Reserve My Curves 2: He Still Belongs to Me

by B. M. Hardin

This really wasn’t the time or the place to talk about the status of my relationship with Silas.

  But I knew that Carmen was going to want an answer.

  I thought about lying, but I figured that I no longer had to.

  I was hoping that whatever it was that I’d found wrapped up in the vase, the papers with the rubber band, was all that I was going to need to get rid of Carmen and my past at the hotel.

  “Yes. I knew how you got when we discussed him, so I lied. The truth is we are getting married in April…well, maybe,” I said since I wasn’t exactly sure what Silas and I were going to do.

  Carmen shook her head.

  I could see nothing but pure evil on her face.

  But with my near death experience, I no longer cared about pleasing anybody else.

  “Well, I’m going to go. I’m glad that it was you that got shot. Better you than me. I hate they missed your heart though. Bummer,” Carmen said and left without another word.

  What?

  Who says that to somebody?

  Her words were so cruel that they almost made me cry.

  Someday, somebody was going to kill that woman.

  And then it hit me.

  What if Carmen was the one that had me shot in the first place?

  It was kind of strange that she’d reserved me for the whole day.

  She had taken a mighty long time inside of the house as though she’d known what was going to happen.

  Maybe she’d set the whole thing up.

  The more I thought about the possibility, the angrier I became.

  Sure we had been on pretty good terms since I was pretending to be her friend, but what if she had been pretending the whole time too?

  What if?

  And if she wasn’t behind it all, then who was?

  I was so confused and in my feelings that I became emotional.

  At the sight of Silas once he reentered the room, I cried even more.

  Hell, he was just as hard to figure out as Carmen was.

  What if he’d had something to do with it?

  We’d just had a big fight.

  He’d made a few threats, though they weren’t exactly towards me.

  How could I be sure that he wasn’t behind it all?

  Could he really be trusted?

  Studying his face, I answered my own question.

  Maybe he couldn’t be trusted on every single level, but it was clear that he most definitely hadn’t shot me or hadn’t had someone else to shoot me.

  The worry on his face was real.

  But someone knew something.

  Someone shot me, and someone else knew who it was.

  Someone had shot me for a reason.

  But why?

  *************************************

  Chapter TEN

  Finally home, I headed to my bedroom to relax.

  As soon as I sat on the edge of the bed, my phone started to ring.

  “Are you okay?” Detective Wiley asked.

  Say it ain’t so!

  Detective ugly, Mr. Asshole, Rude boy 24/7, was actually asking if I was okay?

  I found it funny that he found out that I had been shot but just so happens he hadn’t been following me on the day that the incident occurred…right?

  Any other day he would have been hot on my trail, especially because I was out with Carmen, but all of a sudden, on that day, he wasn’t.

  I found that extremely coincidental.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Something just didn’t add up.

  Something just didn’t seem right.

  And then again, maybe he was there watching and just didn’t do anything.

  Maybe he just sat there and watched as I was being shot.

  He cared so much about the case against the hotel that I was sure that he would have probably looked on and not have done a damn thing in order to save his case and not blow his cover.

  I could definitely see him doing that.

  He was so pushy and he wanted to crack this case so bad.

  Maybe he wasn’t who he said that he was.

  I’d never really investigated to see if he was a real detective or not.

  I’d just taken his word for it.

  What if he wasn’t?

  After all of this time, just what if he wasn’t?

  What if he was someone else?

  I just didn’t know what to think about anyone at this point.

  “I’m fine.”

  “When are you going back to the hotel?”

  Of course that’s what he wanted to know.

  Everyone was all about themselves.

  He wasn’t concerned that I could have died trying to be friends with someone that I didn’t like or want to be friends with in the first place, and it was all for him.

  All he cared about was himself.

  “What’s your badge number?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  After a few more questions, he finally gave it to me and I hung up to call the police station.

  Well, the good news was that he was really a detective.

  At least he wasn’t lying about that, but I still couldn’t trust him.

  I couldn’t trust anyone.

  Hell, I could barely trust myself.

  I started to call Detective Wiley back to let him know that I had something for him, but I wanted to check it out first.

  I found my purse and opened it in a hurry.

  I had to see what was on the papers that I’d found in the vase at Carmen’s house.

  Fumbling around for a while, and after emptying everything out of my huge Prada bag onto the bed, I discovered that the bundle of papers were gone.

  What?

  I was sure that I had put them there.

  So that meant that somebody had to have taken them out.

  Who in the hell got them out of my purse?

  The only two people that had been around me, that I knew on a personal level, were Carmen and Silas.

  Carmen on the way to the hospital, and Silas while I was there.

  One of them had to have taken them.

  But why?

  Obviously those papers would have been my way out but now they were gone.

  Things were just getting crazier and crazier, all around me, and I had a bad feeling that something was about to happen.

  What in the hell is going on around here?

  I was sure that I was about to find out.

  ***

  After two weeks of bed rest and doing nothing, I was feeling a lot better.

  Carmen hadn’t called of course, and the detective wouldn’t stop calling, so I figured that it was time to make a trip to the hotel.

  The detective wasn’t exactly happy when I told him about the papers that I’d found, that were now missing.

  He agreed that they had gone missing for a reason.

  I’d asked Silas if he had gone in my purse at any point in time at the hospital.

  I lied and told him that I had some money missing from my wallet and I’d asked him if he had used it maybe at the hospital’s cafeteria or something, since he always liked to use cash.

  Silas only said no, and that he didn’t touch my purse at all.

  But someone had.

  He promised to call the hospital and make a complaint but I wasn’t worried about that.

  I was worried about the papers.

  But since they were gone, I wasn’t going to worry about it.

  I was going to the hotel and I was going to take the information that the detective needed.

  I was done playing around.

  I could have died because of it and I was done playing nice.

  Silas was all over me but I’d finally convinced him that I was okay enough to go out by myself.

  We’d talk over and over again about our relationship and even touched on a few things of the past.

  I told him that maybe we should wait on getting married but of course he didn’t wa
nt to hear that.

  He assured me that everything was fine and that he just wanted to forget about his past and not constantly have to relive it.

  He told me that Carmen wasn’t who I thought she was and that I should stay away from her.

  But of course she said the same about him.

  Still, I couldn’t help but think that with Carmen out of the picture, Silas and I might actually have a chance.

  Silas was trying to overdose me with his love and definitely tried to make me see that he was all in.

  But I was still confused.

  But I was on my way to get some answers.

  I pulled up at the hotel.

  I was still bandaged but at least everything was working.

  The doctors called me lucky, but I saw it as blessed.

  Life wasn’t through with me yet and I’d be damned if I spent the rest of it behind bars after I’d been spared.

  I walked into the hotel and before I headed for Carmen’s downstairs office, I looked for the maid named Delilah that I’d bumped into a few weeks ago.

  Just so happens, as I stood there looking for her, she came in from behind me and just as she walked in front of me, I called out her name.

  She turned to face me.

  She looked at me as if she didn’t want to be bothered.

  I went into my purse and took out an envelope.

  I reached it to her.

  She took it without hesitating and when she opened it up, she smiled.

  “Go home. Follow your dreams.” I said to her.

  She looked as though she was going to cry but she didn’t ask any questions.

  “I don’t know why, but thank you,” she said as she ripped off her name tag, dropped it to the floor and headed back out of the hotel.

  The feeling that I felt in the inside was unexplainable.

  It felt so good.

  I’d given her enough money to last her for a while and hopefully once it ran out, she would be in a better place in life.

  It was the least that I could do.

  I smiled and headed towards Carmen’s office.

  My good deed was done, and now it was time to get dirty.

  Carmen wasn’t in her office and I didn’t waste any time getting down to business.

  I didn’t have any time to look for anything particularly, so I just grabbed papers, a small stack of folders and stuffed them into my purse as quickly as possible.

  After snatching everything I could off of her desk, I headed to the drawers below it.

  All of the drawers were locked except one of them.

  Without bothering to see what was in it, I grabbed what I could, papers, folders, whatever touched my hand, and put it into my purse as well.

  Feeling nervous, I was about to turn around and leave but the file cabinet caught my eye.

  If she kept sign-on bonus money in there, I was sure that she kept other thirteenth floor related things there.

  I opened the top drawer and grabbed everything that I could get my hands on but at the sound of the elevator, I slammed the drawer shut and hurried to the wall in front of the secret elevator and stood directly in front of it.

  When the wall pushed open, Carmen looked at me with disgust.

  She didn’t greet me.

  Instead, she walked towards the door.

  She looked back to see if I’d followed her and when she saw that I was still standing there, she spoke.

  “If you come back on the property, I will have you arrested for trespassing,” she said.

  I looked at her as though she’d lost her mind but I already knew that she was mad about Silas.

  I walked over to her slowly.

  “And just so you know, whether you marry him or not, he will always be mine. He still belongs to me. I was the first wife; you’ll be his third. But hey if that makes you feel special,” she said and literally pushed me the rest of the way out of her office and slammed the door closed behind me.

  She locked it as I kicked at it, wishing that I could get to the other side of it and kick her.

  All I needed was to smack the crap out of her just one good time.

  Just once would give me life.

  But because I was causing a scene and my body was starting to stiffen up, I headed towards the exit.

  Once I was safely in my car, I couldn’t wait to see what I’d stolen from Carmen’s office.

  I was sure that most of the good stuff was in her upstairs office, but it was worth a shot.

  I had to have grabbed over a hundred pieces of papers and a few envelopes.

  I opened the envelopes and of course they were filled with sign-on bonus money from the file cabinets.

  I didn’t need the money, so I tossed the envelopes to the side. I focused on the papers.

  Looking through the folders and at some of the papers, I saw that I’d managed to grab some stuff that definitely might be helpful.

  There were papers with years of personal information and identification of women that had come through the thirteenth floor.

  My name was on a page or two as well as some of the other girls that only worked the thirteenth floor; which confirmed that the information that I was looking at was in regards to the executive maids and not the regular ones.

  I scanned the pages as fast as I could, looking for something---something big.

  There was nothing extremely useful in that set of papers, so I dug out more crumbled pages from my purse and started to go through them.

  Just as I seemed to be headed toward something good, the knock on my car window almost made me piss on myself.

  “Open the door Envy.”

  It was Carmen.

  Oh, so she wanted to be bad huh?

  Just as my hand touch the door handle, so that I could get out and give her a run for her money, messed up back and all, Carmen spoke.

  “So, you want to come in my office and steal money from me? Open the door bitch,” Carmen said.

  I paused and looked at her.

  Damn it.

  Why hadn’t I pulled off?

  Instead of opening the door, I started my car instead.

  At the sound of the engine, out of nowhere Carmen swung a fairly large piece of wood at my driver’s side window, shattering it instantly.

  This crazy ass bitch!

  I hadn’t even seen the wood in her hand.

  Still talking, she smashed the backseat window out next.

  Barely able to focus, I put the gear in drive and sped off.

  I drove and I didn’t stop driving until I was in the parking lot of the police department.

  At that point, I attempted to remove the glass from my hair and various places on my body.

  Oh, she was going to pay for this.

  Whether with her beat ass or with her life, she was going to pay.

  I was so mad that all I could see was red, but I had to focus.

  I had to keep it together.

  Carmen was going to get hers, one way or another.

  My phone started to vibrate, back to back, from calls from Carmen.

  I didn’t bother to answer it.

  I grabbed the papers instead.

  Still in frenzy, I started to look at the papers again.

  Loads of information about the maids, clients, and payments, but I was looking for more.

  It wasn’t until I was down to my last twenty or so pieces of paper, that I finally I saw something.

  I saw a whole lot of something.

  And then…

  I saw something else.

  My mouth opened wide and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Oh my Goodness!

  That bitch!

  ***

  Though I was supposed to stay at home, I sat across from the hotel.

  I wanted to see the big bust go down.

  I’d handed over the necessary papers to the detective and with all of the information that was on them, he was finally able to make his move.

  I had been granted free
dom as promised and I was in the clear.

  I thought that when this day came, if it ever came, I would feel nervous and maybe even a little bad for playing the part of sending so many folks to jail and even prison, but somehow, I didn’t feel bad at all.

  I was angry.

  That’s the only emotion that I felt.

  I was angry enough to get crazy.

  Not Carmen’s kind of crazy…but ghetto, ratchet kind of crazy.

  And I had my reasons.

  I watched the detective and his men head into the hotel.

  People, regular maids and employees scurried out of the hotel and flooded the sidewalk, unsure of what was going to happen next.

  I decided to get out of the car and join the crowd.

  To be honest, I just wanted to see the look on Carmen’s face.

  I wouldn’t have to testify or anything.

  The documentation had everything that they you could think of on it from names, payouts, sponsors and so much more.

  They had all the proof that they needed and they were sure that when plea bargains started to float around that they would get even more information.

  They offered to place me and my family in witness protection once again.

  But I didn’t think that we would need it.

  I was sure that Carmen noticed the missing paperwork, but then again, maybe she only noticed the opened file cabinet and thought that I was simply trying to steal.

  Who knows and who cares!

  Of course I hadn’t spoken to her, so I had no idea what she was thinking.

  After she’d busted my windows with the wooden plank, she called over a hundred times.

  I never answered so I was sure that I was going to see her later on that day.

  Carmen knew where I lived, and I just knew that she was going to bring the drama to my home.

  And I waited on her all night too.

  I just knew that she was going to pop up and run right into an ass whooping, but she didn’t come.

  She finally stopped calling, and she never came.

  That definitely made me curious.

  Why wouldn’t she have come?

  And the more I thought about it, and because Carmen was part stalker, I wondered if she’d ever saw the detective and I meet up on the few occasions that we’d met in person to exchange information.

  Thinking about it, I was almost sure that she had.

  And I was willing to bet that she’d pulled whatever strings that she had to in order to find out who he was, so now I was really wondering as to whether or not Carmen had something in the works or not.