Heartbreak of a Hustler's Wife: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

up the stairs. In the master bathroom, hot water pelted Des from all directions in the shower. The multiple-positioned shower sprayers were earning the minthe’d put out to have them installed. He soaped up his hand and slid it across the large bruise on the left side of his chest from the impact of the bullet that unsuccessfully tried to take him out a few days ago. He silently thanked God.
    Yarni was sitting crossed-legged on the bed, netbook on her lap, when Des walked into the bedroom still dripping from his shower. She was wearing a black negligee that rode high up her well-toned thighs. Desi was asleep in the nursery.
    “Don’t that thing burn your legs sitting on you like that?” he asked.
    Yarni didn’t reply. She was too focused on the information on the screen. “Huh? What? Did you say something, honey?” she asked, realizing that Des was not only out of the shower and standing in their bedroom, but that he’d just asked her a question.
    “I said, doesn’t that thing burn your legs?” He nodded toward the netbook.
    “Oh, no, it’s fine. That is the least of my worries right now.”
    Yarni hadn’t yet shared her mother’s bad news with Des. “Gloria has breast cancer. She just told me about it this evening.” Yarni’s eyes were still glued to the 9-inch LED screen while she spoke. She’d been Googling information on the disease.
    Des, who was putting on his pajamas, paused in mid-action. “Damn, baby, I’m so sorry to hear that. I—is there anything I can do?” Des felt horrible for not noticing that something was wrong. He was so caught up in his own mayhem, he hadn’t paid Yarni much attention since he came in.
    “Not right now. I asked her to come back to Virginia, maybe move in with us, to be closer to family.”
    “Good idea,” Des agreed. He loved his mother-in-law; she was the one that had come up with the information that was ultimately used as leverage to get him out of prison.
    “Yeah, but she turned me down.” When Yarni looked at Des, she saw something else on his face besides concern for her mother. “What’s on your mind? Is there something I need to know?”
    “You mean besides getting shot and the church being robbed?” he joked.
    The slight hesitation and uneasy glimmer in his eyes confirmed Yarni’s suspicion.
    “Okay, baby, what is it? Spit it out and get it over with.” She looked at him skeptically.
    “My mother told me that I may have another child.”
    “Come again?” Yarni put her hand up to her ear. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
    “Look, I am just as surprised as you are.”
    “I’ve never known you to be stupid, Des, so don’t play now. The only way you may have a child, as you put it, is if you’ve been putting your dick where it doesn’t belong. Or you somehow got the millennium Virgin Mary pregnant.” Yarni was floored. Not in a million years would she have expected this.
    “It’s not like it sounds, baby.”
    “Then how is it, Des?” she mocked. “Just tell me exactly how it is.”
    He began to tell her everything he knew. “The child is eighteen years old. I kicked it with her mother in North Carolina before I ever met you. I never even knew this kid existed until this evening.”
    Yarni sat outdone as he told her how the child’s mother must have kept contact with his mother, Joyce, but made her promise not to tell him about the possibility that he was a father—until now.
    Yarni interrupted Des’s explanation as if she was making an objection in court. “And your mother just kept this secret to herself?” Before he could respond, Yarni further dissected his excuse. “When has Joyce ever held her mouth closed long enough to keep a secret? When, Des? Really, when has she ever kept a secret? Tell me one time?” She put her finger up. “Oh, but I keep forgetting that when it comes to her family, the secrets are endless. As a matter of fact, that shit is like the Mafia.”
    Yarni was getting so worked up Des cut her