The Game Never Ends. Zaire Crown

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СКАЧАТЬ lips met for a long, slow kiss, and when Shaun tried to pull her back towards the bed, Tuesday had to stop her.

      “Bae, just stay the night,” Shaun said in that whiny little voice that could be cute or annoying depending on Tuesday’s mood.

      Tuesday gave her a look that expressed she didn’t find it cute at the moment. It was a stupid comment because Shaun knew better.

      “Shit, I was supposed to be home like three hours ago.” She shrugged her bag onto her shoulder. “I missed another meeting with the board members today. Worse, I missed Dani’s competition! My husband and daughter probably flippin’ a coin right now to see which of ’em get to kill me.”

      Shaun pouted the way she always did when Tuesday brought up her family. “I’m beginning to think you and him ain’t gone ever have that talk.”

      Tuesday rolled her eyes. The talk Shaun wanted her to have with Marcus was never going to happen. Tuesday had only said it would to placate her, and Shaun was finally starting to realize that. Even if she did like to fuck a bad bitch once in a while, to Tuesday her family was, is, and always would be first.

      Shaun went to the bed and yanked off the sheet to cover herself. It was to say that Tuesday had lost the privilege of seeing her beautiful body.

      Tuesday turned to leave. “I gotta go.”

      There was a finality in those three words that Shaun could pick up on. She snatched off the three-carat diamond earrings that Tuesday bought for her a week prior and threw them at her.

      “Here, I don’t want ’em and I don’t want you. Bye! D’you know how many women and men try to holla at me every day? Shit, look at me. Just on my floor I got six or seven people lined up for a shot at me. You think a fine muthafucka like me can’t do no better than a bitch who old enough to be my momma?”

      Tuesday didn’t feed. She understood that it was just Shaun’s youth and immaturity giving vent to her pain. Tuesday didn’t even bother to pick up the earrings. She stepped over them on her way out of the bedroom.

      “Maybe I should go see HR in the morning. Tell ’em that the chief executive officer came on to me in the gym, told me that if I didn’t go out with her, I’d lose my job. What if I did that?”

      Tuesday stopped and threatened her with a look.

      While the company had no official policy against employees dating, her and Shaun’s relationship was inappropriate, which was why they took great care to play it low-key at work. Outside of Tuesday’s marriage, their respective ranks within the company did violate the unwritten rules of the corporate caste system. If a low-level drone from the accounting department went to human resources and claimed that the owner’s wife and CEO used her position as leverage, it could cause a scandal. Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein’s accusers had opened the floodgates, only to be pushed wider by the #metoo movement. Powerful people making unwanted sexual advances against their subordinates had embroiled many celebrities and had recently become the media vultures’ favorite carrion.

      “Going to HR wouldn’t be the smartest thing you did,” said Tuesday. “My family doesn’t like unwanted attention, and you’ll be surprised how far we’ll go to keep our names out of the press.”

      Tuesday saw in Shaun’s face that the message was received. She turned and continued her exit.

      “Wait.” Shaun ran down the hall after her.

      Tuesday was in the living room a few feet from the door when Shaun came and wrapped her up from behind. Shaun was a big girl and Tuesday was too old to be fighting. There was a Heckler in her bag; her alias Tabitha King had a license to carry in the state of California. She liked Shaun, but if she tried to go Fatal Attraction, Tuesday wasn’t above shooting this bitch.

      “Please, baby, please. Just listen to me.”

      She spun Tuesday to face her. Shaun needed all her beauty and the sincerity in those sparkling brown eyes to make her final plea. “Tabitha, that nigga will never love you as much as I do. NEVER.”

      Tuesday stared back at her with eyes that were hard and gray. All the green had vanished from them.

      “And I will never love you as much as I love HIM.”

      Shaun stumbled backwards, holding her chest as if the words were a gun blast. Her face contorted, her lips quivered.

      Tuesday saw the buckling of the emotional dam and could pinpoint the exact second when Shaun’s heart had broken. Tears spilled in a steady stream. She ran to the couch, flopped down hard, and began to bawl like a child.

      Everything Tuesday had in her wanted to go and console her friend but she couldn’t. This was always going to end ugly, and Tuesday knew it even if the youngster didn’t. She left that cheap bungalow in West Hollywood. Tuesday pulled the door closed to the sound of Shaun calling her a thousand different kinds of bitch.

      Chapter Two

      By the time Tuesday made it home, dusk had descended and the landscape lighting bathed the limestone facade of the big Grecian mansion in a luminous white. The portico over the front entrance was supported by huge columns with decorative acanthus capitals. Out front, statues of Aphrodite and Athena stood post on either side of a wide, reflecting pond where a fountain sprayed water jets into the air that resembled arcs of gold coins when dazzled by the moonlight. Tuesday often thought that their house looked like something that should sit atop Mount Olympus rather than be a home for ordinary mortals.

      She parked her white SLS AMG Benz beneath the portico behind Marcus’s black G Wagon SUV and the two-tone Rolls Royce Wraith they shared. The rest of their toys were kept in the attached garage. She sighed when she saw her stepfather’s Bentley Mulsanne, only because she had hoped to avoid him until tomorrow.

      Tuesday killed the engine but didn’t get out. She wasn’t quite ready to face her family. For a second she just sat there behind the wheel of her two-hundred-thousand-dollar car, looking out over the grounds of her thirty-million-dollar estate.

      Life was good. In fact, life was so damned good that it was easy to forget how hard things used to be. Just three years ago, Tuesday would spend months plotting a lick that might only net her twelve grand when now she could easily spend ten times that in a single trip to the Hermes store. She had forgotten about those lonely nights in her one-room condo, eating microwave dinners with only her cat for company: no family, no man, and so horny that she was going through fresh batteries every few days. She promised herself that she would never take Marcus and the girls for granted, but that was exactly what she had done. That was why she had to cut Shaun loose.

      Tuesday never hid the fact that she was bisexual; she and Marcus had even tag-teamed a few thots. Those times had been just for fun but Tuesday broke the rules when it came to Shaun. First, she had kept her a secret, and second, she had gotten emotionally attached. She knew it was no excuse, but the past few months had produced a change in her husband. He was more reclusive, opting to work from his home office rather than be at Abel. Marcus had never kept many friends but he was being less social with the few people in his inner circle.

      While he was physically more available to Tuesday and the girls, spending lots of time with them, mentally he still seemed to be elsewhere. Even when he was laughing and playing tickle-monster with Tanisha, there would flash a far-off look in his eyes that gave Tuesday concern.

      Their sex had even СКАЧАТЬ