Family Business 7

Book 7: Family Business

by Carl Weber, C.N. Phillips

Genres: African American Urban; General Fiction

Synopsis

Keep up with the Duncan family down South as we travel to New Orleans in The Family Business 7.

Operated by the same family for more than a century, Midnight Blues may be fun for the locals and the tourists, but as of late, the club hasn’t been fun for its owner, Big Shirley Duncan, or her son Marquis, descendants of the original proprietors. The pair finds themselves in the middle of a turf war between local politicians, developers, and a ruthless underworld boss, Jean LeBlanc, who is looking to make a name for himself.

Afraid for the first time in her life that her family may lose control of The Blues, Big Shirley sends Marquis out of town for his own safety. Marquis takes a detour to New York to see the family of her brother-in-law, LC Duncan. His New York family enlists the help of bounty hunter Curtis Duncan and his highly trained sister, Lauryn Duncan, to help add some muscle and security to their family’s struggling business.
 

Release date: August 20, 2024

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“Damn, Marquis! Nobody fucks me like you, baby. Nobody!”

Maybe Antoinette was gassing me up, but her choice of words, along with her sexy-ass Cajun accent, brought a confident smile to my face as I slid deep inside her again and again from the back. The two of us had been going at it damn near since we’d hit my door twenty minutes ago. How we even made it to the bedroom was a mystery.

“Oh, shit, babe, I’m cummin’. I’m cummin’, daddy!” she purred as her back arched and her phat ass clapped back at me. God damn, that pussy was good, and the way she was squirming around like I was the best she’d ever had just made me pump away harder. I’ll say one thing about her: if she was faking, she deserved an Academy Award, because she had me open.

After what seemed like an eternity of uncontrollable spasms, accompanied by some of the sexiest moans and groans I’d ever heard, Antoinette finally collapsed on the bed. Despite all that, she wasn’t done yet, and neither was I. I continued to slide myself in and out as she squeezed her muscles around me.

“Damn, baby, that was some of the best dick I’ve ever had. I’m so glad you finally gave in.”

“Me too,” I replied, trying to control the raging orgasm building inside me.

We’d been resisting this moment for almost a year, but today, I’d finally relented when she asked for a ride home from work. I could not help myself. I liked what I liked, and I loved me a ghetto-ass woman with an Instagram face and porn-star body. Her being from the Fifth Ward, one of the rougher sides of town, just made things even more exciting. We both knew we shouldn’t be doing this.

“Now, turn me over, daddy, so I can return the favor. I wanna see your pretty face when you cum for me.”

Her words were like angels singing to me. I turned her over on her back, staring down at her sandy brown face for a moment. She was beautiful. There was no doubt about that, with her long, fake eyelashes highlighting her large, almond-shaped eyes, full succulent lips that she knew how to use, and a cute nose highlighted by a large diamond stud. I moved a strand of hair from her face, and she smiled up at me as our lips and tongues met. I positioned myself between her thick, healthy thighs, sliding myself inside her warmth as she took a sharp breath. I instantly felt the pleasing pain of her long, talonlike fingernails in my back as she pulled me in deeper.

“Don’t play with it, baby. I won’t break. Just fuck the hell outta me,” she shouted, digging her claws into my skin and wrapping her legs around my lower back so I couldn’t get away. She began gyrating her hips and bucking up and down until we were moving the bed halfway across the room. “Fuck me! Fuck me harder, Marquis!”

She was scratching and humping me so hard I was sure she drew blood, but I didn’t give a shit. That just turned me on more, and I was on the verge of an orgasm of my own. It was only going to take a few more strokes to send me over the edge, although I was trying to prolong the moment.

Suddenly, Antoinette’s body froze like a deer caught in headlights.

“What happened? Why’d you stop?” I looked down at her face incredulously and saw what could only be described as a look of horror. “What’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer with words, but her body language told me someone was behind me, and whoever it was had her scared shitless. There weren’t many people who could scare a girl like Antoinette, so the first person who came to my mind was her husband. Yes, she was married, and up until now, he and his crazy-ass fucking reputation for being over-the-top jealous were the main reasons I’d been resisting her so long.

Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath, swallowing hard. That’s when things got even worse, and I heard the click of a gun being cocked.

My momma had always told me that pussy was going to be the death of me. I had always thought she meant I was going to die by some type of horrible STD, but now it seemed that pussy was going to get me shot in the back. It took me a moment to gather myself before I rolled off Antoinette to face what I was sure would be my demise.

“I know how this looks, but—” I raised my hands to see someone far worse than Antoinette’s husband pointing a .44 Magnum at us.

“Nigga, I been calling your ass for the better part of an hour. I know you ain’t ignoring my calls ’cause you got Antoinette laid up my house.” The beautiful thick woman sneered angrily, pointing the gun directly at Antoinette, who quickly tried to cover up. Not that it mattered. By this time, she had seen all she needed to see. “Him I can almost understand. He ain’t nothing but a man. His little head always going to be thinking for his big one, but you? How dare you fuck him in my house! After I took you in and gave you a job.”

“Shirley, it’s not what it looks like,” Antoinette pleaded. I could feel her shrinking beside me, but there wasn’t much I could do for her. It was only a matter of time before I got my ass chewed out myself.

“Oh, no? ’Cause it looks like you’re fucking my son behind your husband’s back. And that’s Mrs. Duncan to you,” my momma growled angrily, glaring at Antoinette as if she were the devil himself. “Now get the fuck out my house.” My momma pointed at the door with an angry scowl across her face.

When my momma got like that, there was no talking to her, and I think Antoinette sensed it, because she shamelessly slipped out of bed without covering up. She retrieved her clothes and headed for the door without making eye contact with either me or Momma.

“I’m going to need a ride home.”

“Why don’t you call your husband?” Momma sneered behind her. “You little tramp.”

“Momma!” I exclaimed.

“Don’t you ‘Momma’ me! Do you know what the hell you’ve done?” She gave me a look of disappointment, but I’d take that any day over the look of distaste she’d given Antoinette. “Her husband will kill you.”

I wrapped the sheets around my waist to retrieve my clothes, which were strewn around the room. I shook my head. “It was only a one-time thing. First and last. No big deal.”

“I hope so, because that girl is trouble with a capital T.” She sat down in a chair across from my bed as I got dressed. “I’m guessing you were too preoccupied screwing her to answer any of my calls.”

“You been calling me? I ain’t hear my phone.” I glanced around the room for my phone, patting my pants. “Damn. I must have left it in the car. What’s going on?”

I looked at the seriousness on her face, and I could tell she wasn’t as upset about catching me and Antoinette together as I thought. Something else was on her mind.

She reached into the black Chanel dangling from her wrist and pulled out a gun, then handed it to me. “Finish getting dressed and get your ass down to the Blues. We’ve got problems.”

“What’s going on?” I stared down at the gun in my hand and exhaled. Whatever was going on had to be big.

“I got a call from Monique. Something went down at the Blues tonight. Something that could have real implications down the road.”

“Shit. We got robbed?”

“Worse, baby. Much worse,” she said sadly.

“Momma, what could be worse than us getting robbed?”

“A body.”

“Fuck.” I felt my heart rate increase with this bad news.

The Midnight Blues, or the Blues, as we called it, was a unique and popular casino and after-hours club that my family had owned and operated for more than a hundred years. It was one of those places that was always filled with tourists and regulars. Outside of gambling and partying your night away, it was just a place where you could kick back and listen to some of that good ole jazz music. That was the brighter side of our business.

The darker side was our parlor rooms, where backroom deals of all sorts took place over high stakes gambling with no questions asked. I felt fairly certain that those parlor rooms were where this body was found.

“Who?” I asked and watched a look of distress cross her face. “Who, Momma?”

Her hesitance made me imagine the worst. “Not Uncle Floyd?”

She shook her head. “No, him and Monique are fine.”

“Then who?”

“Pierre LeBlanc.”

Now I understood the reason for the gun. Hearing the name LeBlanc sent a tingle down my spine. I wasn’t a man that scared easily, but Pierre’s brother Jean was a man to be feared. On the outside, he appeared to be the owner of a huge and reputable construction real estate holding company, but the truth was much grittier. Jean LeBlanc was New Orleans’s most notorious drug lord and leader of the city’s largest street gang, the Crescent Boys. A kingpin, if you will. He was a dangerous man and one anyone should have been careful not to cross. Including us. So, if indeed Pierre LeBlanc was dead in our club, there would be hell to pay.

“Shit!”

Momma was now halfway to the door. “Exactly. I already told Floyd to close that part off to everybody. And hurry the hell up.”

It was late, almost three a.m., by the time I left my son Marquis and pulled my Jaguar onto the long dirt driveway that led to our family’s century-old legacy, the Midnight Blues. The Blues had been in our family since shortly after slavery ended, and despite all the bullshit that had happened earlier tonight with the discovery of a body, I always beamed with pride when I saw the lighted trees that surrounded our planation-style-house-turned casino.

I pulled my car into the parking space with a sign that read: BIG SHIRLEY DUNCAN, PROPRIETOR. People had been calling me Big Shirley for as long as I can remember, almost forty-something years. Some people thought it was an embarrassing nickname placed on me because of my stout size, but I wore the name with pride because it meant so much more. I’d always been a voluptuous woman with big titties and a big ass, but I liked to think the name Big Shirley came more for my over-the-top charismatic personality, which had a tendency to take me into places my big titties and ass couldn’t. Oh, and of course, when my body or my personality didn’t work to open doors, there was always my big-ass .44 Magnum gun I was known to keep handy.

I glanced up at the Blues once more, shaking my head as I thought about the body I was about to encounter once I went inside. Don’t get me wrong. We’d had dead bodies at the Blues before, but we’d never had anyone’s death that could bring us the problems of Pierre LeBlanc.

I exited the car and entered the building, thankful that there weren’t half a dozen police cars and a nosy-ass sheriff asking everyone a million questions. I was greeted by Dice, my six foot four, three hundred pound cousin, who headed our security. Dice wasn’t the brightest man you’d ever meet, but he was loyal, and his size was a huge deterrent when it came to patrons getting out of line. Unfortunately, it hadn’t deterred Pierre’s demise on the premises.

“Where’s Moe?” I asked when I was barely through the door.

Dice gestured upstairs. “Your office.”

I nodded my thanks, then headed for the stairs. When I reached my office, Monique Cartwright, my best friend, right-hand woman, and first cousin on my daddy’s side, was already sitting in her usual spot beside my desk, looking visibly distressed. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but she was in the middle of throwing back a shot of tequila when I stepped in.

“You want one?” She glanced over at me as she poured herself another shot.

“Yeah, but make mine a double.” I walked around and sat in my chair as she poured our drinks. “Is Pierre still here?”

“Yeah, he’s still here. I told you on the phone the man’s dead. You didn’t expect him to get up and walk away, did you?” Monique handed me my drink.

“You okay? You sound a little stressed.”

“Shit, I am stressed.” She downed her second drink and poured another. “You’d be stressed too if you found that fool with his brains splattered all over the room. I mean, that’s Jean LeBlanc’s brother in there.”

“Yeah, I know,” I replied, trying to sound comforting. Did Pierre’s death ignite a small sense of panic inside of me? Yes. But it had already happened, and there was only one way to go—forward. What would get me through was keeping a clear head and handling only what I could handle at the time. So, my focus would be getting in front of the situation. I’d cross the other roads when I got there.

“We’re gonna be all right, Mo. I mean, hell. We didn’t kill the man. And at least that part is the truth.”

I downed my drink just as Marquis walked in the room. Like us, he had a look of worry on his face, and his first question was, “What the fuck happened?

I’d dropped Antoinette off a block away from her house and damn near broke every speeding record I could driving over to the Blues, where I found my momma and her cousin Monique in her office. To my surprise, they were doing shots. I might have expected that from my momma, but you couldn’t have paid me to think it was something I’d see straightlaced Monique doing. See, Momma had a dark and dirty past. It was one she rarely talked about, but it was what had turned her into the person she was today, a hard-nose, no-nonsense business owner who would do whatever it took to protect her club and her family. Monique, on the other hand, had gone to some fancy college back East, and I’d never seen her drink more than a glass of wine. I guess Pierre’s death had everyone stressed.

Don’t get me wrong. Despite her small stature—five feet two inches, 100 pounds—and her by-the-book pit boss mentality, Monique, like the rest of our family, was nobody to fuck with. She could turn from a pussy cat to a damn mountain lion in the blink of an eye. And she was a beast with that eight-inch switchblade she carried at all times.

I let them savor their drinks for a moment, then finally broke the silence in the room. “What the fuck happened?”

Monique shook her head. “I don’t know. Pierre was in the high stakes parlor room, playing poker, drinking, and losing, like always.”

“You didn’t notice anything different or funny about him?” I asked.

“Not at all. Other than he was involved in a pretty bad beat, even for him.”

“How bad?” my momma asked.

“I got called in the room when the pot went over fifty thousand. Pierre’s full house lost to four of a kind. When it was all said and done, he lost about a hundred grand, and he wasn’t happy. He accused the guy of cheating, and things got heated to the point that Dice had to step in. I told Pierre to take a walk. Ten minutes later, the shot rang out. I ran back up and found him dead on the couch.”

“So, the guy shot him?” Momma asked.

“No, he was with me cashing in his chips. Dice and I walked him to his car and watched him drive away. That’s when we heard the shot.”

I was just about to ask Monique which parlor room the body was in when my uncle entered the office. He checked behind him before shutting the door.

Uncle Floyd was Momma’s younger brother. He was dressed in pressed slacks and a Versace button-up. Like usual, he was dressed sharp. He was only a few years older than me, and we were practically raised as brothers, although he always reminded me he was my uncle. Floyd was forced to grow up a lot faster than I was. He was out of the house with his own spot, taking care of himself at seventeen. He was one of those streetwise, practical brothers who didn’t have any formal education, but you’d be stupid to challenge his intellect, because he could run rings around most college-educated men. Momma may have been the head of our family, but Uncle Floyd was the backbone.

He checked behind himself before shutting the door. Noticing me, he nodded his head in acknowledgement. “Nephew.”

“Unc.” I returned the gesture.

He turned to face Momma. “All right, I cleared the other parlor rooms on this floor and gave everyone credits. Folks were asking questions, but only a few people saw the body. The upstairs parlor rooms are completely closed off until further notice.”

“Smart. Good job, Floyd,” Momma replied. “Now, what are we going to do with his body?

“Hell, I say we call the police. Let them sort it out with Jean,” Monique said quickly.

Momma’s neck snapped toward her. “Hell no! Are you crazy? We’re not talking to anybody until we get our stories straight.”

Momma turned back to Uncle Floyd. “Right now, I wanna see the body.” She got up from the desk so Floyd and Monique could take us to the scene.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d seen my share of bodies before; however, nothing could have prepared me for the gory scene I witnessed when Monique opened that parlor room door. My heart sank, and any hope that we could get out of the situation easily, sank with it. Laying at an awkward angle with the top of his head blown off was none other than Pierre LeBlanc. I didn’t have to see his face, which was a bloody mess. His clothes and jewelry told me who he was. Pierre was someone I’d grown accustomed to seeing multiple times a week for as long as I could remember. He was a smooth-talking, impeccably dressed cat with almost as much gold around his neck as Mr. T. Pierre loved to gamble, and the Blues was practically his second home. He was on a first name basis with all of our dealers and most of the cocktail waitresses.

“Fuck.” I stepped near the body. His blood and brains had painted a mural on the wall behind him. There was no question about it; he was dead.

“Who else was in here with him?” Momma asked, walking into the room and looking around for clues.

“No one that I know of,” Monique answered.

“It looks like he killed himself.” Floyd pointed to the gun on the ground by Pierre’s hand. “Or somebody got real close and personal.”

“Anybody check the cameras?” Momma asked.

“There are no cameras on the second floor,” Floyd replied. “You took them out at your friend the mayor’s request, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Momma groaned. She rented the parlor rooms out to politicians, gangsters, and anyone else who would pay the $5000 a night private room fee, so they could have their secret backroom meetings without being disturbed or observed.

“What the hell would make him do something like that here, of all places?” I wondered out loud, staring at the body.

“As much of his brother’s money as he loses, he might have been in some kind of gambling debt,” Floyd suggested.

“Nah. Jean wouldn’t hurt his little brother over no money,” I replied. “This shit just doesn’t add up. What would make a man blow his own brains out?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past Jean. He’s ruthless,” Momma said, and I swear I saw a moment of fear flash in her expression. She was not a woman who was rattled easily.

“Ruthless with a capital R,” Monique added.

“I know I’m asking a lot, but you’re our fixer. I need you to make this go away,” Momma said, looking me in the eyes. “We both know we don’t need any problems with Jean LeBlanc or the Crescent Boys.”

“How the hell do I make something like this go away?” I asked, pointing at the chunk missing from Pierre’s head.

“The same way we make everything else go away, nephew. Money.” Uncle Floyd placed a hand on my shoulder. “Think about it. You know what to do.”

We connected eyes, and I nodded. He was right. I did know what to do, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to do it. “All right. I’ll make the call, but I need to see everyone who saw this room.”

“I thought you might say that. Right this way,” Uncle Floyd replied.

He led me out of the room and to another parlor room a few doors down. When we entered, I saw three men sitting uncomfortably around a poker table. The room stank from the nervous sweat seeping through their pores. I knew them by name: Todd, Eric, and Fred. They were all regulars at the Blues, wannabe high rollers who gambled enough to earn access to the parlor rooms.

Fred’s eyes were glued to the ground, and he didn’t budge, not even when he heard the door open. Eric, on the other hand, was a little jumpy. Todd’s brown face was flushed, and his broad shoulders slumped. I didn’t think he could seem any more down until he saw me and Floyd and slumped even farther.

“Bruh, I swear none of us had anything to do with that boy being dead. How long have we been friends?” Todd asked Floyd in a shaky voice.

“Too long,” Floyd answered. “Long enough for me to know that you didn’t lay a finger on Pierre.”

“Then why are we still here?”

“Insurance,” I said.

I looked at Uncle Floyd, and he gave me a small nod before he left the room. Focusing my attention back on the men, I gave the men a hard stare. I needed them to understand how grave the situation was.

“We all know who the dead body is, right?” I asked, and they nodded. “And we all know what will happen if his brother learns of what happened here tonight, right?”

“But like Todd said, we ain’t do it!” Fred inserted.

“We know that. Pierre killed himself,” I told them, and they seemed to relax slightly, as if they were exonerated.

“You think that matters?” I asked them. “You know who his brother is just like I do. And what he’ll do to anyone who he suspects in the slightest. You three saw the body, right? That could be evidence enough for Jean to take off your heads.”

The three of them shared a mortified expression. They no doubt were envisioning the horrors that Jean would inflict on them. Good. It was those thoughts that would keep their mouths shut. That, and a nice payoff from us. Uncle Floyd reentered the room, holding a nice stack of cash. He split it equally in three and handed a stack to each of them.

“I’m gonna make this all go away, but let’s be clear. Y’all ain’t seen shit tonight. Understand?”

“Shit, I wasn’t even here tonight. I was in Baton Rouge,” Todd said, thumbing through the money.

Fred and Eric simply nodded their understanding. They seemed to still be in shock. But who could blame them? I was too.

“Good. Now, all of you get the hell out of here. And remember, don’t say shit to nobody,” Floyd told them.

The three men stood up and scrambled out of the room, leaving Uncle Floyd and me alone.

How could such a beautiful day end so badly? I wondered. But I didn’t have time to be pissed off about it. We had a body to move.

I’d carried a lot of bodies in my past, but there was only one that had phased me. Years ago, when I found out my son Fabio was murdered, life as I knew it was altered forever. Although I had two children, he’d been my first born and my only boy. I would never forget the call telling me they had to identify him by his dental records because he was unrecognizable. Nor would I forget what it felt like carrying his casket. After that, I was eternally changed inside. A part of me died with him. I always wondered if my days of plundering the streets as a young cat had come to serve me my karma. My son being gunned down at a fresh twenty-five was the worst kind of trauma.

I rarely tried to live in that memory. It was too painful still even years later. I went from being on top of the world to having no world at all. Fabio and my daughter Fanny had been truthfully the only thing holding together the loveless marriage between their mother and me. The divorce papers were signed soon after he died. My ex-wife, Amina, was the most money-hungry witch I’ve ever known. She tried to take me for everything I had, and she would have succeeded if it weren’t for the prenuptial agreement she’d signed decades ago. I let her keep the house and put a nice amount in her bank account, but that was it. Fabio was gone, and Fanny was grown and traveling the world. I knew losing her brother had cut her deeply too. It probably didn’t help to see her parents arguing all the time. I didn’t blame her for staying gone.

All I had left was Big Shirley, Marquis, and the Blues. At least I knew I was with people who genuinely loved me. And I loved them right on back. I’d do anything for them, including getting rid of the body of Pierre LeBlanc.

One thing I’d learned from being in the game for so long was that one should always keep tarp laying around. I had some in the closet of my office, and Marquis and I used that to wrap the body. There was a part of the Blues that was under renovation and had been closed off to everyone, the staff included. We took that route to get the body to where my pickup truck was parked in the back. It wasn’t a short distance carrying literal dead weight, but it was the best way to take. So, we huffed and puffed our way to the door.

“Shit! Did this motherfucka eat a cow before he died?” Marquis asked breathlessly.

We set the body down and stopped to catch our breath. I peered out of the window to make sure nobody was around. The coast was clear.

“All right, let’s do this,” I told him.

“One, two, three.”

On the count of three, we hoisted the body. I opened one of the doors with my back and stepped out backward, walking to the pickup truck. Knowing we were at risk of being seen, we moved as fast as we could and dumped the body in the bed of the truck.

“Damn, Unc, you did that like it was nothing to you,” Marquis said, studying me. “You barely even broke a damn sweat!”

“I’ve been around a lot longer than you, nephew,” I told him. “And I was much younger than you when I had to get rid of my first body.”

“Really?”

“You know me and your mom have different daddies? Well, my daddy was a short-tempered motherfucka. Trigger-happy, too. I was just fifteen years old th. . .