by B. M. Hardin
The lawyer took a deep breath as Micki held me.
I was crying my eyes out.
Now I remembered why I loved her so much despite how big of a jerk she could be at times.
If only I had the chance to tell her that I loved her one last time.
After a few more minutes, and after the lawyer said that the money would be released to us, on this same day, a year later if we could provide documentation of marriage; Micki to anybody. Me, back to Eddie, Micki and I made our way back to the car.
We didn’t say anything to each other.
If either of us failed to do what Patrice had in the will, our half would go to a charity of choice.
All of it.
I couldn’t believe that Patrice had set me up a publishing deal and that she had left me so much money.
But she hadn’t thought it all the way through.
How in the hell was I supposed to win Eddie back?
And get him to marry me again?
In a year?
I might as well kiss that money good bye because I already knew that wasn’t going to happen.
But twenty million dollars?
That was a whole lot of money.
Too much to give up without a try.
Damn, I had twelve months to try to fix my situation and I didn’t even know where to begin.
As we rode down the street, I looked up at the sky and imagined Patrice looking down on me from Heaven.
I managed to smile.
“Don’t be up there giving Him a hard time, okay?”
I heard Micki slightly chuckle.
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
***********************************************
CHAPTER 9
I had been writing my heart out.
I had so much on my mind and on my heart.
Patrice’s death was weighing on me so heavily and I was still in somewhat a shock about it all.
“Do you need anything?”
Though I still Eddie’s bad side, once I told him what happened with Patrice, he had been there for me, despite his personal feelings.
“I’m okay.”
He nodded and headed back upstairs with the kids.
I hadn’t told him what Patrice left in her will about the us or the money.
But her words had been ringing in my ear non-stop.
Though getting the money would be nice and we would be set for life, she was right about everything that she’d said about Eddie.
He may not have been everything I wanted but he was everything that I needed.
And I had to make it right.
I didn’t want the money to influence his decision as to whether he should be with me again or not so I didn’t tell him.
I was just going to work my ass off to win his heart back.
I just had to figure out how.
After calling him Polo’s name, I knew that it was going to take damn near a miracle to get him to see that we were meant to be together, but I was desperate and I was willing to do anything.
Both for the love…and for the money.
Polo still hadn’t really bothered me.
He’d called once or twice but that was about it.
Maybe he was going to leave me alone for good.
Maybe he was going on with his life.
I sure hope so.
If I was going to try to find a way to get Eddie back, Polo had to stay as far away from me as possible.
Hell maybe Eddie’s idea to kill him should have been a real plan after all.
Things would definitely be better if we had.
But maybe there was another way to get rid of Polo.
I thought about the woman that he used to mess with; the one that had turned up dead.
It was weird that she died on the same day that she’d told me about the video tape that she saw of me and Polo.
At the time Polo was definitely into me and what we were doing behind Eddie’s back, so maybe he had taken care of it himself.
Maybe he was angry at her for telling me.
Angry enough to kill her?
I wasn’t so sure.
But with Polo, and his unstable personality, and if he was as crazy as Micki thought that he was, maybe he did do it.
Maybe I could find some evidence.
He only drove his jag, but he did have another car; a Cadillac Escalade, that he never drove and that no one hardly ever saw.
He kept it in that garage of his, and it was definitely big enough to knock the life out of someone, literally, even if he hadn’t being going all that fast.
As far as I knew, they’d never found the person responsible for the hit and run.
Maybe I could check Polo’s car for evidence.
Someway, somehow, he was going to have to go away, completely because I knew if Eddie and I tried to make something happen, he would surely try to mess it up.
He’d made that clear, so it was up to me to stop him.
~***~
“Mama, I want my husband back.”
She and I were finally back on better terms.
“Go get him back then.”
I knew that Eddie loved my mother as though he was her own and he respected her.
To him, she wasn’t as much as a headache as his own, which was why initially he and the boys had gone to my mother’s house instead when all of the crap with Polo and I hit the fan.
I knew that he would listen to anything that she had to say.
I knew that he would value her words of wisdom.
So, I needed her help.
I didn’t inform her either about the money that Patrice had left behind or the restrictions that came with it.
“Can you talk to him for me?”
“And say what? The divorce is final now right?”
“Yes. But I think we can start over. I think that we still have a chance.”
“And Polo?”
“Polo and I have nothing going on. Honestly, I haven’t really seen or heard from him. Maybe he is on to the next, like his normal self.”
“Was it really worth either of you losing the relationships that you had with Eddie?”
“No. If I miss what we had, I know that Polo has to miss their friendship terribly.”
Mama shook her head.
Neither Polo or I could change the past, but I could try to change my future.
“Can you talk to him Mama? Please?”
She huffed.
“Tell me what to say and I will give it a try.”
I smiled.
It was a start.
Speaking of the devil, just as Mama drove off, Polo pulled up beside me.
“Hey.”
“Hey Polo.”
“Oh, so we’re back to being salty again?”
“No. I’m fine. What is it?”
“I just missed seeing your face.”
“Polo, what huh? We aren’t going to be together. We aren’t going to have sex again, ever. So what huh?”
“Nothing Sassi. Like I told you, I’ll always love you. And fine, move on. As long as you aren’t with Eddie, I’m fine.”
“Why though? Why not Eddie?”
“Because he was never supposed to have you. It was supposed to be me. And as I said, if I had to lose him, you have to lose him too.”
Polo winked and drove off.
Yeah, my mind was made up.
His ass had to go.
Whether he was dead, in prison, or in somebody’s crazy institution, Polo could consider himself soon to be a distant memory.
I was on a mission.
Rolling my eyes, I smiled as Micki pulled up next.
“Found a man yet?”
“Not one that I want to marry,” Micki frowned.
She too was trying to get herself together and trying to find love so that she could get her share of the money.
“You know, in your case, you could just marry anyone,” I said to her.
Hell, hers was simple.
>
Find someone, marry them, and get her money.
She didn’t have to love them.
After they were married, they could divorce.
“Hmm, I didn’t look at it that way. You are right. I could do that. I need that money.”
As I said, Micki had always been a single mother.
She didn’t really have help.
She wasn’t a college graduate or anything, but she always kept some kind of job.
But things were always hard for her.
Manageable, but hard.
Twenty million dollars would change her whole life, and her kids.
“But I do only want to be married once; we will see. I’m on the hunt. If I can’t find true love soon, I just may have to do what I got to do. I’m sure somebody will agree to marry me for the money. I’m just not comfortable with having to pay for a husband.”
Micki talked a little while longer.
We both had a year to get our lives together.
But I wished my task was as easy as hers.
“Any luck with Eddie?”
“I haven’t really tried. He’s been around, but we don’t talk about anything like that. I asked my Mama to try to talk to him and see where his head was. And then I guess I will go from there. I just don’t want it to work for the money you know. Just like you. I really do want Eddie back. I really do want my life back.”
“I know you do. Have you heard from Polo lately?”
“Yes, but nothing much. He’s happy as long as Eddie and I aren’t together.”
“What kind of mess is that?”
“I don’t know. You know Polo.”
“I told you he was crazy. I told you.”
Yeah.
And I was convinced that he was crazy enough to kill.
I had to make my way to his house so that I could be nosey.
I knew that it was something in that house that I could use against him.
I needed some kind of leverage.
I needed to find something that I could use to get rid of him for good.
Even if he hadn’t committed the murder, there just had to be something that I could use.
I was sure that he had some kind of dirt or something.
Micki and I finished our conversation and I headed in the house to get the kids from Eddie.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I love you.”
“I see you guys tomorrow,” Eddie said and headed out the door.
I rolled my eyes and chatted with the boys for a second.
After I got them settled with snacks and a movie, I sat on the couch and texted Eddie.
At first he didn’t respond, but by the third text he asked me to stop saying that I loved him because I’d proved time and time again that I didn’t.
But I did.
I really did.
I texted him a few more times and after he stopped responding I texted Mama and asked her to go ahead and give him a call.
And then I remembered that I’d blocked her cell number, so I had to text her and tell her to call from her house phone.
I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down a plan.
I thought about everything that I knew about Eddie.
What he liked.
What he didn’t.
What made him happy.
What made him smile.
Next I wrote down all I knew about Polo.
He was going down!
And I was going to make sure of that.
~***~
I waited for Polo to pull out and I prepared to make my move.
I didn’t know where he was going so I had to get in and get out as soon as possible.
I’d taken Polo’s house key off of Eddie’s key ring the day before.
I knew exactly which one it was because I was the one that had put it on there and put a P on the back of it since it looked like so many other keys that we had.
I’d switched cars with my brother, just to make the run and I parked two houses up on the side of the road.
Polo had seen my brother’s car before, but I doubted that he would pay it any attention.
As soon as he was out of sight, I got out of the car and headed towards Polo’s house.
Looking around me, I put the key in the lock and turned the knob.
I walked in to the smell of men’s cologne.
It smelled so good.
It smelled like Polo.
But I had to stay focused.
My first place was the garage so I headed to the door that led out to the garage from inside of the house.
I found the switch and walked towards the burgundy beauty on four wheels.
The car was shining and super clean.
I checked the front of it for any scratches or signs of blood but there was none.
There was nothing there that would hint that he could have been the driver behind the girl’s accident.
Finally figuring that I should head to more rooms in the house, I turned off the light and headed to Polo’s bedroom.
I had been in there plenty of times but I’d never had the chance to snoop around.
Polo was always there.
I didn’t know where to start so I checked the closet.
He was so clean that I knew that I had to make sure that I put everything back in its proper place.
I didn’t see anything so I came back out.
I looked on his dresser.
He had so many bottles of cologne, of the same exact kind.
There had to be about fifty bottles there.
Weirdo.
There was nothing out of place there though.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
I picked up one of the bottles of cologne just to give it a little spray.
Trying to pull the lid off of it, I dropped it and the lid rolled under the bed.
I got down on all fours to get it.
“What the hell…”
There were about ten boxes under the bed; along with wigs, hand cuffs and chains.
Not to mention a camcorder.
So he was videotaping us having sex?
Where?
How?
Of course the camcorder was a new updated, smaller one, so he could have stuck it pretty much anywhere that day and simply pressed record.
Even though I hadn’t intentionally come to have sex with him, he must have been prepared, just in case.
I flipped through the saved recordings and sure enough there it was.
Excuse me, there they were.
There were several of recorded sexually encounters of us, starting from the first time, on up to the times that I was coming over during my lunch breaks.
And he’d named them…Sex with Sassi #1…Sex with Sassi #2…
He was such a sick little pervert!
I erased them all.
Every last one of them in a rage.
I started from the first time and on up.
There were tons of different recordings there and one other than mine, caught my attention.
Sex with Micki #1.
She’d told me that she hadn’t had sex with Polo.
I pressed play and watched.
Polo started to undress her, but suddenly, she stopped him.
She started grabbing her things to leave and Polo got upset.
“I paid for it, and I want it.”
After arguing for a while, she finally got away from him and ran out the door.
And then the video came to an end.
I guess she didn’t sleep with him, but she’d planned to.
She’d been paid to, and I guess that’s why Polo got upset and started doing all of those crazy things that she assumed that he did.
He was obsessive and definitely possessive and seeing how angry he was that she didn’t keep the end of the deal, I was sure that he had been bothering her as a result of it.
I looked just to see if there were any from Patrice but there wasn’t.
But there was one that said Eddie.
They were sitting in Polo’s living room.
Judging from the angle, the camera had to be taping from somewhere near the fireplace mantel or maybe it was the bookcase that was right beside of it.
They talked for a while and then Eddie told him that he thought that I was cheating on him.
He told him that I had switched my panties and that he had a feeling that I was sleeping with someone else.
Polo tried to reason with him, knowing that he was the one that he was talking about.
And then Eddie said something else.
“I don’t know what I would do if she was cheating on me man. I would probably die or try to kill her man,” Eddie said.
Polo made a comment and then Eddie said.
“Or would you do it for me? Like last time.”
What?
What the hell did he mean like last time?
Last time what?
Polo, assuming that he remembered that he was taping their conversation told Eddie that he was thinking crazy, and Eddie agreed that he was trippin’ and wasn’t thinking clearly.
He then invited him outside for a walk and that was it.
What did I just watch?
What did I just hear?
Was that somewhat a murder confession?
And Eddie was involved?
Or if he wasn’t, he knew about it?
I wanted to listen to it again, but decided that I had been on the camcorder long enough.
Instead, I erased that video too.
You just never know what Polo might try to do with it.
I checked a few more of the boxes and they appeared to have things left behind from different women.
Panties, including the leopard ones of mine that he’d taken, lipstick, hair bows, things like that.
Another box was full of sex toys, gels and creams.