Carl Weber's Kingpins: Miami

Book 1: Kingpins

by Nikki Turner

Genres: African American Urban; African American Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Going from the golden child to the black sheep of the family is a bitter pill for Bianca to swallow, but eventually she becomes immune to what her family thinks of her. Besides, she has Caesar, her Latin knight in shining armor, to show her the unconditional love she craves. New to Virginia, Caesar doesn’t know much about Bianca, but she makes it a point to tell him everything—well, almost everything—there is to tell about her reputation before the streets get to talking. Even then, Caesar's love for Bianca never wavers, making her feel worthy of love no matter who she used to be. Unbeknownst to Bianca, Caesar has a questionable past himself. Only Caesar’s family in Miami knows the truth, and since he’s estranged from them, Bianca has no way of finding out. When that one secret Bianca fails to tell Caesar is exposed, a chain of events forces Bianca out of Virginia and into the heat of Miami. Caesar may not have wanted Bianca to get to know his family, but he has no say in it now. Bianca felt like nobody in Virginia, but in Miami, she’s hell bent on becoming a boss. She tries her hand at dealing drugs on a small scale, but she’s quickly shut down by Miami’s biggest boss. When sparks begin to fly between them, can Bianca sweet talk the man in charge into partnering with her, or will she get burned by Miami's heat?

Release date: June 28, 2016

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“No freaking way!” Bianca tried to convince herself that her eyes were lying to her as she glanced into the foggy bathroom mirror and wiped it. Suddenly her heart dropped. “Oh, no!” She shook her head to see if that would help her shake away the image of her pudgy waistline.

Bianca was in true denial, even after missing two menstrual cycles. Even when she started getting morning and motion sickness, she still refused to accept the possibility that she could be pregnant. She prayed to God so hard to make the vomiting go away, but to no avail. For months, every time she went to the bathroom and wiped herself, she would be hopeful that blood would be on the toilet tissue, from either her period returning, or, if she were truly pregnant, as the symptoms of a miscarriage. Neither ever showed itself.

Before she knew it, she was four and a half months pregnant. Her mind was spinning with so much fear that she forgot to lock the door to the bathroom that she and her older sister, Bella, shared off their joint bedroom. She finally accepted it. There was no way she could deny it any longer. She was pregnant.

A butt naked Bianca had just stepped out of the shower and was reaching for her towel when Bella barged into the bathroom.

“Damn, girl. Can’t you see I’m in here?”

Bianca’s belly made her slow to the draw. By the time she covered herself with the towel, it was too late. Her big sister had already seen her growing baby bump.

“Oh my God!” Bella covered her mouth. She looked like she had seen a ghost. “What the hell?” a dumbfounded Bella said upon quickly shutting the bathroom door.

“Get out,” Bianca aggressively said to her sister, not wanting to face the reality.

“Bitch, don’t try to divert,” Bella said, her eyes just as bucked as Bianca’s. She kept her eyes glued toward her little sister’s belly that was now covered with the towel, but not for long.

Bella ran over and tried to snatch the towel off of Bianca. “I know good and well my eyes are not deceiving me.”

“Leave me alone. Please,” Bianca said as begrudgingly as she could.

“No!” Bella firmly said.

“Get off of me,” Bianca demanded, engaging Bella in a game of tug-of-war with the towel. She tried to plant her feet firmly and get a grip on the floor, but the tiles were wet and she kept sliding forward.

“Give me that towel,” Bella ordered, using two hands to pull on it.

“Get the hell off of me,” Bianca yelled, terrified of being found out. She didn’t want her sister to know about her big, growing secret. She’d managed to ignore her own suspicions for months, hoping, praying to God, keeping her fingers crossed that someway, somehow God would make that baby go away before anyone ever found out.

So much for prayer, she thought.

“Naw, bitch. I know what I saw,” Bella insisted. “And you better not be—”

“Get the hell off of me!” Bianca spat with all her strength as she continued to struggle with her sister. She was getting so angry and embarrassed that tears formed in her eyes.

Bianca and Bella were great sisters to one another. They were best friends. Unlike some siblings, they never argued, fussed, or fought. The term “bitch” was kind of like a term of endearment for them. They didn’t mean it in a bad way. So, having this little fight truly was a first, and it was all love and love licks. There had never been as much as a small case of sibling rivalry or jealousy between the two of them either, even though people had always tried to ignite such a feud between the two.

Bella was the complexion of Wesley Snipes, clearly taking after her father, because Ella was a light caramel complexion. Bianca was a very light, even pale complexion, a trait that she was told came from her father, a different man than Bella’s father, a man she had never known or met. In contrast, Bella’s coarse, natural hair was longer than Bianca’s, but Bianca had the whole “good hair” thing going on. Her nice, soft baby hair that edged her hairline was her trademark. People always assumed she was mixed with something, but as far as she knew, both of her parents were African Americans.

Upon telling people that they were sisters, no one ever believed them, and they always got the same reaction. They would always get the craziest looks from folks, eyes darting back from one sister to the other. Some people would be so brazen as to even outright say, “Y’all must have different daddies, huh?” There were the insensitive, rude ones that would say, “You’re so pretty,” to Bianca, as if Bella wasn’t even standing right next to her.

Every now and then, someone would think they were giving Bella a compliment by adding, “But you’re cute, too . . . to be dark-skinned.”

It never went unnoticed by Bianca how Bella’s spirit would take a nosedive then; sometimes her eyes would even water. Even after over eighteen plus years, to this very day, it still bothered her. It used to infuriate Bianca to see peoples’ comments make her sister feel so bad about herself. So, Bianca, loving her sister the way she did, would start downplaying herself. She started hiding behind Bella, thinking if people only saw Bella, they wouldn’t make comparisons or say hurtful things. Bianca never wanted others to hurt her sister, but at that moment, as the two struggled over the towel, she wanted to kill Bella her damn self; physically, mentally, any way she could.

“Let go, blacky,” Bianca spat viciously.

Bella let that comment roll off her back like the water from the shower Bianca had just gotten out of. She just kept right on battling. She was not moved by her sister’s words. She’d gotten over being called names such as black, tar baby, and darky. Besides, never once had Bianca ripped her for her complexion, so she knew she had only said it to upset her enough to let go of the towel and leave her be.

“I swear to God, if you don’t let go of this towel,” Bianca growled, holding onto it with a death grip. “I promise you, you going to be sorry.” With anger-filled eyes, she threatened her sister. She was so filled with rage that she felt strong enough to rip Bella apart with her bare hands.

Bella was no more affected by her little sister’s waterworks than she had been by the insult she’d spewed. With all her might, she gave one hard tug, successfully yanking the towel from Bianca’s grip, leaving her sister standing there in the middle of the bathroom floor, butt naked, with a very much visible baby bump.

Roaring like a lioness, Bianca’s reflexes made her snatch the towel from Bella and hit her with it.

“Ouch, bitch! I’m going to kill you!”

Before either of the sisters had realized it, the door flew open, and Ella was standing there in shock.

All eyes went to the doorway, where Ella stood, arms akimbo. “What the hell is going on in here?” She poked her nose in the doorway. She craned her head back on her neck in the way she did when she couldn’t believe something crazy was going on.

In all her years, she’d never heard her daughters have a fight, and she wasn’t going to stand for it now. If she had not done anything else, she’d instilled in the girls that once she was long gone, they would be all each other had. So from the first time it sounded as if Bella and Bianca were going to almost have a disagreement that could escalate, she nipped it in the bud. She constantly reminded them, “Y’all sisters, no matter what. And friends come and go, but at the end of the day, when the dust settles, y’all all each other got.” So, for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine what on earth all the ruckus was about that she’d heard all the way from the kitchen downstairs.

Ella stood there, her eyes darting back and forth between her oldest and youngest daughters. Neither of them said a word.

“Did y’all hear me?” Ella said with her fists on her hips. “I said, what is all the screaming and cussing going on? And y’all know damn well I’m the only one allowed to yell and fuss up in this house, so somebody better get to talking, because neither of you want none of this.”

Once again, Ella’s eyes shifted from one daughter to the next as Bella tried her best to explain, but she wasn’t fast enough. Bianca looked downward, while Bella looked down too—at her sister’s stomach.

“Here,” Bella said, handing Bianca back the towel.

Bianca snatched the towel to cover herself, but when she looked up into her mother’s eyes, she knew she’d moved too late. Ella’s eyes followed Bella’s stare, which bee-lined down to Bianca’s stomach just seconds before Bianca had a chance to cover it. Time stopped. The room fell silent.

For what felt like an eternity to Bianca, the mother-daughter pair stared into each other’s eyes. With every second, Bianca could see her mother becoming more and more disappointed. It was as if Bianca could see through her mother’s eyes, and she was watching all the dreams and hopes her mother had for her evaporate into thin air. Her mother’s shoulders visibly slumped inward. She sucked her teeth and shook her head as if she was dumbfounded. Her mother seemed to be frozen in that space, in the doorway of the bathroom.

Bianca thought about all those times her mother had danced around with Bianca’s report card in her hand, bragging about how smart she was. She would go on and on about how her youngest child was going to go off to any college of her choice and be chosen to study abroad and learn about other countries and cultures firsthand. On more occasions than one, Ella had bragged about how her daughters were going to be the ones to break the family curse and not have babies while they were still in high school. So far, she had broken the cycle with Bella, who had just graduated from high school. At that moment, though, Bianca had made a liar out of her mother in more ways than one.

Bianca really wanted to talk to her mother and tell her everything, but she couldn’t. Instead, after she got the lump out of her throat, all Bianca could manage to say was, “Ma, I’m sor—”

But before Bianca could even get the words out, Ella had put her hand up to silence her. “I don’t want to fucking hear it. You are a fucking disgrace to me. You silly little dumbass girl, fucking your life up!” she said with such disdain, as if Bianca were the hugest disappointment in the world. Ella took a look over her as if she were trash. She then shook her head and walked away.

Her mother’s words cut her like a sharp knife. The pain of the cut hurt her feelings so badly that all she could do was tiptoe down the hall to her room, thinking about what she could’ve done differently so that she wouldn’t be in this situation, which only brought tears to her eyes. She began to read her Bible, but that didn’t stop them from coming, and she cried herself to sleep.

“Wake the fuck up!” She was startled awake by her mother’s stern voice. “I said get the fuck up, girl.”

Still half asleep, Bianca jackknifed up in the bed.

“It’s shit everywhere down in that got-damn basement. I mean everywhere. Get your fast ass up and go down there and make yo’ hot ass useful and clean that shit up, now! Right the fuck now!”

Bianca took a deep breath, pulled herself together, and headed to the basement to deal with the backed-up raw sewage that was due to the years of bad plumbing in the house. She tied a pair of tights around her face so that the smell wouldn’t be so pungent as she began to clean it.

The night came and went, and she still felt like she hadn’t put a dent into the swamp that filled the basement floors. It took two days to get the water up, and a whole other day just to shovel the shit up. Then it took another two more days of bleaching and sanitizing the entire basement, from top to bottom, walls and all. Bianca’s poor body was so sore and her bones hurt so bad from all the hard labor that she was forced to do with no help that she secretly hoped that she would miscarry, but that didn’t happen.

Finally, the hour came when everything was done, and it was clean and smelling like new money mixed with Fabuloso. She hoped that the Grade-A job she had done on getting the basement back intact would make her mother proud. With all her might, she raced up the stairs, hoping that when her mother saw how spic and span it was, it would take some of the tension off of the uncomfortable situation.

Before she could get to the top of the stairs, she heard laughter coming from the kitchen. By the time she walked through the basement door, she could hear her mother, her grandmother, and her Uncle Peanut’s wife, Jackie.

“Welcome to McDonald’s! May I take your order, please?” Grandma Williams mimicked Bianca’s voice to the other ladies sitting around the kitchen table. “Yup, that’s gon’ be what Ms. High Yella Bianca gon’ be saying.” Holding her corpulent rolls round her middle, she fell into laughter, and the other ladies followed suit.

Though those were the words Bianca swore she’d never have to say a day in her life, at this moment, her fate wasn’t looking good. Now that she had turned up pregnant at fourteen years old, the people she knew, including family, had already put the words in her mouth and had her marked for failure. They’d written her off as a typical teen mother who wouldn’t amount to anything. They’d just given her a death sentence as far as making anything of her life.

“Fries with that?” another added to the cruel joke. It was Uncle Peanut’s wife’s voice, using a falsetto to imitate Bianca.

“Combo meal, or just the sandwich?” The ladies continued with their mean, sinister remarks. It was as though they were taking great pleasure in knowing that she was going to suffer and feel the full ball of scorn that they had gone through as young mothers.

Bianca shook her head in disbelief. She couldn’t believe how they really had her dropping fries at McDonald’s for the rest of her life. Even though she’d been an honor roll student and had even skipped third grade because she was so far advanced, with a baby in her belly now, no one saw her graduating high school, let alone going to college. Let them tell it, her life was over. Her life as she knew it was over—that much she knew—but something inside of her made a strong resolve. She wasn’t going to let this baby’s birth destroy her dreams.

It truly pained Bianca for the dreams of being the smartest and most successful one in the family to be ripped away. They hadn’t necessarily been her dreams, though. They had been more like her mother’s. Bianca’s mother talked about the girl so much that people who didn’t know any better would think Bianca was her only child, even though she had an older daughter, Bella. Her mother was living her own aborted dreams through her. Over the years, no matter how much Bianca’s mother would praise her youngest daughter, there had always been that one person in the background with a big ole needle in hand, always ready to burst her bubble.

“I told you, Ella, outta both of yo’ kids, Bianca was going to be the one that was going to give you the most trouble,” Bianca’s grandmother had said to her daughter, Ella. “Them yellow ones always think they better than everybody else and that the world should cater to them because they so damn light-bright, they almost white.”

Growing up, Bianca swore Grandmother Williams hated her with a passion. She could not figure out for the life of her what she’d done wrong to make a churchgoing woman look at her like she was the devil. As respectful as Bianca had always been, it just seemed like it was never good enough for her grandmother. Even when Bianca got an A on a test, her grandmother wouldn’t say a thing: no pat on her back, no compliment, and no “job well done, granddaughter.” Just nothing!

Now Bella, on the other hand, would get a C-plus, and her grandmother would take her out for ice cream.

For many years, Bianca analyzed, wondered, and tried to figure why, but time and time again, she could never explain the favoritism, so eventually Bianca just chalked it up to her grandmother’s own emotional scars. As a result of her being a dark skinned, bitter woman, she had taken out all the bad treatment she’d gotten because of her skin complexion on her own granddaughter.

“Ella, you should have had you another dark one like Bella,” Grandmother Williams continued lecturing her daughter. “Now, that girl got some good sense. She got her li’l job at Goodwill, and she going to enroll in school next semester. That girl got her head on her shoulders. See, Bella know as black as she is, and the way these men folks run around sniffing behind women that look like Paula Abdul, Vanity, and Vanessa Williams, that she gotta be humble and take what she can get.”

“Mm-hmm,” Jackie, her uncle Peanut’s wife, agreed.

“But that damn Bianca just stuck up and think she all that just ’cause she pretty.” Grandmother Williams shook her head and continued, “Told you not to mess with that ole El DeBarge–lookin’ Negro. He thought his dookie balls didn’t stank, and now so does his offspring. You’d think the no-good gigolo would have raised Bianca every day of her life by the way she act just like him. And you better hope this bastard that she pops out with her hot tail is by a dark-skinned dude as black as charcoal, or you gon’ have another high yellow heifer running around here thinking she cute.” She rolled her eyes, leaned back into the kitchen table chair, and let out a harrumph.

“That is, if we ever even find out who the baby daddy is,” Jackie added.

“Well, I do know this: Don’t expect me to do nothing for that bastard baby. Not nothing. I’m not babysitting, making no bottles, or changing no shitty-ass diapers.” Those were the words that, unbeknownst to Grandmother Williams, Bianca overheard her tell to her mother.

The old saying goes, “Stick and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Whoever came up with that saying told a l. . .