“The hell that nigga thinking, popping up at my motherfuckin’ house?” Kaylen yelled after we watched Salem drive off down the road. I shrugged at her and sighed heavily.
I understood why she was mad, but I felt like shit and I knew she would never understand why. Salem was my boy. We grew up together as brothers. It took me forever to get over the fact that I had killed him…or so I thought. Then for him to show up and I was at Kaylen’s house…I had made his bitch my bitch. I knew from his point of view the shit looked grimy as fuck. It looked like I had gotten rid of his ass and didn’t even give a shit.
Before Salem started fucking with meth, he knew that I wanted Kaylen. He knew that from the beginning. Anyone with eyes could tell I was sweating her. I kept it at bay because he had moved in on her first. But it was obvious how I felt. For him to show up and see that we were now together, it seemed like I had offed this nigga and moved in on his bitch like it was nothing. Moved right on in with my conscious still intact.
“Fuck!” I said aloud.
“What?” Kaylen asked, walking over to me.
“I just can’t believe that nigga is alive. Damn,” I muttered to myself as I sat down on the couch. I reached down and picked up my dark blue and black Jordan sneakers.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m about to go see about Salem,” I replied.
“What the hell you going to see about him for?” Kaylen stood in front of me with her hand on her hips.
I paused from putting on my shoes to look up at her. She was mean-mugging me hard as hell. Her attitude was on some other shit but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. I had to get up with Salem and talk to him without her around acting like she was about to blow some shit up. I couldn’t blame her because of what Salem did to her, but I didn’t need to deal with that shit at the moment.
“Look, Kay, I understand you went through some shit with him but he was my best friend. Same best friend I shot and left for dead when he probably only needed help. Now he’s got help and it seems like he has his shit together. I’m about to go see what’s up with him. I’ll be back,” I said standing up.
I moved in to give her a kiss on the cheek but she pulled back out of my reach. I shrugged and walked past her and out of the door. I couldn’t deal with that shit at the moment. She would get over it.
“Salem, where you at, man? I swung by your condo and there’s a ‘for sale’ sign out front,” I said to Salem’s voicemail. “Hit me up when you get this. We need to talk. Real shit.” I hung up the call and did a U-turn in the road to head over to one of my restaurants.
Business was decent, but I had been seeing a drop in my profits. Most likely it was because my head wasn’t in it like it should have been. I had put a decent manager in place, so I was leaving a lot to her to handle but the real truth was no one could run my shit like I ran my shit.
“Tanae, what’s been up in here?” I asked once I walked into my restaurant, Deluxxe.
Salem had come up with the name. Deluxxe was the first restaurant I purchased after graduating from college. After opening, it did so well mainly because of Salem’s connections. Every person in the hood who wanted to take their girl out somewhere or wanted to discuss business did it at Deluxxe. At night, the spot turned into a strip club. It was a classy establishment but it got crazy after dark. And I was a real nigga…I wasn’t running a strip club with strippers who wouldn’t show the pussy. We got wild in Deluxxe.
That was actually how I met Tanae. She used to be a stripper at another joint around the way which was run by two shady niggas by the name of Juelz and Jace. I had been trying for a minute to get their top strippers, Jizzy and Kandy, to work at my spot, but when they started dating the owners, it was curtains on that. Tanae was able to get me a few other girls to move over to my club before she left, though.
At the moment, I had a lock on the strip club game in Atlanta, New York and Miami. King of Diamonds was giving me some competition in Miami, but I was still able to hold my own. In two months’ time I was set to expand out into LA. It was my first venture out west and I couldn’t wait. Kaylen knew I owned a restaurant, but she didn’t know it doubled as a strip club. She never asked and I never told her.
“Everything is going pretty good, boss,” Tanae said, smiling at me and flashing her deep dimples at the same time. Tanae was a beautiful woman and at one point we dated. It got pretty serious until I took her to my birthday party and ended up leaving her to help Kaylen after she found out about Salem’s drug addiction. Tanae got pissed and we ended up breaking up our personal relationship, but she was a professional woman and was able to put all that to the side for business.
I couldn’t deny her beauty though, regardless of how we ended. She had a light toffee complexion and long black hair that touched the curve of her ass. I complimented her once on her hair and ever since she had been wearing it down. She had the prettiest light brown eyes and her dimples added to her beauty. Her stripper name was Londyn Falls. She got the name because people were always comparing her to Lauren London. They looked like they could be sisters, except that Tanae had a lot more ass. Kaylen was killing her in the body department, though. There was no comparison there.
“Good. I would hate to make your ass jump back on that pole to bring in some customers,” I joked with her.
Tanae used to be the number one entertainer at the club. Most of the men came in just to see her dance. One day she decided she didn’t want to dance anymore. I was cool with that but I didn’t want her to leave. She told me she wanted to be the club manager and I gave her a chance at it. She had a great business mind and she knew how to get the girls in order, too. Plus, niggas still came round just to look at her.
“I would get up there if you wanted me to, daddy,” she smiled back at me.
I laughed and started to walk back to my office when my phone rang. “Yeah?”
“What up, my nigga? You rang?”
“Yeah, Salem. Man, we just need to talk this shit out. I don’t know what happened back there at Kay’s, but that got out of hand,” I explained.
“Look, Zo, I ain’t gone lie to you. I’m surprised as fuck that I get over to my girl’s house and yo’ ass was over there. That shit fuckin’ with my head a lil bit, ya know?”
“Why don’t you come over to the restaurant and we can eat and talk this shit out real quick?” I asked him. I waited for him to respond.
“Yeah, that’ll work. Be there in about an hour.”
“Aight, bro.” I hung up the phone and turned to see Tanae staring at me. “What?”
“Nothing. You just look better than I’ve seen you look in a while.” She winked at me.
I sighed loudly and laughed to myself. “Yeah, some crazy shit been going down in my life. But I’m starting to finally get it together.”