by B. M. Hardin
As soon as it was up and running, it began to vibrate in my hand.
Another private call.
Frustrated I answered it, but still no one said anything on the other end.
I hung up and sat the phone beside me on the bed.
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another, I thought as the private number started to call again.
***************************************
Chapter SIX
I glared at Nolan and his husband with hatred in my heart, as they entered a store.
I was surprised to see them together.
I’d thought that he’d said that he was leaving him but I guess either he was lying, or he was a sucker for love just like everybody else.
I hadn’t seen Nolan since that day at the gravesite and I wanted to take my car and run both of them over…and that’s exactly what I did.
Okay, so not really.
I only ran them over in my head.
But believe me I really wanted to do it.
Nolan deserved to die for taking the baby from me and his man deserved it for telling him to.
But nevertheless, the light turned green, and I drove off, hoping to never see them again.
I stabilized my breathing and headed for the hotel.
I was disappointed to find that all of the parking spaces were filled, where I usually parked, due to a conference being hosted at the hotel, so I had to go find a space under the parking deck in the back.
I got out of the car and before I could even take a step, a big black SUV pulled up and parked directly behind my car.
Something told me to run or at least get back into my car and lock the doors, but like a dummy, I just stood there.
Once I saw who it was, I let out a deep breath.
“Mr. Ben, what are you doing?” I asked him as he stepped in front of his car and then started to approach me.
“Get in the car Envy,” he said softly.
I looked at him confused.
“What are you talking about silly,” I tried to laugh it off but for some reason I knew that he was serious.
“I’ve been calling you,” he said.
Calling me?
What was he talking about?
He didn’t have my number.
Wait a minute…
“You’ve been the one calling me private and from random numbers?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
He ignored my question.
“That’s a nice little house you have too; but I can give you a better one. If you just let me,” Mr. Ben said.
What?
He’s been to my house?
Old stalking ass!
“Mr. Ben, that’s called stalking,” I said backing away from him as he continued to come closer and closer to me.
“I love you Envy. Don’t you love me?”
“Mr. Ben, you have a wife. I have a family. What we do in the hotel isn’t love. What you think you feel for me isn’t love,” I tried to explain to him.
I could tell by the look on his face that things were about to get ugly.
“Well since you don’t love me, it’s fairly simple. If I can’t have you, no one can. Get in the car Envy,” he said and grabbed my arm.
Immediately I started to swing at him.
All I could think to myself was that this could not be happening.
Mr. Ben tightened his grip and I started to scream and looked around for help.
He quickly covered my mouth, wrestled me to the ground and he started to drag me toward his SUV.
I cried, I kicked, I swarmed but no matter what I did, he didn’t let up.
He opened the back door and attempted to put me inside.
“Uh uh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Mr. Ben paused and I looked towards the voice.
Carmen.
She was pointing a gun at Mr. Ben and from the way that she held it and the comfortable look on her face, I was sure that it wasn’t her first time.
I had never been so happy to see someone that I hated in my entire life.
Mr. Ben stared at her and she stared back at him.
But he still didn’t free me from his grasp or uncover my mouth.
“Now, we both know that I could shot you, dead, right here and right now, and get away with it. So, it looks like your best bet is to let her go. And then again, it would be nice to let off a little frustration,” she said and she pressed something that made a clicking noise.
After another few seconds, which felt like hours, Mr. Ben released me and I ran towards Carmen and stood behind her.
“Now get your ass out of here and don’t you ever come back or you will be sorry. Oh, and if I were you, I would watch your back. You know, just in case,” Carmen said and without a word, Mr. Ben looked at me one last time, got into his black Denali, and sped off.
I was crying uncontrollably.
And before I could stop myself, I hugged Carmen.
But she just stood there.
She didn’t say a word or even hug me back.
She just stood there.
Finally she spoke.
“Envy, I am holding a gun you know,” Carmen finally said.
I moved in a hurry.
I didn’t know what to say.
If it hadn’t been for her, there was no telling what would have happened to me.
Maybe he would have killed me or maybe he would just have taken me somewhere far away, away from Silas and away from my little girl.
Never would I have thought that that Mr. Ben was capable of something so extreme.
He’d been stalking me and tried to kidnap me.
I was just at a loss of words.
But I had to find a few words to say to Carmen.
In a way, I owed her my life.
“Thank you Carmen. If you hadn’t been here…”
“Envy, really, just let it go. Really, it’s no big deal,” she said and walked to her car that was parked only three spots away, put the gun inside the trunk, and then she came back over to me.
“So you saw the whole thing?”
“Yep. Someone took my parking space, so I was just sitting there, waiting to go in. And then I saw his stupid ass,” she said.
I wondered what had taken her so long to come to my rescue but I guess that really didn’t matter.
As long as she’d come.
We walked towards the hotel and she started talking business as though nothing had happened.
What’s wrong with this woman?
I allowed her to talk but my mind was still on what had just happened to me.
She coached me to wipe the tears from my eyes and to fix my face before entering the hotel.
I walked through the doors, and immediately turned around and walked back out.
I sat on the sidewalk, right and front of the hotel.
I thought that Carmen was going to come to see about me, but of course she didn’t.
But I didn’t care.
That was the last straw.
I had to get away from this place…now!
***
“Look,” Carmen said and nodded towards the television in her office.
It was Mr. Ben being led in handcuffs to a police car.
The headline said: “Billionaire accused of wife’s murder.”
He’d killed his wife?
Because of me?
The television said that she’d been dead for weeks.
I just didn’t know what to say, so without saying anything, and since it was the end of my shift, I got the hell out of the hotel as fast as possible.
I hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place.
Once inside my car, I tried to get my thoughts together.
In a strange way, I felt partly responsible for the death of his wife.
He had done it because of me; because he was in love with the things that I did to him.
And now an innocent woman; a wife and a mother was dead.
All because of me.
I felt as though I was about to have some kind of breakdown, so I drove home as fast as I could.
Carmen called me over and over and even Detective Wiley called me a time or two, but I just wanted to get home.
I just needed to be home.
I’d told Detective Wiley about the incident, but he’d sworn that his men hadn’t seen anything.
I arrived home and I couldn’t wait to get inside.
It was early in the afternoon, so of course Silas wasn’t there, but that was okay.
I locked the front door and ran to my bedroom and then headed for the closet.
I got as far behind a few bags and still unpacked boxes that I could go and I just sat there.
I just sat there and cried.
I cried like never before.
So many things were wrong and I just wanted everything to be right.
I needed the advice of Mama and one of her soothing hugs too.
She would know just what to say.
She would know just what to do.
And then it hit me.
Maybe there was a way to reach her and I did something that I hadn’t done in forever.
I started to pray.
***
“What?”
I needed him to speak slower so that I could understand what he was saying.
“She’s gone. It happened two nights ago. She’d made me promise not to say anything until I had her cremated. It was her dying wish. I promised her that I would do it. I didn’t want to but I promised,” Sonni’s husband, Mark, cried.
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
Immediately, Silas noticed that something was wrong and came to my side.
Sonni was gone.
I had already been feeling so down lately, and this was just going to make everything worse.
“She left letters, explaining it all and requesting that you guys don’t take it out on me and that I was only doing what she asked. I tried to talk her out of it, especially with the baby situation and how Nolan didn’t bother to tell you, but she said she didn’t want anyone crying over her lifeless body. She’d said that she didn’t deserve it. And she didn’t want a funeral or memorial service. She requested that we each have a small urn of her ashes. I have them here.”
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t.
I just felt…empty.
But the fact that she wasn’t hurting and suffering anymore made my heart smile through the pain.
I hated that she hadn’t let any of us be there with her, but she’d had her husband by her side just like she’d wanted.
I listened to him speak for a few seconds more and he’d said that he was calling to break the news to Josephine next.
I already knew that her guilty heart was probably going to take it pretty hard so I told him that I would do it instead.
“What’s wrong? Sonni?” Silas asked.
“Yes. She’s gone,” I said softly as Silas embraced me.
For some strange reason I wondered if he thought that people died too much in this family.
Hell I was starting to feel the same way.
But hopefully there would be no more deaths, no time soon.
I was going to add that little request into my new daily and nightly prayer routine.
I’d wanted to tell him what had happened to me at the hotel, but I knew for sure that he wouldn’t have allowed me to go back.
He would have made me quit and then I would have been going to jail with everyone else.
But I wanted to tell him so badly, so that he could comfort me, and I wished that I had somebody that I could be one hundred percent honest with, so that I could get some of the things that I was feeling off of my chest.
Talking to Carmen about it was like talking to a damn door, so I was going to have to figure it all out on my own.
Mark vowed to drop off my personal urn of Sonni’s ashes later on that evening and strangely I couldn’t wait to get them in my hands.
As I hugged Silas, I had a small vision of Sonni, Tia and the baby in Heaven.
I didn’t see my parents, but I knew that they were there somewhere.
But my sisters and nephew were smiling and laughing and it was as if they were all looking at me with eyes that told me that I shouldn’t feel sad for them.
They were just fine.
I was the one still stuck here on Earth while they were in paradise.
With that thought in mind, I kissed Silas and told him that I couldn’t wait to get married and have another baby.
Life was just too short.
And there just wasn’t any more time to waste.
The wedding and baby were the next things on my list.
Maybe or maybe not in that order.
***
“Why are you wearing that ring?” Carmen pointed out.
Damn it!
I forgot to take it off.
Hiding Silas from Carmen was a lot harder than I thought that it would be.
And I was sure that it was because I loved him so much.
With almost being kidnapped and the death of Sonni, I had been leaning on Silas more than ever and he had been right there.
He never left my side.
If I was up crying at three o’clock in the morning, he was up too, right beside me, telling me that everything was going to be okay.
If I was mad at the world and walking around the house screaming, and cussing because at times I just felt so lost, Silas was right there, following behind me, picking up everything that I threw along the way.
And my love for him was growing stronger than ever and I was so consumed by it that I wanted the whole world to know about it.
Well, except for Carmen.
I had so many mixed feelings about her, which always had me confused and stressed out.
I mean, the woman had saved my life; that just had to count for something.
But still yet, if I didn’t do my part in bringing her and the hotel down, I would go down with them.
But again…this woman saved my freaking life!
So, it wasn’t fun to be in my shoes.
Detective Wiley said that all of the information that I’d given him was turning out to be accurate and they were so close to cracking the case, they just needed a little bit more.
Something a little bit stronger.
And it was up to me to get it.
I knew that once it was all said and done that I would be free, married, pregnant and probably happier than ever.
I mean, I just didn’t have a choice but to do what I had to do.
But how do you ruin the life of someone that saved yours?
It just didn’t seem right.
But, I had to stay on it if I wanted my freedom.
And I couldn’t make such a big mistake like wearing my ring in front of Carmen again.
“Um, I put it on this morning. It’s so pretty and to be honest, though I can’t be with him, I miss him,” I said to Carmen.
Maybe she would give me a little sympathy.
“Well, that’s because you haven’t tried to date anyone else Envy. I mean, sure you get dick on the regular, but it’s not the same as love and all of that other stuff. Trust me, I know. But to wear the ring…that’s just tacky,” she said and walked away.
Immediately I took it off.
I wiped my forehead.
That was a close one.
Though I hated even coming to the hotel, I was there, and I headed towards my room so that I could breath.
It was empty.
I’d told Carmen that from now on, especially since the incident with Mr. Ben that I only wanted to be ordered once a day.
For some reason, I’d thought that things had to go according to how they were when I was on contract but on a drunken night, Carmen called my phone wanting to talk and she actually questioned me as to why I still took so many clients when I didn’t have to.
I’d never even thought of it that way.
I was only there to try to keep my ass out of jail and because the detective said that I had to be, so I’d told her the very next day that I would only see one client a day; and that even applied to being reserved.
Carmen hadn’t fussed about it either.
I mean after all, what could she say?
She couldn’t make me do it, or I would just say that I was done and for the most part I was sure that she just wanted to keep me around.
After all, her drunk ass mentioned on plenty occasions that I was her only friend.
But she was wrong…I was actually her enemy.
Even though I was still disgusted to have to still be there, the whole one client thing was making things a lot better for me.
I didn’t feel so mentally, emotionally, or sexually drained.
And I was able to keep Silas happy, regularly.
I was always home extra early and I’d told Silas that I’d gone down to part-time at the hotel.
I’d told him some bull crap about just being used to working and doing things all on my own for the last few years that I had to wing myself away from having to work.
But since I was home more and overdosing him with the pussy, he rarely complained these days.
Carmen questioned if my decision was the best one, money wise, since she thought that I was only there to keep getting money to open up a business, but I already had a hell of a lot of money.
I knew that one day I was going to have to find a way to explain the money to Silas.
Since I hid it most of the time, and since Silas had enough money for the both of us, I hardly every spent a dime of my own money.
Secretly, I was one wealthy woman and at some point I was going to have to start enjoying the money that I’d had to lay on my back and earn.
It was only right.
Hell, it couldn’t just sit there, untouched, forever.
I just had to find the perfect lie to explain the dough to my future husband.
But I would cross that bridge after I was away from the hotel and done getting the detective what he needed.
For some reason, I wondered if Carmen was really in the dark about Silas and I or if she was just playing along.
You just never know what she was thinking or what she had up her sleeve.
But soon enough it wouldn’t matter.
My short day at the hotel was over before I knew it and I headed to meet Josephine.