Working Girls

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

Nineteen-year-old Jewels is one of the Midwest‘s most wanted. The daughter of one of the baddest prostitutes to ever work the streets of St. Louis and a high end call girl herself, she attracts nothing but the elite.
She has caught the eye of twenty-two-year-old Rome, a dope boy who quickly makes a name for himself in the Loo. One uneventful night, their worlds collide when Jewels is caught with a violent and deranged client, while Rome is laying low at the same hotel because of a drug beef. After that evening, life for Jewels and Rome will never be the same.
Together, they climb to the top, but Jewels is the one responsible for getting them there.
Sex, money, and murder are the outcome as the world of prostitution collides with the drug game. Bodies begin to drop, and the streets are littered with corpses as an all-out war is launched. The Midwest heats up and things become even more complicated when Jewels is put in the line of fire and becomes the target.

Release date: July 26, 2016

Publisher: Urban Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Sometime during the nineties . . .

“Bitch! Didn’t I tell you to mind your manners?” barked thirty-six-year-old Ice, one of St. Louis’s coldest pimps, as he brought the bent-up wire hanger down with all his might on naked nineteen-year-old Melody Walker’s Carnation milk–toned back.

He slicked his straight-permed reddish-brown hair back with his hand as he thrust himself deep inside of her wet box. He yanked a fistful of her hair, gripping it tightly in his left hand and putting the hanger temporarily in his mouth, then roughly began to jab his pointer finger in and out of Melody’s ass, causing her head to jerk back and her body to quiver. She let out a loud whimper. But it went unheard. Ice was too busy torturing her. He was in a zone and could hear only his hips smacking up against her ass cheeks as he rammed himself vigorously inside her. He sweat profusely as he physically and sexually assaulted Melody.

“I’m sorry, Daddy!” she cried out. “I promise I won’t do it again.”

Ice ignored her pleas and cries. Instead, he took the hanger from between his teeth and delivered another blow to her back side. It caused her entire body to tremble. Her bottom lip shivered as if she were freezing, but that was impossible, because the heat had the room temperature at eighty degrees. She moaned, closed her eyes, and bit down on her lip. It helped ease the pain.

“Bitch, you sure is sorry! Sorry-ass ho! You gonna learn today, though!” Ice bellowed as he whacked Melody’s backside for a third time. He plunged his pulsating dick as deep as he could inside of her as he simultaneously pulled her curly fire engine–red hair back for a second time. This time he pulled with much more force.

“No, Daddy, please!” Melody begged. “I’m not—”

Her words were interrupted by the bedroom door slamming up against the wall in the room.

“Stop it!” a voice echoed in Ice and Melody’s bedroom.

Melody drew her attention to the open doorway. Ice, on the other hand, rolled off of her and reached for his trey-eight pistol. He had barely recognized the voice when it first echoed in the room, and he didn’t bother to look at who stood in the doorway until he spun back around with his pistol cocked.

“What the hell?” Ice muttered. “You little bitch!” he cursed and shook his head in disgust. The sight of her infuriated him. His eyes grew cold. “Take yo’ ass back to yo’ room and back to bed, before I beat yo’ ass!” he bellowed, threatening her. He waved his gun in the direction of the doorway as he spoke.

Melody grabbed the barrel of the gun. “Don’t point that shit at her,” she spat.

“Bitch, you better back the fuck up!” Ice jerked his pistol back and grabbed Melody by the throat. He was just about to shove the barrel down Melody’s throat when nine-year-old Jewels yelled, “Stop hurting my mama!”

Ice shook his head and uncocked his pistol.

Melody gasped for air. She tried to regain her breathing as she covered her nakedness with a sheet. An embarrassed look appeared across her face.

“I-it’s okay, baby,” she said, her voice cracking. “Mommy’s okay,” she added. “He wasn’t—”

Again, she was cut off. This time, it was by Ice.

“Fuck that!” His voice boomed. “You don’t have to explain shit to this li’l bitch. This my mu’fuckin’ house! I pay the goddamned bills to keep the lights on and a roof over y’all funky asses’ head. Ya understand?” Ice directed his words to both his bottom whore and his unwanted child by her.

“Now explain to this bitch that you like gettin’ yo’ ass beat like this and that mu’fuckas pay good money fo’ this type shit.” He wasn’t asking her; he was telling her.

He wanted Melody to school their nine-year-old daughter on her own sexual fetish and the value of it in the world of prostitution. Melody wiped away the last drop of Jewels’s tears, which would have joined the previous ones that stained her face. “Come here, baby.” She held the sheet up with her armpits and extended her arms toward her daughter.

Jewels peered over at Ice. At nine years old, she already knew the difference between love and hate, and she knew she hated Ice. She cautiously made her way over to her mother as she rolled her eyes at him.

Melody wrapped her arms around her. She cupped Jewels’s chin and raised her head. She stared into her daughter’s eyes. “It’s some shit out here in these streets that will scare the hell out of a weak bitch.” She made sure she had Jewels’s undivided attention before she continued. “But yo’ mama ain’t no weak bitch. And you ain’t no weak bitch, and you ain’t gon’ be one!” Melody put an emphasis on her last statement.

Jewels’s eyes widened at the sound of her mother’s words. She was used to Melody being hard on her, but she had never talked to her the way she was now. She fought to hold back the tears she felt coming on as her mother continued.

“Yo’ mama is one of the baddest bitches in the streets of St. Louis and is respected wherever I go. You know why?” It was more a statement than a question.

Still, Jewels shook her head no in rapid succession, as if she had been asked a question.

“Because I’m about my muthafuckin’ money, and I don’t take no shit from no other bitch or nigga,” she said to Jewels, with conviction in her voice. “You know how I get my money? Get you all those nice things and stuff?” she asked her daughter.

Again, Jewels shook her head no.

“With this. And this!” Melody pointed to her temple and then grabbed a handful of the sheets between her legs.

A confused look appeared across Jewels’s face. She was trying to process what her mother was saying, but her young mind was drawing a blank.

Ice snickered. He could see that she was struggling with what Melody had just said to her. “Your mama sells pussy!” he blurted out. “For me!” he added voluntarily.

Jewels didn’t understand fully, but what little she did comprehend pierced her young, naive heart. It hurt her to hear Ice talk about her mother that way. Tears began to form in her eyes again. Before one could fall, her mother’s voice dried them up.

“Don’t you fuckin’ cry.” She gripped Jewels’s face. “You hear me? Don’t you fuckin’ shed one tear.”

Melody looked back and cut her eyes over at Ice. She rolled them hard at him.

Ice dismissed her with the wave of his pistol. He was not serious about either one of them. He leaned to the side and reached for his E-Z Wider paper and weed grinder.

She drew her attention back to Jewels. “I know it sound fucked up what yo’ daddy said about me.”

“Ice!” he exclaimed, jumping in and correcting her.

Melody sucked her teeth and grimaced. “Ice,” she said, switching up and referring to him by his street moniker. If looks could kill, Ice would be buried in his best Sunday suit. Melody shot him a look of death, as if she were the Grim Reaper in the flesh, before she continued. “But it’s the truth. That’s what I do, and I’m damn good at it!” She drew her attention back to her daughter.

Jewels stared at her mother as she spoke.

“So whatever you decide you wanna be in life—I mean, whatever, whether good or bad—make sure you be the best one you can be, you hear me?”

Jewels nodded. It took all her strength not to shed a tear as her mother spoke in an authoritative tone. She knew at that moment, life as she had once known it would never be the same, and she would never see the world the way she had seen it ever again after what her mother had just said to her and what she had witnessed.

“Jewels? What the fuck are you doing up there?” The voice penetrated the bedroom door of twenty-year-old Jewels, snapping her out of her trance. She hadn’t even realized she had traveled back in time. But she was not surprised. All her life she had daydreamed and reminisced about what and where she had come from. Life as the only child of a mother who was her father’s ho had left memories that would haunt her and would be a part of her forever.

“I’m coming!” she replied as she shook off the memory of her parents and carefully outlined her full lips with her lip liner.

Since the day she was born, Jewels had been told she was beautiful by her mother but had never received any real major love from her father. He had always made it perfectly clear that he didn’t particularly care for her. Still, Jewels had convinced herself that she actually was the shit. And both her father and her mother were wrong. Beauty-wise, she believed she had exceeded even her mother’s expectations. She was nothing short of gorgeous and everything lovely. Her skin was a flawless café brown, and she had mountain-brown eyes. She had a well-toned body, which came from her home workouts four times a week. She had pothole-deep dimples, and a perfect smile to accompany them. A new hairstyle was her newest change in appearance. She had cut her hair, which had gone past her shoulders and down her back, and had styled it in a curly twist. She had been taught at an early age that her beauty was to be used as a means to an end, that end being financial stability and security, safety and independence. In other words, she should not depend on a man for anything. Which was why she took pride in both her looks and her appearance.

To put it bluntly, Jewels was a professional escort. And she had absolutely no problem with her title. In fact, she loved being one. She believed it allowed her a measure of freedom. Besides, her mother had been a whore, so she was convinced the apple hadn’t fallen too far from the tree. It was her mother who had taught her mostly everything she knew about a man and the power of the “P.”

Jewels was just twelve years old when she turned her first trick, one year after she lost her virginity. Since that day she had never had sex with anyone without getting paid for it. She liked sex, but she loved money even more. She loved the power that her sexual prowess gave her. Like her mama, she did it all for the love of the cash. She kept her mother’s words at the forefront of her mind—“Ain’t nothing in this world free”—and Jewels lived her life believing and knowing that. She was thankful for the lessons she’d been taught by her mother when she was just a young girl. It was because of those life skills she had instilled in her that Jewels was the strong young woman she was today.

And thanks to her mama, she had been blessed in all the right places and looked every bit of her worth. Jewels had the radiant complexion of R & B singer Mariah Carey. Just from looking at her, it was obvious that she was mixed. Although she had European features and very light skin, she had definitely inherited her mother’s black genes physically. She had a very small waist, thick thighs, and a high, round ass. Now, at the tender age of twenty, she constantly stayed on her grind like a drug dealer. Like a gas station, she was available 24-7.

She worked for an escort service and independently for herself through her Web site. The thought of being a stripper had never crossed her mind. She refused to shake her ass for what she believed was a bunch of drunk-ass dudes who thought they were “making it rain” just because they threw a few one-dollar bills at a bitch onstage. Besides that, she didn’t want to have to wrestle with a bunch of funky-ass bitches for those few dollars. Instead, she met with and provided sexual favors and comfort to lawyers, judges, doctors, and anybody else, for that matter, if the price was right.

As a general rule, she fucked only white and Asian men. She had learned early on in the business that they made the best tricks. She had made as much as twenty-five hundred dollars in one night with an Asian client, and all she had had to do was piss on his chest. Although it had been creepy to her, she’d been turned on by what she was paid. It had happened on her eighteenth birthday. She had made more than that in a single night, though. Ironically, that high-paying encounter hadn’t been with a white or Asian john. It had been with a man of color. Which was why he was an exception to the rule.

Jewels wasn’t the type to fuck with the so-called “ballas” and drug dealers. She felt they were cheap tippers and didn’t know how to sample good pussy and keep it moving. They always wanted to try to lock her down and turn her into something she believed she’d never be. She wondered if they had ever heard the saying “You can’t turn a ho into a housewife.” Jewels was definitely not a housewife. She was a whore. Besides that, she didn’t like big-dick niggas. She couldn’t afford to have them wearing her prize possession out. What she had between her legs was her moneymaker, with her head game running at a close second. She couldn’t front, though. She did crave her some black dick every now and then.

But she was particular about the type of black man she’d be with. Full-blooded African was her binge. She didn’t want any black man who was African-American bred. She despised men of color who had been brainwashed into believing you had to act, sound, or look white to make it in this world, and she definitely couldn’t stand black men who acted like niggas and ran the streets. Give her an African Mandingo straight up and down when she needed to actually feel something inside of her. It wasn’t often, but she loved to be piped out by a good pipe-laying African client, while getting paid for it. The only two downsides to dealing with an African man, Jewels believed, were, one, he always wanted to lock the woman down, and two, she was always sore for a week after seeing him. She would be walking like she had been riding a horse.

One of her favorite clients was Kareem, and he was from Kenya. He worked in a brokerage firm and owned quite a bit of real estate in the greater Chicago area. He traveled nearly six hours back and forth from Chi-Town to the Lou to see her. He usually paid in advance for the privilege of spending two or three nights with her. Although he had the perfect equipment between his legs, he had some very annoying habits. He spent at least three hours every morning in the bathroom. Jewels had no idea what he did in there all that time. Out of curiosity, one morning she’d put her ear to the bathroom door and listened.

“God bless America. These are good people!” He had kept repeating that phrase over and over again. It had sounded like he was praying.

Jewels couldn’t help it. She’d had to ask him why he did that every morning. He’d told her that she had grown up in America, so she wouldn’t understand, and that if she had grown up where he had, she would be doing the same thing every morning.

He had proposed to her after their first date. Jewels had told him that she wasn’t about to go to no hot-ass Africa and be one of ten wives living in no damn tent with goats and shit. They didn’t have high-end department stores or huge malls like the ones she loved in the Midwest over there, so she’d posed the question, where the hell was she supposed to shop? She was so oblivious to the motherland that she believed they didn’t have cable. She couldn’t see herself not being able to watch The Maury Povich Show and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Those were must-see TV shows for Jewels. She was getting really tired of his ass, but the dick was just too good, and the money was even better.

With some of her older white clients, she would play the struggling college coed who was “just doing this” to help pay her way through college. She would put on a college sweatshirt with a pair of faded jeans. She would wear the bare minimum of makeup. Her hair would be pulled back in a ponytail. She looked the part. She’d had her “college tuition” paid for quite a few times. The tricks loved to save her, and she loved being saved. They always gave her a little something extra to help her get by.

It was good money for a minimal amount of work, and she did mean minimal. Some of her clients barely had two inches of dick. The white and Asian men were so small that their dicks were barely noticeable. If I were a man, I would be embarrassed to be so unfortunate, thought Jewels at times. Sometimes they didn’t want sex. They wanted to talk about their wives or their jobs. Jewels didn’t mind. It was their money.

She had come across her fair share of weirdos too. Some clients wanted to be shit on, while some of them liked to be tied up and beaten. Whatever floats their boats, thought Jewels. All she was concerned with was her money.

Besides the money, the best thing about being an escort was the acting part. She had to be so many different characters for her clients. She became whomever they wanted her to be. If they wanted her to be a slut, she would be a slut. If they wanted her to be a dominatrix or a struggling college student, she would be that too.

She was so used to being someone else that she sometimes completely forgot who she was. But at the end of the day, all she knew was that she was a whore and a damned good one too.

With Kareem, it was something different, though. Once a month he sent for her and paid ten large for the weekend. He paid not only for her body, but for her company as well. He treated her like she was special to him. She almost felt sorry for him because she knew she couldn’t and would never give him what he really wanted—all of her.

Normally, this weekend would be one when Kareem sent for her, but when he’d called in, it was to inform the agency that he would not be sending for her this weekend. For a quick moment, she had felt some type of way. Not because she was looking forward to seeing him, but because she was looking forward to what she stood to make from their weekend rendezvous. Now here she was, about to step out for the evening with some white trick whose fetishes were some of Jewels’s specialties. She knew it was going to be a long and disgusting evening, but she told herself, like always, that the ends justified the means.

Jewels stood up and took one last look in the mirror. “Let’s go make this money, bitch!” she uttered, then puckered her lips and blew herself a kiss. She snatched up her MK clutch and made her way downstairs.

“You always taking fucking long, like you the shit,” chided Ralph, the agency’s house supervisor, who was also a flaming gay Latino man.

Jewels ignored the comment. She had been working with this particular agency for only a month, but she was already used to his snide remarks. Despite the fact that she was young, this was not her first house, so she was used to the hate, period. She knew it came with the territory. In the world of escorting and prostitution, Jewels was one of the most wanted and baddest bitches in the game. The fact that she was a freelance escort made her even more valuable to any agency she went through, so she was also used to the red carpet being laid out, meaning that she would get first dibs on big spenders.

Jewels rolled her eyes, made her way out of the lavish home, made a beeline to the awaiting silver Phantom, and climbed in. She couldn’t help but chuckle when she saw Ralph standing in the doorway, with one hand on his hip, looking like Cinderella watching her step sisters go off to the ball. She gave him the middle finger as the enormous Rolls-Royce drove off. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game, Jewels thought as she leaned back and melted into the plush leather of the luxury car.

Twenty-seven-year-old Rome navigated his way through the city, toward downtown, while he nibbled on a fresh batch of catfish nuggets and a side order of fries, which sat in his lap, from one of his favorite chicken spots in town. On his right sat a cup of grape juice. He picked the drink up and took a swig as he thought about what he was going to get into today. Besides the block, he loved drama. He had been on the same block practically all his life: twenty-five of his twenty-seven years, to be exact. He could’ve moved, but for what? He was getting paper where he grew up. He was addicted to the drama of the streets. He couldn’t sleep at night if he didn’t hear gun shots and sirens outside of the bedroom window of his lavish studio apartment.

A lot of people tho. . .