by Iva Britt
***
I felt my whole body calling out for him. I wanted to surprise him at his office; I had never been there before. I wondered if he had any young, hot women working for him. But when I turned the corner of Lexington and James Street, I was the one who got the surprise. There he was about to hop into a cab, when two men in long coats called out to him. He waved for the cab to go on then he looked at the men. Both of them pulled out what had to be badges and flashed them in his face.
Oh shit, I thought, what had I gotten myself into. Who was this man? Why in the world would the police be questioning him? Then my mind shot back to that day in the gallery, when Simon said that I should watch out for Thomas. But for what? I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but Thomas seemed flustered and scared. I had never seen him like that. He was always so calm and in control. What the hell was going on? I wanted to scream. I wanted to run into his arms and hold him. I wanted to tell those men that there must have been some mistake. There was no way he could have done anything wrong. No, it wasn’t possible. He was too perfect. One of the cops opened the back door of an unmarked car. He motioned for Thomas to get in. Thomas hesitated, looked around. I ducked my head to make sure he didn’t see me. He finally got in and the car zoomed off.
***
That night at dinner he seemed really withdrawn. He kept looking around the restaurant, like he expected someone to barge in at any moment, maybe those two cops, and take him away. I had never seen him like this before. But I didn’t want to ask what was wrong. I didn’t want to tell him that I had seen him earlier that day. I wanted him to tell me. I was sure there was logical explanation for what happened. But instead of him mentioning it, we just made small talk. After I got tired of watching him fidget, avert his eyes, and hide his hands under the table, I finally asked what was wrong.
“Nothing, babe. Hard day at work.”
“Anything interesting?”
“No, not really. But I was trying to get things in order for our trip.” There’s just a lot of” his eyes darted in one direction then the other. He seemed like he was about to get up. He took the napkin from his lap, wiped his mouth and stood halfway up before he scanned the room quickly and sat back down.
“What is it? Please tell me. I can’t stand to see you like this.”
“Like I said. It’s nothing, babe. Let’s just finish our meal.”
“I saw you today. Outside your office.”
He glared at me. I had never seen that anger in his eyes.
“What did you say?”
“I wanted to surprise you at your office today. I saw you talking to those two men. They were detectives, weren’t they?”
“Who the fuck do you think you are? You spoiled fucking brat. This is how you repay me for what I’ve done.”
“I wasn’t following you, I swear. I missed you. I hadn’t seen you in three days.”
“Three days? Three days? Are you serious? Do you think I’m just sitting around in my own fantasy land like you and all your artist friends?”
“Please, don’t be mad at me.”
“How do you think that I can afford to take you to these restaurants? How do you think that I can afford to fly you to Spain and put you up in a villa for nine months so you can do you work?”
I felt terrible. This is not how I envisioned this happening. I wanted him to know that I would be there for him if he needed me. The last thing I wanted was to upset him. I could see people in the restaurant turning in our direction and whispering under their breath.
We needed to get out of there before something bad happened. Unfortunately, Thomas was in no mood to calm down.
“So you’re following me around during the day. I wonder how else you’re keeping tabs on me. I bet you love gossiping with your girlfriends about how well I take care of you.”
Now he was clearly trying to embarrass me. He had raised his voice, so everyone in the vicinity could hear exactly what he was saying. I felt my face flush red. I don’t know what stopped me from getting up and running out of the restaurant, but for some reason all I could do was sit there and take his abuse.
“I thought we were more than that. I thought you loved me.”
“Like we could be anymore than what we are. I don’t even know what that is. But take a good look around this restaurant. Take a good look. Do you see any couples that look like us? Do you?”
I felt myself breaking inside. I grabbed my napkin and dabbed at my eyes. I couldn’t believe how cruel he was being. But what I didn’t know at the time was that he had much brutality in store for me later that night.
“Tell me why those policemen came to your office today. Tell me!” I screamed.
Every head in the restaurant turned towards us. I saw some of the restaurant staff looking and pointing in our direction.
“All you fucking art girls are the same. I bet your girlfriends told you about my reputation. And just wanted to come down to the office see who I was fucking, that’s it isn’t?”
“So that’s all I am to you a good fuck? That’s it. I can’t believe I actually fell for your tired act. So stupid.” I made a move to stand up. He grabbed my wrist and jerked me back into the seat.
“Maybe you should just go back to the Midwest. Go back there and make your stupid collage paintings. You’re never going to make it in this city, or any other city for that matter. What a joke.”
“Fuck you!”
He seemed startled, but quickly regained his composure.
“Just like my fucking wife,” he snarled. “That goddamn bitch.”
I felt like he had just knocked me upside the head. Wife? He had told me that he had been divorced for three years.
“Your wife?”
“What are you going to cry about that to? Yes, my wife. That’s why those cops came by my office today. It’s not enough that she trying to take all of money, she’s also accusing me of trying to kill her.”
All this was too much for me. I felt my head get light, breathing becoming harder. I took a long sip on a glass of water and tried to catch my breath.
“You told me you were—”
“I told you what you needed to know. I knew you wouldn’t want anything to do with me if I told you I was still married.”
“You want to have her killed?”
“Why don’t you say it louder so everyone in the restaurant hears you?”
He shook his head, attempted to calm himself down and then told me that according to his ex-wife someone had been waiting outside their suburban Westchester home for the past two weeks, staking the place out or something like that. The cops stopped the guy on a routine traffic violation and had uncovered a whole slew of warrants. And now the police were going around questioning anyone who might have a reason to harm her. Thomas was the first name on that list. He had been living in separate residences for the last few months, that’s what he said, and they were going through a divorce.
“You should have told me. I would have understood,” I said. I stretched my hands across the table. He didn’t take them in his like he usually did. I stared into his eyes, pleading, hoping for some signal that we still had a chance of making it.
“It’s not enough that she’s going to take all of my money. Now she’s got me involved in some sort of criminal investigation.”
“But it’s not true, right? It’s all some big mistake, no?” I wanted him to tell me that the police had made a mistake. I wanted him to tell me that there was no way he could possibly be involved in something evil. But that’s not what I got from.
“You probably suspected all along. I mean, you never wondered why we only see each other once a week. Even after all these months of dating. You really thought I was that busy?”
Maybe he had a point. There were signs that I should have seen, but I choose to ignore them because everything felt so good, so right between us. But now when I looked across the table, when I looked into his eyes I feared that this man could actually be capable of what he was b
eing accused of. Murder. He paid the check and barked at me to get up.
Outside the restaurant I figured we would go our separate ways. I thought that he would be glad to be alone, or at least not with me. Maybe another one of his art girls, someone as young and dumb as I was, would welcome him into her arms. Maybe there was another tight pussy, with swollen pink lips waiting for his huge, raging cock. Whoever it was, she would probably get the fuck of her life.
***
If only we had gone our separate ways, everything might have turned out differently. But instead of letting me go off and cry on my own, he yanked me by the arm and hailed a cab. Before we slid into the backseat, he glared at me, gritted his teeth, and said, “You say one fucking word. One word. And I’ll fucking kill you.” I wanted to scream, but my vocal chords wouldn’t produce any sound. Nothing seemed to work. My whole body tensed up. I wanted to drop down right there on the concrete in the middle of Manhattan and wait for someone to come and rescue me, to save me from this man whom I could hardly recognize. He was going to kill me. I was sure of it.
I must have passed out in the backseat because I had no idea how I ended up back in his apartment tied to the bed with a blindfold over my eyes. For the next three hours, or however long it took, he ravaged my body, slapped me around, jammed his huge dick in and out of me. All I could do was surrender.
In the morning, it must have been morning because the sunlight filtered through the blinds; he untied me, laid his head on my chest and wept. We wept together, held each other in our arms. He begged for forgiveness, begged for me not to call the cops. They were already watching him, waiting for him to slip up and this would only add to the heat they would put on him. It was only game, he assured me, a very rough game that he wanted to play with me. Then he admitted that yes, he did have someone tailing his wife, but it wasn’t to have her killed he insisted, he just wanted to scare her out of going after so much of his money in the divorce.
“I did it for you,” he said. “For us. She’s trying to take everything I have. Everything I’ve worked for.”
He told me that I was his only hope. Despite the fancy suits, lunches and dinners at five star restaurants, and this apartment on the Upper West Side, he was really struggling financially. He had lost a lot of money in the recent financial crash and his artistic investments hadn’t panned out either. Paying the rent on the swanky 4k a month apartment had become a real struggle. He begged for me to stay with him.
“We can leave tomorrow,” he said, full of desperation.
“Tomorrow? Where?”
“Spain. The villa still needs some work but we’ll do that ourselves. Just you and me,” he said.
He cupped my face in his large hands. I pulled away. I thought he was going to hurt me, but the look in his eyes was so desperate and pleading. He kissed me gently on the lips.
I looked at him as lovingly as possible and assured him that I wouldn’t abandon him. But wasn’t sure I believed that. I didn’t really know who this man was. There was no way I would run away to another country with man who had hidden this secret life from me. A wife and kids that he never talked about. And on top of that hiring someone to kill the mother of his children? I didn’t feel safe being in the same apartment with him, let alone in a foreign country where I didn’t know anyone and couldn’t speak the language. I knew he was hurt and wounded, but so was I. Samantha was right. It was time that I finally stood up for myself. I had to protect myself. The old me would have stayed with him, trying somehow to rationalize the lies and the brutality. But I had been through that once before and I knew where it ended: drunk on the floor all alone, reeking of alcohol, cigarettes and cum. But still I wanted to believe, despite what I could clearly see, that this man who had penetrated me so deeply, had filled me up so completely, and had promised me the life of artist which I had always dreamed of, was the perfect man.
I noticed that his cock was beginning to stiffen. It stretched down his thigh. I took into my hands and began rubbing its huge, bulbous head against my clit. It wasn’t long before I was wet.
He fucked me with every ounce of strength he had in his body. He fucked me like this was the last time he might ever fuck a woman again. He scratched and clawed my back and I did the same and both of us had blood underneath our ravenous fingernails. I screamed for him to fuck me, to fuck my pussy. He grunted and jammed his rod to the hilt. With each thrust his big balls slapped against my clit. He picked me up and pounded me against the wall. My body went wild with lust. I felt like I was possessed; I shook and trembled involuntarily; a thick stream of cum dripped out of my pussy and down my thighs. I screamed. He grunted then his seed exploded inside of me. We collapsed on the floor. I laid my head on his heaving chest. He closed his eyes and put his hands behind his neck. His cock lay like a big salami on his chest. I gently took it into my mouth and licked off our mingled juices.
I don’t why but I couldn’t bring myself to leave him. I know I should have bolted out of his apartment the first chance I got, but I didn’t. Instead I went with him to his house in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was a five-acre nature lover’s paradise overlooking a lake. We fished, canoed and kayaked; we sipped champagne, kissed, and chatted for hours in the outdoor hot tub. On the third night there he told me his plan, the diabolical scheme that would make us both rich: high-end art forgeries.
“Just think,” he said. You won’t have to worry about money anymore. Ever”
“I don’t think I could do something like that,” I said. “It seems so dishonest.”
He snickered. “Stop being so damn naive.” Many famous paintings hanging in renowned museums are forgeries.”
When I hesitated before agreeing, he assured me that he was getting out of the business. This would be the last forgery that he put on the market. It was an early century Thompkins—extremely rare. A buyer willing to pay millions was already lined up.
“Who’s been painting these for you during the last three years?” I asked.
He seemed annoyed by the question, looked away, and said something under his breath that I couldn’t make out.
He told me that I could start tomorrow morning. He would walk me through the complicated and meticulous process. The painting had to be completed in three days time. There was no time to waste. He kissed me gently, squeezed in his arms and led me to an upstairs bedroom, a different bedroom from the one we had slept in the previous two nights. I was too exhausted and overwhelmed by his revelation to ask why he wanted me to sleep in there.
When I woke up a few hours later it was still dark. My mouth was dry and I wanted to get something to drink from the kitchen. I turned the door, but it must have stuck or jammed. I jiggled it vigorously. Nothing. Maybe he locked it accidentally I thought. I started banging on the door and calling his name. I heard footsteps approaching.
“Go back to sleep, he said from the other side of the door. “You’ll need to be rested in the morning.”
“Thomas, let me out! Let me out!” I screamed. I heard his feet stomping away and the stairs.
I panicked, started banging on the door, screaming hysterically. After a few minutes I fell to floor and began crying. He’s going to kill me, I thought, I know he is. I thought about how stupid and naive I had been in coming here; how stupid it was for me to trust him again after he had already lied to me about not having a wife. Why would I have ever trusted such a man? I tried to imagine all the horrible ways he would kill me or torture me or both. When that became too much to bear, I began walking around the room. I stopped at the window. It was pitch black outside so I couldn’t see how far down the drop was. I grabbed a book of the bed stand and let it drop out the window. From the sound the drop only seemed to be about ten feet. I had no other choice. But where would I go once I got down there? It was impossible to see anything through the darkness. There was no point in jumping out the window if I wasn’t going to be able to get away. A few minutes I heard the sound of what had to be a car approaching or driving past. Yes! I saw head
lights coming from a road that was about fifty years away. This was my chance.
I opened the window all the way, put one leg over the window, then the other. I let myself. I fell into a thicket of bushes. They scratched my skin but my adrenaline was pumping so fast that I hardly noticed. I took off for the main road. One of my shoes fell off but I kept running. Another set of car lights streamed down the main road. I ran as fast I could and managed to get the attention of the driver. I spoke hurriedly, breathlessly. He seemed to understand how desperate I was. He told me to get in and then drove me to the nearest police station where I spent the next several hours explaining to two detectives what exactly had happened to me. They told me that the NYPD had been investigating Thomas for the murder of the painter who had worked for him before he had chosen me as his mark: Amanda Lavreaux.
When I got back into the city the next day, the story was front page news:
Art Patron Charged with Murder of Brilliant Young Painter
New York—A former investment banker turned art patron has been charged with the grisly murder of promising New York artist Amanda Lavreaux. The victim’s body was found in her West Village apartment. She appeared to have been strangled and suffocated. The suspect, Thomas Wilson, left Wall Street for the art world three years ago and has used his big money and wide-ranging connections to become a major player in the international art forgery market. Authorities believe Ms. Lavreaux, a star in New York City art circles, was both Mr. Wilson’s lover and the painter whom he called on to produce the high-priced forgeries. Police suspect that Ms. Lavreaux may have been killed because she threatened to expose both Wilson and his partners. Police are also investigating whether Wilson has been plotting to kill his wife to keep her from disclosing his criminal activities.
I couldn’t read anymore. The paper was shaking in my hands. If I hadn’t jumped out that window and had refused to participate in his criminal activities, he would probably have killed me. I felt lucky to be alive and hungry to start on my next series of paintings.