Dirty Rotten Liar (5 page)

B
arron Dominion walked down the long executive corridor at Dominion Oil's headquarters, kicking himself up the ass all the way.

The DNA results on Mink and Dy-Nasty still hadn't come back yet. Pilar had jumped all in his shit for signing the papers that gave the board permission to hold a voting session without having those results in their hands, but there wasn't shit that Barron could have done about that.

And now, once the board signed off on the final documents today, there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do to stop that sexy Harlem scam-artist from getting her paws on three hundred hunks of sweet Dominion dough each and every year, either.

The last paragraph of that fucked-up letter that Suge had made him sign flashed like a strobe light in Barron's head.

 

Fuck!

The board members his father had appointed to watch over his stash were a crew of oil-grubbin' gangsters who robbed the country blind with one hand and thumped the Bible with the other one. Barron knew them old jackers would've chewed his black ass down to the bone if they ever got some dirt on him.

His gut got tight again as he mentally replayed Suge's blackmail videotape of that skank-ass white chick claiming he was her baby daddy!

Barron had been telling the God's honest truth when he swore to Pilar that he had never even met the bitch, and he had damn sure never fucked the girl, but Viceroy Dominion hadn't raised no fool. When it came to money, Barron knew the truth didn't matter, especially in the eyes of a board like the one his father had set up. If they'd found out about him running over a kid and getting a DUI they would've kicked his ass out of the trust fund in two seconds flat.

And those pictures?

Barron's gut clenched again and he turned off his cell phone as he approached the door to the conference room. He would've been
ass-fucked
if the board members had peeped those shots of his nuts hanging out of a skirt and his lips all over some random dude's dick!

He was sweating all underneath his five-thousand-dollar suit by the time he opened the door and stepped into the huge room where a group of powerful businessmen were seated around a large, oblong table. The body of rich white men, some old enough to be his granddaddy, rose to their feet out of respect for Barron's title as he approached the biggest chair at the head of the table.

Barron paused for a few moments as the men all stood up and clapped as they beamed and smiled at him. He knew it was all fake love, but on the real tip it didn't matter how torn-out his asshole was—he was
still
the acting CEO of one of the largest and most profitable oil companies in the country, and every last one of these old bastards better recognize that shit too.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a deep, commanding voice, motioning for them to take their seats so he could get down to business. “I trust everyone is in good business spirits today. The last time we met we voted to have my father, Viceroy Dominion, declared incompetent to make sound legal decisions and to carry out his primary business responsibilities here at Dominion Oil.”

Barron cleared his throat and extracted a folder from his briefcase, and then he took a few sheets of paper off the top.

“Today's meeting will serve as a finalization of that vote. We have our staff notary public standing by to record your votes and notarize your signatures, and Hank”—Barron passed the document to a middle-aged man on his left whose family owned the biggest law firm in Texas—“if you could review the top document quickly and then sign it and pass it around the table, we can conclude this order of business and get on with the rest of our day.”

Barron felt small as shit. His father had clawed his way up out of the trenches of the ghetto and built his business from the dirt up. Barron wanted to smash the shit out of something as he sat there watching the piece of paper that would end Viceroy's reign of power get passed around the table from greedy old white hand to greedy old white hand.

The oil rig accident had been bad enough, but all the shit that had gone down afterwards had been Barron's fault. Sitting there in his father's chair, he couldn't help feeling like a total fuckin' failure.

And he
had
failed too. Big fuckin' time. Viceroy had trusted him with billions of dollars in cash and assets, and all it had taken was two dirty rotten liars, Mink LaRue and her crusty-toe look-alike Dy-Nasty Jenkins, to run up in the Dominions' lives and fuck everything up.

Barron's chest felt tight as he thought about those two scandalous bitches. The one from Philly was gonna be easy to get rid of. His boy Frankie Gaines had dug up enough shit on her to bury her out in a cow pasture. And the other one, the one who came to Barron's bed every night and sexed the dog shit outta him in his dreams, well, she had run back to Harlem to see about her so-called boss.

Boss hell.
Barron allowed himself a small chuckle inside as he thought about the hunk of cash he had wired to New York. He wasn't gonna have to worry about Mink much longer, though. Because if Gutta was good to his criminal word and he gave Barron his money's worth, then Mink was gonna get real wet when her ex-convict boo tied a cement block around that greedy bitch's neck and sent her floating to the bottom of the East River.

 

“Viceroy! Oh my
God
!” Selah rushed over to her husband's bedside as tears fell from her eyes. “I thought you were . . . I thought . . . Thank God you're awake!”

She squeezed him tight and planted kisses all over his face, and then she perched her slim body on the edge of the bed and cried into his shoulder as Viceroy stroked her back and tried to soothe her.

“I'm okay, baby,” he murmured over and over. “It's all right. I'm okay.”

“But I was so scared,” Selah moaned as she cried. “I prayed for you every minute of every day, and I tried so hard to keep the faith, but the doctors said . . . they made me think . . . they said you might not be able to talk or walk or even
think
for yourself again!”

“Well them fools were wrong.” Viceroy soothed her and leaned over to kiss her forehead. He had been pretty busted up in the explosion and had lost a lot of weight, but when he smiled at Selah, she saw the same old devilish dude who had knocked her off her feet all those years ago.

Fresh tears ran from Selah's eyes, but they damn sure weren't for her husband.

“Don't cry, Selah,” Viceroy said in a deep voice. He lifted a shaky hand to wipe her tears away. “The time for crying is over now, baby. I'm back and I'm about to be better than ever. It's gonna take a helluva lot more than a little rig blast to stick a cat like me in a goddamn coffin.”

Selah nodded and pressed a big wad of tissue to her eyes, but the truth be told, Viceroy had picked a real bad time to decide to wake his ass up! It was almost like he had gotten some kind of vibe while he was knocked out. Like somehow he'd peeped the love jones that was going down between her and his arch-enemy Rodney Ruddman and had woken up to throw some ice-cold water on their red-hot flames.

Selah suddenly felt stupid as hell for slapping Ruddman in the face in downtown Dallas. They had been right out on the street, and she never would have done something like that if she thought Viceroy had the chance of a snowball in hell of waking up and being in his right mind. Selah knew she was a high-profile figure in an elitist oil town. She was gonna have to be way more careful. Any Joe Blow with a cell phone camera could have filmed her little dust-up with Rodney and posted it on YouTube for the whole world to see.

But foolish wasn't the only thing Selah was feeling as a male nurse came to get her husband and take him downstairs for a therapy session. Rodney Ruddman had released her inner freak, and now, watching her husband get helped into a wheelchair but knowing damn well she was dying to get back to Dallas so she could see her overweight lover, had tears of frustration running from her eyes and a knot of shame eating its way through her stomach.

Selah walked toward the door with Viceroy as he was being wheeled out. Clutching her soggy tissues, she bent down to kiss him good-bye. He took her guilt for grief and reached out and wiped at her eyes.

“C'mon, now, sugar. I'm okay, baby. I'm straight. Just gimme a minute to get back on my feet and everything is gonna be just the way it used to be. I can promise you that.”

Again, Selah nodded, but behind her wet ball of tissues a hot streak of attitude flashed in her eyes. Viceroy had her twisted! Who the hell said she wanted things to go back to the way they used to be? She thought about his limp, shriveled up dick and poked out her lip. With all that good wood Rodney had been putting down on her she'd been digging her life just fine the way it was!

 

“Mr. Barron?”

Barron jumped and blinked his eyes real quick as his father's personal assistant handed him the small stack of documents. He glanced around the boardroom and then looked up at the elderly assistant.

“The only signature left to record is yours,” she said gently, and placed her wrinkled hand on his shoulder. Sallie Kendall had been working for his father since before Barron was born. She loved Viceroy and had been steadfast in her prayers for his recovery. Right now her eyes were full of sadness and sympathy as she patted Barron's shoulder again and gave him a small smile.

Barron glanced down at the documents and then pulled out his favorite fountain pen. He had just bent forward to sign his name on the dotted line when suddenly the door burst open and Viceroy's lead secretary rushed in waving a big message pad.

“Wait, Mr. Barron!” she pleaded, waving a notepad in the air. “Wait just a second! I'm not sure you want to sign that just yet!”

Barron paused with his pen in the air.

“Why? What's the problem?” he asked, his eyes narrowed in confusion. “Is something wrong?”

“Your mother called,” the old lady panted, blinking rapidly. “I was in the restroom and I missed the phone. But she left a message. She's in Houston. At the hospital. She asked me to tell you that your father is
out of his coma
! She said he's sitting up and talking! Praise the Lord, can you believe it? I guess y'all can tear up those papers and freeze the vote now because Mr. Viceroy just woke up!”

P
ilar Ducane walked into the kitchen of the Ducane manor and poured herself a small glass of orange juice. She took a sip of the chilled liquid, then shot a nasty look at her father as he sat at the table eating breakfast.

Digger Ducane might have landed himself a job at Ruddman Energy that paid decent money, but Pilar was still salty with his ass. Every last one of her credit cards was still canceled, and her father had put a restriction on the amount of money she could withdraw from her debit account each day.

Living on a tight string wasn't something a bad bitch like Pilar was accustomed to doing, and she blamed her father for causing her social status to tumble into the gutter right along with her bank account balance. She didn't give a damn about that little regular paycheck he brought in every two weeks because she wasn't interested in that kind of temporary cash.

No, Pilar wanted that perpetual shit. The type of money that rolled in generationally on the regular, year in and year out, whether you worked for it or not.

She wanted the type of dough that her relatives the Dominions had stashed away in nooks and crannies, under the floorboards and deep in the crevices of all their pockets. The kind of money that Barron's dumb ass had practically thrown away when he signed those papers letting the board give that ghetto bitch Mink and her street-slime Dy-Nasty access to the Dominion family trust fund!

Just the thought of those two bitches rolling around in that type of free cash every year while she struggled to get her luxury shopping on and her nails done and flounce her fine, cultured ass around in the best finery that money could buy, burned Pilar up.

She had done a damn good job of luring Barron between her sheets and wiping so much good pussy on him that she had his chocolate ass stuttering and strung out, but no matter how good she fucked him and no matter how much she hinted around, dude still hadn't popped that big question yet.

Pilar just didn't understand it. Everything about her was prime and she knew it. Barron should have been hopping at the chance to marry a prize piece of ass like her so he could jump her bones every night. And hell, with Viceroy on his deathbed and about to slide into his grave, it was only right that a new generation of Dominions added some fruit to the family tree and stepped up to take over the throne.

And that's why Pilar had chucked her birth control pills in the trash and started lifting her skirt and letting Barron dig her out raw as much as possible. Because the way she saw it, the best thing that could happen would be for her to miss her next period and pop up pregnant. With Barron taking over as the CEO of Dominion Oil, Pilar and her baby would be laced for life. And unless Barron wanted her to bust up in front of that board with her lip and her belly poked out like that white girl he said was on Suge's tape, his ass wouldn't have no other choice but to put a ring on her finger and put a Mrs. in front of her name.

Finishing her juice, Pilar giggled her ass off inside. She was about to pull a gold-digging extraordinaire move on Lil Bump, but she didn't feel bad about it at all. She was gonna love Barron up, and she would work her ass off to be a damn good Dominion wife.

Now, how the rest of the family was going to feel about her and Barron getting married? She glanced at her father as he slobbed down a stack of blueberry pancakes and about a pound of curled up, crunchy pork bacon. Well, that wasn't her damn problem. Pilar was on a mission to set herself up lovely as the new queen of the Dominion castle, and whoever the hell didn't like it could just kiss her ass!

She was sashaying out of the kitchen with much pep in her step when her phone vibrated and a text message came through. Clicking on her phone, Pilar's heart fluttered in her chest when she saw the message was from Barron.

Her heart damn near stopped beating when she read what was staring at her from her screen. The message read,
The board's vote has been canceled. My pops just woke up.

 

Digger Ducane set his fork down on his plate when he saw the shocked expression on his daughter's face. Pilar had been walking around giving him the shit treatment for weeks, but right now his baby girl looked like somebody had slapped the taste out of her mouth.

“He woke the hell up?”
she shrieked, and then started punching numbers into her cell phone as she dashed from the kitchen.

“Pilar!” Digger called out behind her. “Who woke up, Pilar?
Who
woke up?”

But his daughter ran up the stairs without answering and Digger's heart skipped a beat as he stared down at the half-eaten stack of blueberry pancakes on his plate.

Oh shit,
he thought as his mouth went dry.
He woke the hell up?

He grunted. There was only one damn person Pilar could have been talking about and he knew exactly who that was: his brother-in-law, Viceroy Dominion.

A wave of guilt washed over Digger and turned his bacon sour in his stomach. Viceroy had been his runnin' dog for over thirty years. He'd gotten Digger started in the logistics business and had even financed his very first business loan. His brother-in-law was a ruthless businessman and he wasn't the type to take betrayal lightly.

Especially the kind of betrayal that Digger had pulled on him when he jumped across the tracks and switched over to Rodney Ruddman's team.

Digger pushed his plate away and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. His sister Selah was barely speaking to him behind that shit. She had been mad as hell when she found out he was leaving Dominion Oil while Viceroy was down and out. But Selah wasn't half as pissed as Viceroy was gonna be when he got wind of that shit, and Digger knew there was sho'nuff gonna be some hell to pay when that little bit of news landed in Viceroy's lap.

Which didn't make his current fucked-up situation at Ruddman Energy any easier either. After just a short time at his new job, Digger had managed to step on his own dick and get caught up with the wrong people.

When the economy tanked and his contracts started drying up at Dominion Oil, Digger had sworn on his dead wife's grave that he would never again get so damn broke that his credit cards melted in a roadside steak house and his baby girl couldn't afford to buy herself a new pair of shoes.

He knew the only person who could guarantee that Pilar's future was secure was
him,
so after taking the job at Ruddman Energy and scoping out what he thought was a wide-open deal, Digger had jumped under the covers with an outside trucking firm and made a back-alley deal to undercut a few of Rodney Ruddman's shipping products.

It wasn't a whole lot, just some extra shit that he had leftover from his days at Dominion Oil. But Digger had hooked up a deal to sell his products to a local trucking firm at half the price that Ruddman charged them, and he stood to make a solid hunk of change under the table.

But for some damn reason, at the last minute, just as the money exchange was scheduled to go down, the local company had backed out of the deal and left him hanging.

Digger didn't know what was up at the time, but the Texas oil bizz was a real small industry and rich people talked. And to make shit worse, for the last week or so that shrewd bastard of a boss of his, Rodney Ruddman, had started playing him real close. Digger's invoices and sales documents had recently been sent up to their financial team for a so-called routine audit, and no matter how many times his co-workers told him this was standard procedure for new partners, he had a feeling his days with the big-time oil conglomerate were about to be over damn near before they had begun.

And that meant Digger was going to be financially fucked any which way he looked at it, and he was going to be super-fucked when Viceroy found out that his old running dog didn't have a loyal bone in his body.

Pilar's words echoed in his head like alarm bells and Digger could actually feel his ass frying. Because after the stunt he'd pulled, there was no going back to Viceroy and Dominion Oil. And if Rodney Ruddman found out that he'd been playing a little side ball with his customers, there'd be no future with Ruddman Energy either.

Digger stabbed his fork into the last of his pancakes and shoveled the syrup-soggy mess into his mouth.

Yeah, he thought as he chewed the sweet wad of dough. He was fucked all right.

Ass
fucked.