Candy Licker by Noire Page B

a condo in La Brea, and I chilled and laid low there while he handled his West Coast business with them same Italians who had almost killed me. Every morning he brought me doughnuts or scrambled me some eggs, then had one of his boys drop me off at the hospital where I stayed next to Caramel's bed until late at night. He didn't try to sex me once. In fact, he didn't even stay in the same room with me. He said I needed time to heal and he didn't want to mess with that.
    I looked ten times worse than my sister did and couldn't sit down without a pillow, and when the cop who was guarding her saw all my bruises he called his sergeant and blabbed his damn mouth. The cops were back in my face in less than an hour. They wanted to know who kicked my ass, where I was living, and if I would come down to the station and look at some mug shots.
    You know what I told them. I was in the wrong place at thewrong time and got jumped by a gang of bitches who were banging. They stole me from behind, so I never saw their faces. Mug shots? Like I said, I never saw who hit me so there wasn't no need in wasting their time.
    Caramel's doctors said her condition was stable. She'd gotten away with just a deep graze, and they said the only thing she might suffer was some short-term memory loss. She'd told them she didn't even remember getting shot, and she was mad at me 'cause the whole thing had gone down in the first place. She was gonna be discharged from the hospital in a few days, but I didn't have anywhere to take her when she was released. Going back to my place was totally out, and Mama's place was still a crime scene.
    Hurricane was pressed to get back to Harlem to meet with some producers for an upcoming video shoot, and he said I had to roll out with him. “You heard what the man said, Candy. I gotta keep you close, girl. If they find out you walking with no protection, they'll kill you.”
    The only way he could get me to agree to leave my sister was to hire a nurse to fly back to New York with Caramel as soon as she was discharged and cleared by the doctor.
    “Don't stress nothing,” he told me. “Your sister can stay with us. We got plenty of room where I rest.”
    I hated to leave Caramel alone, even for a few days, but she seemed to understand what was up and I really didn't have no other choice. It was either do things the way Hurricane said or die a hardhead's death.
    I did what I had to do.

    T he next morning we caught a flight back to New York. Hurricane had a white Jaguar waiting at the airport that was driven by some guy Vonnie was fucking named Quadir. The whip was phat as hell, and any other time I would have been memorizing every detail so I could brag on it to Dom, but so much had happened over the last two weeks that I couldn't relax enough to enjoy it at all. The only thing that mattered to me was that in a few days my baby sister would be coming back to Harlem to live large with Hurricane and me.
    Even though my short-term problems—like Caramel, a crib, and some pocket change—had been solved, all kinds of other issues were running through my head as we drove through Queens and out to Long Island. It was a relief to be safe from the Gabrianos, and I wanted to prove to Hurricane that his decision to snatch me and Caramel out of L.A. was the right one. We'd talked on the airplane and he told me how Vonnie had run my whole situation down to him.
    “It's fucked up what happened to your people,” he said. I was looking out the window and thinking that out of all the trips I'd taken as a mule, this was my first time traveling in first class. Hurricane was drinking his ass off and had them ditzy little flight attendants running back and forth and getting him ice, crackers, you name it.
    “But that's how it goes in this hustle,” he was saying. “You was a little girl playing stupid games with a lot of big boys, Candy. That was a lot of money your mother tried to hustle off. You lucky Nicky's my nuccah and I got to him