by SLMN
He threw up a second time, over the arm of the chair this time, chunks all over the floor, then begin to cry tears of rage as he heard Cash say, “Man, O can’t fuck that bitch like me.”
Othello’s blood felt like lava flowing through his veins.
He had heard enough.
He hit END and staggered down the hall.
When he came across the mirror and saw his own reflection, he shattered it with one blow, then eyed himself through the broken glass.
Mac smiled to himself.
He knew that somewhere in the city, Othello was in a murderous rage. He figured it wouldn’t be long before he came over to Cash’s house to confront him. It was still too soon for that. Mac knew he had to head him off.
He handed Cash the blunt and stood up.
“Yo brah, I gotta go handle something.”
Cash stood and embraced him. “Be safe.”
“You, too.”
Once he got into his car, he called Othello. It rang several times before it went to voicemail.
“I hope that dumb ass nigga ain’t blow his own brains out,” Mac chuckled to himself, then called again. This time, Othello answered.
“I need to see you,” Othello seethed.
Mac acted like he didn’t know what was going on.
“What’s wrong, big brah? You sound like you upset.”
Mac had to hold back his laughter.
“Just get your ass over here now!”
Click!
“I got him.”
When Mac got to Othello’s apartment, he hadn’t even stepped all the way through the door good before Othello grabbed him by the collar and slammed so hard against the wall, the damned plaster cracked like some cartoon, leaving his imprint there forever.
“Yo, O!” Mac bleated.
His fear was genuine.
He had unleashed a beast that he couldn’t control.
He could only hope he made it out of there in one piece.
“You think this is a game? Do you? I’ll kill both of you!” Othello thundered, his eyes flashing with the lightning of intensity.
Mac’s eyes were as big as plates.
“What the hell are you talkin’ about, O? What the fuck I do?”
Nose to nose, Othello’s breath felt like the flame of the dragon on Mac’s face.
“I heard you and Cash talking about Mona, talking about fuckin’ Mona like she was some fuckin’ whore in the street!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You heard what?” Mac asked, feigning bewilderment, seeing that he was slowly reigning control of the situation, because Othello’s eyes showed confusion.
“Tell me the truth, Mac, was he talking about Mona?”
“I musta butt-dialed you by mistake, O.”
“ANSWER ME!” Othello barked.
Mac dropped his head then slowly nodded.
“I’m sorry, O… yeah… yeah, he was talking about Mona, but nigga, I wasn’t laughin’, not at you.”
Othello roared with such rage, Mac thought he was going to rip open his own chest.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Mac added.
Othello looked at him, ready to tear his nut sack off.
“When I was over there, I found something I think belonged to Mona. A scarf.” Mac said, as if it were a question.
Othello glared at him. “A… silk scarf? Blue?”
Mac nodded.
Othello sat on the couch and covered his face. “I’m done.” His tone was so broken, Mac almost felt sorry for playing with his emotions. “I want to see the scarf. If it’s hers, Cash is dead,” Othello vowed.
Mac looked at him solemnly, but inside, he was gloating with victory. “Brah, we boys. We came up together.”
“Tell him that!” Othello bassed. “He violated, Mac, and I can’t live with that.”
Mac shook his head.
“Okay, if it’s hers… I understand. But wait until he’s not there. We don’t need the heat right now. I’ll take him on my rounds and while he’s gone, you go over there,” Mac suggested.
Othello nodded his head, defeated.
He got up and looked Mac in the eyes.
“I won’t forget this, brah. Now, I need to be alone.”
Where’s the scarf?
I got it here.
Meet me at Cash’s place, asap.
He knows?
He knows.
Milk answered the door, naked.
She looked like temptation made flesh, but he wasn’t biting.
“Goddamn ma, do you ever put clothes on?” Mac chuckled. Even so, he eyed her luscious body.
“Why? It bothering you?” Milk smirked.
“Hell no,” Mac replied, watching her ass jiggle as she walked away. He was a good liar, but not that good.
She sat on the couch.
“Cash is in the bathroom taking a shower. He said to tell you he’ll be ready in a minute. Smoke something,” Milk suggested.
“I ain’t bring no piff, yo.”
Milk shrugged and went back to watching her movie.
“Let me see if this nigga still got my shit,” Mac remarked offhandedly. He got up and went through to Cash’s bedroom. As soon as he was out of sight he pulled out Mona’s scarf and looked around for somewhere to plant it, trying to work out just where it might fall if…
He glanced at the closet. No, out in the open, obvious. He decided to drop it on the floor and half kick it under the bed, just enough that a nigga might miss it, but plenty easy to find if you came in in a rage looking for it.
Perfect.
It was barely hidden before Cash came out of the bathroom, wearing only a towel.
“Goddamn nigga, put some fuckin clothes on,” Mac growled.
Cash chuckled. “Muhfucka, what you doin’ in my bedroom? You pretty an’ all, but I ain’t doin’ ya.”
“Lookin for my fuckin’ watch.”
Cash took the chrome Tissot watch off the dresser and tossed it to Mac. “Now get the fuck out. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
Mac clipped the watch around his wrist and walked out, smiling to himself.
A half hour later, Othello arrived at Cash’s place.
Milk came up the stairs a few steps behind him, key in hand. Her face lit up seeing Othello on landing.
“Long time no see, stranger,” she remarked, giving him a big hug that he returned absentmindedly. She scrunched up her face and asked, “You okay, O?”
“Yeah… I’m good. How you been?” Othello responded.
“Bored,” Milk snickered, “You ain’t got nobody for us to kill?”
“I may have, ma, and to be frank, you might not have to go far,” Othello replied sinisterly.
The comment struck her as strange, but she let it go, opening the door.
She called out Cash’s name as he followed her inside.
The apartment was empty. It looked like Hurricane Floyd had torn through the lounge. There were pizza boxes and all sorts of other shit littering up the place.
“Needs a woman’s touch,” Othello joked, looking around the place.
Milk sat down on the couch and hit the remote to turn the TV on.
“So, wanna wait with me?”
She acted like she was completely at home, but then that was how they treated each other’s cribs, places to lay their heads or lay low, all friends together.
“Naw, it’s good. Just picking up my shit.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Othello went in the back and headed straight to the bedroom.
Inside, he scoped the place out. He pictured Mona on the bed, naked and wet, bent over and taking every inch of Cash’s dick.
Othello’s blood boiled as he looked around, lifting up the pillows, kicking away clothes scattered across the floor, even lifted up the mattress.
And that was when he saw it and a little piece of him died.
It was the wink of blue that caught his eye and tore his heart straight out of his chest.
“Why ba
by?” he groaned, as he bent to retrieve the scarf.
He held it close to his nose.
He could smell her on it, her favorite perfume and her, present in it, and he raged at the symbol of infidelity it had become.
“I gave you my heart, and you tore it into pieces like paper. You went against the grain for a moment in time, when I was promising you forever,” Othello shook his head, dismally, then thought of Cash and his anger began to take on hellish depth. “And my friend, my boy, my partner… All my life I’ve had to worry about your shadow, how women in my life always ended up with you and I never protested because it was money over bitches. But my wife? Now, you will feel what I feel, but in a very different way,” Othello swore, not exactly a blood oath, but it was a promise to the god of death.
He lovingly kissed the scarf, then let it fall to the floor and left it where it lay.
7
They called the place the Hanging Gardens of Bali. It was like nothing else on earth. Adonis stood on the terrace. He was on the edge, looking out over the lush tropical forest as the valley below cut a deep V through the world. With nothing but the moon, the world out there was an inky black nothingness, with the glitter of faraway stars pockmarking the sky like raindrops on a universal window. The breeze blew across his face, and with every sensation, he felt Devante near him, haunting him, reaching out to him.
“Please forgive me as I have forgiven you,” he whispered into the wind.
There were two pools beneath him, one, an infinity one that seemed to hang out over the cliff, a drop of hundreds of feet below him. The place had everything two lovers could ever want, the privacy of the cabanas, the sensuality of the massage tables and the essential oils. He felt like the only person in the world, even though there were maybe forty other cabins hidden away within the trees. The illusion of solitude was perfect.
He’d paid a lot of money to have their table made up in the middle of the pool, lights lining the way, the water splashing over the side all the way down to nothing in a fine spray. It was about the most romantic thing he could imagine. The staff had even draped white curtains around the table to give some privacy from certain angles.
But he wasn’t hungry.
Bianca stepped out into the night air next to him.
“Oh god, just look at it,” she breathed.
“Breathtaking,” he agreed.
They had flown in a few hours before, after a luxurious wedding in Jamaica. The Davenports and The Hamlets, two powerful families, joined as one. It was a proud moment for Joe and Wingate, the patriarch of the Davenport clan. Everyone was happy, none happier than Bianca, but Adonis had been distant during the whole ceremony. Troubled.
Bianca wrapped her arms around his midsection.
“Come to bed, baby, we have a marriage to consummate,” she cooed playfully.
Adonis sipped his drink.
“Later,” he replied brusquely.
Bianca looked at him.
“What’s wrong, baby? Are you okay?”
It took Adonis a moment before he answered, “You… have no idea.”
She guided his face to her.
“Try me, love. That’s what I’m here for. We’re a team, right? You and me against the world.”
Adonis gazed into her eyes, and for the first time felt genuinely sorry for her.
She was in love, but he couldn’t love her back. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to, or hadn’t tried, it just wasn’t in him, and out here in what should have been paradise he felt guilty as sin for leading her on.
He turned his body to her, and said, “Bianca. We need to talk.”
His tone disturbed her, but she managed to keep her voice steady for the one word response, “Okay.”
Adonis took a deep breath.
“I… I don’t love you. Not like you love me, I…want to. Honestly, I do. But I’m not the kind of man you need me to be. This… you know… it was about family… our families wanted this union… It was about consolidating power for them, not love. There is no romance in Joe Hamlet’s soul, believe me…. anyway… I won’t walk away. I won’t stop you. We can make some sort of… arrangement,” Adonis concluded, hating the way his voice sounded. It was like he was negotiating some backstreet deal.
Bianca fought back tears, but she was stronger than Adonis realized.
“Arrangement?”
“To make it easier on you. On us. You can be with who you want, as long as you are discreet. That is all I ask.”
Bianca laughed in his face.
“You don’t have the right to ask anything! Who the hell do you think you are, Adonis Hamlet? You tell me you don’t love me, you slap me in the face on the first night of the rest of our lives, in this place, with such a cold ass speech about power and arrangements, like they are fucking life, then you have the nerve to tell me how and when I can fuck someone else? You can fuck off and die!” She blazed.
Adonis nodded, taking it all in stride. “I understand your frustration-”
“You have no idea what frustration feels like, you motherfucker,” she said that last word very slowly, “you spineless cunt of a motherfucker. What if I had a dick? Would you fuck me then?”
Adonis looked at her strangely.
“You think I don’t know what’s going on? I’m not fucking blind. I know why you don’t love me, you fag.” Bianca spazzed.
Adonis couldn’t believe what she just said.
Bianca was in her feelings and didn’t care how it came out.
She had been stupid enough to hope that Adonis had married for love.
Sure she knew about his secret, but she still felt like they had a future.
“What did you say?” Adonis seethed, his fist balling involuntarily, itching to strike her down.
“You heard me. You are a fag. I know all about your sick, twisted relationship with that- that… thing!”
Adonis felt the rising of an inner tide of raw scarlet rage that he had never felt before. It was red hot lava bubbling up from the very depths of himself. He struggled to control it, fought it with all he had.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he replied, his voice so low, she damn near couldn’t hear him over the gentle susurration of wind through the trees below.
He turned to leave the terrace, but Bianca grabbed his arm.
“Don’t walk away from me! I’m not finished! I’ve known about you from day one, but I was still willing to love you, Adonis. So you don’t get to lay down the rules of any arrangement, it’s my turn now, you give me what I want.”
“What do you want, Bianca?”
“A child. You will give me a son, I don’t give a fuck about how many cocks you suck as long as I get my boy. That is what I want.” She cried, the tears staining her checks as red as his rage.
“I’m going to bed.”
Bianca couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“I took him from you, you miserable fucking shit,” she seethed, her true feelings and her crime out in the open, and the moment those words left her lips, she regretted them.
Adonis stopped in his tracks, then turned back to her.
“What did you just say to me, woman?”
Bianca just looked at him, trembling.
“You heard me.”
“Say it again!” He roared.
“You are so fucking stupid, Adonis. Devante didn’t betray you. I took him from you, because he took you from me! It was me. I took those pictures!” She screamed, her heart heaving with every breath.
Adonis stepped back out onto the terrace.
“What are you saying? How could you?”
Bianca smiled at him through her tears, chin up, triumphantly. “Your jacket.”
“Jacket?”
“You are so fucking blind… you didn’t ever think that every time those photos were taken of you fucking your fag you’d been wearing your favorite burgundy jacket? Yeah. Every time. I fitted it with a tiny camera. I took hundreds of pictures, hundreds. You were doing the most
vile shit… not just his cock up your ass… I have photos of his fist up there making you cum like a fucking fountain. I have photos of him sticking a metal spike down the center of your cock, then sucking you off with that shit in there and you cumming around it… sick, twisted shit. I’ve got shots of him pissing in your mouth like a pig. You on your knees… pathetic. You ain’t no head of the family, you’re the bitch. So you will give me what I want. You’ll fuck me enough times to put a baby in my belly and then you will never touch me again,” she spat, her voice full of pain, the rage a mask.
He couldn’t believe what she was saying. How she was taunting him with the fact that he had murdered the only person he could ever have loved, and Devante hadn’t betrayed him. He was the betrayer.
It burned him up.
Bianca had manipulated him into murdering his own heart. The thing in his chest didn’t mean a goddamn thing anymore.
He looked at her smug expression.
And he hated her.
In her mind, she was untouchable, the golden child. Their marriage was too important to jeopardize. She was his beard. There was nothing he would or could do to hurt her, so she gloated over his powerlessness.
But she had underestimated how easy it was to kill a second time; the first was hard, it was a moral and ethical dilemma, it posed questions about who you were and what you believed, and even had you wondering about heaven and hell, but the second was easy.
Adonis grabbed her by her throat, squeezing the bones, wanting to feel them snap as he choked the life out of her gorgeous body.
Needing to look her in the eye, to know she was helpless. Desperate.
She clawed at his hand, slapping and kicking, but he was so much stronger. Tears cascaded down her face as she fought air, gasping out two words, “Your mother! Your… mother,” she tried to say.
Adonis’ nails sank deeper. He could feel the U-shape of the hyoid bone pressing against his palm and knew that all it would take was one clench to break it and rob her of a next breath, but he couldn’t do it.
Instead, he let go.
She collapsed to the wooden deck.