Desperate: I'll Do Anything for Love

by B. M. Hardin

  I grabbed the food and drink once the police was out of sight and headed to lock the fence. I had been in such a hurry to get to Elroy and the airport the last time that I’d left without locking it which was how the police were able to get in, in the first place.

  Once inside, I put on my mask and damn near ran down the stairs to give her the food and drink so that hopefully it could knock her out. All I had to do now was wait on Big Nate to come and get her the hell out of there!

  When I got down to the basement, she was just sitting there. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t scream. She didn’t move. She was just sitting there. She looked at me but her facial expression didn’t change.

  I ignored the smell and walked over to her. She looked at me as I sat the food on the bed.

  “Eat and drink. You’re going home today,” I said to her in a low voice. She still just stared at me. I sat the drink on the floor and I took the food out of the bag for her. I quickly glanced for blood on the covers, but there was none. That baby was a tough little something wasn’t it?

  Oh well, I now had the upper hand, so it was fine. She just had to go!

  “It’s steak. Eat it. Drink your drink,” I repeated.

  “A kidnapper that brings you steak?” she mumbled, as I turned my back to her.

  “Hmmm, nicest damn kidnapper I’ve ever seen! That’s how I know…this is personal!” Her voice went from low to extremely loud within seconds and before I could react, she had come from behind me and snatched the mask off of my head. Oh no! With my hair exposed, I didn’t turn around. I hurriedly walked towards the steps.

  “You’re her aren’t you? You’re his wife,” she said behind me and I stopped walking for a second.

  What? Huh? How did she know that Elroy and I had gotten married? She couldn’t possibly know that.

  “You’re Roger’s wife. Roger Thomas is your husband,” she said.

  Wait? Roger Thomas?

  No. He wasn’t my husband. He was my father.

  And wait a minute…how the hell did she know him?

  ***************************************

  CHAPTER VIII

  “Don’t drink the drink. It has sleeping medicine in it,” I said to her, heading back in her direction, showing her my face and all and seeing that she’d picked up the cup.

  “You. The lady from the sandwich shop. You approached me on purpose that day didn’t you?”

  “What did you say about Roger Thomas?”

  “You found out about me didn’t you? You found out that I was his mistress. For years.”

  What? My father’s mistress?

  No. She was mistaken. My father was faithful. He was a saint. I admired him and I wanted a man just like him. She had to be talking about someone else.

  “On my behalf, he lied to me. I didn’t know that he was married in the beginning.”

  What? How? Huh?

  “Wait. So you’re telling me that you have been sleeping with Roger Thomas, the lawyer, Roger Thomas? The one that owns Thomas & Co. Law Firm? For years?”

  “Yes. Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t that why you kidnapped me? Aren’t you his wife?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears!

  No! No! No! Not my father! Not Roger Eugene Thomas the III! He was perfect. He was what every man was supposed to be. He loved my Mama and I knew that there was no way that he was cheating on her. I just wouldn’t believe her. There was just no way!

  “And you knew that he was married?” I balled up my fists as I asked the question. I was angry! Why would he cheat on Mama? She was amazing!

  “No. Not at first. I somewhat assumed that he was. Someone as successful as he is usually has a wife and kids somewhere. But when I asked him, he told me that he had been married years ago, but that he was divorced. I believed him. Until I found out the truth.”

  “He’s twice your age.”

  “I like older men. So are you her? Are you his wife?”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Then who are you?”

  I was quiet.

  “Did he put you up to this? Because I’m pregnant with his baby?”

  Wait a minute…say what now?

  ‘”You’re pregnant by Roger?”

  “Yes.”

  Unbelievable! The whole time! The whole freaking time! And eww! How in the hell was she pregnant by my father? I mean, well I know how getting pregnant happened, but she was pregnant by my dad and not Elroy? What the hell!

  “Wait a minute. So, if you are pregnant by Roger, then why would Elroy think that the baby is his?”

  “Elroy? How do you know about Elroy?”

  “Why does he think that it’s his baby?”

  “Because I told him that it was.”

  The baby wasn’t even his? She’d lied and the baby wasn’t even Elroy’s? I swear, I could slap her right on home to glory! She’d caused all of this for nothing!

  “After I broke the news to Roger he told me to get rid of it. I refused. I’d always wanted a baby of my own and I wasn’t getting an abortion. He said if I kept the baby, he was cutting me off and he didn’t want anything else to do with me. He was furious with my decision to keep it. After a month of begging him to accept it, I saw that he meant business. I saw that he was serious and that he wouldn’t want anything to do with my baby. And he no longer wanted anything else to do with me either. So I lied. I figured that I would just tell Elroy that the baby was his. Some kind of father was better than no father at all,” she said.

  I shook my head and sat on the floor. Far enough away from her just in case she tried something stupid again.

  My mind was blown! I felt like a fool. I’d done all of this for nothing and the whole time she was pregnant by my father? Like really, the whole time? Her baby wasn’t my problem or my competition, yet instead it was my brother or sister?

  Get the hell out of here! Now this was crazy!

  “So Roger gave you money? You said that he cut you off? He paid you to sleep with him?”

  “No. Nothing like that. We were in a relationship. Well, I thought we were until I found out that he was married. For two years he lied and made it like I was his woman. He had more than enough money and he told me that I never had to work again. And I didn’t. I haven’t in three years. He gave me an allowance.”

  “So you don’t sing? Professionally?”

  Once I asked the question it was as though a light bulb went off in her head.

  “Oh. You’re not the wife. You’re the daughter; the one that Elroy was seeing? He told me that he told you that.”

  Wait…so she knew about me?

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re um…wait…Serenity? Right?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Yeah. The one that Elroy started seeing to get back at me for seeing Roger. The one that he wanted to make me jealous over. He was just using you to try to make me feel some kind of way. I think he eventually started feeling something for you. But originally, he only started dealing with you to get back at me. He hates to lose.”

  I shook my head. “You’re lying.”

  “No. I’m not. Elroy is slick. Slick with talking. And slick with making moves. You don’t know Elroy like I do. Elroy isn’t who you think he is. He’s different when he’s dealing with you. Even when I would hear him talk to you. He talked different. He was trying to be someone else but I knew him. I know the real him. I know that he’s madly in love with me. More than he loves you. I think there’s something there though. After pretending for so long of course he now has feelings for you. But Elroy loves me.”

  What? So Elroy was pretending? He had only approached me as some kind of get back? I was getting angrier by the second, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea for her to tell me anything else. Still yet, I didn’t stop her from talking.

  “At first I was sneaking around on Elroy with your father. We were together. In a relationship. We were living paycheck to paycheck and your father introduced me to more. Better. I w
as a waitress. He took interest one night and everything went from there. He started showing me the finer things in life. Taking me on trips, and I basically started to pull away from Elroy. I told him that I needed some space. Overall, I was tired of his ways. You probably don’t know this but Elroy has a bad gambling problem. He hides it well, but it’s bad. Where do you think all of that settlement money went so fast? He has a problem; which is how he lost his first two wives.

  What? His first two wives? Elroy told me that he’d never been married.

  “What?”

  “Oh you didn’t know that either? He told me that you were desperate to get married so he gave you a ring to shut you up and get you off of his back. What do you know about Elroy?”

  Obviously nothing.

  “Yes. Elroy has been married twice; I was the second wife’s baby sitter. That’s how we met. We started fooling around after she left him. I came to their house to babysit at my scheduled time, and she was gone. The house was empty. She left him with nothing. Or maybe he left her with nothing since he’d gambled all of their savings away. That’s why she left him.”

  You have got to be kidding me! That was not the Elroy that I knew. I mean, the settlement money didn’t last long, but it’d lasted long enough. I thought that it was because he was just spending. He spent on himself. He spent on me. I never got the feeling that he was gambling his money away. As serious as he was about having a job and making his own money, it just didn’t seem like he would waste it.

  “Don’t look so shocked honey. Elroy lies. Big time. He’s been lying to you since the very beginning. But yes he had two wives.”

  “Make that three,” I said showing her my hand in shame. I’d married a damn stranger!

  “You got married? To Elroy? When?”

  “Last week.”

  She started acting as though she was thinking.

  “Well I’ll be damned! He said that he would never marry you. Did he take out an insurance policy on you?”

  “What? No?”

  “Is he your beneficiary?”

  “No why?”

  “Trust me. There’s a reason he married you. He was positive that he didn’t want you to be his wife. So, there’s a reason.”

  I didn’t know if she was telling the truth or just trying to hurt my feelings, but she had better back off before I punched her in her dirty ass face!

  “Yeah. I’m telling you. Watch and see. He’s slick I tell you. And you said last week? Let me see. Yep. That’s about right. He must have finally gotten the divorce finalized. His second wife had moved away with her kids and she and Elroy just never made it official. That was why he hadn’t married me, and was telling you that he needed time to marry you. He had still been married to her. But before I went missing, and because I was pregnant, he had started working on it. He found her on social networks and finally they had started the process. He even told me to start getting ready for a wedding. But then he married you? Hmmm…all I can say is be careful.”

  “So he would marry you but not me?”

  “Like I said, I know the real him. I accepted it a long time ago. He knew that you never would.”

  I wanted to cry but there was no time for crying. I was going to kill his ass!

  “So he has kids too?”

  “No. They were her kids from another relationship. And I don’t think his first wife had kids at all; well not by Elroy. I think he told me that she did now. I remember him telling me that he’d ran into her and that she’d remarried some man named Dion and I think he said that they had kids. I believe Elroy said that she has two.”

  “Dion?”

  “Yes. She married a man named Dion.”

  I thought about my friend Dion and his wife. They did have two kids and he’d told me that she’d been married once before. I wondered if she was Elroy’s ex-wife. Maybe she told him the truth about Elroy’s problems and maybe that’s why Dion stopped liking Elroy all of a sudden and said that he wasn’t the one for me. I wasn’t sure, but I was surely going to ask him! And if he’d kept something like that from me, well, he was going to get a taste of my bad side too!

  “But Elroy loves kids. That’s why I knew that he would believe me and jump at the opportunity to be a dad. His dad was never around. He didn’t even know who he was.”

  I knew that she was telling the truth. She knew too much. She was too sure. I was the one that had been in the dark all along.

  “And you’ve been around all this time?”

  “Yep. But I was mostly busy with your dad. But wait, back to the story. Elroy was in gambling trouble again, and your father was my way out. I told Elroy that we needed some space. Next thing I know, he had an accident at work and went to get your father to help him. Of course I’d told him who your father was. Knowing Elroy, he probably, caused the accident at work on purpose, just to go consult his help. Just to check out the man that had stolen me from him. Elroy could be jealous. He can be possessive. Especially with me. Maybe it’s because of the age difference, but he always tried to control me. He’s such a manly man, tough guy, and I think that my decision bruised his ego. But your father didn’t know that Elroy and I had history.”

  Elroy knew that my father was having an affair on my mother the whole time and didn’t tell me? He knew that he was sleeping with Kera and didn’t say a thing? Humph! He was a dead man. He just didn’t know it yet!

  “Anyway, your father took on his case. They won. And then he saw you. He told me that he won and said that now he had money to give me the life that I wanted. He surprised me with a brand new car and everything. But I told him that I still wanted space. He let me keep the car but then he told me that he was going to start dating you, my lover’s daughter. He’d said that he was going to wine and dine you and that he was going to make me miss him and make me jealous. But it didn’t. He bragged and bragged about what kind of woman you were and said that I had better come back to him before I lost him forever. He’d said that he was going to become a part of your family before I did. Just to throw it in my face. But I didn’t care. I had already fallen for your father. To be completely honest, I lied at the beginning of the conversation. I didn’t know how much I wanted to tell you, but I might as well tell you everything. I didn’t know that he was married at first, but I did find out pretty soon afterwards. Elroy was the one to tell me the truth about his wife and all of his kids, once he’d started dating you. He found it funny that I’d thought that I was moving on to bigger and better when I was actually nothing more than some piece for a rich lawyer on the side. At least with Elroy, I had been his only. I asked your father and he’d changed his story. He’d said that the marriage was just for the image but that they weren’t together. But Elroy assured me that he was lying and told me that indeed they were.”

  I was feeling overwhelmed. I needed a cigarette and I didn’t even smoke. Sure my father was a lawyer, so I knew that he could lie, but he’d spent his life teaching my brothers the importance of being honest. He’d told them that real men kept their word and that they were good to their wives and their children. But he damn sure wasn’t living by example.

  “As time and years went on, Elroy and I would screw every once in a while. And I’ll admit we both started catching small feelings again. Elroy had changed drastically since he’d met you, and it was somewhat attractive. He was now this hard-working, genuine guy, and I wondered if we would have been better off if he’d always been that way with me. I asked him if he really loved you. He said yes. But he’d also said that he still loved me too. He always said that you and him would never have anything real because everything that you two shared, was built on lies. He’d only wanted you because he couldn’t have me. But things started to change. We started to fool around more often again, and then he started asking if we could give it another try. I knew him. I knew the real him. And I also knew that he was a better man than he had been before. That’s when he gave me the ring. And to be honest, your father and his lies had started to turn me of
f. Elroy would take pictures of him and your mother, kissing, laughing, or whatever and send them to me. And yes, I guess you’ve figured it out by now, but yes, I knew that you weren’t the wife from the very beginning. Like I said, I just didn’t know how much I wanted to tell you. But I knew exactly who you were once you turned around. Anyway, Elroy didn’t mind showing me that your father was just lying to keep fooling around with me. Elroy asked me to stop seeing your father and I told him that I would. I stopped for a little while but when I found out that he hadn't cut you completely off like he’d told me that he was going to do, I started seeing your father again. But this time I didn’t tell Elroy. He thought that I was being faithful and he told me that he was trying to find the right way to break things off with you. He told me that you had started to suspect something anyway and he’d started doing little things to get caught. He’d started hoping that you would find out the truth.”

  “Wait he wanted me to catch him?”

  “Yes. So that he didn’t look like the bad guy. At least that was the lie that he’d said. I threatened to tell you and he said that he’d told you the truth about me. When I found out that I was pregnant. I didn’t tell Elroy at first because I knew that it was your father’s. I’d still been having sex with him, and Elroy and I were barely having sex because he was always working; or still with you and just telling me that he was working. I mean, the timeframe pointed towards your father anyway. I told your father and he asked me to get rid of it. I refused. When he saw that I was serious about keeping it, he cut me off. And since Elroy didn’t know that I’d gone back to seeing him, I told Elroy that the baby was his. At that point he said he would no longer wait on you to leave him or play any more games. He said that what you guys had was over and that he wanted to be a family with me and the baby.”

  I stared at the ring on my finger. In frustration, I took it off. Elroy! That damn devil! It had all been some kind of act! He’d really loved her the whole time and only really got involved with me to get back at her because she was screwing my father.