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

off. “Look, baby, I’m just finding out about this too. I’m just as surprised as you are. I came in the room earlier to tell you as soon as I got off the phone with my mom, but you looked like you were having a pretty intense conversation with your own mother. And then the police came. After Slim left we came up here. You went and got Desi ready for bed. And I took a shower.” Des threw his hands up. “This is the first time I’ve really gotten a chance to talk to you.”
    “The story is not quite making sense to me. I understand me and your mother don’t always see eye to eye, but why now?” she wanted to know. “Why tell us now? Why not eighteen years ago? Why today?”
    “The girl’s boyfriend got himself shot up and her mother thinks she may be in some type of trouble and someone might be trying to kill her.”
    “Well, damn, ain’t that a chip off of the old block? Like father, like daughter, huh?” she quipped.
    Des ignored the sarcasm coming from his wife. “Her mother thought it would be wise to get her out of town for a while,” Des explained. “Baby,” he reached out and took her hand in his, “I really don’t know if this kid is mine or not. That’s the truth.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But she could be.”
    “What’s her name?” Yarni asked, thinking how could this be happening?
    “Desember,” he said. “That’s what my mother told me. But there’s something else.”
    “How can you possibly top that?” Yarni asked.
    “My mom is with her now and is driving her back here. She will be arriving in town tomorrow, and I said that she could stay here with us.”
    With her hands on her hips, Yarni shook her head. “Well, got-damn, when it rains it pours. I just hope your ass took out flood insurance.”

What’s Done in the Dark … Will Come to the Light
     
    The recent declining state of the economy pounded the stock market almost into submission while the housing market was buckling at the knees. And employment was harder to come by than the highly coveted seats at President Barack Obama’s inauguration in Washington, D.C. The prices at the local supermarket were through the roof.
    Strange as it may seem, through all of this financial uncertainty, the murder rate in Richmond, Virginia—a city that was once known for one of the highest homicide rates in the country—had also plummeted, to a fraction of the reckless and lawless bloodbath numbers it had a history of putting up in the nineties. In fact crime as a whole was down. It was enough to make some people wonder: if the crime rate was declining inthe city, then how come the rate of people going to prison was at an all-time high? The state of Virginia, in conjunction with the U.S. government, spent upward of three hundred million dollars on a brand-new state-of-the-art Federal court facility amongst blighted storefronts and struggling businesses on Broad Street in downtown Richmond. If the deficit had swelled to astronomical figures, trying to revitalize the economy, why would this type of money be wasted on such a grand piece of architecture that wasn’t needed? It may not pay to break the law, but it’s a known fact that crime paid, and it paid well. And as long as they were building courts, Yarnise Pitman-Taylor, Esquire, would always have employment.
    All hell had broken loose in Yarni’s personal life, and while a part of her wished she could crawl under a rock and hide, that wasn’t the reality of the superwoman that she was.
    Des had promised his congregation that he’d make everything all right, that he’d make them whole again, which meant he’d replace whatever was stolen. If Des was nothing else, he was a man of his word. The church had an insurance policy, but there was no telling what it would and wouldn’t pay. Whatever the case, Yarni knew this incident could possibly send them into the poor house, but she wasn’t going to let that happen if she could help it. So she was ready to pitch in by