Notorious Read online

  “Nothing I can’t handle. Just make the call.” The mysterious Mercedes slowed as it rolled past the fender bender.

  She used the opportunity to try and peer into the vehicle, but the driver suddenly jammed the accelerator. By the time she opened her car door, the Mercedes picked up speed and zoomed off down Wilshire—but not before her photographic memory got a good look at the license plate.

  “Gotcha, muthafucka.”

  Did this chick just make me? Eli expelled a thick cloud of smoke from the corner of his mouth while his black gaze sliced back up toward the rearview. Despite the growing distance, he had no trouble of all making out the dangerous curves of Blake Scott’s Coke-bottle frame. Hell, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of it for the past two weeks. When he had headed out to the West Coast, he knew the don’s daughter was attractive, but the cute fatherly picture in his godfather’s pocket didn’t do justice to the real thing.

  Kissing six feet, Blake Scott was one hell of a tall drink of water, with mesmerizing D-cups and an ass shaped like an upside-down question mark. She was the total package with her cinnamon-kissed skin and haunting green eyes. He’d sat and watched her hypnotize every man she came in contact with. No doubt she’d get out of this little fender bender without the cops being called.

  Elijah pulled over in front of Saks Fifth Avenue and then shifted his surveillance from the rearview to the side mirror. He was taking a calculated risk that the minor accident was what it appeared to be and that the muthafucka riding in the quarter-million-dollar car wasn’t one of Midnight’s henchmen ready to open fire the moment Blake stepped out of her car.

  With one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the chrome Colt in his lap, Eli sat on edge, praying that his hunch was correct. He didn’t mind playing babysitter, but this shit was damn near impossible to do on the DL. However, the Don was clear that he didn’t want to scare his daughter or intrude on her life. Eli was only to step in if there was a clear and direct threat. After all, they were operating on the word of a dead street hustler.

  As he predicted, Blake charmed her way out of having the cops called to the scene, and she even gave the driver she hit an extra thrill by slowly sliding his number in between her breasts.

  Eli laughed. Blake definitely knew her power over men. He didn’t know what he’d expected when he arrived, but in the weeks he’d been tailing the voluptuous businesswoman, he’s surmised that Daddy’s little girl didn’t fall too far from the tree. Sure, the hustle was in a different field, but the hustle was still the hustle. From his wiretaps, he surmised the beauty had a list of enemies as long as her father’s. But she handled her shit with a smile and a roll of her hips.

  The Bentley and the Jag started up again, and a minute later, Ms. Scott blazed past him at a clip that was a good twenty over the speed limit.

  Eli pulled off from the curb and rushed to catch up. A couple of minutes later, he parked outside of Spargo and watched Blake race inside. There was no stopping the erotic thoughts that flashed in his mind as her ass jiggled and her tits bounced as she made her way inside.

  “Stop it, man. That’s the boss’s daughter,” he had to voice out loud in order to break his trance. Problem was that at this point, it wasn’t working. He had never seen or met anyone like her. She stacked her own paper, kept herself up, and owned a multimillion-dollar crib in Denzel Washington’s neighborhood. Apparently all earned by her own hustle. What nigga wouldn’t be impressed by that shit?

  In fact, more than a couple of nights, he had fantasized about kicking in her bedroom door and mussing up her perfect hair and funking up her silk sheets. He didn’t know why, but something told him that baby girl knew how to put it down in the bedroom.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter,” he warned again. But that shit was easier said than done.

  His “California Love” ringtone interrupted his private conversation with himself, and he pulled out his phone and recognized Omar’s number. “Holla at me.”

  “Yo, nigga. You still out there enjoying your fuckin’ vacation?”

  Eli smirked. “It’s hardly a vacation.”

  “Nigga, if you ain’t dodging bullets, your ass is in fucking paradise right now.”

  “Streets still hot?” he asked, missing the action like a dope fiend.

  “The muthafuckas are on fire. We lost ten soldiers last night at a swap over off riverside. Fuck. I took one piece of lead to the hip and had another graze the side of my head.”

  “Shit, man. Are you all right?” he asked, concerned. Resentment for being placed on babysitting duty set in.

  “Yeah, man. I’m all right. But I tell you what—that nigga Midnight is putting a serious hurtin’ on our operation, man. I can’t wait for your ass to get back here. You have any idea when the hell that’s going to be?”

  “No clue.” Eli expelled a long breath and then looked at his watch. How long is she going to be up in this bitch? It was damn near going on two hours.

  “All I know is that we could’ve used your Terminator ass last night. I swear, some of our younger niggas learned how to shoot on a damn Xbox or some shit.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  Eli’s gut started looping into knots. “Yeah. Maybe I’ll give the don a call. I think Dutch played our asses on this one.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. That nigga and the truth mixed like oil and vinegar.”

  Eli chuckled as he glanced at his watch. He jaw-jacked with Omar for another thirty minutes before he started getting anxious again. “Yo, man. Let me holler at you later. I need to go check on my package. Keep me posted on what’s going on out there. Hopefully I’ll see you soon.”

  “Sure. That or we can switch places. I know I wouldn’t mind sitting on my ass doing nothing for a little while.”

  Instantly, Eli didn’t like the idea of his boy peeping out his girl—well, not his girl technically. He shook his head in the hopes of untangling his confusing thoughts. “Later, man.” He disconnected the call and then hopped out of his vehicle.

  The sun was setting and the dinner crowd was milling toward the door. Eli was toned down in a pair of seven-hundred-dollar jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a pair of aviator glasses. As he glanced around, the hostess asked whether he had reservations. He gave her a distracted shake of his head as his gaze took a second lap around the spacious restaurant.

  Where in the hell is she?

  “There’s a forty-five-minute wait,” she told him, smiling. “What’s your last name?”

  “Um, Mitchell,” he lied with the first name that came to his head. “Can you tell me where your bathrooms are?”

  The hostess pointed to the back of the room. When he strolled off in its direction, his gaze took its third lap. She’s not here. Eli’s chest muscles tightened. Where in the hell did she go?

  Instead of hitting the boys’ room, Eli burst into the girls’ room and caused a minor riot. “Sorry, ladies. Excuse me.”

  “What in the hell are you doing in here?” one woman demanded.

  He ignored her as he bent over to check the bottom of the stalls for the expensive blue pumps he’d seen Blake sashay around town in all day.

  No such luck.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Hey, asshole. Get out of here,” an indigent middle-aged white woman yelled.

  Without a word, he rushed back out just as the restaurant’s manager was closing in. He held up his hands and flashed his best smile to preempt the dude from going off. “Sorry, man, but you didn’t happen to see a tall African American woman, stacked wearing a light blue dress, did you?”

  For a moment the man looked confused. “Sir, there have been some complaints, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Yeah, okay. I just need to know whether—”

  “Sir—”

  “Goddammit, ANSWER ME!”

  The manager jumped at Eli’s thunderous roar. “I . . . um . . . no. I haven’t seen—”

  �
�Fuck it.” Eli shoved the little man out of the way and stormed back toward the door. One look at his hardened face and muthafuckas scrambled out of his way. Where the fuck could she have gone? He rushed over to the parking lot and found the spot where Blake’s Jag had been parked now occupied by an Aston Martin.

  “What the fuck?” He spun around. Was he completely losing his shit? Maybe she slipped out while he was searching the ladies’ bathroom. That had to be the only explanation.

  Eli turned and raced back to the Escalade he had parked across the street. Chances were she had either returned to her office or was headed home. “Goddammit.” Now he had to roll around town, trying to play catch-up. If something happened to this chick because of this fuck-up, Mafia Don would have his head.

  He jerked open the door and hopped in behind the wheel, but before he had the chance to start the car up, he heard the click of a gun a second before the cold steel was pressed against the back of his head.

  “Who the fuck are you, asshole?”

  From Fistful of Benjamins

  “Special Delivery” by Kiki Swinson

  Available wherever books

  and ebooks are sold.

  Prologue

  “Oh my God, Eduardo. What do you think they will do to us? I don’t want to die . . . I can’t leave my son,” I cried, barely able to get my words out between sobbing and the fact that my teeth were chattering together so badly.

  The warehouse type of room we were being held captive in was freezing. I mean freezing like we were sitting inside of a meat locker type of freezing. I could even see puffs of frosty air with each breath that I took. I knew it was summertime outside, so the conditions inside where we were being held told me we were purposely being made to freeze. The smell of sawdust and industrial chemicals were also so strong that the combination was making my stomach churn. Eduardo flexed his back against mine and turned his head as much as the ropes that bound us together allowed. He was trembling from the subzero conditions as well.

  “Gabby, just keep your mouth shut. If we gon’ die right now, at least we are together. I know I ain’t say it a lot, but I love you. I love you for everything you did and put up with from me. I am sorry I ever let you get into this bullshit from the jump. It wasn’t no place for you from day one, baby girl,” Eduardo whispered calmly through his battered lips.

  With everything that had happened, I didn’t know how he was staying so calm. It was like he had no emotion behind what was happening or like he had already resigned himself to the fact that we were dead. In my opinion, his ass should’ve been crying, fighting, and yelling for the scary men to let me go. Something. Eduardo was the drug dealer, not me, so maybe he had prepared himself to die many times. I hadn’t ever prepared myself to die or to be tied up like an animal, beaten, and waiting to possibly get my head blown off. This was not how I saw my life ending up. All I had ever wanted was a good man, a happy family, a nice place to live, and just a good life.

  “I don’t care about being together when we die, Eduardo! You forget I have a son? Who is going to take care of him if I’m dead over something I didn’t do?” I replied sharply. A pain shot through my skull like someone had shot me in the head. I was ready to lose it. My shoulders began quaking as I broke down in another round of sobs. I couldn’t even feel the pain that had previously permeated my body from the beating I had taken. I was numb in comparison to the pain I was feeling in my heart over leaving my son. I kept thinking about my son and my mother, who were probably both sitting in a strange place wondering how I had let this happen to them. That was the hard part, knowing that they were going to be innocent casualties of my stupid fucking actions. I should’ve stuck to carrying mail instead of stepping into the shit that had me in this predicament. I was the dummy in this situation. I was so busy looking for love in all the wrong places. I had done all of this to myself.

  “Shhh. Don’t cry. We just have to pray that Luca will have mercy on us. I will try to make him believe that it wasn’t us. I’ll tell him we didn’t do it. We weren’t responsible for everything that happened,” Eduardo whispered to me.

  “But he’s the one who got us out so fast. I keep thinking that he only did that because he thought we might start talking. He got us out just so he could kill us, don’t you see that? We are finished. Done. Dead,” I said harshly. The tears were still coming. It was like Eduardo couldn’t get what I was saying. We were both facing death and I wasn’t ready to die!

  “You don’t know everything. Maybe it was something else. Let me handle—” Eduardo started to tell me, but his words were clipped short when we both heard the sound of footsteps moving toward us. The footsteps sounded off like gunshots against the icy cold concrete floors. My heart felt like it would explode through the bones in my chest, and suddenly it felt like my bladder was filled to capacity. The footsteps stopped. I think I stopped breathing too. Suddenly, I wasn’t cold anymore. Maybe it was the adrenaline coursing fiercely through my veins, but suddenly I was burning up hot.

  “Eduardo Santos,” a man’s voice boomed. “Look at you now. All caught up in your own web.” The man had a thick accent, the kind my older uncles from Puerto Rico had when they tried really hard to speak English.

  “Luca . . . I . . . I . . . can . . . ,” Eduardo stuttered, his body trembling so hard it was making mine move. Now I could sense fear and anguish in Eduardo’s voice. That was the first time Eduardo had sounded like he understood the seriousness of our situation.

  “Shut up!” the man screamed. “You are a rat and in Mexico rats are killed and burned so that the dirty spirit does not corrupt anything around it.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, but I couldn’t keep the tears from bursting from the sides.

  I was too afraid to even look at him. I kept my head down, but I had seen there were at least four more pairs of feet standing around. Eduardo and I had been working for this man and had never met him. I knew he was some big drug kingpin inside the Salazar Family Mexican drug cartel that operated out of Miami, but when I was making the money, I never thought of meeting him, especially not under these circumstances. I was helping this bastard get rich and couldn’t even pick him out of a police lineup if my life depended on it.

  “Please, Luca. I’m telling you I wasn’t the rat. Maybe it was Lance . . . I mean, I just worked for him. He was the one responsible to you. He was the one who kept increasing everything. I did everything I could to keep this from happening,” Eduardo pleaded his case, his words rushing out of his mouth.

  “Oh, now you blame another man? Another cowardly move. Eduardo, I have people inside of the DEA who work for me. I know everything. If I didn’t pay off the judge to set bail so I could get you and your little girlfriend out of there, you were prepared to sign a deal. You were prepared to tell everything. Like the fucking cocksucking rat that you are. You know nothing about death before dishonor. You would’ve sold out your own mother to get out of there. You failed the fucking test, you piece of shit,” Luca spat, sucking his teeth. “Get him up,” Luca said calmly, apparently unmoved by Eduardo’s pleas.

  “Luca! Luca! Give me another chance, please!” Eduardo begged, his voice coming out as a shrill scream.

  His words exploded like bombs in my ears. Another chance? Did that mean that Eduardo had snitched? Did that mean he put me in danger when I was only doing everything he ever told me to do? Did Eduardo sign my death sentence without even telling me what the fuck he was going to do? I immediately thought about my family again. These people obviously knew where I lived and where they could find my mother and my son. A wave of cramps trampled through my guts. Before I could control it, vomit spewed from my lips like lava from a volcano.

  “What did you do to me, Eduardo?” I coughed and screamed through tears and vomit. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t care anymore. They were going to kill me anyway, right? “You fucking snitch! What did you do?” I gurgled. I had exercised more loyalty than Eduardo had. The men who were here to kill us said nothing and neither
did Eduardo. I felt like someone had kicked me in the chest and the head right then. My heart was broken.

  Two of Luca’s goons cut the ropes that had kept Eduardo and me bound together. It was like they had cut the strings to my heart too. Eduardo didn’t even look at me as they dragged him away screaming. I fell over onto my side, too weak to sit up on my own. Eduardo had betrayed me in the worst way. I was just a pawn in a much, much bigger game. And all for what? A few extra dollars a week that I didn’t have anything to show for now except maybe some expensive pocketbooks, a few watches, some shoes, and an apartment I was surely going to never see again. Yes, I had been living ghetto fabulous, shopping for expensive things that I could’ve never imagined in my wildest dreams, but I had lost every dollar that I had ever stashed away for my son as “just in case” money. I had done all of this for him, and in the end I had left him nothing.

  “Please. Please don’t kill me,” I begged through a waterfall of tears as I curled into a fetal position. With renewed spirit to see my son, I begged and pleaded for my life. I told them I wasn’t a snitch and that I had no idea what Eduardo had done. I got nothing in response. There was a lot of Spanish being spoken, but I could only understand a fraction of it; so much for listening to my mother when she tried speaking Spanish to me all of my life.

  “I promise I didn’t speak to any DEA agents or the police. Please tell Luca that it wasn’t me,” I cried some more, pleading with the men who were left there to guard me. None of the remaining men acted like they could hear me. In my assessment, this was it. I was staring down a true death sentence. I immediately began praying. If my mother, a devout Catholic, had taught me nothing else, she had definitely taught me how to pray.

  “Hail Mary full of Grace . . . ,” I mumbled, closing my eyes and preparing for my impending death. As soon as I closed my eyes, I was thrust backward in my mind, reviewing how I’d ever let the gorgeous, smooth-talking Eduardo Santos get my gullible ass into this mess.