by B. M. Hardin
For real.
***
Everything was going lovely.
Well, almost everything.
My contract at the hotel ended two days ago…and I was still there.
I’d had to tell Carmen that I wanted to stay a little while longer and boy was I pissed!
And I mean I was as hot as hen’s piss pissed!
I was supposed to be gone, free, but because of this stupid case, and because I hadn’t gotten much of anything out of Carmen, I was stuck.
And it sucked!
I told Carmen a lie about starting my own boutique and I told her that I wanted to make just a little bit more money.
Of course she knew that just from my hotel cut, not including tips, that I’d made quite a bit of money, but she didn’t question me.
She’d ripped the contract up in front of me and told me that I was free to leave anytime; with at least a day or two heads-up so that she could take me off of the menu.
But I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to stay too much longer.
The up side to it all was that Carmen most definitely trusted me, I think, so I was sure that I was going to have what the detective needed soon.
On another note, Silas and I were doing pretty well.
I hadn’t asked anymore details after he admitted to lying about when his wife and daughter died.
The only other question I’d asked him was why they’d named their daughter after Carmen.
His response was that it was his wife’s idea and that no matter how hard he’d tried to change her mind about it, she wouldn’t budge.
Maybe she really had felt bad for what she’d done to her sister.
I wasn’t sure.
But all of that was the past, so I tried to stay focused on our future.
And my future with Silas looked brighter than ever.
He was forgiven, and for his sake, he had better hoped that nothing else came up.
We were making plans to go through with him adopting Horizon and changing her last name, and I was definitely excited about that.
Everything was in the works, so basically we would just be waiting on the day that we said “I do.”
We were all settled into our new house and our wedding plans were coming along just fine.
I’d tried to move up the date on behalf of Sonni, but she wouldn’t let me.
She’d said that she wouldn’t want to be in the wedding anyway in her condition and hopefully she would still be alive to see it.
It was weird.
Now that we all knew about the cancer, she was starting to look sicker than ever.
Before she’d told the secret you would have never even guessed it.
I guess she no longer put forth the effort to try and hide it.
We were all trying to support her and be there for her as much as possible.
We’d all watched our Mama go through it, so we knew what to expect, but it still didn’t make the process any easier.
We just did the best that we could to make sure that she knew that we all loved her; especially Josephine.
I was sure that it was mostly out of guilt, but Josephine was so far up Sonni’s ass that if Sonni passed gas, it came out as Josephine’s burp.
She was at her house all the time and she went to Sonni’s chemotherapy treatments every chance that she could.
And from what she’d told me, she was going to work out her marriage and that she was no longer going to see Sonni’s husband.
And you know what, I believed her.
And I was proud of her.
She was doing the right thing.
Josephine said that she was going to dedicate herself to working on her family and her marriage.
After all, Grant deserved a real chance and she vowed that she would give it to him.
Before I could continue to entertain thoughts about my family, there was a knock on my room door.
Ugh, here we go…again.
I was seeing someone new.
He’d reserved me for my whole shift, so I was sure that he was one of those that needed to drink first until he was comfortable or until he was too drunk to stop the process.
“Hi,” he said entering.
He looked me up and down.
His eyes damn near fell out of their sockets as he eyed my curves and my hips.
“Damn,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s what they usually say,” I said and walked in front of him, towards the bed, so that he could get a better view from behind.
I looked back to see if he was following me, but he was undressing.
Damn, so maybe he wasn’t going to be as nervous as I thought he would be.
I almost smiled at the sight of his package.
It was huge…just the way that I liked it.
“Look, I just served five years in prison. So, in other words, I’m about to fuck the dog shit out of you. Is that okay?”
I laughed aloud but it was on accident.
“Prison?”
We usually only dealt with rich men, so I had to ask.
“Yeah, I took the rap for my boss in a scandal. I got lucky since I didn’t have any prior trouble. I only got five years and in return he gave me five million dollars. But he set this whole thing up. He said that he could at least get me a day full of the one thing that I’ve been missing. So, again, is it okay if I damage that pus---,”
“Yes,” I answered without letting him finish his sentence.
I hadn’t had anything rough in a while, so I was all in.
I was ready to see what his pipe was like and I hoped that he knew how to use it.
He did…
Walking out of the hotel, I turned around quickly.
I had the feeling as though someone was following or watching me.
I mean, I was sure that the detective or one of his employees, were watching from a distance.
But this was different.
I got into my car in a hurry and locked my doors.
As soon as I was settled, my phone started to ring.
It was a number that I didn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
At the sound of my voice, the caller hung up.
I called the number back but pulled the phone away from my ear as the white woman spoke.
“The number that you have dialed is no longer in service.”
What?
How was that possible when they’d just called me literally seconds ago?
Something just ain’t right…
***
I sat in my car, watching my next door neighbors have sex through their window.
Our new home was in a private, quiet community.
I loved it.
It was about an hour away from the hotel, so it was usually late in the evening when I got home.
Silas was pressuring me to quit more than ever but I knew that I couldn’t walk away just yet.
But it wouldn’t be long.
Carmen was talking to me with no filter and sharing things that I really didn’t want to know.
She was allowing me to know things about her personal life and even things that I would consider a little too intimate to share.
Yes, she trusted me, and I was her new best friend.
At least in her mind I was.
Naturally, pretending to like her was actually causing me to find out things about her that I actually did admire.
She had some big future plans and a lot of things that she wanted to do that surprised me.
But not once did I lose focus.
Carmen was going to jail.
It was either her or the both of us.
It was the only way.
I turned my attention back to the neighbors.
The big bay window wasn’t covered by blinds or curtains, yet they were going at it as if no one could see them or maybe it was as if they didn’t care if anyone saw them at all.
They had just moved in as well, and from chatting with them briefly they seemed like decent people
.
But one thing was for sure…they were freaky!
Hopefully not too freaky.
I definitely couldn’t handle a repeat of what my deceased past neighbors had put me through.
I forced myself to stop watching them and finally exited the car, only to hear a horn beep behind me.
Quickly I turned around.
Carmen?
What the hell!
I walked to her car in a hurry, quickly glancing back to make sure that Silas had parked in the garage.
Thank goodness, he had.
“Carmen, what are you doing here?” I asked her.
“I followed you. I called you ten times but you didn’t pick up,” she said.
I rolled my eyes.
I’d wanted to enjoy my ride home in silence so after informing Silas that I was on my way, I placed my phone on silent.
“Why didn’t you just beep the horn at me?” I questioned her but she simply shrugged.
Nosey ass.
“Anyway, here you go. I guess you had been messing in your purse or something before you left, and this fell out,” Carmen said handing me my license.
I grabbed them from her, still frustrated at the fact that she would follow me for over an hour, all the way home.
If she’d gotten out of the hotel in time to trail me, she surely could have stopped me from leaving and given me my license there.
I surely didn’t want her to know where I lived and I surely couldn’t risk her finding out that I was still with Silas.
Oh hell, what if he came outside?
“I see you have come a long way from where you used to be. This is a nice house. Hell, you’ve definitely made enough money at the hotel to be able to afford it. You should thank me. You wouldn’t have any of this if it wasn’t for me,” Carmen said.
Just when you almost try to like her stuck up, inconsiderate, conniving ass, she always reminds you of why you hated her in the first place.
I didn’t bother to thank her as she’d suggested.
“I have to go,” I said to her.
“Go where, you just got home,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, but my sister sent a text just as I’d pulled up telling me that I had to come and pick up Horizon tonight,” I lied.
“Then why didn’t you return my calls if you’d seen them on your phone?”
“I was. Once I was settled. But I have to go. It’s already pretty late. Good thing I’m off from the hotel tomorrow,” I said and turned my back to her.
“Yeah, good thing. Oh by the way…you should tell your neighbors that they should consider closing the blinds or something; although I did enjoy the little show,” Carmen said, just before waving and pulling off.
That woman made my skin crawl.
I got back into my car and headed down the road not far behind her.
Carmen was sneaky, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if she would circle back around just to see if I had really gone somewhere or not, so I took a left as she took a right and drove in circles for all of thirty minutes.
Just in case.
I couldn’t afford to mess up anything when I was so close to getting what I needed from her.
After I was sure that Carmen was long gone, I finally pulled back into my drive way.
I pressed the button on my keys to open my garage.
I hated to park inside, since usually I was always in a rush, and just parking in the driveway worked better for me, but for tonight, and maybe even from now on, my Toyota was going to be in the garage, and I would make sure that Silas car was always in there too.
Carmen would be back.
Uninvited…and I was sure of it.
***
“Not tonight Silas,” I said to him for the third time.
Silas pouted but I was so worn out from the hotel that there was just no way that I could perform my duties.
The last week at the hotel had been hell.
I’m assuming that there had been a sudden recruitment of new billionaires or something because I’d had so many new clients, that had paid top dollar to get a taste of Envy’s curves.
I’d made over $20,000 in just a week; and that didn’t include my tips.
So, now that I was off, I just didn’t have anything left to give to Silas.
“But it’s been about a week,” Silas complained.
“I know. Tomorrow I promise. I’m just so tired.”
“I bet you didn’t tell them that at the hotel,” Silas mumbled.
What?
My eyes opened wide at his statement.
“Who is them?” I asked him.
What did he mean by his comment?
Did Silas know the truth about what I was doing at the hotel?
“I was saying them; as in the hotel as a whole. I told you to quit a long time ago. You’re basically working for nothing. I don’t understand why you’re still there Envy. You don’t need the money. So what is it? And the hotel is coming in between our relationship. Don’t you see that?”
Okay, so we were back on track.
As long as he didn’t know that I was a whore, I could take everything else.
I forced myself to sit up.
Silas sat quietly on the edge of the bed.
I was exhausted but I had to get Silas off of my back.
And if sex was the only way to do it, then so be it.
I guess I could understand his frustrations.
The sad part about it all was that he couldn’t understand mine.
But pulling him backwards, he laid on his back and I straddled him and forced myself to give him the best ten minutes of his life.
That was all that I had in me, and judging by the smile on his face once he’d released himself inside of me, I was sure that was all that he’d needed.
The next day I didn’t wake up until it was almost noon.
And I woke up to an empty house.
I reached for my phone to call Silas to see where he and Horizon had gone off to, but I decided that I was going to enjoy the time alone.
I trusted him with my life and my daughter’s life, so I was sure that wherever they were, they were okay.
Carmen had called a time or two and so had the detective.
There were also a few private phone calls but I had been getting those a lot lately.
Along with random numbers that always said that they were disconnected when I called back.
I could be wrong, but something told me that Carmen was behind the mysterious calls.
I just never knew what to expect from her.
I returned the detective’s call and he informed me that some of the information that I had given him was leading us in the right direction.
Here recently, Carmen had slipped up and said plenty of things for me to run back and tell him.
Carmen definitely had a problem with alcohol and I got her drunk every chance that I could.
Of course I knew that at the top there was more than one person, but from the way that Carmen talked, if I had to guess, it was either two or three of them at the most.
I was sure that one of them probably had more power, but she talked about them as though they were equal.
She’d also said that the top dogs in charge trusted her more than they actually trusted each other.
I definitely found that surprising since Carmen was so unstable.
But maybe they hadn’t seen that side of her.
Carmen explained that each the bosses, or head honchos had been there since before she’d become a part of the team, and that she didn’t know who was in charge of the thirteenth floor before them.
The way that she talked about the people in charge wasn’t as though she thought that what they were doing was a bad thing. She talked as though she admired them.
Carmen also expressed that each of them brought very different things to the business and that they were very powerful and rich.
But after saying all of that, and no matter how tipsy she was, she never sa
id their names.
She’d said the names of a celebrity or two, and even a sponsor, but never did she say the name of the bosses in charge of the whole operation.
Carmen described herself as the glue that kept it all together.
She still didn’t tell me how she’d exactly gotten into the business but I was working on it.
I was going to get it out of her.
Someone along the way had to have recruited her I suppose.
Maybe the person who hired her at the hotel, or the person that was in her position before her.
I was dying to know how she ended up being the glue.
But I was sure that in due time, she would tell me.
Carmen also told me that she was tired of it.
She’d mentioned that she hadn’t been on vacation in years and that she just wanted to take her money and run away.
I asked her if she was still under contract, like a real one, but all she said was that there was no way that they were going to let her go.
I felt sorry for her, kind of, but oh well, if it were me, she wouldn’t give a damn about me.
And I was sure of that.
Not wanting to be bothered, I didn’t bother to call Carmen back.
Instead, I headed to the bathroom to run myself a bath.
I was in desperate need of relaxation and I'd be damn if I wasn’t going to get it.
Well, at least that was what I’d thought.
My phone started to ring as soon as I was settled in the bathtub.
I scowled myself because I’d forgotten to leave it in my bedroom.
Glancing at it on the rug by the tub, I saw that it was a private number.
Rolling my eyes, I slid down further into the water.
But immediately after the ringing stopped, it started again.
And then again.
And then again.
The private number called back to back until finally I decided to answer it.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
No breathing. No cursing. No comments. No questions.
Just nothing.
They’d called over and over just to say nothing!
Needless to say, I called whoever the speechless person was every kind of bitch, bastard, and everything else I could think of, just before I hung up the phone and turned it completely off.
Idiot!
I was sure that it was Carmen’s stupid ass, it just had to be, but I wasn’t going to let her ruin my day.
An hour or so later, I got out of the tub and once I was dressed, I turned back on my phone.