the photo, she put the picture down and then glanced into the mirror and noticed how much she resembled her. Only Justice was darker and more voluptuous. She was beautiful, intelligent, and now legally successful. There was no reason for her to be single—yet she was. Suddenly she felt a sense of loneliness wash over her.
Justice thought briefly about a quote she had recently read in a book of poetry by her favorite poet, Shakim. The quote read: “
To find riches is a beggar’s dream, but to find LOVE is the dream of kings
!” Like any ordinary woman, Justice too longed for love and happiness. But those two aspects of life just didn’t seem to exist in her world anymore. While pondering over Shakim’s quote, wet clusters began forming in her eyes. As she lay back and closed her eyes, her mind once again journeyed back two years to the last man she had given her heart to, and the events that caused her to flee Charlotte, North Carolina.
Justice and her brother, Monk had the perfect set up. She’d scope out the potential victims, using her female wit to get information she needed and used just about any way to get it. She targeted ballers, athletes, entertainers and other rambunctious niggas that didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut—the more they blinged, the harder she went after them.
After getting the pertinent information that she needed, she’d help Monk, along with his boys, D. C. and Cross set up the victims and then the four of them would split the dough. She made enough dough doing that for years without having to have a regular job—hell, she was a boss.
The only regret that Justice had was introducing Sapphire to the game. Justice loved Sapphire with all of her heart and she treated her as if she were a little sister. Sapphire was the type of woman who was impressionable—had low self-esteem and always made a bad choice with men. Justice had put her on with her first chance to run game and things ended up going sour because the women who Monk, D. C. and Cross tried to rob remembered that Justice and Sapphire were the ones who rang the doorbell.
Meanwhile, Justice and Monk had been accused of participating in the robbery of her ex-boyfriend, Carlos, a major drug dealer in Charlotte. Because of Justice and Monk’s treacherous ways, their MO’s fit perfectly with the crime they were accused of. Although they were innocent, Justice couldn’t get Carlos to listen to reason. Therefore, Monk and Carlos had gone to war and Justice was forced into hiding. In the crossfire, Sapphire was brutally beaten and left for dead and barely lived to survive the ordeal. It was then when J. T. entered Justice’s life. He came along like a breath of fresh air and whisked her away from the streets and the madness that came along with it.
Justice let her guard down and ended up falling in love with J. T. She thought she had finally met her knight in shining platinum, until one day she unveiled an ugly truth! By sheer coincidence, Justice discovered that J. T. had actually been the one who robbed Carlos! Not only had he participated, he had also been the mastermind behind the whole scheme. He even knew that Carlos blamed Justice and Monk for the stick-up. After putting together the pieces of that crazy puzzle Justice realized that she had been sleeping with the enemy the entire time!
Subsequently, Justice planned her revenge and carried it out to the letter. When it was all said and done, eleven bullet holes decorated J. T.’s torso and Justice was the one who held the smoking gun. She cleaned out J. T.’s large safe and fled the vicinity. She and Monk were supposed to meet up after J. T.’s murder so they could go back home to Chicago and start a new life far away from the streets of Charlotte.
Unfortunately, Monk was murdered in Rock Hill, South Carolina, only fifteen minutes outside of Charlotte, on the same day they were supposed to have left. Monk’s murder went unsolved, but Justice was pretty sure she knew who had been responsible for his death. That Dominican drug dealing bitch named Tan who they had robbed shortly before his demise. Justice made a vow to make that bitch suffer the same way her brother had. Even if Tan hadn’t actually committed the murder herself, Justice was sure that she had her hands in it because she was the last person Monk had been with when Justice last spoke with him on that fateful day. Either way, Justice knew that Tan would have to pay!
On that same day, Justice found out that she had carried J. T.’s child, which she wasted no time aborting.
Justice arrived back in Chicago with a trunk full of money, an urn full of ashes, and a heart full of despair. Once back in the Windy City was when she was paid a visit by her estranged father, Tyson. After having a long-needed heart to heart talk, Justice learned that her father had sired a son out-of-wedlock shortly after she had been born. When Tyson told her who his son was, Justice suffered a minor breakdown. That long-lost sibling had been none other than J. T.! The man she fell in love with, the man whose seed she’d carried, and the man whose life she had taken had been her own brother!
Justice wiped her wet eyes and shook the thoughts of her past as she continued to lay upon the large bed in the fetal position. She briefly thought about Carlos and remembered the many phone calls and text messages he had sent her after he found out the truth about the robbery. He begged and pleaded for her to try to understand his position, but his apologies went unanswered. He even paid Sapphire’s hospital bills and gave her fifty thousand dollars for getting caught up in the tangled web that had been woven.