Reserve My Curves 3

by BM Hardin

  My phone rung over and over with calls from Silas but I refused to answer them.

  There was just no way I was going to be with him.

  He was a fool to even suggest that we try to make things work and on top of that, he still wanted to get married.

  What the hell was he smoking?

  Silas was delusional and he had better find a genie and three wishes if he thought for a second that he would see me in a white dress, walking down aisle toward him to music, holding flowers and all that other bull crap.

  It just wasn’t going to happen.

  Not now and not ever!

  I ignored his calls over and over again and before I could even turn onto the street of my parent’s house, I could see the smoke.

  And then I saw the flames.

  My house, the house that had belonged to my parents, was up in flames…again.

  But this time, the house was burning down.

  It was pretty much gone as though it had been burning for a long while.

  And get this, fire fighters were there…but they weren’t doing anything.

  They were just standing there, chatting, as though a fire wasn’t taking place right in front of them.

  I didn’t see even one water hose spraying water on the house to control the flame.

  I didn’t see anybody running around in a panic trying to make sure that no one was in there or trying to figure out want to do next.

  Everybody was just standing there.

  Everybody was calm.

  What the hell is wrong with this picture?

  I jumped out of the car and immediately started to ask questions.

  No one seemed to know how the fire had started, but they assured me that the house couldn’t be saved.

  It was gone.

  The house that my parents had raised us in and worked hard for, and that I had laid on my back to pay back off, was burning down to the ground right in front of me.

  I thought about all of the things that were now lost like pictures and things left behind to remember the people that I’d loved the most.

  My life absolutely, positively, sucked!

  Everything was always going wrong.

  After a few minutes the head fireman in charge, I suppose, walked over to me and reached me his phone.

  I looked at him confused as he continued to reach it out towards me.

  Finally, I took it and placed it on my ear.

  “Hello? Envy. So when will you be back home?” Silas asked.

  What?

  What was he doing on the fireman’s phone?

  Ugh, they had connections everywhere!

  I’d left my phone in the car, so I’m guessing he’d called the man to see if I’d arrived.

  “Silas, did you do this?”

  He was quiet.

  “Not technically. I might have made a small call,” he said.

  My mouth opened wide, and the next thing I knew, I was hollering, screaming and cursing so bad that even the grown folks started to cover their ears.

  And just before throwing the fireman’s phone to the ground, and stomping on it, I heard Silas say.

  “Okay Envy, I’ll see you when you get home.”

  Damn lunatic!

  ****************************

  Chapter TWO

  “Envy, you don’t have any money, come home,” Silas said.

  Can you believe that I’d gone to the bank to get whatever little cash that I had in there out, just for them to tell me that the account was empty and had been closed due to some bogus ass sixty day old overdraft?

  Get the hell out of here!

  Yet, I’d just deposited a small regular maid’s check the week before, not to mention that I’d recently used my bank card for gas, but no matter who I talked to, they all tried to tell me the same thing which could only mean one thing.

  Silas was behind it all.

  I was sure that he had something to do with it.

  He wasn’t God for crying out loud!

  Why was it that he could do things that he wasn’t supposed to be able to do?

  I couldn’t help but wonder how he and his family, or whoever had gotten so many different American ties, and it only made me even more afraid of whom the real Silas actually was.

  So basically, I was broke and eventually I was going to have to do something about it.

  I’d thought to ask Josephine for a few dollars, but she was only going to ask questions and I wasn’t sure of what answers to give her just yet.

  I was just glad that Horizon was with her so that I could really try to figure some things out.

  I was sure that Grant knew that I knew about him and his previous role at the hotel by now, and I was sure that he was on pins and needles, waiting for my next move.

  But for now, he was in the clear, but I didn’t know for how long.

  I had to get myself together first before I started messing up my sister’s relationship.

  Since I didn’t have any money, thanks to Silas, I’d slept in the car overnight, in the driveway of my burnt down home.

  I couldn’t believe that Silas would have gone that far, but it just showed me that I didn’t know him at all.

  It showed me just how ruthless he really was.

  And it also showed me just how far he was willing to get to get what he wanted.

  I’d only eaten a candy bar, so I knew that I had to do something quick because my stomach was definitely on empty.

  And on top of that, it was cold.

  Silas would always tell me to keep cash in my purse, but I never did.

  I never listened.

  And now I was paying for it.

  I was furious at him for what he’d done to my house; well, more like what he’d had someone else do to it, but of course he was the one to blame.

  I wasn’t sure of what I was going to do to him when I saw him again, but he had better believed that he'd just caused a war.

  I couldn’t believe that he was doing all of this to make sure that I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  And the sad thing was that he was succeeding.

  He was messing with my money. He was messing with everything.

  And I was willing to bet that he wasn’t going to stop until he got what he wanted.

  At this point, I didn’t have a choice but to go home to him.

  I was cold, I was hungry, and I hadn’t washed my ass in over twenty-four hours, so Ms. Pussy definitely had one hell of an attitude.

  He’d left me no choice.

  I arrived to see Silas sitting on the front porch as though he was expecting me.

  Why won’t he just go away and leave me alone?

  He couldn’t possibly really love me after all of the lies that he’d told me. But then again, no one loves exactly the same.

  And at the same time, I’d been lying to him too, and no one could tell me that I hadn’t loved him, because I had.

  Or maybe in a way I still do.

  I was confused.

  But we could never work.

  He couldn’t have loved me and allowed me to be a whore all at the same time.

  He just couldn’t have.

  Whatever it was just couldn’t be love.

  I wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t love.

  Not the kind of love that I wanted for that matter.

  So, why was he fighting for something that we never really had in the first place?

  Our relationship was doomed from the very beginning.

  And the fact that he was trying to leave me broke and without a home if I didn’t want to be with him, just confirmed that he cared more about himself than he cared about me.

  I guess I took too long to get out of the car because after a while, Silas got up and walked over to the car.

  He waited for me to roll down the window.

  “Envy, let’s talk.”

  “We already talked Silas.”

  He seemed as though he was becoming frustrated.

 
“Well, let’s talk again. Let’s start over.”

  I shook my head no.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Well if you leave, where are you going to go? What are you going to do? You don’t have any money. I just got word that they are officially shutting the hotel down for good. You can’t go back as a maid. So what are you going to do?”

  I hadn’t watched the news yet but I’d heard a good bit about what was being speculated about the hotel on the radio.

  I’d known from the start that shutting its doors was inevitable.

  “I’ll figure it out.”

  Silas took a deep breath.

  I could tell that he was really getting upset like he had the right to be.

  But there was no way in hell that I could stay with him after all that had gone on.

  “Envy, let’s go in the house and talk.”

  I shook my head no again.

  I guess that was the last straw because before I had a chance to blink, Silas opened my driver’s side door, and pulled me out of the car by my hair.

  And I mean he was literally pulling me, head and hair first out of the car.

  Really?

  I was in shock at first and it was as though I was having a bad dream or something.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  But when reality kicked in, I started screaming for help and throwing punches his way all at the same time.

  “Hey Silas, how are you doing over there buddy?” our next door neighbor said, stepping outside at the sound of all the noise.

  Silas was still pulling me by my hair towards the front door and I was still screaming.

  “Everything is going just fine.” Silas responded and with his words, the man from next door said okay and went back inside of his house.

  What?

  Wait a minute…what!

  He’d gone in as though he hadn’t seen a thing.

  Silas opened the front door and damn near threw me inside.

  As soon as I was loose, I attacked him but he picked me up and carried me to the bedroom.

  He threw me on the bed and then closed the bedroom door and sat in front of it.

  I started to throw stuff at him but he only smacked it away.

  “How dare you! You said you would never put your hands on me!” I screamed.

  “And I haven’t. You just needed a little help coming inside.”

  Who was this man?

  This wasn’t my Silas.

  I felt as though I didn’t know him at all.

  Hell in all reality, I didn’t.

  Everything I thought I knew about him was what he’d wanted me to believe and most of it was a lie.

  I screamed and fussed.

  And fussed and screamed some more.

  But Silas didn’t say anything.

  His phone ranged and I made as much noise as possible and shouted out that he was keeping me against my will and that I needed help.

  Silas hung up, and continued to just sit there.

  For starters, he was being too damn calm about everything, the whole time, which gave me the feeling that he was even more dangerous than I realized.

  “Silas just leave me alone. Just let me go. I need my money so I can just go.”

  “Give me a chance. Let’s work on us until the wedding date. If it doesn’t work out by then, then I will let you go. It’s only a few months away. Let’s just see what happens from now until then.”

  I wanted to call him so many names that I couldn’t get them out of my mouth fast enough.

  He can’t make me do anything.

  I’m a grown ass woman!

  And then he said that he will let me go.

  He won’t let me do a damn thing!

  “No Silas, no,” I said to him harshly.

  “Why? Thanks to you, there’s no more hotel business, no more thirteenth floor, no more reserving your curves. We have a clean slate. A fresh start. We can really try to work it out. I love you, Envy. You might not think so but I really do. And I can’t live without you or Horizon.”

  At the mention of her name, I thought about my daughter.

  I thought about how much I loved her and I thought about how much she loved him.

  He was the only father figure that she’d ever known and she adored Silas.

  But she would get over it.

  And then again…what was I really going to do?

  I didn’t have any money, not within my reach, and I didn’t have a home to go back to.

  And Silas wasn’t going to give me the money back, unless I did what he said.

  I was sure of it.

  So, that meant that I had to find a job, and I already knew how hard that was going to be for me.

  So what was I supposed to do now?

  But I just couldn’t stay here.

  I just couldn’t stay with Silas.

  I didn’t trust him any further than I could see him and I didn’t know what he was really capable of.

  I just wanted out.

  “Silas, just please give me my money and let me go.”

  He looked at me as though he wanted to choke the life out of me or as if he was upset that he couldn’t change my mind with his words, no matter what he said.

  “You will give us a chance. Or you will go to jail and I will take Horizon.”

  Excuse me?

  What the hell was he talking about?

  I was in the clear when it came to the charges with the hotel, so what did he mean?

  And taking my daughter…over my dead body!

  “Silas, what are you talking about? And you’re not taking my daughter anywhere.”

  Though we’d already handled the adoption process, and everything was signed, his lawyer was holding on to the paperwork until the day after the wedding.

  We’d finally fully agreed that it was just better to do it once we were husband and wife.

  But then it hit me.

  What if Silas had already had the papers turned in?

  He’d been the one to get everything going for the process, so who’s to say that he didn’t have all of them in his back pocket too?

  Not to mention that my signature was already on everything.

  Oh hell no!

  “You heard what I said.”

  “No, Silas explain,” I replied to him.

  Silas stood to his feet and came over to me.

  His face had softened but I knew that he was up to no good.

  “You remember that hit you ordered years ago?”

  Hit?

  What was he talking about?

  I didn’t order any kind of hit.

  Wait a minute.

  Oh…no…wait.

  He couldn’t possibly know about that.

  Could he?

  I thought about Josephine and the guy that she’d been with before Grant.

  She was only about sixteen but he was in college and in that whole “I can screw any woman I want” stage.

  I was very overprotective in those days and I’d tried to get him to back off and leave Josephine alone but he refused and that’s when I’d gotten Keymar’s drug dealing brother to follow him and shoot him down one day as he was getting into his car.

  He’d looked at me like a sister, and he hadn’t mind doing it.

  He’d owed me a small favor anyway.

  It was a horrible thing to do, and I wasn’t proud of it but I couldn’t let him hurt my sister.

  I would do anything for my family.

  I’d always been that way.

  It was a careless decision and just something that happened.

  Josephine had taken it pretty hard, since she’d been caught up in that whole first boyfriend, first love, nonsense, but only months later she met Grant.

  And they’ve been together ever since.

  But how did Silas know about that secret?

  Keymar’s brother had been in prison for years on drug charges.

  He and his gang were never caught on the murder, b
ut he’d gotten so many years behind living the fast life and making fast money.

  “I can tell you are thinking about it so I’ll confirm it. Yes, I have a signed confession that you ordered him to kill and he’s willing to say that it was a paid hit. The police would have a field day with information on a case that was never solved and years old. When we first started dating, I spent the necessary resources to find out everything that I could about you. Everybody has secrets. You just have to be willing to find them. He’s the brother of Horizon’s father and after just one visit and putting enough money on his books to last him a lifetime, he told me about what he’d done for you. But your secret is safe with me…if you just give us one more chance.”

  He was going to blackmail me to be with him?

  Really?

  I felt as though I was about to die.

  I couldn’t believe Keymar’s brother had told and I definitely couldn’t believe inspector Silas.

  What is wrong with folks with money?

  Just because you have money, power and resources, that doesn’t mean that you go messing around in people’s lives and in their past.

  Who does that?

  And now he was trying to use it against me?

  He was trying to make me stay in a relationship with him or send me to jail and take my child away from me?

  Who in the hell does he think that he is!

  “Just give us one more chance. I know I’m not who you thought that I was and of course I knew exactly who you were all along, but I love you anyway. Now I want you to learn to love me, the real me.”

  This man just wasn’t going to quit.

  He was crazy!

  Like, I was just at a loss for words.

  And I knew that this fool was going to do just what he’d said that he would do if I didn’t comply.

  “Silas, it’s just a lot. I mean you were one of the bosses at the hotel, and all of the truths about you, your past and Carmen. I just don’t see how we can get past it all. I don’t know why you would even want to. I’m no angel, but of course you know that already. There’s just no way that you could possibly think that we could have a future,” I said to him.

  Internally, I was as hot as Hell’s fire.

  I was so angry that even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to express it.

  But I was trying to play at the strings of his heart.

  You catch more bees with honey, so if I wanted results, my type of results from Silas, I was going to have to soften and sweeten up.