Vengeance Read online

  “No, I’m about to work out for an hour.” I climbed down off the barstool at the breakfast bar. “I have to keep these tits and this ass tight for the stage.”

  Nikki grinned. “And you keep them tight, too.”

  I walked off to throw on a sports bra and pair of sweat pants so I could get in a good sweat before Bianca Hudson, formerly Bianca Lee, showed up at eleven. She thought she was coming to acquire the decorating contract of her lifetime and I was going to give it to her . . . right before I took out the knife that she had embedded in my back decades earlier and fucked the conniving, heartless bitch up with it.

  * * *

  “It is such an honor to meet you, Miss Wicket. Should I call you Miss Wicket or do you prefer just Wicket, or do you prefer your real name, Miss—”

  “Wicket is fine.” I reached out and shook the hand fake-ass Bianca had extended to me. “Please, come in and make yourself comfortable. Nikki, get us a couple of glasses of fresh lemonade. You like lemonade, Mrs. Hudson?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, please call me Bianca. I want you to think of me as a long-lost, dear friend.”

  It took everything within me not to spit in her damn face when she spoke those words. Little did she know that we had been friends at one point—best friends.

  She was putting on airs and was dressed in the latest designer fashion, likely designed by that other bitch: Cherie. Later on in the day, before she left, I planned to fall into the laid trap and have a fit over the dress and ask where I could get one. That was what they wanted; for me to ask about the dress. Bianca would have a chance to introduce Cherie into the mix so she could try to get a lot of my money in her bank account as well. Still the same old slick trifling hoes from high school.

  “Why don’t we start in the great room?” I suggested. “It’s a big space, but I have some thoughts about it.”

  “That would be lovely. I’d love to hear what you envision.”

  As we walked into the great room, I started my description. She was feeling it. I really didn’t need her ass to design shit for me. I was an excellent interior designer myself and owned houses and penthouses around the world that I had decorated alone.

  “I envision this as my little-black-dress room. I want to put a black, large square rug in the middle of the floor, about twenty feet square and a huge, circular sofa that seats at least twelve that’s also completely black. I was thinking a nice, round crystal table in the middle with a light that has decorated edges that shine a pattern on the ceiling when the main lights are off. Something real sexy and intriguing.”

  “So how does the little-black-dress concept come in?”

  “It’s simple. You know how we can take a black dress and change the accessories and make it look completely new? Well, I want to be able to change out the objects on the coffee table and the pillows whenever the mood hits me. I might use yellow in the spring, or sea-foam green. Turquoise or peach in the summer. Red or purple in the fall. You get my drift?”

  “That’s hot.” Bianca looked like I had shown her up. That’s because I had. “You’re about to make me feel useless already.”

  “It’s merely a concept.” I shrugged. “I’m open to your thoughts. Everyone sees different things in different spaces. You’re the expert, so I’ll defer to you.”

  That made her feel like the shit. She started strutting around like a peacock after that, from room to room as she sipped her lemonade and Nikki took notes to transcribe and share with us both later. I decided not to show her up anymore and pretended like all of her ideas were awesome. Some of them were actually pretty damn good. I could see why she was regarded as one of the top interior designers in Atlanta. Several had put in bids, but I did not even look at the others. She was the one that I wanted to trap in my web, and her greedy ass was about to breakdance right into my slaughterhouse.

  * * *

  Bianca and I were sitting on the veranda drinking two glasses of Moscato when Nikki appeared, as I was about to ask about her dress.

  “I’m so excited about working with you,” Bianca said with a huge grin. “You’re such a sweetheart.”

  I faked a smile and looked at Nikki, who was waiting patiently to say something. “Yes, Nikki.”

  “You don’t have your cell phone with you so I wanted to remind you that you have a Skype call scheduled with your father at three.”

  “Thanks.” Now, that actually made me happy and my smile became real. “I’m always on time for Daddy.”

  Bianca looked like she had seen the rapture when Nikki mentioned my father. “It must’ve been great, growing up with Richard Sterling as your father.”

  “He’s a man like every other man,” I replied, upset that she would even regard him like she knew him like that.

  “Yes, but one of the richest men in the world. It had to be an amazing childhood.”

  “He adopted me when I was six,” I lied, deducting an entire decade from the truth. “But yes, it was an amazing childhood. Not because of his wealth; because of his heart. He’s a very loving man, especially toward me.”

  I decided not to ask her about the dress. I wanted her grubby ass to grovel for business for her friend. I was sick of staring into her hazel eyes that were clearly fake. Her eyes were brown, the color of walnuts, like her skin. She was wearing colored contacts to make herself more appealing. There was nothing wrong with her natural eye color. I had stared into them enough as a child.

  I had a quick flashback of Bianca and me walking down the street to school in the tenth grade, laughing about what had happened on a sitcom the night before. We were both smiling at each other and lightly tapping each other on the arms during conversation. Then I realized she was there, in real time, in my presence, smiling again, but I remembered what evil she was capable of: BITCH!

  “You should get going. Please be in touch with Nikki when you have a formal presentation together and she’ll fit you into my schedule.” I went from being overly gracious to strictly professional in the blink of an eye. “She’ll see you to your car, and thanks again for coming by.”

  Bianca shook my hand and started to hesitantly walk away. She paused and turned around. “Um, by the way, I have a friend who is an excellent designer and stylist. You may have heard of her. Cherie Thompson?”

  “No, can’t say that I have.” I sighed and started acting irritated.

  “She’s great. Top-notch. In fact”—Bianca spun around like she was ripping up a runway, so I could peep the same dress that I had been looking at all damn day—“she designed this little number exclusively for me. She does practically all my clothes.”

  “It’s simplistic but rather nice,” I said, trying to downplay it. “Leave her card with Nikki and I’ll consider giving her line a look-see.”

  Bianca cleared her throat. “Maybe we can have lunch one day later this week, at your convenience.”

  I rolled my eyes, making sure she would see the gesture. She had a lot of fucking nerve to think that she could commandeer my time like that. I was the celebrity, not her. Stupid whore!

  “Or maybe not.” She paused. “You take care.”

  “You as well.”

  Bianca walked off, trailing Nikki.

  “This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel,” I whispered to myself. “Look at you,” I said to Bianca’s back, “with your fake hair, your fake nails, your fake smile, your fake eyes, and your fake attitude. Biotch!”

  I plopped back down in the chair and drank some wine, trying to calm myself down. Daddy may have been across the globe in Australia on business, but he was far from stupid. Someone had clearly made sure he had seen the reports on CNN or had read the online articles about how Wicket, real name Ladonna Sterling, had decided to relocate to Georgia after giving a spectacular performance at Philips Arena in front of a sold-out crowd of fans. How she had instantly become enamored with Atlanta and had dropped $19 million on a crib. How she was planning to spend the majority of time between tours there, working on her next
album.

  At three o’clock on the dot, I would have to look happy as a pig in shit on Skype and try to convince him that I understood and totally embraced what I was doing, that I had gotten over the past, and that I was legitimately interested in residing in the same city where I had actually grown up as Caprice Tatum, daughter of a drug-induced, schizophrenic maniac of a mother who had cut the left side of my face with a paring knife when I was seven because she couldn’t stand to look at her own image.

  Daddy would legitimately be worried about my welfare, and I could not fault him for that. He had done so much for me; he had paid to fix a broken doll and had rebirthed her as one of the greatest entertainers the world had ever known . . . ever would know. It was hard, but I wouldn’t let him down.

  Who was I fooling? I wanted to fuck them all up for what they had done to me. For the pain, for robbing me of any chance of a normal, healthy, loving relationship with a man, and for merely being pure evil.

  “Calm down, Caprice,” I tried to convince myself. “You can pull this off. Daddy can’t make you leave. You’re damn near forty years old. Just tell him that much.”

  I finished off my glass of wine and went into my office to launch Skype.

  * * *

  The forty-minute conversation with Daddy did not go off well. He went on and on about how I needed therapy and should leave right away, even if I joined him overseas. He was concerned that I might have some kind of mental break if I ran across any of the people from my past, even though they would never recognize me. I started to say that one had just finished doing a walk-through of my new house to do a mock-up design proposal and that I had played it off without a hitch. But being braggadocious would have only backfired, with Daddy personally flying his private jet to Atlanta by the break of the next dawn.

  Nikki had gone out to run errands. She was loving Atlanta. I needed some kind of release, so I called Kagiso into my bedroom for a little afternoon playtime. I was not lying when I said that I had never fucked any of my bodyguards. But the reason that I knew they all needed lap bands on their dicks is because I had definitely seen them.

  I was standing by a picture window, gazing out onto the courtyard out back, butt naked sans a pair of black Louboutins, when Kagiso knocked lightly on my door.

  “Enter,” I directed as I turned around.

  Kagiso stood there for a few seconds, admiring my sepia skin, flawless after years of treating it both internally and externally with Vitamin E, my shoulder-length onyx-black hair, and eyes the color of a papaya. The papaya eyes were Daddy’s idea. They made me distinctive and hid any resemblance to the eyes of Caprice Tatum, whose eyes were naturally a darker brown. Bianca had chosen to wear fake lenses to make herself feel special; my lenses were to mask my past.

  “Are you going to stand there in the doorway and stare at me, or are you going to come in?” I asked Kagiso.

  He came in the room and shut the door behind him. Then he started in on me with his alluring, seductive accent. “You plan to tease me again? Dangling a carrot in front of my face that I can never have?”

  I walked over to the bed, climbed on, propped my back up on some pillows, and spread my legs so he could get a perfect view of my hairless pussy. It was already wet, but I planned to get it much wetter.

  “Answer me,” he demanded.

  I rolled my eyes and then faked a smile. I needed him to cooperate, and you get more with sugar than you do with shit.

  “I want to play Jack and Jill.”

  “And I want to play digging your back out with my dick.”

  Same story, different day.

  “That’s not happening.” I bit my bottom lip and stared down at his crotch. “Take off your clothes so I can see that elephantine dick of yours.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  I smirked. “Then I’ll call Diederik in here so he can show me his. You and I both know that he’ll be down with it.”

  “Why not call Diederik in here in the first place, then?” Kagiso asked sarcastically.

  “Easy answer.” I started tapping my clit with the manicured index finger of my right hand. “I love the way you jack off. It’s . . . fascinating.”

  I could tell that he was getting excited. Kagiso loved to be complimented and flattered, especially when it had anything to do with his dick. He was vain and entitled to it. The motherfucker was spectacularly fine.

  He started removing his shirt and walking closer to the bed. That’s it. Come here, little doggie.

  “What’s so fascinating about the way I beat my meat?”

  “Beating meat is such a vile term for it. I prefer jacking off or . . . pleasuring oneself.”

  “I wanna fuck you, Wicket. These little excursions with you are driving me insane. No man can continue to do this without wanting more.”

  “So leave and send Diederik in on your way out. Tell him to bring a jar of honey. I like the way the honey looks on his pale dick when he uses it to spurt his jism halfway across the room.”

  I was being cold but not nearly as bad as I was with Glaze and Piece of Shit. My two pets relieved and released an anger in me that could never truly be explained. I equated my sexuality with disdain when I was in their presence and humiliating them was all that mattered. It was my way of making someone else feel how I felt on October 25, 1987, a date forever embedded in my mind. In many ways, it was the date of my death and my rebirth as someone who simply didn’t give a fuck about most people in the world. Somehow that made it easier for me to take chances that led to an extreme amount of success in life. Strange shit but the harsh truth.

  Kagiso still stood there, pondering over whether he should continue to try to press me for some pussy or cave like always and expose his dick.

  “I don’t have all damn day, Kagiso,” I said. “It only takes five seconds for you to drop your drawers. Let me see Striker.” I eyed Kagiso seductively as I went ahead and inserted my index finger into my pussy. “I’ve missed my baby so much.”

  Kagiso couldn’t hold back any longer, unzipped his pants, kicked off his shoes, and was butt naked within thirty seconds flat. “Ain’t nothing babyish about my dick.”

  I licked my lips. “Damn sure isn’t.”

  Kagiso climbed on the bed and lay down with his head resting on the mattress between my thighs so he could inhale the scent of my pussy. Also, he liked to be close so he could hear the sounds of me playing in it.

  His dick, lovingly known to me as Striker, was on full alert and it looked divine. There were times such as these when I yearned desperately to impale myself on his dick, but it was useless. Allowing a man to touch me was out of the question. There was too much pain and agony involved.

  “Stroke him gently at first,” I instructed in a whisper. “I want to see you pamper him like he deserves to be treated.”

  Kagiso looked upward at me and our eyes met as he started moving his hand up and down his shaft slowly.

  I moaned and slipped two more fingers into my pussy and started moving them in and out to the same rhythm.

  “You like this dick?” he asked.

  “Um, yeah, I love your dick.” I stared at his hand as he started moving slightly faster. I did the same. “I love the blackness of it, the length, the girth; every motherfucking thing about it.”

  “Sit on it,” Kagiso urged, damn near in a begging way.

  “You have other women for that. Imagine that I’m sitting on it. Move like I’m sitting on it and I’m going to move like you’re inside me.”

  What ensued was amazing. Kagiso and I both were thrashing around on the bed, him jerking off and moving his hips up and down like I was on top of him, and me gyrating my hips as I bombarded my pussy with my fingers. When Kagiso came, his sperm shot straight up to the ceiling like a geyser and I squirted far enough that some of my juices landed on his cleft chin and in his mouth.

  We both moaned and gasped as our bodies convulsed and our breathing patterns returned to normal. Kagiso turned over and licked some of my pu
ssy juice off the sheets and tried to move his tongue up onto my left thigh, where there was a mound of it, but I quickly pushed him away, lifted my leg over his head, and got off the bed. His lips brushed across my ass cheek and that was as close as he was going to get to skin-on-skin action.

  I went into the bathroom to wash up with a warm towel, then returned to the bedroom with one for him: our routine. As he stood up and wiped himself off, he glared at me like I had molested him or something.

  “What?” I asked. “Didn’t you like it?”

  “I’m simply trying to figure you out.”

  “In what regard?” Of course, I knew what he meant, but I wanted to hear it.

  “Why you constantly have me doing this and giving me nothing in return. What’s up with that?”

  “Listen, Kagiso, you and I both know that all of you can get pussy at the drop of a hat. You can smell mine, you can hear mine, and you can even grab a little taste if one comes your way, but I am not giving it up to you or anyone else.”

  “That’s my point. Why is that?” He started getting dressed and then paused, staring into my eyes. “It’s certainly not for religious reasons. You’re too damn freaky to be shy. Fuck it! Truth be told, you’re the best sex partner that I’ve ever had and I’ve never even fucked you. So what is it?”

  “It’s none of your damn business.”

  I walked back into the bathroom and shut the door. A moment later, I heard Kagiso approaching it. “Wicket, I can only assume that something happened to you. Something that has turned you off like a faucet. For some reason, you don’t want to be touched and that’s a damn shame.”

  “Go away!” I yelled through the door.

  “If you ever want to talk about it, I’m here for you. You’re too beautiful, intelligent, and talented to live your life this way. If I’m not the man for you, that’s cool. We started out like this, but you deserve someone to love you.”

  “I said, go the fuck away!” I yelled louder.

  I could hear Kagiso backing away from the door and then leave the room. As he was shutting the bedroom door behind him, I emerged from the bathroom and collapsed on my bed in tears.