Reserve My Curves 3

by BM Hardin

  But for now, I was just going to say nothing.

  Knowing Carmen, all of this could be a load of bull crap.

  She could have been lying about most of the things that she’d said, and maybe trying to mess things up between Silas and I, or for some other reason unknown.

  You just never know these days.

  “I’m okay. Just ready for the baby to come. I’m tired of being pregnant,” I said to him.

  He took my word for it, and went on about his business.

  He was setting up the baby’s crib in one of the spare bedrooms of the condo.

  Since the driver of the Charger had yet to be found, we’d decided that we weren’t going back to our perfect house.

  Eventually we were going to have to get all of our things out of it and sell it, but we had too many other things to worry about at the time.

  Of course we were going to have to find another house, but with the baby coming, for now, I liked the security of the condo. I liked the fact that we were in a building, around other people, so I did feel just a little bit safer in a way.

  Hell, the danger was probably in my own home.

  The knock at the door startled me and I headed to see who it was.

  The only person that knew we were in the condo was Josephine, and she’d moved away, so I wondered who it was.

  I peeked through the hole on the door and I was surprised to find that it was Detective Wiley.

  But then again, in actuality, he was Silas’s brother, so of course Silas probably told him where we were a long time ago.

  But he would never admit to it.

  And then again, maybe he had some news on who had killed Sonni and tried to kill me.

  “Envy, I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Detective Wiley had his cop, asshole voice on, so I guess he was in character or maybe he was doing real police business.

  Silas came into the living room.

  I watched his expression.

  It didn’t break.

  You would never even guess that they were brothers. They looked nothing alike and the way that Silas looked at him was as though he didn’t know him at all.

  Maybe Carmen really was up to no good.

  But then again, Silas and Grant had pulled the same stunt, so he was probably just pretending.

  “Carmen has been missing for a while now. You and she were spotted together at a children’s department store a while back, and she hasn’t been seen since. Have you heard from her? Do you know where she is?”

  Silas looked at me as though he wanted to ask me when I’d seen her again.

  Wiley had some nerve talking to me as though I didn’t know about what was going on between him and Carmen.

  So, he hadn’t seen her?

  Really?

  Or was this a part of another one of their schemes?

  Could be.

  Maybe they were trying to fool Silas.

  Wiley looked at me as though he didn’t believe me.

  “Where is she Envy?” Detective Wiley said in a tone that shocked me.

  Oh, this he was serious.

  It was as though he’d said forget all of the bull crap…he wanted answers!

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do. Tell me.”

  He seemed to be getting upset.

  Wow. He must really not know where Carmen is.

  Oh hell, Carmen, what are you up to now?

  “She said that she doesn’t know.”

  “Silas, she’s lying,” Wiley said.

  He called Silas by name.

  Oh hell yeah, that was my opening to dig in.

  “Oh so you two know each other?” I looked at them both.

  “Leave her alone,” Silas said to Wiley.

  Wiley stood to his feet.

  “How do you know each other?”

  “Tell your wife who I am…brother,” Wiley said.

  So, Carmen was telling the truth!

  At least about that.

  They were indeed half-brothers.

  Silas didn’t look at all bothered by his statement.

  It was almost as though he didn’t care about the truth being exposed.

  “Well if she doesn’t know where she is, that leaves you. What did you do to her Silas?”

  Uh oh.

  “Nothing. I haven’t seen her.”

  “Bullshit! Did you kill her? If so, then where is the baby?”

  The way that he said the comments were almost as though he didn’t really care all that much about Carmen. He was more concerned about the baby.

  Looking at Silas’s face, immediately I knew in my heart that Carmen had been wrong.

  Silas hadn’t killed her and I was sure that he didn’t even want to.

  “I don’t know where she is,” Silas said.

  Call me silly, but Silas was just a little hurt that his brother was the father of Carmen’s child.

  I could see that he felt the same pain in a sense that Carmen had felt when he’d done it to her.

  He was more hurt than angry.

  More betrayed than revengeful.

  I didn’t know him as well as Carmen did, but I was sure that he truly hadn’t seen her or done anything to her or the child.

  My gut just had to be right on this one.

  Wiley stared at Silas for another second or two, and without another word, he left.

  It wasn’t until the door shut behind him that I was actually able to breathe.

  Silas sat beside me, knowing that yet again, he had some explaining to do.

  “I didn’t do anything to her, I swear. I really don’t know where she is.”

  I rubbed my belly and continued to focus on my breathing.

  I believed him.

  I really did believe him.

  But now was the time to see what I could get out of him.

  And I wouldn’t accept anything less than the truth.

  “Carmen told me about the scheme to close the hotel and bring down the thirteenth floor. Was she telling truth? Was it all a scheme?”

  Silas looked at me.

  “Yes. So you have seen her?”

  Tell him or don’t tell him.

  Aw hell, she was gone now more than likely anyway.

  “Yes. And Detective Wiley is you brother? You guys have the same father?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Why hide the truth from me? Why not tell me about the hotel or about Wiley? Why?”

  “You didn’t need to know what was going down with the hotel. That was between us and something that we all had to do for ourselves. No one was supposed to ever know about that and I can’t believe that Carmen even mentioned that to you. What was she thinking? Eventually I was going to tell you about my siblings, but I hadn’t exactly figured out how. And things between Wiley and I had been tensed.”

  “Because he was seeing Carmen?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think that it would bother me. But it did. I don’t want her, but he wasn’t supposed to want her either. But karma is a bitch ain’t it? It is what it is. I had no right to feel any kind of way about their relationship. But I didn’t kill her or do anything to her. If she’s gone, she left on her own.”

  I felt some kind of way that Silas was a little jealous of their relationship.

  But then again, he’d got just what he’d deserved.

  He’d done the same thing to Carmen, and I was sure that in a way it was her payback.

  That’s what his ass gets!

  “Well since we are being open, I have something to ask you. Something that Carmen also told me. Did you kill your wife and daughter? Carmen said that you did.”

  “No.” Silas answered so fast that I knew that he found the question offensive.

  I could see that he was trying not to get upset and that he didn’t want to make the question more than it was.

  Maybe he didn’t hurt them.

  That damn Carmen had me and my mind all messed up!

  I just didn’t know who t
o believe anymore.

  But at this point, I was past tired of all of the drama and I was coming up with a plan of my own.

  It didn’t matter whether Silas was telling the truth or not.

  I was up to something…

  ***

  “Push! Push!” Silas screamed and soon after, I heard the cries of my precious baby boy.

  Silas loved on him for a little and then reached him to me.

  I kissed him immediately and smiled at how beautiful he was. He was so adorable and he was almost identical to Silas.

  He was perfect.

  That moment was perfect.

  My family was complete.

  Well, at least for the time being.

  Though I loved Silas and I’d chosen to move forward with him by marrying him and giving him a baby, I was starting to think that it was all one big mistake.

  I thought that all of the secrets had come out a long time ago, but things were still happening and don’t nobody got time for that.

  I had to get out.

  I had to get away from it all but now that a child was involved I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy.

  Silas just wasn’t going to let me just leave.

  I was going to have to put up a fight.

  He hadn’t wanted me to leave before the marriage or before the child, so he surely wasn’t going to let me just walk away from him now.

  I could bet my life on it.

  Still no one had heard from or seen Carmen.

  She hadn’t tried to reach out to me and I hadn’t tried to reach out to her. I was sure that wherever she was, she had already had the baby and she was probably far, far away.

  She was probably someone under a different name and look by now, and I wondered if the baby was safe.

  I knew that Wiley didn’t have it, so I wondered who did.

  In my opinion, just thinking of Wiley’s responses and the way that he’d acted when he’d showed up at our condo that day, I think that Carmen had it all confused.

  I don’t think that it was Silas that had been trying to kill her.

  I had a feeling that it was Wiley.

  For what reason, who knows, but I just didn’t think that it was Silas.

  But still yet, Silas had to go.

  He just had to.

  Our stay at the hospital was memorable and I tried to cherish each moment with him, since I knew that it was all going to have to come to an end.

  Some way or another, I was getting out.

  My mind was made up.

  If I didn’t, I felt that I would spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

  I would spend the rest of my life fearing what could happen or wondering what else Silas had in his bag full of bones that could possibly come out and hurt us.

  And no one could live like that.

  At least they couldn’t live like that and truly be happy.

  And I just wanted to be happy.

  The suggestion that Silas had mentioned a while ago often crossed my mind.

  If we ran away together, started brand new, in a place where no one knew who we were, maybe things would be better.

  Maybe things of the past would be easier to forget.

  Maybe I could be happy with him then.

  Maybe.

  But I just couldn’t be sure. The only thing that I was sure about was that I now had two children and they needed me. They needed me healthy. They needed me sane. And they needed me happy so that I could be the best mother that I could possibly be to them.

  Our first night back at the condo, I watched the baby sleep for hours.

  It was almost as though I couldn’t believe that he was mine.

  He was just so precious.

  I’d always wanted mama to give me a baby brother but that never seemed to happen.

  Daddy wanted another baby, but Mama was so busy trying to be super woman that what he wanted after a while didn’t exactly matter.

  But that hadn’t stopped him from trying to teach us everything there was to know about football and other things that we could have cared less about.

  But a son, a son would have really made him happy.

  And now I had one and he was truly a blessing.

  I just wanted him to be safe. I just wanted both of my babies and myself to be safe.

  And the cold reality was that being with Silas, just wasn’t safe.

  It never had been.

  And it never would be.

  I knew that if I was going to make a move, I was going to have to do it soon.

  And I knew just who I was going to get to help me.

  *****************

  Chapter NINE

  I was definitely dealing with postpartum depression.

  I was down and out and I couldn’t do anything for my kids, Silas, or even myself.

  Considering the other things that were heavy on my mind and heart, I was sure that it had made it all a lot worse.

  I was damn near suicidal.

  Every day I seemed to cry more and more and the more I cried, the more detached from my family and the world I became.

  I hadn’t held my son in over a week and Horizon was stuck with Silas doing her hair every morning and getting her dressed for school.

  My poor baby looked a hot as mess most of the time, but I couldn’t seem to make myself do a thing about it.

  I just couldn’t shake the feeling of anxiety and worry and I just couldn’t pull myself together.

  “I fixed you some food baby,” Silas said.

  He sat the food in front of me and then sat right beside me.

  “I’m not moving until you eat,” Silas said.

  Of course he was being the good husband, but I didn’t trust him or his actions half of the time.

  What I felt for him was no longer love.

  I really didn’t know what it was.

  “Baby I want you to get better. We love you. And besides, I don’t have any titties for little man to lie on, and I think he’s starting to notice,” Silas said.

  Surprisingly, I smiled.

  I didn’t want to, but I did.

  Why did he have to be all of the bad things and not enough of the good?

  At one point I thought that the good outweighed the bad, but with all of the new bull crap and discoveries; I was surely wrong.

  So now I have to make my wrong choice, a right one.

  And the right thing, the best thing for me to do was leave him.

  “I love you so much. I can’t imagine my life without you. You’re my baby, my lady, my wifey, and my friend. Now please get better and come back to me. Daddy misses you. And he do too,” Silas winked and I smiled again.

  He didn’t keep his word by sticking around to make me eat, and soon he exited the room.

  I placed the food on the table and crawled back under the covers.

  Damn…I was really going to miss him.

  ***

  “Envy slow down,” Wiley said as I tried to rush to my Escalade.

  The Toyota was gone, and I had only driven the Porsche from last year’s Valentine’s Day once.

  He’d made it to the door just as I was closing it, and held it open with his hand.

  For the past few weeks I had been doing a lot better and slowly but surely I was getting back to myself.

  The postpartum was definitely going away.

  I had just come out of the grocery store from getting the baby’s formula and Detective Wiley had been waiting for me to come out.

  “Envy, I just wanted to talk to you.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to him.

  Not only was he a part of tricking me with the whole hotel thing, he had also shot me for Carmen and hid the fact that he was Silas’s brother.

  He was so amped about finding some damn head honchos, when he shared the same blood with one of them the whole time.

  People were a damn trip!

  And he too was going to pay for shooting me.

  I was going to make sure
that my justice was served.

  “We don’t have anything to talk about. And if you bother me again, don’t think that I won’t go to the station and tell them about you little extra-curricular activities. Dirty cops are the worst and I’m sure they would have a field day making you pay for all of the crimes you have committed. What would happen if they knew about your involvement in the hotel case or that you were the finger on the trigger that shot me? Oh, did you think that I didn’t know that it was you? Carmen told me.”

  “Envy look. I’m just looking for Carmen and my son. Did she tell you anything about where she might go? Or what she might do? I’ve done enough dirt. I just want my son. She has my son, wherever she is, and I just want to at least get the chance to be his father.”

  I didn’t feel a bit of sympathy for him.

  Screw him and his pity party.

  “I have to go,” I said to him and he let go of the car door.

  He hit the alarm on the car that was parked right beside mine.

  I glared at him and then back at the car.

  I rubbed my eyes to make sure that I was seeing things right.

  He wasn’t driving his police car, or the jeep that I’d seen him in a few times.

  It was the red Charger with the tinted windows; the one that had hit and killed Sonni, and the one that had tried to hit me.

  He’d wanted me to see it.

  He’d wanted me to know.

  I grabbed my phone, and rolled down my window as he stood there as though he was waiting on me to ask him.

  “Why?”

  He looked at me as though he had changed his mind about saying anything.

  At this point, knowing wouldn’t change anything and I knew that somehow he would get out of it even if I’d tried to report him.

  But that wasn’t going to stop me from trying.

  “Was it Carmen who put you up to it huh? Why?”

  “It wasn’t Carmen’s idea. Not the second time. Your sister’s death was ordered by Silas, which I’m sure you already know why. And yours was ordered by…your sister Josephine.”

  What?

  I just didn’t understand.

  Josephine wanted me dead?

  But why?

  He’s lying!

  “She hated and loved you all at the same time. You didn’t know this, but Grant sort of had a thing for you. She’d said it was more of the idea of you, or at least what he’d fabricated you to be in his mine. He always compared her to you. He wanted her to look like you and dress like you. He even wanted her to act like you. Whether it was because he wanted you and couldn’t have you, or if it was just infatuation, or because he damn worshiped Silas and his choices and taste in everything, he wanted her to do everything just like you. From how she explained it to me, her breaking point was while she was cleaning Grant one day, he called out your name. He hadn’t said any other word, but he managed to say Envy. The doctor’s said he would never speak, yet he spoke your name. I would have probably beaten the life out of him, right then and there but that was the last straw for her. She’d planned on killing him too but Silas stepped in. But she still wanted your head. She wanted you gone. Of course Grant had her in the loop a little more than you think, and she reached out to me. She knew enough about me. Enough for me to take the job. She offered me a few of Grant’s millions to get the job done. It wasn’t personal. It was just business. But I missed. I never miss, unless it was on purpose, like the first time. But I missed. She saw it as a sign. Called it off. Paid me for trying and moved away. Of course Silas and I went to war over it, since you’d managed to get a glimpse of the car. Silas wanted answers, but I denied it. And I put the blame on Carmen. I told him about our relationship and said that she must have taken the car while I was asleep. This car was supplied to me personally by him, for dirty work, so I had to put it on someone with access to it.”