by S. Ann Cole
The thing with me, though, was that I felt his words were fair enough. How? Because my sentiments were exact. For him, it was me, or no one. He was stuck with me. We were both a detonating threat to each other. Both hardcore danger. Two horns wrestling atop the Devil’s head.
However, if ever a man should whisper the words, “it’s me, or no one”, don’t sigh and think it’s sweet. It’s not. It’s not sweet. It’s bitter as gall. Painful as a piercing bullet to the heart. Fuck around and you’ll end up like Liz. Mark my words.
Run.
Love does not threaten. Love does not test, try or compete. Love does not challenge, claim or dominate. Love does not strangle. Love does not suffocate, debilitate or erase. Love does not kill. Love does not end.
Love goes on. Love flows.
Love simply loves.
Love just is.
At least, that’s what Isabel, my mother, said.
“That’s okay,” I whispered, laying my head down to his chest again. “I want to be stuck with you.”
With a kiss to the top of my head, his arms tightened around me. “Hate you so much, Jhay.”
“Love you, too, Blood.”
Isabel hadn’t spared me this one truth, though…
Love, in its purest form, is madness.
Piercing sunlight unapologetically poked my eyelids open. Chad was missing.
I flipped onto my side and espied him out on the balcony, leaning over the railing, a burgundy towel slung around his lower half, cellphone pressed to his ear, rapt in his conversation.
Slipping from between the sheets and out of bed, I trudged to the bathroom to freshen up. Fifteen minutes later I popped out with clean, moisturized skin, fresh breath, and a revived face, then realized neither of us had clothes in the room. We would either have to borrow clothes from the other famous couple occupying the house, or redress in our dirty habiliments from the day before. The latter sounded more likely.
I glanced out to the balcony and Chad was still on the phone, now with two fingers pressed to his forehead as though the conversation was a headache-inducing one. So I dragged the top sheet off the bed, wrapped it around me ancient Egyptian-style, and went in search of our clothes we’d negligently left out in the hall the night before, hoping the other two—Roman Prince and Rock Princess—weren’t yet awake.
Drifting noiselessly from the room, I tiptoed down the hall, finding not a single item of our clothes. We’d left our stuff littering the hall: of course a more civilized person would have picked them up.
I decided to just suck it up and go seek clothing for me and my man, borrowed or dirty. Didn’t matter. We were both still targets, still walking dead, so at this point it wasn’t really relevant whose clothes we were wearing.
As I neared the end of the hall, I heard discord, voices raising higher, and higher. The two were quarreling. Oh great, marital problems.
“…just not ready, JK. Not at this point in my career when—”
“Your career,” JK’s voice said, sounding more like a sneer. “Do you realize you use your career as excuse for everything? I have a ‘career’, too, Sassy, and I’m still playin’ my part as your husband. Play your fuckin’ part as my wife and do what you promised me you’d do in your vows!”
“It’s just bad timing, yeah?” Saskia returned, her voice now pacific and forbearing. “I’ll run it by Lion and—”
“ARE YOU FUCKIN’ KIDDING ME?!!” JK roared, and even I jumped at the reverberating explosion. “My wife needs to ask her manager’s permission on whether or not she should carry my motherfuckin’ baby?!”
“I don’t—”
There was a loud crash of something, followed by a jumble of other noises like a few things got tossed and kicked over. Then silence. Then a contrite “JK, wait!” Then the echoing bang of the front door.
I figured JK had stormed out, but waited a few minutes before resuming my journey down the hall. Saskia was standing still in the center of the massive kitchen, staring blankly at a completely ruined blender shattered all over the kitchen counter, pinkish smoothie running and dripping over the edges of the island. Four bar stools on the other side of the island were topsy-turvy.
I probably should be asking her if she was alright, offer her some help or something, but, yeah, I wasn’t that kind of human being.
“Excuse me, were you the one who picked our litter up from the hall?”
Saskia’s head jerked up at the sound of my voice, as if she’d been on another planet, only then becoming aware of my presence. “Oh, um, no. JK did.” As though she hadn’t just been a participant of a heart-imploding marital war, with a cool expression, she walked away from the debris, from the helter-skelter scene created by her Megatron of a husband, and rounded the island, heading into the open living area, towards an ivory couch that had a few pieces of clothes folded in a low stack.
“I could only save yours and Chad’s boots, and Chad’s trousers. Everything else got burned. So you’ll have to wear something of—”
“Burned?”
She fumbled needlessly with the folded garments, and I figured, despite her brave face, she was still on edge from the argument. “Yeah. JK was the one who took them up from the hallway…and threw them in the fireplace.”
“That asshole,” I muttered under my breath. I was close enough for her to hear me, but I didn’t give a damn how she took it. Her husband was a piece of shit asshole.
Pretending she didn’t hear, even though I was positive she did, she took up a skinny black jeans from the pile. “You’re taller than me, but I’m sure we wear the same size, yeah? And don’t worry, these are brand new. Never been worn.”
I bet they were. She was her. The famous kind who wore clothes once then tossed them aside, until she decided to make space in her closet for new stuff and donate those “old” ones to charity.
The jeans were definitely my size, so I took them and tossed them over my arm. Next she handed me a black, long-sleeved T-shirt and a lace underwear set with an eight hundred-dollar price tag still on. Also black.
“Based upon what you were wearing last night, your style seemed very much like mine,” she explained when she caught me eying the all-black garments piled in the crook of my arm. “I love black.”
Evidently.
When I just shrugged, she passed me Chad’s black jeans, washed and neatly folded, and a black wife-beater. “JK’s a little more built than Chad. Chad’s taller and lean, and I wasn’t sure how JK’s shirts would fit him, so I thought this singlet would be a safer choice, yeah?”
She was a lot friendlier than last night. The night before she’d been flat-out glaring at me, and now she seemed like she was trying to atone for that unwarranted hostility.
“Thanks,” I muttered, taking the wife-beater then bending down to pick up our boots. Chad’s were well and good, but the laces on one of mine were burned off at the ends.
As I made to leave, Saskia said, “He’s a good man.”
“What?” I asked, because that statement was laughable. She couldn’t possibly be talking about Chadrick Niiveux being a good man.
“I don’t know how bad the things are that he does—he or JK won’t tell me—but relationship-wise, he’s perfection,” she asserted. “He’s monogamous. If it’s you, it’s you. And he’ll treat you like no other woman exists in the world but you. Don’t hurt him.”
Oh, that explained it. She knew the fake Chad. The pretend-to-be-a-normal guy Chad. But I knew the real Chad. The one who’ll wrap his fingers around your throat and squeeze the air out of your lungs just minutes after confessing he’s falling in love with you. The one who whispered threateningly sweet things like “It’s me, or no one”.
She knew Chad. She didn’t know Chadrick. Half-Russian Kah-had-reek. Heir to the Devil’s pitchfork.
This woman with her easy life, her increasing wealth and fame, and her husband who loved her so much it seemed he was going mad, did not know the real Chad.
I did.
“Do you love him?” I questioned.
She took umbrage at this, her shoulders squaring in defense, pussy-cat gray eyes narrowing. “I love my husband.”
“Well, if you truly love your husband, be a good wife, carry his child, and keep your nose out of my and Chad’s business. It’s safer for you.”
I turned and walked off before she could shoot a rejoinder.
Why did I say all that? I had no idea. I guess I was just jealous about the whole “he’ll treat you like no other woman exists in the world but you”. Right. She should know. Why did she get the queen treatment and I got the rough, abusive treatment?
Maybe because she’s never tried to kill him or abuse him before? my snarky mind suggested.
Clutching the apparels while trying to keep the sheet around me intact, I re-entered the bedroom and found Chad still on the balcony. No longer on his phone, though. Just gazing out at the rolling green hills.
“Pssst,” I hissed, dumping the garments on the bed.
Chad turned around, saw me, and padded into the room, all wind-tousled hair, rippling abs, sexy V, and artistic tattoos on glowing olive skin.
“JK burned our clothes,” I told him, “so we have to wear theirs.”
Chad nodded once like he couldn’t care less, took up his jeans from the pile and started getting dressed. “All the shouting, marital problems?”
“Yep,” I confirmed. “She’s pregnant. He’s ready for it. She’s not.”
“Hmm” was all he gave out.
Chad had on his clothes before me and sat down at the edge of the bed to tug on his boots, and I rushed on my pieces in a slapdash manner just so I could sit down next to him and tug my boots on, too.
“Did you have feelings for her?”
A pause, then, “Yes.”
“Strong?”
His movements, as he tied his laces, got unnecessarily aggressive. “Yes.”
I moved from my right boot to my left. “What happened?”
Done with his boots, Chad stood up from the bed, and I could feel him staring down at me. “She wasn’t mine.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of all this. Knowing it hadn’t just been Liz. He’d had “strong feelings” for another woman also.
What I’d like to know is, when the fuck did he have time to love, miss, or mourn me? How could he claim he always loved me when he was busy loving other women? Was I a dolt to be believing his bullshit? Maybe.
But what did it even matter, huh? If he fessed up and told me he hadn’t always loved me, would I care? No. I wouldn’t. Because even if he hadn’t always loved me, I always loved him. For my whole life. Even when I hated him, I loved him.
If I should be honest with myself, my enthusiasm for Chad’s assignment had not been because I so desperately wanted revenge, but because I so desperately wanted to see him again. Even if it was just to kiss him right before I blew his brains to kingdom come.
I had never hated him.
Was just disappointed.
When I was finished with my boots, I straightened up on the bed and found him standing there, hovering, watching me.
Moving in front of me, he stooped down and placed his hands on my kneecaps. “Don’t ever doubt that it has always been you, Jhay. I loved Liz, but nowhere near how obscenely in love I am with you. You have always been inimitable in my thoughts. Memories of you were indelible. But a part of me…a part of me had to let you go, while another part still hoped. Hope at least that your hate for me hadn’t erased me completely from your memories. Stupidly hoped that one day the good memories would outshine the bad, and you’d come find me, because searched as I did, I couldn’t find you. So I got the tattoo. A year after, I found it wasn’t enough. I kept missing you. Missing you. Kept searching and couldn’t find you. So I went again and got the lyrics on my side. You never asked me about the lyrics because you don’t even realize they’re for you. You don’t know, Jhay. You don’t know how important you are to me.”
He looked down at his hands on my knees, took a minute, then looked back up at me. “I was falling for Saskia, it’s true, but I could’ve never shown her my real face. You know me. You know the real me. You knew me before I became me. I never have to hide from you. You see my ugly, my monster, my sins, my wounds, and you still love me. You fear me, but you don’t run. You’re sending yourself to doom with me.” A loaded sigh. “We were eight years apart, Jhay. What could we have done? It was impossible. It would’ve been labeled statutory rape, wrong, disadvantage, manipulation, abuse… Now we can call it….” He trailed off, as if to say “whatever we want”.
“Love.” I touched the side of his face. “We’re still eight years apart, but now we can call it love.”
He leaned into my touch. “I fell for them, but for you I fucking face-planted. You’re matchless. I know you don’t believe my words because you’re trained not to trust,” he said softly, “but know that I do my best to never, ever lie to you. About anything. You’re the only one I can be myself with. And I enjoy that freedom. I won’t ruin it with lies.”
“Only half-truths?”
He shook his head. “I might keep things from you to protect you…”
There was nothing more to say, because due to our past, the betrayals, treachery and duplicity, not just from him, but also from my mother, I might never reach a point where I’d believe his words, or anyone else’s, not even my own, so I curtailed the conversation with a simple “Okay.”
Realizing that nothing he said would ever convince me, Chad stood up, took my hands and pulled me from the bed, accepting defeat and moving on. “Feel any different about your brother being alive now? Ready to apologize?”
Not really, but I nodded. “Guess so.”
He slung his arm around me. “Let’s hope Hell’s out of vacancy and Satan doesn’t call us home today.”
“He better not,”—I uncharacteristically gyrated my hips—”because, dude, I’m wearing eight hundred-dollar panties today.”
NINETEEN
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise,
Than when we’ve first begun.…
The end is now, a voice whispered in my head.
I had a bad feeling. The second we drove through my brother’s open gates and saw the red sports car from yesterday belonging to Org’s men, I knew today was either the end or the beginning.
Even if Org’s guys were supposedly protecting me, finding their car parked inside my brother’s residence was off. One, I wasn’t in there. And two, the residence was gated, so how could they have gotten in, unless with coercion?
“What are they doing here?” I asked Chad.
His tone and entire demeanor weren’t of the man I knew. “I lost them in the hills last night before I drove to my right address. Didn’t want them knowing of that place. They’re just here to find out your whereabouts.”
I leaned forward and opened the glove compartment, took out his handgun and readied it with more aggression than needed so he’d know I was irritated. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a little fucking girl. You know that’s not why they’re here. You know we can’t reverse out now because we’re trapped. I know you counted three suspiciously idle cars parked five blocks within each other on the way here. You know like I know that something is up. So fuck you. Stop trying to spare me.”
Nothing.
Then, “Five. I counted five idle cars.”
“Then why didn’t you turn around?!”
Rolling up beside the sports car and easing the gear in park, Chad turned his head and gave me a look like I was the most inhumane person alive. “Because your brother is here.”
“But these are Org’s men. What do they care about Ricardo being alive or not?”
Providing no answer, Chad reached under his car seat and came back up with a Walther P22 semi-automatic handgun, then opened the door to get out. “Stay in the car.”
“That’s it?” I asked, mouth agape. “You’re just going to march in there with nothing but a handgun? You don’
t have more weapons in the trunk or something?”
He was irritatingly impassive, eyes stark and accepting. “I can smell him. Just…stay in the car, Tweety Byrd.”
Unfolding smoothly from the low sports car, he shut the door with a simple backward flick of his hand, then strode without falter or uncertainty up to the house, gun held loosely in his hand like it was a cheap accessory he didn’t care for. He seemed resigned, convinced that this was the end.
And what did he mean he could “smell him”? Smell who?
Surely, Rafail wouldn’t come here himself. Rafail did nothing himself. He hid behind threats and manipulations, orders, and money power.
Suddenly I realized it: Chad, if not afraid of anyone, was afraid of his father. If Rafail was really inside that house, Chad would not put up a fight. He would let him kill him. He would let Rafail win.
The prime reason he wanted me to remain in the car. Because if Org’s men were inside, too, they were there to protect me, not him. They would do nothing to stop Rafail from killing Chad.
Stay in the car…
He knew today was not my day to die.
It was his.
Fuck staying in the car!
Renting the passenger door open, I leaped out of the car and tore up to the house.
The front door was wide open, and someone was standing in its frame, facing inside, back facing outside. I made out the overly muscular figure and the military haircut. Sambo.
Walking up to him, I poked him in the side with my gun—not threateningly—and asked, “What the fuck is going on?”
Sambo turned to me, never minding my weapon. Expression one of victory and complacency, he scanned my face and then my body for a minute, before he stepped aside and held his hand out in a gesture for me to enter.
I brushed past him into the house, and the first thing I saw was Clementine’s petite body in pink pajama bottoms and a blue tank top soaked with blood, her stomach riddled with bullet holes, like the person who did this emptied an entire magazine on her, with the intention of ensuring the newborn’s death.
Second thing I saw was Chad kneeling beside Clementine, the upper half of her lifeless body propped up in his arms, while he rocked to and fro, to and fro.