On opening the door Milan was surprised to see Kendu sitting there with a beer in his hand and smoke rising from the cigar in the corner of his mouth. The beautiful sight alone started chiseling her resistance away.
Kendu mashed the cigar in the ashtray and placed the beer on the table. He stood up and walked over to Milan. “We need to talk.”
“Kendu—”
“If you still hate me and you’re thinking about leaving me I’ll understand, but I have thought about this all day and I need you to know that I love you. I love you like crazy, until the shit is sick. I have never experienced anything like this, and I know that I take you for granted, and I apologize for that, but I can’t apologize for wanting to be with my daughter.”
“I’m not asking for that. I know she’s sick.”
“It’s more than that, though. Listen, before I was adopted I lived in like ten other homes, and I thought there was no one in the world who would love me, who looked like me or wanted to be around me for long. I mean, hell, all I had of my biological family was their last name. But I never knew who I was. Did I have my father’s nose, my mother’s smile? My grandfather’s laugh? What did I have? I always felt like the kid who could be given away. And don’t get me wrong, I love my adopted parents, but when Evan got pregnant and I thought about how I was finally going to have someone in this world who belonged to me, who resembled me, who was related to me, I felt like, yeah, this has to be it.
“Did it hurt me to leave you alone?” He pulled her close. “Hell yeah, but I had to be a man and I had to claim my family. I had to, because I couldn’t have my kid feeling like I did.”
“So what happens in the meantime?” she said as he pressed his forehead against hers.
“I don’t know, Milan. I know I’m not lying to you. I know that I love you and that I am going to leave Evan, but I just need a minute,” he spoke against her lips.
“I don’t know how many more minutes I have left.” She slid her arms around his neck.
“Then just give me now,” he said as they started to kiss passionately and he laid her on the bed. “Just give me right now.”
Evan
It was official: He was having an affair. The two private eyes she’d hired had both told her the same thing: From around midnight to five in the morning he was spending time with another woman. They hadn’t identified the woman, but they’d been able to get a few pictures, one with the two of them kissing and the other with them making love, the woman’s back pressed up against the window with the New York City skyline illuminated behind them.
Instead of crying Evan smiled. The pictures let her know that she wasn’t going crazy. It was Milan, the bitch who once again was destroying her life. It had been the same thing when they were in college. Milan fucking Kendu behind her back. No one thought she knew, because she one-upped Milan’s ass and had a baby. But now what was she to do? Kendu wouldn’t touch her. He didn’t like her, he didn’t want her, and he had the nerve to tell her so. He didn’t see his cheating when they were in school as detrimental to how she felt back then; he could see only himself and how he felt now.
But she couldn’t lose him, that was no secret, and since begging him hadn’t worked, Evan could think of only one thing left to do. She had to do what her stepfather loved for her to do when he wanted his “special girl, really bad.” She had to pretend to be the very person Kendu must’ve wanted her to be: Milan.
After she had swallowed her daily cocktail of Vicodin and alcohol, Evan’s head was spinning as she struggled to draw a mole above her upper lip with black lip liner. The hazel contacts she wore irritated her, and she couldn’t seem to shade the circle in without smudging it. After giving up on having the perfect beauty mark, Evan moved on to fingering her two-thousand-dollar infusion weave that draped jaggedly over her shoulders.
“Who’d you dress up like a slut for?” she heard her mother’s voice whispering in her ear.
“Daddy wants me to wear this dress and perfume,” she responded. “I don’t like it when he wants me to dress up. I don’t like the nasty things he does to me.”
“So what do you want him to do? Leave? You want us to be out in the street with nothing? You selfish little bitch! You know you like it … you know you like it! You do! You do!”
“Stop it!” Evan screamed, banging her fist on the mirror and causing the glass to crack and spread like a spider’s web. She shook her head and relaxed her shoulders. She had to get her thoughts together in order to pull this off.
A few seconds later she sprayed Chanel No. 5 all over her body and then she slid on a sleeveless fitted black dress. Her new eagle tattoo shimmered against her cleavage. She slid on black satin elbow gloves, placed her black garden hat on her head, and allowed the small veil to drape directly over her eyes. Finally she was beautiful.
She stepped out of the bathroom and watched Kendu as he lay sleeping in their bed. Evan eased into the bed next to Kendu and ran the tip of her index finger between the indent of his muscular pecs.
Kendu opened his eyes as he lay between sleep and wake. “Milan,” he whispered. “Damn.”
“Shhhh.” She placed her index finger over his soft lips.
Kendu opened his eyes wide and looked down. “Evan…?”
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s Milan.”
Kendu’s heart pounded in his chest. He looked down at Evan, stunned. He couldn’t believe his eyes. She almost looked like Milan: the contacts, the hair, the mole above her lip. The perfume.
But then again, Evan wouldn’t do something like that. Not Evan, she was too vain. This was a coincidence. It had to be.
Evan didn’t have time to wonder what he was thinking. She could tell by the sound of his voice that he wanted her to stop, but she couldn’t. She ran her tongue down the center of his washboard chest.
He looked down at her. “Evan, get up.”
“No, not Evan.” She licked the tip of his dick and swallowed him whole.
“I said stop. Now get up.”
She sucked in her inner cheeks and by the way his eyes rolled to the back of his head she knew she had him right where she needed him. “Shhh,” she assured him. “I need this—we need this.”
“I said stop.” Kendu paused. Her tongue tricks were ridiculous, and he wished he could control his hard-on, but he couldn’t. “Stop.” He gripped the back of her head and slipped his thick and heavy dick from between Evan’s lips. “No.”
As he turned away and rose from the bed, Evan grabbed his hand. “You don’t mean that. I need you to put it in.”
Kendu looked at her and wondered, Did she even know who she was anymore?
As he backed out of the room Aiyanna was running in the door from school. “How’s Daddy’s girl?” he said, sweeping her into his arms and slyly closing the door on Evan, who was kneeling on the floor.
“Is Mommy mad?” Aiyanna asked.
“No, baby,” he said. “I tell you what, how about if I get the chauffeur to take you to Granny’s house so Daddy can talk to Mommy a little bit.”
“Daddy, we’re supposed to go out to dinner, remember?”
Evan rose from the floor and looked in the mirror. She hated herself. She hated what she’d come to be, so she picked up the scissors and started cutting her hair, until it fell like snowflakes. Patches of hair were everywhere. “You stupid bitch!” she snapped at herself. “You stupid bitch!” She started slicing her arms with the scissors, carving S.B. in them. Afterward she started punching herself, repeatedly, until all she could see was blood running over her eyes.
Evan heard Kendu convincing Aiyanna that he needed to do something for her, that he had to take her somewhere. The same speech that her father had given her when her mother had a nervous breakdown and never came back again.
Evan felt tight-headed and fell to the floor, but she had just enough strength to pick herself up and grab her car keys. She staggered through the French doors of the bedroom to the outside, got into her car, and placed it in gear.
“Evan!” she could hear Kendu screaming behind her, as she headed toward the highway.
Evan started to feel dizzy and all she could see was the barrier up ahead. She thought she would be able to stop, but she couldn’t remember which pedal her foot needed to be on for the car to brake, so she continued going until there was a loud crash and the next thing she knew she was hearing the sound of sirens blaring and feeling an IV needle being shoved into her arm.
“Thank God she made it,” Evan heard the doctor saying to the nurse as Evan opened her eyes one at a time. The nurse walked over and took her pulse. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
Evan nodded.
“Okay, well, you need your rest,” the doctor said, and then he and the nurse left.
Evan lay dressed in all white beneath the white hospital sheets, counting the hours, the minutes, and the seconds before Kendu would come rushing through the door on his white horse, realizing that he’d literally driven her to this point.
“Evan.” She heard Kendu call her name before she saw his face. Immediately her eyes looked at the clock. It had taken three hours, fifteen minutes, and ten seconds for him to come through the door.
“I’m here.” Her voice was raspy. “I was waiting for you.”
Kendu walked over to her, the faint scent of Chanel No. 5 continuing to linger on him. “I had to wait for the nurse to give me the okay to come in. How do you feel?”
“Happy.”
He looked at her hair and touched the cut and uneven pieces. “What happened to your hair?”
“Nothing, it’s perfect.”
Kendu paused. “I’m worried about you.”
“Excuse me,” the doctor said, walking into the room. “Mr. Malik?”
Kendu turned to him.
“Yes,” he said. “Your wife gave everyone a little scare.”
“I’m okay though.” Evan struggled to smile. “Just a little sore.”
The doctor patted her hand. “Well, you get some rest. I need to speak with your husband for a few minutes.”
“Knott.” Evan reached for Kendu’s hand, and he unintentionally took a step back. She never called him Knott, that was the name Milan called him. “Will you come back before you leave?”
Kendu paused, still caught off guard. “Yeah, sure.” He walked behind the doctor toward a secluded section of the hallway.
“Mr. Malik,” the doctor said, “I have serious concerns about your wife. Do you know where she was going?”
“No.” Kendu hunched his shoulders. “We had an argument and she wasn’t herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was dressed up like someone else. And pretending to really be that person. I’m worried, Doctor. I’m really scared for her.”
“There are some concerns. Your wife has a high level of Vicodin in her blood.”
“What? What is that?”
“Prescription medication painkillers.”
“Evan doesn’t take any prescriptions.”
“Does you wife have any history of illnesses, mental illnesses?”
“Something’s going on.”
“We found some cutting on her arm. It looks like she carved initials. Does she have a history of self-mutilation?”
“Self-what?”
“Mutilation. It’s when people cut themselves, believing they can relieve their own pain.”
“Pain from what?”
“Something traumatic. Is there anything going on between you and your wife? You said there was an argument.”
“We’re in the process of separating.”
“Well, that may be it, or it could be something else. I would like to keep her here for a seventy-two-hour observation.”
“Seventy-two-hour observation?” Kendu said, taken aback.
“I’m concerned that Mrs. Malik may have had a nervous breakdown.”
Silence.
“I would like to commit her for seventy-two hours, but after that she has to be in agreement to stay, otherwise we can’t keep her.”
“Well, what should I do? Should I tell her?” Kendu asked. “No, we gave her some medication that will make her sleep. It should’ve already taken effect. So if you’d like you can go home and come back a little later. If something changes one of the nurses will give you a call.”
“No,” Kendu said, “I would like to stay with her, at least for a few hours, if that’s okay?”
“Okay,” the doctor agreed, “for a few hours.”
Kendu walked into Evan’s room and she was sleeping. He sank down into the chair beside her and wondered if his rejection of her had made her crazy. It was true he wanted to leave her, but he didn’t want to leave her in pieces. He could feel the fading heat from the sun going down as he looked at Evan’s face, studied the slight smile she wore, and wondered what she was dreaming about.
Chaunci
“Tell the camera how you feel today, Chaunci,” Carl said as he pointed the camera at her.
Before Chaunci could comment, Bridget said, “I want some emotion, some tears and drama. Curse the judge”—she flung one arm in the air—“curse Idris”—she flung the other—“and plead for us to understand that you are a good mother.”
Chaunci didn’t have it in her to cuss out Bridget, especially knowing it would get her nowhere. She actually hated that the cameras were following her around today and that the crew didn’t see this as a true invasion of her privacy. But then again, what privacy?
She watched Idris walk up the block dressed in a camel-colored two-piece Versace suit, looking as if he were headed for a game he planned to win.
Chaunci smiled at Carl. “I feel fine. I’m sure the judge will see”—she looked Idris dead in the eyes—“that I love my daughter and that Idris has no right to come along demanding things.”
Carl turned to Idris, who was passing them by. “You have anything to say?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Chaunci needs to learn to forgive.” And he walked past the stone lion statue and into the courthouse. His smooth swagger lingered on the concrete steps behind him.
Chaunci walked into the courthouse and was greeted by her attorney, Sarah Washington, who walked over to her and smiled. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
“I have an offer for you that Mr. Lawson’s attorney presented to me this morning.”
“Is it one saying that he will go away?” Chaunci tapped her three-inch heels as she caught Idris staring at her.
“No, he’s not going away,” Sarah assured her. “He’s put in his offer for child support—”
“I don’t want his money.”
“Hear me out, Chaunci.”
“Sarah, I’m serious.”
“Listen to me. I am your attorney, and though I will present to the court what your wishes are, it is my responsibility to give you the best advice. Mr. Lawson wants a relationship with his daughter, and the only way we could have made him go away was if the DNA test had come back negative, which it didn’t. So let’s consider the plea they’re offering: joint custody, twenty thousand a month in child support, the first meeting at your house or a mutual place that is comfortable for the child, every other weekend during the basketball off-season, and one weekend a month during on-season. Alternate holidays.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“My daughter doesn’t know him. Now I’m supposed to dump her off at his house? No, no way.”
“What do you think the judge is going to give you?”
“I’ll take my chances,” Chaunci said, as the bailiff walked into the hall to announce that court was now in session.
“All rise,” the bailiff said as the judge walked in. “Judge Randall presiding.”
“You may be seated,” the judge said. “We have here Lawson versus Morgan on the matter of joint custody, child support, and visitation. Have the parties come to any type of agreement?”
Idris’s attorney looked toward Sarah and Chaunci. “No, Your Honor
,” Sarah said. “We have not.”
“Are you all aware of the paternity test results?”
“Yes,” Sarah said. “We’ve received the positive results.”
“Fine,” the judge said. “Now, let’s hear the arguments.”
“My client wishes to see his daughter,” Idris’s attorney said to the judge. “We were hoping to come to an agreement, but it seems that Ms. Morgan simply wishes for my client to go away so that she can go on pretending that he doesn’t exist.”
“And your reason for not accepting the offer?” The judge looked to Sarah.
“With all due respect, Your Honor, Mr. Lawson doesn’t know his daughter. As a matter of fact, he paid Ms. Morgan three hundred dollars to have an abortion. He has never even seen this child, and I’m certain the court understands that Ms. Morgan does not feel comfortable handing her child over to Mr. Lawson, who essentially is a stranger, Your Honor.”
Idris’s attorney rose from his seat. “Your Honor, my client thought that Ms. Lawson had terminated the pregnancy, as this was their agreement.”
“Not so, Your Honor,” Sarah interrupted.
“Allow me to finish, counselor.” Idris’s lawyer paused. “However my client now knows that he has a six-year-old daughter and he wants a relationship with her. He is in no way seeking full custody. He simply wants to know his daughter, and I think, Your Honor, for a child not to know her father can be likened to cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Not if that same father paid for this child to be medical waste when her mother was pregnant,” Sarah stood up and said.
The judge cleared his throat as he looked through the file. “Well, we certainly have a situation here. The child is six years old, six years that Mr. Lawson has missed, however ironic it is. It is also six years that he never would have had, had Ms. Morgan terminated the pregnancy as he wished and apparently paid for back then. It is always unfortunate that children are caught in the middle of these situations. It is my hope that one day you two people will reach an agreement where the court does not have to be involved. However since we are not there today, the court orders as follows:
Millionaire Wives Club Page 18