Lust & Loyalty

by Shelly Ellis

  He lowered his eyes. Shame marred his face.

  “Answer me!”

  She watched as he reached for the door handle and closed his office door.

  “Have a seat,” he said, walking toward his desk and gesturing to the chair facing it.

  “I’d rather not.” She crossed her arms obstinately over her chest. “Whatever you have to say to me can be said just as easily while I’m standing.”

  “Fine,” he muttered. “Have it your way.” He sighed and gripped the back of his leather swivel chair. “Look, C. J., I’m not . . . I’m not asking you to agree with what I did, but—”

  “You’re damn right I don’t agree with what you did! I thought you were better than this!” she yelled, jabbing her finger at him. “I thought you were better than them! But you’re just like Victor! You’re just like my dad!”

  “No, I’m not!” he boomed, then took another deep breath, bringing himself back under control. “I can acknowledge when I make a mistake, C. J. Because that’s what it was: a mistake. That . . . that thing that happened with Rochelle and me happened during a period of spiritual weakness.” He cleared his throat. “At the time, Monica and I were fighting. We were arguing all the time about what she wanted out of our relationship . . . how she wanted to get married. Rochelle was someone who I confided in, and she confided in me about . . . about your father. We sought . . . we sought solace in each other, and it led to something more. But it was brief. It only lasted for a week or two. I realized it was wrong and I ended it. I’d push it out of my memory if I could!”

  “But you can’t push it out of your memory, because now she has a baby—your baby.”

  “A baby that she swore was your father’s only weeks ago! That baby could be anybody’s,” he spat, making C. J. cringe.

  Seeing her reaction, he lowered his eyes again, looking embarrassed.

  “I just . . . I just mean that she’s slept with lots of people, lots of different men. She told me that she slept around a lot before she was saved, and I suspect she was still doing it after.” He gazed at C. J. again. “C. J., please don’t let this come between us. I told you, I made a mistake. And we all make mistakes, right? Did you ever consider that maybe I was so patient and forgiving of your sins because I wasn’t perfect, either? Remember when I told you that I never expected you to be Snow White and I didn’t need you to be? Remember when I told you I still loved you despite everything you told me you’ve done . . . despite you walking out on me? I still want to put a ring on your finger someday—if you’ll have me.”

  She slowly shook her head. “But what about Rochelle, Shaun? What about her daughter?”

  “What about them?” he asked impatiently, curling his lip in disgust.

  C. J. fell silent. Once again, she was struck speechless.

  He took another step toward her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Look,” he said, dropping his voice to a soothing tone, “I’m ashamed of what I did, but nothing between us has to change. My feelings for you are still the same, as well as my intentions toward you.” He inclined his head. “I still want to make you my wife. God’s ordained you for me, C. J.! One day I will have my own church and you will be my first lady. I made a mistake and I admitted it. But don’t let that taint your opinion of me. We’re moving forward. Don’t let this hold us back. Please?”

  Her shoulders and her heart sank. It would be so easy to agree to what Shaun was asking, to forget everything she knew and to pretend, like him, that Rochelle and her baby didn’t exist. They could do it. Even if Rochelle went public with her claims, no one would believe her. They would just think she was lying again. But C. J. knew if she did what Shaun was asking, she’d be proving her brother right. She would be a liar and pretender just like him.

  I don’t want to live my life that way, she thought, knowing what she had to do.

  “I’m sorry, Shaun, but I . . . I can’t.” She took a step away from him, removing his hand from her shoulder.

  “C. J.,” he called after her as she turned and walked out of his office and down the corridor.

  “C. J.!” he called again as she walked past the receptionist desk where her brother stood.

  “Hey, Court, I’m glad I ran into you. I need you to stop by my office later to discuss that breakfast you’re attending next week,” he said, but she didn’t respond.

  Instead she walked out the glass doors and to the parking lot. She pulled out her car keys and raised the remote to unlock the car door, prepared to make the long trek back to Virginia, knowing that she would probably never set foot here again.

  Chapter 22

  Dante

  “Mr. Turner?” Lindsey, the receptionist at the front desk squeaked as Dante shoved open the glass door of Nutter, McElroy & Ailey law offices. She squinted at him behind her lenses as he strode past her. “Mr. Turner, is . . . is that you?”

  He didn’t answer her but instead continued undeterred to his destination, feeling fury propel him through the front lobby and down the hallway.

  Dante knew he didn’t resemble the debonair lawyer Lindsey or any of the other law firm associates was used to seeing. He wasn’t wearing one of his expensive suits and had skipped getting one of his one-hundred-dollar haircuts. He instead looked like a vagrant who had just wandered into the law offices off the street to come beg for change.

  Dante wore his signature hoodie, which smelled of beer and an acrid musk thanks to the many days he had skipped washing it. His full beard and hair were scraggly and knotted. Dark circles were under his eyes from his lack of a good night’s sleep in months. But he didn’t care. The moment he had read the email from the firm’s partners notifying him that he was “no longer a member of the law firm due to his unexplained and extended absence,” he ran from his mother’s house and leapt into his car. He would have come there in his socks and his boxers if he had to, even though he knew he was probably risking his life by showing up here.

  Dante now reached the end of the hall and pushed the door open, catching Edgar McElroy and Steven Nutter by surprise. Steven hopped off the edge of Edgar’s desk. Edgar dropped the coffee cup he had been holding, splashing himself with scalding hot French roast, making him shout out in pain.

  “Dante? What . . . what are you doing here?” Steven stuttered, staring at the younger man in amazement.

  “You fucking fired me!” Dante exploded. “After all that I’ve done for this firm? After all the billable hours I’ve given you? After busting my ass for . . . for almost eight goddamn years, you fucking fired me?”

  Steven raised his hands. “Now, Dante, please calm down. You—”

  “No, I’m not going to fucking calm down! I got shot! I almost died and you fired me! Who the hell does that?”

  “You were absent for more than three months!” Edgar said, finally rising to his feet. He reached for the box of Kleenex on his desk and wiped feebly at the brown spot now marring his shirt. “We asked you to provide proof of your . . . your disability and you refused to do so.” He loudly cleared his throat and walked from behind his desk. “We—”

  “You want proof?” Dante said, raising the bottom of his hoodie, revealing his bare stomach where the scarring from his bullet wound still looked red and raw. “Here’s your fucking proof! Would you like to see the bullet, too?”

  “For God’s sake, Dante! Put your shirt down,” Steven said with a grimace as he turned away, covering his eyes. “There’s no need for that!”

  “We are sorry for what happened to you,” Edgar continued. “But we have several associates at this firm who have experienced their own mishaps and—”

  “Mishap?” Dante bellowed. “Did you really just call me getting shot a fucking mishap?”

  “—and losses,” Edgar continued, undeterred. “But they all checked in. They didn’t go missing in action. They let us know what was going on and returned to work in a timely fashion.” He pursed his wrinkled lips. “You know how competitive our field is, Dante. We need all of our associates
at the top of their game.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, but . . . we had no other choice. We had to let you go.”

  “B-but we’re providing you with a nice severance package,” Steven piped, “in light of your . . . your eight years of working with us.”

  Dante clenched his fists at his sides, feeling as if he might explode into a million pieces. He wanted to march across the room, grab Edgar’s stapler, and beat him and Steven to death with it. He wanted to shove both men through the office window and watch as their bodies sailed thirteen floors to the concrete walkway below. Instead, he forced himself to take a long, slow breath. He forced himself to smile.

  “Sure, I . . . I understand,” he said before walking across the room to Steven. He held out his hand for a shake. “I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, and I’m . . . I’m sorry you had to fire me, but I get that you had no choice.”

  Steven gazed at Dante’s hand cagily, like it might zap him with a charge if he touched it. Finally, he shook it. “Yes, we’re . . . we’re very sorry, too.”

  Dante then turned to Edgar with his hand also extended for a shake. “It was a pleasure working with you, Edgar.”

  Edgar didn’t hesitate. He raised his fat chin and shook Dante’s hand, giving it two firm pumps. “I’m sorry we had to let you go, too, son. But you know how it is. Lesson learned. I just hope there are no hard feelings.”

  Dante shook his head. “Of course not.” He walked back toward the office door, but paused in the doorway. “Oh, before I leave, there’s something I wanted to tell you, Edgar.”

  Edgar raised his brows. “What’s that?”

  “I fucked your wife—on several occasions . . . particularly that time that you were at that law conference in San Diego. We did it eight times that weekend.”

  Dante watched as Edgar’s face drained of all color. Steven’s mouth fell open in shock.

  “One night, she took a hit of ecstasy and got really into it. She sucked my dick until her jaw was sore, then told me to fuck her up the ass on the baby grand in your living room. She said it was the best sex she’s had in quite a while. Well, at least since your prostate surgery. She said you’ve had a hard time getting it up since then.” His smile broadened. “I just wanted you to know that. You guys have a good day now.”

  He then turned and strode into the hallway, leaving both men speechless.

  * * *

  Dante climbed into his Jaguar, slammed his door shut, and shoved his hand into his pocket to retrieve his painkillers, seeking the chemical solace that they offered. He shook three into his palm and then tossed them into his mouth like Tic-Tacs. He gulped them down without water, feeling them lodge in his throat as he swallowed. He then gazed into the bottle and saw that there were only a half dozen left. He would have to buy more. His doctor had already cut him off, rightly suspecting that he had developed an addiction to OxyContin. He had already moved on to another doctor, who had cut him off, too. Now he was going to one who was willing to write him a fake prescription, but at a steep price. Now that Dante was officially unemployed, he didn’t know how long he would be able to keep paying for his drug habit, to keep paying for a condo that he was still too scared to go home to.

  He put his key into the ignition, turned on the engine, and pulled off with the screeching of tires.

  Dante realized belatedly that he probably shouldn’t have told Edgar about the affair he had been having with the older man’s wife, especially not in such graphic detail. Talk about burning bridges! But he had been furious at how smug Edgar had been, how he had placed all the blame on Dante for what had happened. It wasn’t his fault that he had been shot. It wasn’t his fault that Renee was still trying to kill him and the police still hadn’t arrested her. He didn’t care that he had burned any metaphorical bridges. He was mad enough to set the whole damn village on fire!

  Dante’s hands tightened around the steering wheel as he drove. He fought to get his rage under control so that he didn’t start randomly rear-ending the cars in front of him. He drew to a stop at the stoplight and told himself to count to ten yet again. He then glanced out his side window. When he saw who was parked along the curb a few feet away, he blinked.

  Dante watched as his brother Evan strode along the sidewalk toward his Lincoln Town Car, looking every bit like the refined millionaire that he was.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” Dante wondered aloud. And then he realized that he wasn’t too far from Chesterton—only a few miles away, in fact. It wasn’t too shocking to see Evan there, but still . . . Dante’s mouth still hung open limply.

  The driver held the rear door open for Evan and smiled. Evan muttered something to him before climbing inside the car, and the driver nodded. Dante watched as the driver slammed the door shut, then strode to the front of the vehicle.

  Watching his brother, Dante was flooded with fury all over again. Here he was at his lowest point and Evan was going about his business like nothing had changed in his life. And nothing probably had changed for Evan. He was still CEO of Murdoch Conglomerated. He was still living with and fucking Leila Hawkins on the regular—the same woman who had outright rejected Dante. Evan was still worth millions of dollars. His life was perfect while Dante’s life was the complete opposite—a steaming pile of dog shit!

  “Son of a bitch,” Dante spat under his breath, feeling like he could rip the wheel from the steering column. If it was the last thing he did, he would make sure that Evan suffered, that he felt just as low as Dante felt right now.

  Someone behind him blared a car horn, snapping Dante out of his daze, startling him. He turned to glance over his shoulder at the driver behind him—some elderly man wearing a baseball cap and bifocal lenses—pointing up.

  “Just telling you the light’s green!” the old man shouted with a wave and a smile.

  Instead of pressing on the accelerator, Dante gave the old man the finger. He finally pulled off at top speed through the intersection.

  * * *

  Dante arrived back at his mother’s house, still furious at the world, but too tired to do anything about it. He wanted nothing more than to go inside, collapse into his recliner, take another Oxy, close his eyes, and go to sleep.

  He slammed his car door shut and turned to the walkway leading to his home, but paused midstride when he saw a familiar face peeking at him from around one of the porch’s wooden posts. His shoulders sank.

  “Wassup, Daddy!” Kiki called out to him as he slowly walked up the porch steps.

  She had traded her leather jacket for a hoodie much like his own. Her braids were pulled back from her face today. He hadn’t seen her since the last time she had come to the house and made her dramatic announcement that he was her father.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Kiki?”

  “Well, damn!” she exclaimed with a mischievous smile. “Hi to you, too!”

  She stood back to let him unlock the front door. He shoved it open and Kiki trailed in behind him, as if he had invited her inside. He was too tired to point out that he hadn’t.

  “I repeat . . . why are you here?” he asked.

  “I still need a place to crash, and I was hoping that maybe you changed your mind.” She flopped back onto his couch and crossed her legs before dropping her feet on the coffee table.

  He slammed the front door shut, then collapsed into the recliner facing her.

  “No, I have not changed my mind.”

  “Come on, Daddy! You can’t help me out just a little?” she cried, dropping her feet to the shag rug.

  “No, I cannot.”

  “Shit! It ain’t like you did anything for me for the past eighteen years! The least you could do is—”

  “Look, stop it with the fucking guilt trips!” he exploded, leaning forward in his chair, making her fall silent. “Stop trying to make me feel bad for being a shitty father! I know I was shitty, but I had a shitty father, too, goddammit! He didn’t do me any favors, either! I had to bust my ass for everything that I
got, Kiki, for everything that I am! And even then nothing was promised to me. It all fell apart! It was taken away from me!” He paused and glared at the room around him. “That’s why I’m back in this fucking shithole, hiding like a rat in a sewer.”

  Kiki shifted on the sofa and squinted her caramel eyes at him. “What do you mean? Who are you hiding from?”

  He sighed and shook his head, wishing she would just leave so he could take his damn pill. “Nothing,” he mumbled.

  She eyed him silently for a long time. “So that’s why you moved back to Grandma’s? Cuz you’re hiding out? What happened?”

  He lowered the release on the recliner and leaned back with his feet up, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the suede padded cushion.

  “Come on, Daddy! Tell me what happened. I promise I won’t tell nobody!”

  Might as well tell her the truth, he thought. What did he have to lose that he hadn’t lost already?

  “I pissed off some crazy bitch who wants to kill me. She shot me once,” he said pointing to his torso, “and she sent some thugs to my place to finish the job.”

  Kiki’s eyes widened. “You for real? She really shot you?”

  “Does it look like I’m joking?” he asked dryly.

  Kiki started to laugh and clap her hands. “Damn! My Daddy’s more of an O. G. than I thought. So what you do to her? You shoot her, too?”

  “I don’t even know where the hell she is,” he replied with his eyes still closed. “The police can’t find her, either. They haven’t arrested her.”

  “And they ain’t going to! Besides, you don’t get the police to handle some shit like this. You keep that shit in house. You take care of it yourself!”

  Dante opened his eyes and stared at his daughter. “What am I supposed to do? Hunt her down like some assassin? Shoot her with poison darts?”

  “No, you pay dudes to do it for you! Duh!” Kiki shrugged. “I know a couple of them in the neighborhood that would do it for a less than a grand. All they need is a name, address, and where she likes to hang out. They could take care of it for you.”