by BM Hardin
I didn’t know what to say.
My mind was on overload and I needed a drink.
Pregnant and all.
I needed a damn drink!
I just didn’t know what to say or what to believe anymore.
The lies and the secrets surrounding the people in my life were just too much.
Carmen went on to say that she was the one that had me shot at her house that day.
I knew that bitch had something to do with it!
She admitted that she was in a bad place and that she’d told Detective Wiley to shot me but not kill me.
Just for her entertainment.
Just because Silas loved me and not her.
I wanted to spit in her face after she said that, but I stood up instead.
I wish I would help this bitch after telling me something like that.
I started to walk away but she followed me.
“Envy he loves you and you make him vulnerable. I’ve watched him ready to give up everything because of you, so I know that he loves you. Hell, he killed my sister, his own wife for you,” Carmen said.
He what?
Carmen shook her head.
“He what?”
“There’s so much more that we need to talk about. Just keep him busy. Occupied. Just until I have my baby and so I can get the hell out of town,” Carmen said and walked off.
He did what?
If he killed her sister that meant that he killed his daughter too.
But why?
Why would Silas do something like that?
And because of me she’d said?
Huh?
I sat in the car and wondered if I could believe anything that Carmen had just told me.
I'll admit it, some of it made a whole lot of sense, but Carmen was evil at heart and believing her just didn’t feel right.
But she’d even told me that she was behind me getting shot.
I was sure she wouldn’t have said that she was behind it if she wasn’t.
She hadn’t had to tell me that but she had.
Maybe she was telling the truth.
Maybe she’d told me because she’d wanted me to somehow know how serious she was about everything that she was saying.
Even if she had to tell me a few secrets of her own.
But I had so many questions.
She’d said so many things, and there were so many things that I still wanted to know.
Oh, and Silas was such a liar!
Damn, he was the worst!
All of his half-ass truths made my ass itch, and now I was going right back into that space concerning him that I’d just come from.
He couldn’t be trusted.
But Carmen had said that he loved me and if anyone knew how he really felt, than I was sure that it was her.
But why had he wanted to kill me?
When?
What was it about?
That part really had me wondering.
I’d never done anything to him but tell a few lies, but hell, he definitely couldn’t have wanted to hurt me because of that.
Some of the things that I’d thought that I was lying to him about, he’d already known anyway, so I had no idea why he would have even thought about trying to kill me.
I just didn’t know.
And then Carmen said that they’d put the whole hotel scheme together.
Wow.
Now that was just beyond crazy.
And clever as hell too.
I guess they’d wanted out as bad as they’d said that they did.
And they’d found the perfect way to do it.
But my question now was why would Silas want to kill Carmen?
Was it because he was jealous?
Was it because he felt betrayed?
And why was he just mad at Carmen and not Wiley too?
Carmen had mentioned that he had a few brothers and sisters, half ones anyway, yet he’d never mentioned that either.
Why?
As I drove down the road, my stomach started to cramp so I tried to stop stressing and thinking about all of the things that Carmen had told me.
But she had mentioned that there was more.
So I had to keep her alive so that I could find out.
That’s if I could.
******************
Chapter EIGHT
Everywhere Silas went, I went.
Every phone call he took, I was right there.
Why I was doing this for Carmen?
I wasn’t sure.
I still didn’t like her, not one bit.
But I mean, she was pregnant and all.
And though her parenting skills were up for question, the baby still needed a mother or at least to be safe while she was carrying him.
We hadn’t spoken since that day, but she’d dropped more than enough bombs on me, and considering that she said that she had more, I wasn’t sure that I was ready for them.
But I wanted to know what they were.
She’d said that Silas had wanted to kill me.
I didn’t know when or why, but that was one of the main things that I was hoping to get out of her.
She’d also said that he’d killed her sister, which was also his deceased wife, for me.
How?
Why?
That just couldn’t be true.
His wife and daughter had been hit by a drunk driver and the driver had died as well.
Silas damn sure was alive and living so I guess that would have meant that he would have had to order the hit.
But why would he do that?
And especially to his daughter?
No, he adored his daughter.
Hell, he loved my daughter more than words could explain, so Carmen just had to be wrong.
Something just wasn’t right.
Something had been left out.
And Detective Wiley had shot me?
And Carmen had told him to?
Oh, I hadn’t forgotten about that and I was going to make sure that both of them paid for what they’d done to me.
I wished that I could have told Silas, but since I had to find out some things on him from Carmen, and because Detective Wiley was his brother, it was probably better to keep my recent discoveries to myself.
But they all were going to get what was coming to him.
Sooner or later.
With Silas and Horizon napping on the other couch, I reached for my phone.
I was desperately awaiting my delivery date, but I still had a little while to go.
I was due two days before Valentine’s Day and that was just too far away.
I went to search the fatal accident that involved Silas’s previous wife and his daughter.
The story confirmed that the driver was drunk and it was a head on collision. Silas’s wife, daughter, and the male driver were pronounced dead at the scene.
I looked at the pictures from the scene.
The photos of the wife and daughter matched the ones that I’d seen on Silas’s obituary.
The man looked somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t put his face to the name.
I glanced at Silas as he slept and wondered if he really had something to do with it all.
Horizon was resting comfortably in his arms.
It was truly a picture perfect moment and there was nothing that Carmen could have said to me that would make me believe that Silas would have killed his own daughter.
There was just no way.
His wife, for whatever reason, maybe I could believe that, but never would I believe that he killed his daughter.
She would have to come better than that.
But I couldn’t put much of anything, past anyone, these days.
If you ask me, all of them had some major issues and they all were fighting harder than ever to make sure that their truths and secrets stayed hidden.
I was just caught up in the middle of it all and I hated it. I hated the soap opera that my life had become. I see why
I had spent years by myself, in my own space and in my own little world.
People in this world were lunatics.
But little by little, I was getting fed up and when a woman is fed up, she gets up and does something about it.
I eyed Silas’s phone and thought to go through it but I figured that he probably wasn’t as asleep as he appeared to be.
He was always watching me these days and I was definitely watching him too.
I’ll admit, I was definitely in my feelings about it all. I mean I just thought, for once, things were going to be okay.
Sure, someone was out to kill me, I think, but I was getting use to things with Silas going as well as they had been.
I was hoping that we were finally going to be drama free and that everything concerning him, was either out in the open, more or less, or pretty much done and over with.
But from the looks of it, I was never going to know all that there was to know about Silas.
And I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to live with it or not.
Still entertaining my thoughts, out of nowhere, my phone chimed and Carmen’s name appeared.
It was a text message.
What was she up to now?
I was going to erase the message without bothering to actually read it and just mind my own business, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t ignore it.
No matter how bad I’d wanted to, I just had to see what it was that she had to say.
I opened it to find that she’d asked me to meet her and she’d sent an address.
Should I go?
No, Carmen couldn’t be trusted.
But maybe she had something else to say.
Something that I needed to hear.
Maybe I could find out some other truths about my husband that I was sure that he was never going to tell me.
I couldn’t make up my mind for a while and after ten minutes, I gave in.
I was going to go and see what it was that Carmen wanted, and I hoped and prayed that I wouldn’t regret it.
I tip-toed my big ass around the condo and headed out the door trying not to wake my family.
Silas hadn’t popped up or hadn’t called me as I pulled out of the parking lot, so he must have really been asleep.
I drove in a hurry.
I wasn’t sure if was a good idea, but I was going anyway.
I hated Carmen.
And Carmen hated me.
I didn’t care if she was trying to hide it or if she was only trying to act with some sense because she felt as though I could be some assistance to her, but I knew the truth.
And the truth was that we hated each other.
She still had some kind of twisted love for and loyalty to Silas, so at the end of the day, she was still my enemy.
And I had to remember to treat her as such.
Matter of a fact, it would be a good idea to go by the house and get my gun, to keep it in my purse.
Just in case.
Just to be safe.
These people were cold-hearted and they were sneaky.
And sneaky and cold-hearted just wasn’t a good mix.
I pulled up at a house that wasn’t exactly Carmen’s taste.
It was old, and looked pretty much abandoned except for her car in the driveway.
As soon as I saw it, I decided that I wouldn’t go inside, and I didn’t have to because as soon as I placed the car in park, she came outside.
She wobbled to the car and got in.
“Whose house is this?” I asked Carmen.
“Oh, this is the house that I killed my family in. I bought it a few months ago from the owners.”
What?
So she did do it?
So Silas had been telling the truth about her and her history?
Well, maybe he was on a roll with being honest and maybe Carmen was the one still lying.
I was surprised that Carmen had said the piece of information and hadn’t tried to hide it like she had tried to before.
I guess she figured that since I was with Silas, there was no telling what he’d told me, or either it was that she just didn’t give a damn anymore.
I could tell that she was tired.
But weren’t we all?
“How could you be in the house that you killed your family in? And why aren’t you at your other house?”
I was so uncomfortable that I started to drive, just in case something unexpected was about to happen.
This was a bad idea.
“They’re dead already. Stop being so sensitive. And I can’t go home. Silas knows where I live…duh. He wouldn’t be caught dead on this side of town so I’m not worried about him finding me here. I need to know from you if he’s said anything. As soon as the baby comes, I can make my move. I already have everything planned. I just can’t take the baby with me. Has he said anything to you, about me?”
Carmen was shook!
I mean she was definitely afraid of something, or someone, and let her tell it, that someone was Silas.
Maybe she was just paranoid.
Or maybe she was right.
And if she was right, I had been wrong about the man that I’d decided to marry.
But Carmen’s fright was real and it showed and as much as I wanted to enjoy it, I couldn’t.
She was definitely acting out of character, and I for one knew how it felt to be scared for my life or concerned for my safety.
“No. He hasn’t. Why don’t you just fake your death? And cover it up the way you do everyone else’s?”
“What the hell do you think I’m going to do? But I can’t take this baby with me. I’m going to leave it with Wiley or somebody. Silas had been right all those years ago. I am not fit to be a mother. And doing it alone definitely wouldn’t work. I don’t love Wiley. He was a mistake. I tried to be friendly and see if there could possibly be anything but my heart will always belong to Silas. Even though he’s with you and even though I know he’s trying to kill me. I’ll probably never love again. If love is what you could call it. Can you find out what he’s up to? I’ll pay you or whatever you want me to do. You may need a favor one day; my kind of favors. You never know what you may need me to do.”
Carmen was scaring me because she was so scared.
She wasn’t all big and bad now, and truthfully, it was freaking me out.
I didn’t need to be involved in this, especially being pregnant.
Whatever was going on, I didn’t want to be or need to be a part of it.
I couldn’t help her.
Hell if it was me, I was sure that she wouldn’t help me. Hell she would have probably been trying to be the one pulling the trigger.
I’d been trying to stay on Silas, not necessarily for Carmen but for the baby.
But the thing is, I felt that if he really wanted Carmen, she would have really been dead a long time ago.
But then again, both of them had so many things on their side and in their back pockets, both of them were probably always two steps ahead of what the other one was thinking or trying to do.
We circled back around and pulled back up at the old, abandoned looking house.
This was the last time I was going to meet her, so I had to ask.
“Carmen why would Silas have wanted to kill me?”
She looked at me.
“Because you’re her. You’re her,” Carmen said and got out of the car.
I’m her?
What did that mean?
Who was I?
What was Carmen talking about?
I drove back to the condo in silence with Carmen’s words ringing in my ears.
Of course she knew something that I didn’t know, but her loyalty to Silas kept the information that she told me limited.
That’s a lot of damn loyalty to someone that she thought was trying to kill her.
I guess she figured that she had it all worked out if she could just disappear.
And she was planning to do it without the baby?<
br />
I guess she knew herself better than anyone else did. But I had to wonder if she really knew Silas just as well. Whether she did or she didn’t, I needed to find out the truth behind her words.
She’d said them, and I knew that she’d meant them.
***
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Silas asked.
I looked at him innocently.
I had been trying my best to act normal, but it was hard with all of the things that Carmen had said, constantly in my head.
I hadn’t talked to her since that night and she hadn’t attempted to reach out to me.
I’d actually driven by the abandoned looking house, but her car wasn’t there.
Maybe she was gone.
Whether she was gone by choice or by force, so to speak, I wasn’t sure.
She had to be about due for delivery because I was and I wondered if she’d had the baby already and taken off, and if she had I wondered where the baby was.
Of course it crossed my mind as to whether or not Silas had done something to her.
But of course I couldn’t ask him.
Not directly anyway.
“I’m fine. Have you heard from Carmen?” I asked.
“No. But to be straight up with you, I called her. A few times. When I saw that she was pregnant, I immediately became worried about that child. Carmen is not well. She can’t be a mother to that baby. But she didn’t answer or return my calls. So I didn’t sweat it. It’s past time for us to cut all ties. All of our business is handled. So the way I see it, it’s good luck to her and good riddance. But I’m worried about you. My beautiful, amazing wife. You’ve put your store process on hold. You don’t seem half as excited about it as you were before. So, what’s wrong? Is it the baby hormones?”
I could tell that Silas was concerned.
It seemed so genuine, but Carmen had me second guessing him, again.
I just wanted to blurt everything out but I had seen his not-so friendly side and reactions when I said things that were out of line, and I didn’t want to get on his bad side.
But I just wanted to know.
I needed to know why he initially had a problem with me. I needed to know why he’d wanted to kill me.
I needed to know if he’d really been behind his wife’s death. And I definitely needed to know how was I this “her” as Carmen had mentioned.