by B. M. Hardin
Huh?
And Carmen allowed it?
Plenty of times she’d referred to the little girl as her niece, so she was going along with the crap and for what?
Why hadn’t she ever tried to get her back?
Oh and Silas…he was a dead man!
“I found out that I was pregnant right as we started the divorce proceedings. I was already two months along. I hid it from him until I was too big and started to show. I tried to say that it was someone else’s, but he knew that I was lying. So once he found out, he was all over me. He came by my house every single day. I guess he thought that I was going to try to skip town or something. I don’t know. He’d said that he was going to be a part of the child’s life and that I wasn’t going to keep his baby from him. On the day that I had her, I delivered her at the hospital and held her in my arms. That was the only time that I’d ever gotten to I hold her. She was so beautiful. I sent her to the nursery, and when I woke up from a nap, Silas was there. And he was there with court papers. Somehow he and all of his rich buddies had gone back into my past and pulled up a few things that were supposed to be hidden and that he was never supposed to know. They deemed me as mentally incapable of caring for a child. According to them I was unstable and I could potential harm her as well as myself. After I’d killed my father, though my mother took the blame, I’ll admit that I wasn’t exactly the same or just right after that. I’d spent some time in a couple of hospitals here and there but I was fine. It was nothing a few medications couldn’t take care of. I would have been a good mother to my daughter. But Silas had the law and everyone else on his side. He took my daughter from me. He wouldn’t even let me say goodbye. Literally two officers basically held me hostage in that hospital room until it was time for me to be released. I should have looked into it. What he’d done and the corners that the people in charge had cut, couldn’t have been right, but I didn’t even fight. I never saw her again until that day that I spotted her with my sister, the same day of the accident. I’d forced myself to pretend as though she didn’t exist the same day I’d walked out of that hospital. It was my way of dealing with it. I didn’t try to fight him for her. I never showed up at the court hearings. I just let it be and pretended as though I didn’t have a child. I just let them have her. I pretended so much that for years I actually believed the lies that I’d told myself. I didn’t even know that he’d named her Carmen like I’d asked him to that day at the hospital until he told me that she was dead. I’d asked him to name her after me. But I thought surely that he wouldn’t. But he had. Because deep down, he still had love for me,” Carmen said.
I looked at her as she finished her last statement.
Carmen was delusional.
She was just as stupid as she looked.
Silas didn’t love her.
Silas had used her to become a citizen.
Plain and simple.
But I wasn’t concerned about Silas and everything that she’d just told me.
I was speechless!
No, not my Silas!
He wasn’t that type of guy. He just wasn’t.
But one thing was for sure and that was that apparently Silas and Carmen had too much history and a ton of secrets that they shared and to be honest, it was too much for me.
Silas was such a good guy around me but obviously Carmen knew the real him and the real him appeared to be ruthless.
How could he take her daughter from her?
Granted, I was right, she was and is crazy.
But still, he should have at least attempted to work something out.
You simply don’t just take someone’s child from them and give them to your new wife---who just so happens to be her damn sister!
I just couldn’t believe that he would do something like that.
Maybe Carmen was lying.
She just had to be lying.
Silas was so good with Horizon and he adored the bond that I had with my daughter.
Even when I was tired, he always reminded me to make time for her.
I would never have thought that he would have done something like that to Carmen.
It just didn’t make sense.
And Carmen was still secretly obsessed with him after all he’d done to her?
Oh hell yeah, she was just as looney as they came!
With my mind on overload, I didn’t say anything to her.
I simply stood up and she stood up behind me.
I headed towards the door in a hurry.
I couldn’t wait to get home to confront Silas.
There was no more being quiet.
He had a lot of history and past that was about to mess up his present and his future.
Oh yeah and by the way…the wedding is off!
***
“So, today is your last day at the hotel for sure?” Silas asked.
I hadn’t told him what I’d found out at the hotel yesterday only because he seemed to be in a very bad mood when I got home.
He was so angry for some reason or another and he couldn’t seem to shake it off the entire evening.
He barely said one word the whole night.
Even when I told him the news about finally leaving the hotel, he’d just nodded his head.
I asked him what was bothering him but of course he wouldn’t tell me.
But this morning he seemed to be in a better mood, but I was about to mess it up again.
“Yeah, I am,” I answered him nonchalantly.
He walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
He inhaled the scent of my skin.
“Why do you always have to smell so damn good just to go clean? And it’s your last day, just don’t go. Stay here and spend the day with me,” Silas said.
I didn’t even bother to respond.
Don’t worry about what the hell I’m doing…let’s talk about you!
“Silas, what do you really do for a living?” I asked.
I figured that I might as well cover all of the basics since I was about to expose yet another one of his secrets.
“I told you. I was smart with my previous riches and I invested wisely. The stock market is where most of my money is tied up in and from dealings with it is where the bulk of my money comes from. Why do you ask Envy?”
“Just to see if I got the same answer,” I answered him truthfully.
Silas backed away from me and stood as if he already knew that something else was coming next.
“So, why didn’t you tell me that your daughter was actually Carmen’s child?”
“She told you that?”
His response wasn’t the one I’d thought that it would be.
It kind of caught me of guard a little bit.
“Yes, why?”
Silas didn’t respond.
He simply walked away and headed into our walk-in closet.
“Answer me Silas,” I said following him, but he was silent.
He looked through his clothes as though he was trying to decide what to wear.
I became so furious at his behavior that I grabbed the closest shoe to me and threw it at the back of his head.
He looked at me with the eyes of an angry tiger, but he still didn’t say a word.
“So she was telling the truth Silas?”
I asked him the same question all of ten times but he still refused to give me an answer.
“You know what, either you answer the question or the damn wedding is off!”
With that threat, finally, he looked at me.
Good, that got his attention, but I was serious.
“Yes. Yes she was our daughter but Carmen isn’t telling you the whole truth. But don’t worry about it. I’m going to take care of that,” Silas threatened.
Once the words came out of his mouth, it seemed as though I was less mad and more hurt.
I didn’t want it to be true.
I really didn’t.
I was starting to regret the decisions that I’d made.
And it was the way that he’d said that he was going to take care” of Carmen that told me that he was going to mess Carmen’s ass up as soon as he could.
“You say that Carmen didn’t tell me the whole story. Well, what’s the whole story?”
“Envy, it doesn’t really matter. You wanted to know if she was our daughter, yes she was. The rest of the story is irrelevant now.”
What right did he have to tell me what was relevant or irrelevant to me?
I wanted answers and I wanted them now!
“Silas you’re going to have to say a hell of a lot more than that if you want me to marry you.”
Silas gave me another deadly look.
“I can’t take anymore secrets. Every time I turn around here comes something else,” I said as Silas walked passed me to my side of the closet.
He reached for a duffle bag on the top shelf, unzipped it and threw it at my feet.
“Looks like you have a few secrets of your own,” Silas said at the sight of the money spilling out of the bag.
I had two other bags full of money, as well hidden in the house.
Silas was never the messing type so I hadn’t overdone it with hiding the money in the house that I’d made from the hotel but I guess I should have.
I’d wanted to put it in a bank account plenty of times, but I feared being questioned as to where it had come from.
“So Envy, you answer some questions. Where is the money from?” Silas asked.
I just looked back and forth between the bag and him.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Exactly, so don’t come at me about secrets when clearly you have your own. Like I said, I’ll take care of it,” Silas said exiting the closet and soon exiting the room.
Well, that entire conversation went nowhere, I thought, as I grabbed the small stool and placed the bag of money back on the top shelf of the closet.
I headed to the hotel shortly after, feeling all kinds of confused and frustrated.
I was sick and tired of this involuntary threesome of a relationship between Carmen, Silas and myself.
It just always seemed to be something coming up about the two of them or their past.
And I, for one, was over it!
Basically it seemed as though all of Silas’s secrets were dealing with, or revolved around Carmen.
I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen between Silas and I, but I was for sure that I had to get away from the hotel to figure it out.
Carmen greeted me with a smile.
“You’ve been reserved all day,” she said.
It was my last day so what the hell.
“By who? Is it a regular?”
Carmen smiled.
“It’s by me.”
I looked at her.
Now, I wasn’t with that funny business.
Carmen was in for a rude awakening if she thought that she was coming anywhere near these curves.
“It’s your last day. So, come on,” she said, grabbed her purse, and back down the elevator we went.
Oh, I was about to say!
We headed out into the early winter air.
“I’ll drive,” she said and we headed for her car.
Where in the hell were we going?
To be honest, I still didn’t know what was what with what she’d told me the day before and so I felt uncomfortable even being with her.
Maybe she hadn’t told the whole story.
Maybe she left something out on purpose.
I didn’t know what to believe.
Carmen talked and talked and said that she had to make a quick stop at home before we had a girl’s slash supposed to be work, day out.
Once we pulled up at her house, she got out of the car and ran inside.
Her house and the yard even looked adorable in the winter.
It was just so pretty.
I thought about how bad she must feel to have everything but still have nothing.
Then I was reminded that misery loved company.
Maybe she had her own agenda and she wanted to make sure that I ended up just as miserable as she was.
Hey, anything was possible, especially when it came to Carmen.
Maybe she had a few cruel intentions in the works.
I was willing to bet that she did.
I wondered what it was that she was doing and why she was taking so long.
After a few more minutes, I decided to get out of the car.
I decided to walk around her yard.
I wanted to touch everything and just admire it up close.
I felt as though I was in a winter wonderland.
Touching everything in sight, I walked around with a smile on my face.
For some reason the stroll relaxed me.
Before I knew it, I was at the side of the house, checking out a collection of big vases that she had lined up just before you reached one of the side entrances.
Looking at them closely, I could tell that they were very expensive and maybe even hand made.
Carmen definitely had good taste.
Deciding that it was time to head back to the car, I turned around in a hurry and accidently knocked over one of the vases.
Thank goodness that it didn’t break.
The dirt, rocks and shells that were in it spilled out but that was about it.
I swatted down to put everything back inside of it, but as I looked closer inside the vase, I saw the corner of what looked to be a stack of papers.
Pulling it out of the dirt, I saw that it was a shit load of papers, held together by a rubber band.
With no hesitation, I grabbed the stack and stuck it up under my arm.
I rushed to fix the vase and then I scurried back to the car.
Once inside, I hurriedly placed the papers in the bottom of my purse.
I didn’t know what they were, but they were hidden for a reason.
And I was going to find out why.
Finally, Carmen appeared in the doorway carrying a ton of bags.
I was going to make her carry them all by herself, but I decided to be nice and since I knew that I had the papers in my purse, I was feeling quite jumpy.
I got out and went to help her carry them.
She smiled and handed me a few of them.
I had no idea what she was doing with them.
Maybe they were all returns.
I started towards the car but saw that she still was having trouble so I turned back around to get one more bag from her but…
Bam! Bam! Bam!
And then everything went pitch black.
***
“Hey Mama,” I smiled.
Mama smiled at me and soon Tia joined her at her side.
“Hi,” they said in unison.
They both looked so beautiful.
I missed them so much that I started to cry.
I tried to walk towards them but they backed away.
I saw my nephew, who was now walking, appear and reach for Tia to pick him up.
She did and I reached for him but he only smiled at me.
I started towards them again, but they backed up again.
They were all smiling but they all started to shake their heads no.
I looked at them confused but they only shook their heads no….
I jumped up, gasping for air.
I must have been dreaming.
“Envy calm down. Relax. You’re in a hospital,” a stranger said.
At the sound of his voice and once I comprehended what he’d said to me, obeyed him and checked out my surroundings.
I was indeed in a hospital.
But why?
Silas appeared seconds later.
He came through the opened door and I could tell that he was more than worried.
“Envy, you were shot in the back, once. Two other bullets grazed you. One grazed your shoulder and one grazed your ear. Can you hear me okay? Tell me if you c
an feel this.”
I could hear him just fine. The doctor touched all over my body and I shook my head yes.
Thank goodness that I could hear and feel.
“Good. We removed the bullet and it looks like you will make a full recovery.”
“What happened?”
“We’re not exactly sure as of yet, but the police are working on it,” he said.
The doctor turned to Silas and smiled before he exited the room.
Silas approached me cautiously.
“Come here,” I reached for him.
He looked as though he had been crying but he obeyed me and continued to approach me.
He kissed my forehead and sat beside me.
I smiled at him and held his hand.
What the hell happened to me?
How could I have been shot?
“Silas has anyone said what happened?” I asked him.
He simply shook his head.
The pain seemed to hit me all at once and I whined, causing Silas to look over me as though he was a mama bird hearing the cries of her new baby bird as it cracked open the egg and took its first breath.
Silas tried to make me a little more comfortable, but I had just had a hole in my back, so no matter what he did, nothing worked.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” Silas said.
And I knew that he meant it.
I could see the love and fright in his eyes.
But I still hadn’t forgotten that we weren’t on the best of terms.
Just as I opened my mouth to ask a few more questions, there was a knock at the door.
Carmen.
I couldn’t quite describe the look on her face.
Maybe she was sad.
Maybe she was worried.
But it also looked as though she was angry.
And I knew why.
It was because Silas was there.
“Just came back to see if you were okay,” she said.
“Oh, you were here?”
“Of course. I came in on the ambulance with you. I’ve been out there waiting for hours,”
I smiled.
Hell, as evil as she was at heart, she could have sat there and watched me die, so I was thankful that she’d actually gotten me help.
Silas didn’t speak.
He didn’t even look in Carmen’s direction.
Instead he told me that he would be right back and exited the room.
“So, it was all a lie? About you and him?” Carmen asked.