Page 7 of Read the Room

Sully ticked his head downward before Joey turned his body toward me. “I’ve been watching Emmitt closely because I felt like he was moving funny. I didn’t want to come to y’all until I confirmed that I was right. Well, I’ll lead with what I feel is themost detrimental. I found out that he’s working with Jeremy. He’s actually Jeremy’s cousin.”

My jaw tightened as my orbs floated over to Sully. He had the same look of death in his eyes.

“What is the less detrimental shit?”

He huffed. “He’s stealing product off the top. The reason no one noticed was because he’s stepping on the product.”

“How did you find that shit out? He couldn’t have been doing that shit in our warehouse. We would have seen that shit on the cameras,” I said with a tight jaw and a pushed back neck. This shit couldn’t be life.The fuck?

“From what I surveilled, he picks the product up from the girls when it comes in and takes that shit off the top. It doesn’t seem like they know, though.” He took a pause for the information to sink in. “Um, I broke in his shit and put a camera in there so I could see and hear what he was up to.”

This was why I fucked with him. He was only twenty-one years old with more analytical skills and common sense than men two times his age. I made sure Joey graduated high school and he was enrolled in college. I paid his mother’s bills so she would have no worries when it came to taking care of his younger sisters. Joey told us that he watched this fraud nigga Emmitt take keys out of our products then half it. He kept half then stepped on the other half to make up for the rest.

I tilted my head. “How the hell did we miss that this nigga is Jeremy’s cousin?” That shit blew me. This nigga Emmitt had been with the org for like six years. This was a big miss.

Sully sat back. “Clearly, that nigga has got to go. I don’t care to have a conversation at all about it. He can chop it up with the devil on that shit.”

“Bet. I agree. Well, what’s the plan? I wanna make this shake sooner than later.”

Neither I nor Sully were ones for long, drawn-out conversations about why someone betrayed us. Why would I care why you betrayed me? The bottom line was that you did that shit.

A devious smile broke through Joey’s expression. “Well, you know he damn near lives in Glitter Girls. His favorite girl is GeGi.”

I saw where he was going with this. Glitter Girls was a strip club that was owned by me and Sully, and GeGi was our top money maker. She also was one of Alexi’s friends. She wasn’t your typical stripper, though. Her ass was a good girl who had a trash situation happen to her and needed to take care of her two children. Her youngest son was neurodivergent. I knew that, for the right price, she would jump on some shit.

A Little Time Later…

A mama wastired as hell. I worked at Louie’s Sandwich Shop, which you would think was your run-of-the-mill eatery. Nope. It was the place to be. It was the hood hangout, which was a fortunate but unfortunate situation. The fortunate part was that I made amazing tips from simply making sandwiches. I was a beautiful girl who had an innocent aura. Niggas loved the geeky looking bitches.

I made bomb sandwiches that were on and off the menu. I’d worked here for almost three years. It was known in the hood that there was a secret menu of sandwiches that I made. Louie told me that the secret menu items brought in the most money.The unfortunate part was that some of the customers who came into the shop were ghetto as hell. There was a big difference between ghetto and hood. I could handle hood because I had a twinge of it in me but ghetto, I couldn’t deal with.

The dudes that came in were more hood than anything. If you were in search of hood niggas, drug dealers, scammers, or robbing niggas, then Louie’s was where you would find them at any given time. Because those were the types of men that frequented the shop, it drew the ghetto birds here. It would be one thing if they came, ordered a sandwich, then left. Nope. These bitches came in here like it was a coffee shop and posted up. It annoyed me to no end.

There was a gang of females that came in here that thought they were better than me because I worked here. Yes, they had more money than me. To me, that didn’t mean anything because I knew that I was a better person than them. I counted that as my riches. It was the dudes that gave me the big tips like one hundred dollars for making a twelve-dollar sandwich.

“I know this sandwich is about to hit. You make the best fucking sandwiches, ma,” Tyrus said as I wrapped the sandwich that I’d just finished making for him. He took a wad of cash out of his pocket when we got to the register.

I gave him my beautiful straight, pearly-white smile. “Thank you, Tyrus. Thank you again for letting us cater for your daughter’s sleepover. I hope she liked the cake pops I made for her.”

“Liked them? She loved those shits. I appreciate you doing that to make her feel special. My baby mama really loved them and your thoughtfulness to suggest the party. That was literally the first time that she’s smiled at me in almost a year.”

We both tittered. Tyrus’s daughter recently started her menstruation, and he almost lost his mind when he got the call. He was in the shop and wanted to know what to do tohelp her with all of this. The ghetto birds had suggestions like buy her a bag, shoes, or clothes. Those were superficial ideas. I suggested that he talk to her mother about throwing a sleepover with her friends and the mothers. The mothers would teach their daughters about topics surrounding menstruation such as cramping relief, proper hygiene, and most importantly, what this meant as far as pregnancy.

At the time that I suggested the party, I told him that we catered, which was crazy because we didn’t offer catering. His daughter had a favorite sandwich that I made for her, so the offer felt right. Since the catering was a success, we added it to an option on our services list. Louie loved that I always found new ways to bring money into the shop.

After Tyrus left, we got busy. There was another girl working, but she mainly ran the register. When the door dinged to let us know that someone had entered, I lifted my head.These bitches.In walked the mean girl crew. The mean girl crew was a group of five girls who thought they were God’s gift to Jesus.

The group technically had six members, but GeGi wasn’t mean like them. I often wondered why she hung with them. When our eyes connected, she threw me a warm smile.

“Excuse me, can we get some service,” the lead mean girl, ghetto rat Alexi said.

I couldn’t stand this ho. She was literally a waste of air. I took a breath before I walked toward them.

“Hey, ladies, what can I get for y’all today?” I put on my fake smile.

Alexi rolled her eyes. “I hope you don’t have that attitude when you’re behind the bar at my man’s club. Trust me, I’ll have your dorky ass fired.”

I never understood why the term dorky was an insult. I had a second job at this popular strip club, Glitter Girls, as a bartender. I only worked there for three to four nights a week. Alexi’s manAK owned the club. He was a big deal in the streets, although I’d never met him. He never came into his establishment, but the other owner Sully did. Alexi threatened to have me fired every time she came in here. My dorky ass made great tips there because of my innocent, quiet demeanor with a sexy twist.

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