I swung my Timbs and kicked Moonie in the balls and then jumped on Ace’s back. He was swinging his bat at Gino’s head when I bit down into that fucker’s back like it was a piece of lobster dipped in butter. That grimy nigger tasted just like salt pork.
“Get this bitch!” Ace yelled, and Moonie grabbed me from behind putting me in a sleep-hold.
“Get the fuck offa me!” I tried to scream, but he was choking me so hard all that came out was a wheeze.
“Chill, Juicy,” I heard Moonie whispering in my ear as Pluto and Ace beat the shit out of Gino. “Quit fighting it, girl. G set y’all motherfuckers up. Jimmy’s safe on the Lower East Side with Cooter, but G knows all about you and Gino, girl, and one of y’all is gonna have to die.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They dragged us both down to the Dungeon, kicking and fighting the whole way.
Moonie tossed me onto a nasty mattress, while Pluto, Ace, and two other big niggas pinned Gino down on the ground. The Dungeon looked just like it sounded. Dingy and dark. We were in a small, bare room and the mattress I was laying against was the only furniture in sight.
G came down the stairs and I started shaking like a mother. As usual he looked pressed out in expensive everything, and even his cologne smelled like money.
Jimmy is safe, I reassured myself. Moonie said Jimmy was safe, and that was all that mattered.
G stood there staring at his son. He didn’t even bother to look at me, which was cool because I was scared of what I’d see in his eyes.
“Gino, Gino, Gino. You always were your mother’s son.”
Gino cursed at Pluto and tried to ram his shoulder in his gut.
“Know why I didn’t give you my name? You ever wonder about that? How you came to be Gino instead of Granite II?”
“Do I look like I give a fuck?”
G laughed. “I knew you wasn’t shit the minute you jumped out of that bitch’s ass! I knew you wasn’t gonna be man enough, hard enough to handle my name. Damn.” G shook his head. “You almost inherited an empire. A ready-made cash cow that I built with my own two hands, and you let a stink piece of pussy get you bent.”
G moved closer to Gino, who was straining to break free of all the rough hands that held him back. I saw his muscles jumping through his shirt and all I could do was hold my breath and pray.
“Salida the slut,” G continued. “You just like that dirty bitch. I should have been a better magician though. Instead of wasting my paper on that white-boy college I shoulda made your punk ass disappear right along with hers.”
Wasn’t no holding Gino back. He broke free of all them niggas and jumped on G, knocking him backward and down to the ground. For a moment, they were scrapping, the young against the old, the father against the son. And then Gino was muscled down again, niggas five deep dove on top of him and pinned him once more, then pulled out their guns and started denting his head.
G got up, wiping his lip. Both of them were strong and built, but Gino had drawn first blood, and I was proud of my man for that.
“Take him back to the apartment and guard him for the next two days,” G said. “Don’t give this niggah a bite of my food or a drop of my water neither. If he gotta piss, let him do it in his pants. Let him shit in them, too. I want four of y’all on him. Twenty-four/seven. Fuck him up good if he gives you any flack. Forty-eight hours from now I want you to take this motherfucker down to Kennedy and put his ass on the first thing smoking out west.”
Ace looked up from the fighting heap and asked, “What if he don’t wanna go? What if this nigga won’t get on the plane?”
G didn’t even hesitate as they dragged his only son fighting and bleeding up the basement steps.
“Then kill him.”
G was gonna kill me, too. I could see it in his eyes.
He told everybody to get the fuck upstairs and they jetted with a quickness. As soon as they were gone G went crazy, slapping me, punching me, and bending my arms back until my shoulder bones popped. That motherfucker kicked my ass. Plain and simple, that’s what he did.
All the time he was beating me G was also cursing me out. My whole body was in pain, but I could still feel G’s pain, too. I had humiliated him. Violated him in the worst kind of way. Everybody knew how particular he was over his pussy, and my fucking Gino had just put the word out on the wire that the great Granite McKay couldn’t hold it down in the sheets.
At first I screamed and begged him not to hit me, but I soon realized that G didn’t even hear me and I would do better trying to duck and roll and use my energy to run from one side of the small room to the other.
Sweat was coming off both of us in that hot-assed basement, but G looked like he was enjoying his workout. After a while I started screaming again. How much longer did he think I could take this? My stomach, my back, my ribs… I just knew he had ruptured something in me and I would die from internal bleeding.
I was scooting backward on the floor screaming and trying to dodge his kicking feet when G crouched, then jumped straight up into the air. And then life started moving in slow motion. It took forever for G to land, but when he did he came down hard on both feet. Surely this shit was happening to some other chick, I thought as the bottom of G’s two-thousand-dollar shoes descended on me, but when I felt all that hard leather come crashing down into my face, I damn sure knew it was me.
I came awake sputtering, hot liquid splashing in my face.
G was pissing on me.
All over my face and right into my half-opened mouth. When I opened my eyes and closed my lips, his pee stung my eyes and ran down into my ears. I couldn’t have been knocked out long, probably only a few seconds, but staring up at that big niggah holding his dick and aiming his flow down at me, I wished like hell I could go back unconscious.
“This is all you worth, you rotten-ass bitch!” G stood over me until he squeezed out his last drop, and then he tucked his dick away and zipped up his pants.
I thought he was gonna start beating me again, but we both turned around when the door opened upstairs and somebody came running down.
It was Moonie. He gave me a pity look when he saw me laying on the floor, my face and hair soaked in G’s piss, but then his mask came down and he turned to stone again as G laughed and dapped him out.
“Private party tonight,” G said as I whimpered on the floor. “The best pussy in the house is up for sale and I want all my niggahs to get some.” He rotated his onyx ring on his finger and then nodded toward me. “Have Kadijah put her nasty ass in some water, then make sure she’s out there when the girls go onstage.”
They left me down in that stanking little basement for almost twelve hours, and by the time they came back I was dying to get upstairs and breathe some real air. My whole body was throbbing, but I didn’t protest when Ace and Pluto grabbed my arms and dragged me up the steps. Upstairs, the show was getting heated up. I limped down the halls of the Spot being manhandled by Ace and Pluto, embarrassed as hell, my eyes on the floor. Mouths were opening and closing left and right, and I could hear the steady buzz… G done fucked Juicy up, and now he’s putting her ass out to work the rooms!
As we turned a corner, Monique stepped out in front of me styling and profiling. Every inch of her shit was tight and she had this big-ass smile on her face like she’d just been crowned queen of the Spot. I was ashamed to be caught out there looking all dirty and fucked up and smelling like piss, but I stared at her like my hair was did and my clothes were fly.
She looked me up and down. “Damn, Juicy. Your shit is way raggedy! All this time you been perpetrating like you all that, when you really just another low-profile ho. So you don’t fuck behind nobody, huh? Well, before it’s all over you’ll be fuckin behind me and every other ho up in this Spot.”