Just Say The Word

by Tiffany Patterson

  “That must’ve been the reason my mom was acting so damn odd tonight.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Odd? She was very welcoming and friendly.”

  “Exactly,” he stated. “That is not how she is on a regular basis, at least, not when I’m around.”

  “Which isn’t too often according to her.”

  He snorted. “She’s always exaggerating.”

  Hearing the tension in his voice, I reached down for his hands and brought them to my lips.

  “How come you don’t like her?” I asked.

  “It’s not that I don’t like her—”

  “You don’t. You love her. I know that. You’ve taken care of her all of these years, but you don’t like her. I could sense it almost as soon as she opened the door. You seemed on edge every time she opened her mouth.”

  Sighing, he lifted his right hand. I didn’t need to turn around to face him to know that he was rubbing his hand through his beard—a move he often did when frustrated or thinking seriously about something.

  I laid my head back against his chest and waited for him to respond to my question.

  “I had to take care of her. I was thirteen when my father died … was killed,” he corrected, his voice taking on an edge I’d never heard before. “And she … gave up. I get that she was in mourning. I fully understand that. But she still had two children to look after. Charlotte was only seven years old, and instead of our mother taking her to and from school, that job was left to me. That wasn’t even the bad part. I had no problem helping with Char. But when the bill collectors started calling and the bank began foreclosing on the house, she still did nothing. That was when I knew taking care of everything was up to me. I went out and did the only thing I could do at thirteen. And it was the one thing my father had lost his life to keep me out of.”

  That was when I turned to face Damon. His gaze was focused on the sky behind me.

  “That’s why you’re still upset with her?”

  Shaking his head, he snorted. “What kind of a mother just gives up on her kids like that?”

  I worried my bottom lip, my gaze lowering. I inhaled deeply. “It’s not that easy,” I stated, my voice low. “I had no intentions of becoming a young mom … but things didn’t work out as I had planned.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t give up.”

  I pushed out a deep breath. “But I spent every night of my pregnancy praying and hoping that I could find the strength to love the baby growing inside of my womb.”

  That was when his eyes met mine again. He tilted his head.

  “Remember when Monique said I’d taught her to make wishes as she watched the sunset?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s because that’s what I did every evening as I walked back to my tiny, dingy apartment from work, while I was pregnant. I worked the mid-day shift and always seemed to leave around the time the sun went down. I’d look up, my hand would go to my belly, and I’d wish that I could be strong enough to love her as deeply as she deserved.” I clamped my mouth shut, just shy of telling him exactly why I feared I couldn’t love my daughter.

  “And it worked.”

  I nodded. “As soon as she was put into my arms in the hospital all of those fears disappeared.” Of course, new fears reemerged, like how I was going to actually take care of her, but I had fallen instantly in love with her.

  “My mother isn’t you.”

  I shook my head. “No, she isn’t, but she is your mother and it might be time to cut her some slack.”

  He slowly nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

  Moving in, I pressed a kiss to his soft lips, running my hand through the hairs of his beard. Damn I loved that thing.

  “I was there when my father was murdered.”

  My hand stilled; I stared at him. My mouth dropped open, but no words formed.

  “I didn’t see it. But I heard it.”

  “H-how?”

  The Adam’s apple in his throat bobbed up and down, and again his dark gaze went to something over my shoulder.

  “A few weeks after I turned thirteen, I accidentally overheard a conversation between my father and one of my uncles. He wasn’t a blood uncle but one of my father’s closest confidantes, or so I thought. He spent a lot of days and nights at our home. Anyway, my father was in his private office, the one he never let me, my mother, or my sister inside of. The door was slightly opened and I heard him raising his voice with my uncle as I walked past. I stopped because I rarely heard my father raise his voice like that. He was telling my uncle that he was done with that life. Drugs weren’t for him and he was going into real estate with the money he’d saved over the years.”

  He paused, clenching his jaw.

  “What happened?”

  His eyes came back to me and my breath caught in my throat. They were so raw and filled with emotion. I instinctively knew I was the first person he was telling this story to.

  “I pushed the door open. My father and uncle looked at me, stunned, but I was pissed. I looked up to my father. Saw him as superhuman almost. He’d spent my entire life telling me he was in business. Never stating what kind of business, and I had to find out like that. My uncle left shortly afterwards, and my father and I had a huge fight. I called him a liar and a criminal. I went to school with kids whose parents were doctors, lawyers, ran companies because that was the environment he wanted me raised in. And all along he was selling drugs. I stormed out of his office and locked myself in my room for hours.

  “Later that night I heard him saying something to my mom about going out. Again, I heard agitation in his voice and he never spoke to my mother like that. And while I was still pissed at him, something in my gut told me to follow him. He’d said he was going to see someone. I was familiar with the name. And since I didn’t have a car, I waited until my pops left and then snuck out of the house. I had called a cab and told it the address I believed where the man lived. We arrived and I watched my father get into another car parked outside of the house and pull off. I begged the cab driver to follow him. He did and we followed him to a dark alley that I wasn’t familiar with. I paid and got out of the cab. He drove off. I ran to the alley where my father was, calling after him. The fear on his face when he saw me standing there—” He broke off, shaking his head.

  “He demanded I get behind a dumpster and make sure I was hidden. I tried to apologize for what I’d said in anger but he brushed it aside and told me to hide and not come out until he came and got me. I did, and within seconds, it felt like, I heard some familiar voices. My father told the man he was done with that life. I heard the fear in his voice, but it held determination as well. I felt both proud of and scared as hell for my dad. I don’t even know how it happened, but within minutes there were gunshots. I covered my mouth to keep from yelling out, remembering what my father had told me about remaining unseen. A long while passed and then there was silence. I dared to look out from behind the dumpster and there was no one. My father was gone along with the other men whose voices I’d heard. I saw streams of blood running down the alley but they led nowhere. It was raining that night so eventually it all got washed away. Two days later, police knocked on my door and told my mother my father’s body had been found in an abandoned building on the other side of the city.”

  It was silent for a long time between us. I had to take in everything he’d just revealed. I couldn’t imagine hearing the murder of your own father and being powerless to do anything to stop it.

  “Did you ever go to the police?”

  Damon gave me an expression that said yeah right. “The police hated my father. They’d long since known what he did for a living but were unable to actually do anything about it for one reason or another. His death didn’t garner any sympathy from the Williamsport Police Department.”

  “Yeah, but you were there. You knew who did it.” I knew I was sounding like that innocent, naïve girl again but I couldn’t help it.

  He shook his head. “My fath
er was just another dead black drug dealer to those cops. They didn’t give a shit, and the man who’d killed him … he had connections. Nah, I didn’t say anything.” His hands tightened into fists.

  I covered them with my own hands and felt the rigidity in his body. He pulsed with the anger and emotion of that night so many years ago. He’d carried so many burdens in his young life. I leaned in closer.

  “I love you,” I whispered against his lips. I pulled back to see his reaction to those three words.

  His eyes widened.

  “I know it’s way too early for that, but … I couldn’t help it.”

  My heart rate increased, fearing that he would reject me because I was too clingy. I’d always worn my heart on my sleeve. It was what had gotten me into trouble in the past but I was learning that I was who I was.

  Without saying anything, Damon leaned down, capturing my lips in his. I moaned into his mouth because that was my body’s natural response whenever he put his lips on mine.

  “Is Monique a hard sleeper?” he questioned just after pulling back.

  I wrinkled my forehead in confusion. “What?”

  “Is she a hard sleeper? She won’t hear us?”

  Grinning, I shook my head. “She’s been sleeping well throughout the night since she got her pump.”

  After taking my lips again in a kiss, he stood, and lifted me to wrap my legs around his waist as he moved us from the balcony to his bedroom, farther down the darkened hall. Damon closed the door behind us and casually strolled over to his bed, all the while peppering my lips with kisses.

  I released my legs from around his waist and went to kiss him but he pulled back. I stared at him, startled.

  He stared down at me, hard, as if trying to figure something out. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

  I gave him a confused look. “I know.”

  He stared at me for a long while as if waiting for me to share something. The one thing I’d been holding back, I didn’t have the heart to share in that moment. I just couldn’t. Even after he’d shared with me about the murder of his father. I was too much of a coward and I knew it.

  Instead of spilling my guts I rose to my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his mouth. His lips held firm for a few seconds but eventually his entire body softened and he welcomed the kiss, his arms moved around my waist, going to the button of my jeans.

  Once his hands made contact with the skin underneath my shirt, neither one of us was thinking anymore about secrets from our past.

  ****

  Damon

  “You sure you want to go in there?”

  I glanced over toward the driver’s seat where Sean sat. He stared straight ahead at the metal fences that served to separate the huge brick building of the jail from the surrounding area. We were two hours outside of Williamsport at a maximum security jail. The same one where Mike Russo Sr. had finally been carted off to, nearly a week earlier. It’d taken some finagling, but through Josh I was able to get in for a visit with Russo

  “Hell yeah,” I finally responded. “Been waiting a long time for this one.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid. You’ve got companies to run and a lady to look out for.”

  “Two ladies,” I corrected.

  Sean glanced over at me, eyebrow lifted.

  “She has a ten-year-old daughter, remember?”

  He grinned. “Two ladies. They don’t need your ass getting locked up in a place like this.” He tilted his head toward the prison.

  “Never gonna happen. I’m just going in to talk to the man.”

  Sean snorted.

  I didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to because Sean and I both knew that while I was just planning on talking with Russo, this would be one of the last conversations of his life.

  “I won’t be too long.”

  With that, I got out of Sean’s Lexus SUV, shutting the door behind me and heading over toward the gate to the visitor’s entrance. This wasn’t my first time in this particular prison. I’d visited one or two of my past business associates here, and I hated it every single time. But this visit was different. As I gazed up at the cloudy sky, I noted the feeling of anticipation that flowed through my veins at this particular moment.

  I had to go through the entire process showing my I.D., getting searched, and answering way too many questions for my liking. If I wasn’t sure that Joshua’s connections would help to erase any trace of my being here, I would’ve thought twice about showing up. But I needed this meeting just as much as I needed my next breath. To get it over with.

  “Fifth window down on your right,” the guard gruffly ordered, jutting his head in the direction of the long succession of windows and metal stools for me to walk down.

  I didn’t glance backwards as I started for the fifth window on the right. I sat down on the hard, metal chair, staring at the door where I knew prisoners entered in, opposite me. A handful of seconds later, the door opened, a guard stepped forward then moved to the side, allowing the man I’d only seen in pictures and from far away all of these years to emerge.

  Mike Russo Sr.

  He was about five-eleven and the orange jumpsuit looked like it added twenty years to his fifty-five-year-old body. His dark hair was greying at the edges, his eyes held huge circles beneath them as if he hadn’t slept in a week, and his pot belly protruded as he turned to the side, holding out his hands for the guard to remove his cuffs. When he looked over in my direction to see who his visitor was his eyes narrowed. He didn’t recognize me.

  Casually, he shuffled toward the window and took his time picking up the phone on his end. I slowly reached for my phone, bringing it to my ear.

  “You my lawyer’s assistant? Law clerk or something?”

  I chuckled. “I look like a fucking law clerk to you?”

  His eyes narrowed even farther and he stared at me as if trying to figure out who I was.

  “Confused?”

  He glanced around briefly, ensuring that the guard was still standing at the door, before leaning in close to the window.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “The reason you’re sitting where you are.”

  His eyes widened for half a second.

  “I don’t have much time, and unlike you, once this conversation is over, I can get up and walk out of this place. Just know, I’ve waited almost two decades to see you like this. You were tough shit that night in the alleyway, eighteen year ago.”

  A deep V settled in his forehead as he tried to pin down exactly what I was referring to.

  “See, the man who you killed and used your connections with local PD to make it look like he was somewhere else he wasn’t supposed to be, wasn’t alone that night. It might’ve taken this long to get shit squared away but it was worth it.” I paused and leaned in closer. “Lamar Richmond.”

  Russo’s eyes widened.

  “You’re his—”

  “His son. And I never forgot that night. The police covered it up for you but it’s all good. Your own son helped put you in here.” I pointedly glanced around the four walls of the prison we were in. “Must suck to know your own seed did this to you. But don’t fret. This isn’t the worst of it. I’ve got eyes and ears all over this place. You don’t have too many friends anymore, especially not in here. Remember that when you lay your head down to sleep at night.”

  With that said, I stood and hung up the phone, staring down at Russo whose eyes had taken on a ghosted look. His mouth widened and closed and few times. I straightened the jacket of my suit, smoothing it down before glancing over at the guard, noting his attention was on another inmate. I made a gun with my thumb, pointer, and middle fingers, aiming it at Russo’s forehead, before mock pulling the trigger.

  I watched as his skin went pale.

  I took a step back, granting him one last look before I turned and walked out of the room and out of that prison for good.

  Two weeks later, the city of Williamsport was shocked to learn about the beating d
eath of one Mike Russo Sr., though no one was particularly surprised. And unfortunately, because it’d happened in the middle of the night, and his body had been found in the laundry room of the prison, no one was certain who had done it, or exactly how he’d ended up down there after hours.

  And while it’d taken eighteen years to get that resolution, I realized that people who said payback wasn’t worth it, were fucking liars. Knowing the piece of shit who’d taken my father from me and my family was resting in hell, helped to put an end to my nightmares.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sandra

  I swallowed nervously, looking down at the blank screen of my phone. I had just abruptly ended a call with Damon because I couldn’t keep it together with him on the line while knowing I would have to see Randy again. Damon had called right as I was finishing up my lunch time workout. Emma had already been in the changing room and informed me that there had been an impromptu meeting scheduled with the opposing attorney in the Steve’s Diner case. That meant Randy Jameson would be in the office.

  Ever since that first encounter, I’d managed to avoid seeing him; he hadn’t come to the office again. However, I had seen his name on the legal documents for the case, and my stomach roiled with nausea every time.

  My hands shook as I changed back into the pastel pink and white tweed skirt I’d worn that day with a white, long sleeve turtleneck, lightweight sweater. I made my way back to my desk and tried to busy myself by organizing the files I needed to have arranged for Emma during the meeting. However, the entire time I tried to figure out some way to get out of the meeting. But it was useless. I needed to be there and this was my job. I just couldn’t run out every time he showed up. No matter how much I wanted to.

  I became lost in my thoughts, but when I heard voices behind me I was quickly pulled from my reverie.

  “Here’s Sandra,” Emma stated.

  I dropped the pen I’d been holding as I turned to see her moving toward my desk, Randy Jameson a half a step behind her. I had to work at it, but I kept my face completely neutral instead of the scornful look I wanted to give him.