Phillip glared at her, seemingly deep in thought, and didn’t speak.
Alicia sat across from him and set her purse on the other chair. “You’re going to kill me, but baby, I’m sorry. I got carried away again, and I didn’t realize how much time had passed.”
“Is that right?” he said. “What’d you buy?”
Alicia smiled as much as she could. “Well, that’s the best news of all. I bought a bunch of stuff I didn’t need, but then I returned it. I took everything back because I realized how upset you were gonna be.”
Phillip leaned back in his chair and relaxed his arms on the island. “If that’s true, show me the receipts. All of them.”
Alicia’s face turned solemn. “What?”
“Show them to me. For purchases and returns.”
Alicia’s heart revved up again. What was she going to do now?
Phillip’s eyes turned cold, and she could tell he meant business. He wanted to see proof, but she didn’t have any.
“Why can’t you just believe me?” she said, hating how pathetic she sounded.
“Because you’re a liar.”
“I’m not.”
“Then show me.”
“I’m not a child,” she said, hoping he would back off.
“No, but you’re my loving, faithful, committed wife, and if I want proof I have a right to see it.”
“If you don’t trust me, then why did you marry me?” Alicia rambled off whatever she could, trying to turn things in a different direction.
“You really think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
“I don’t think anything like that.”
“So you were at the mall all this time.”
“Yes.”
Phillip shook his head. Then he picked up his phone and typed in his passcode. He clicked a few icons and slid the phone over to Alicia. “Does this look like the mall to you?”
She glanced at the displayed photo and knew she had to be seeing things. On the screen was an image of Levi hugging her good-bye on his front step, which had happened less than two hours ago. But this couldn’t be real. There was no way Phillip had followed her.
“Why are you so quiet?” he asked. “I’ll bet you weren’t this quiet earlier.”
“Phillip, it’s not what you think.”
“Alicia, don’t even try it. You’ve lied for the last time.”
“I can’t believe you were following me,” she said, feigning outrage.
“I wasn’t. I hired an investigator.”
“When?”
“Right after I discovered that lowlife was out of prison. By then, he’d been out for a few weeks, so I couldn’t help wondering if you’d already been seeing him.”
Alicia was starting to feel a bit uneasy, because the more Phillip talked, the less upset he seemed. Almost as though he couldn’t care less about what she’d done.
“But silly me,” he said, laughing out loud. “I only had the PI follow you for the four weeks leading up to our wedding. I told him to stop when I saw that you really weren’t being with Levi. But then after you were gone all day Friday and Saturday, I called him again. He wasn’t available, but he put one of his associates on it right away yesterday.”
Phillip was explaining things in great detail, and taking this a lot better than she’d expected, but she still thought it was best to wait to ask him for the divorce.
“But what I really wanna know is, did you see Levi when he first got out? Before I hired an investigator?”
“What? No,” she said, relieved that she’d cut things off with Levi in June and Phillip couldn’t prove otherwise.
“So the first time you saw him was three days ago?”
“The first time I saw him was today.” Phillip was trying to trip her up, but he’d just admitted that the investigator hadn’t begun following her until yesterday.
“Still lying, I see.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he spat, reaching over and picking up a handgun from the chair next to him. He got up and hurried around the island.
“Oh my God, Phillip, what are you doing?”
“Just shut up,” he said, grabbing her hair and yanking her head back.
“Phillip, please don’t do this. I’m begging you.”
He pointed the gun at her face. “I said shut up.”
Alicia thought she was going to pass out. She hadn’t even known Phillip owned a gun, let alone that he would threaten to kill her with it.
“You made a fool out of me, not once but twice. You practically got on your knees, pleading with me to take you back. And now you’re sleeping with that same snake all over again?”
“Phillip, baby…I didn’t sleep with him. All we did was talk.”
Phillip rubbed the gun up and down the back of her head as though it were a water pistol. “They always say nice guys finish last, but not this time, sweetheart. You took my kindness for weakness, and something has to be done about it. Somebody has to pay.”
It was all Alicia could do not to urinate on herself. Phillip had snapped, and she was frightened for her life.
“Baby—” she said.
“Don’t you call me that!” he shouted. “Don’t you ever call me that.”
“But I just wanna talk to you.”
“About what? Your jailbird boyfriend? Okay, let’s talk about him.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s nothing to me.”
“Still lying,” he said, laughing and pressing the gun harder against her head. But when her phone vibrated, he reached over with his other hand to pick up her handbag. He set it on the island and dug through it until he found her cell. Then he typed in her passcode.
Alicia loathed the day they’d exchanged passcode information, because while she’d made sure to delete all text and call logs between her and Levi, there wasn’t a thing she could do about this current message. She hoped the text wasn’t from Levi, but she soon learned otherwise.
“Oh, so you were planning to ask me for a divorce?”
Alicia closed her eyes, praying Phillip didn’t shoot.
“Because this text right here says, ‘Call me after you talk to him about the divorce. Let me know you’re okay. I love you, baby.’”
Alicia didn’t bother lying anymore. Instead she said, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth, as—”
Phillip dropped the phone on the island and yanked her head back again. “Stop all that praying. First you sleep with me, then you sleep with that punk Levi, and now you’re saying the Lord’s Prayer? All in one day? You’re such a hypocrite. Such a lowdown whore.”
Alicia wanted to plead with him to put the gun down, but she was afraid to say anything.
“Text him back,” he demanded.
“For what?”
“Tell him everything went fine, and that you’ll call him later. And don’t forget to tell him you love him.”
Alicia didn’t move.
“Here,” he said, forcing the phone into her hand. “And you’d better type exactly what I told you or else.”
Alicia quickly keyed in the message with jittery fingers, correcting a number of mistakes. But right when she got ready to send it, Phillip snatched the phone from her. He read the text more than once and pressed Enter himself. Then he dropped her phone back in her bag.
“I should kill you right now,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Baby, I don’t want Levi,” she said. “I love you, and that’s what I went to tell him.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m stupid. You didn’t have to drive an hour to do that. You could’ve told him that on the phone.”
“I tried, but he said he wouldn’t stop calling me unless I told him in person. That’s the only reason I went.”
“Then why did he just send you that text about divorcing me?”
“I don’t know.”
Phillip grabbed her purse and pressed it against her chest. “Let’s go.”
/>
“Where?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Alicia believed it was better to stay here than to get in the car with a crazed gunman. “Baby, why don’t we stay here and talk. Let’s pray about it, and call my dad.”
“Your dad doesn’t have a thing to do with this. This is about you, me, and your boy Levi. Now, let’s go!” he yelled. “Don’t make me ask you again. Don’t make me blow your brains out.”
Chapter 46
Melanie upped the speed on her treadmill from 4.2 to 4.8 miles per hour. She’d been power walking for nearly a half hour, but every three to four minutes she’d been having to take it down a bit. She felt as though she couldn’t comfortably walk at her usual pace, because when she did, she struggled to breathe and her heart beat well beyond the normal range. But in order to burn the necessary amount of calories and feel the release of endorphins to feel better, she needed to finish off the last few minutes at top speed. She was only planning to stay on for thirty minutes, but already she was starting to feel wiped out again. Her face and body were also drenched in sweat, something that didn’t usually happen with such severity.
Melanie fought to keep up her desired speed, but when she couldn’t, she dropped it back to 4.2. Still, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath the way she needed to, so she dropped it to 3.5. When that didn’t seem to do much, either, she slowed the treadmill to 2.0. She held on to the rails, panting and waiting for her heart to stop pounding, and when it didn’t, she stopped the machine and went up to the main floor. That flight of stairs alone took everything out of her, so instead of continuing up to her bedroom, she walked into the family room and lay across the sofa. When she did, her cell rang. She sat up to look around for it, but the room started to spin and she felt dizzy. She thought she saw flashing lights, but when she squeezed her eyes together, they disappeared. Her phone stopped ringing for a few seconds, and then it rang again. This was when she realized it was coming from the kitchen, and she pried herself off the couch and went to answer it.
“Hi, Dad,” she said, pulling a bottle of water from the refrigerator and heading back into the family room.
“How are you feeling?”
“Okay. Just finished working out.”
“You sound exhausted.”
She lay on the sofa again. “I’m fine.”
“Sweetheart, I’m really getting worried. You seemed a little weak today, so maybe you should stop exercising for a while. Just until you feel better.”
“I’ve been thirsty the last couple of days. Probably just a little dehydrated,” she said, turning up her bottle of water.
“I really wish you would’ve spent the night over here. Especially with everything going on with you and Brad.”
“I just need to be alone right now.”
“But that’s not good. Even if you don’t wanna come here, why don’t you call Alicia? Go stay with her and Phillip.”
“Alicia…Alicia…she’s my best friend.”
“Yeah, and that’s why you should head on over there.”
“They live in Orlando now,” she said.
“Who lives in Orlando?”
“Alicia and…you know his name…you know…that minister at the church.”
“Sweetheart, are you okay?” Andrew said. “You don’t sound right.”
“I have to get dressed for work. I have a lot of patients this morning.”
“Sweetheart, it’s not morning, it’s evening.”
Melanie heard her father speaking, but she couldn’t decipher what he was saying. She tried to ask him to repeat it, yet when she opened her mouth, nothing came out. She fought to say something, but soon her eyes fell heavy and rolled toward the back of her head. In seconds, everything went black.
Alicia drove along I-90 East, praying God would stop Phillip before he did something crazy. For an entire hour, Phillip had forced her at gunpoint to circle around Mitchell, but thirty minutes ago, he’d instructed her to head toward the interstate. He hadn’t given a single reason for doing so, but she had a bad feeling about it. Especially since Levi lived in that direction.
Phillip poked her harder in her right side with the gun. “I did everything I could to make you happy. Everything.”
“I know that, and—”
“Don’t you say one more word. Not unless I tell you.”
Alicia swallowed hard, trying not to cry.
“Why couldn’t you just be faithful to me? Why did you have to turn into a worthless tramp?” he said, poking her with the gun again.
Alicia prayed one prayer after another in silence.
“The first time, you hurt me so badly I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over it. And then I was dumb enough to start seeing you again. Even after you ruined our marriage with that drug dealer and married that thug pastor. After all that, I still loved you and took you back. I believed you when you said you were sorry, that you would do anything to be my wife again, and that you could never love anyone else. You lied about everything,” he said, sticking the gun in her side, this time much more forcefully.
Phillip took his other hand and turned her face toward him.
“Phillip, please don’t,” she said, trying not to yell. “It’s dark out here, and I can’t see the road.”
“Stop whining. There’s hardly any traffic at all.”
“We can still run off the highway.”
He let her chin go. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe an accident is the answer to our problems. With death, there’s no more pain. I just preached about this very thing yesterday. The wages of sin is death.”
Alicia mentally prayed the Lord’s Prayer over and over and kept driving.
Phillip pointed the gun at her temple. “So tell me. What is it exactly? Is it the way he makes love to you? Is he really that much better than me?”
Phillip had told her not to say anything, so she pretended she didn’t hear him.
He jabbed her side with the gun. “Answer me when I’m talking to you.”
“It wasn’t anything like that. I told you, I didn’t sleep with him.”
“Liar!” he screamed. “If you lie to me one more time, it’ll be the end for both of us.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” she said, fearing what he might do next. “When I slept with him six years ago, it just happened. I never planned for it, and it certainly wasn’t because he was better than you.”
“Then why did you keep going back? Like you couldn’t get enough of him?”
“I don’t know. I made a huge mistake. I was young and stupid.”
“You’re still stupid.”
“I’m sorry for the way I treated you.”
“Are you sorry for what you did back then or what you’re doing now? Because you and I both know you slept with that fool Friday, Saturday, and today. Just admit it.”
“Phillip, please, let’s turn around and go home. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“You don’t need to do anything except drive.”
“Where are we going? Can I at least call to check on Melanie?”
“If you were so worried about her, why did you ditch her to go be with your man?”
“I told you, it was the only way Levi would leave me alone.”
“What did I tell you about lying to me?”
“I wouldn’t do that, Phillip. I’m your wife.”
“No, you’re a dirty whore who doesn’t deserve to live. Now keep driving.”
Phillip’s phone rang, and Alicia glanced over at him by reflex. He pulled it from the holder attached to his belt and answered it.
“Hey, Pastor,” he said, raising the gun back to Alicia’s head, this time cocking it. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he continued. “Is she conscious?…No, Alicia and I decided to get away for the night, so we’re downtown Chicago…Oh, that’s because her phone is off,” Phillip said, looking at her.
Alicia wanted to scream as loud as she could. She wanted to tell her father everything, but having a gun pressed against her
head stopped her.
“I was just gonna call and tell you I wouldn’t be in tomorrow,” he said, sounding as innocent as always. “I’ll be there Wednesday, though…Of course…No problem at all. I’ll tell her, and you have a good night.”
He rubbed the gun down the side of her face. “That’s a good girl. See? You kept your mouth shut, and you’re still alive.”
“What did my dad want?”
“He tried to call you, but your phone kept going to voice mail.”
“You made me turn it off, remember?”
“And it’s staying off.”
“Why was he calling?”
“Melanie was rushed to the hospital.”
“Oh my God, is she okay?”
“I’m sure she’ll be fine. Just like last time.”
“Phillip, we have to go back.”
“You just keep driving. It’ll all be over soon enough.”
“What does that mean?”
“I already told you,” he said, suddenly breaking into tears and sobbing. “The wages of sin is death. It’s the only way to fix all this.”
For the first time since they’d gotten in the car, Alicia knew for sure Phillip was going to kill her. He was also going to kill Levi. She’d wanted to believe he would snap back to reality, but if anything, he was slipping into a deeper state of insanity. Which meant she had to do something. Anything. If she was going to die, it wouldn’t be without a fight.
Alicia pressed on the accelerator, zigzagging her Mercedes from lane to lane, hoping a state trooper saw them.
Phillip cocked the gun again. “You either slow this car down or so help me…”
Alicia swerved over to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes so violently, their heads and bodies jerked wildly. She threw the gear into park, unbuckled her seat belt, and jumped out. She hurried into the middle of the highway, waving her hands, hoping to flag down the next vehicle that drove by. But Phillip rushed over and dragged her back toward the car.
“Let me go,” she screamed, but when he pointed the gun in her face, she knocked his arm away so hard, it fell out of his hand. They both dove at it, but when they hit the ground, Phillip landed on top of her. Still, Alicia grabbed the gun, and Phillip tussled with her, trying to take it. He was much stronger than she was, but she held on to the weapon with all her might. They scuffled and fought, and suddenly the gun flew a couple of feet away from them. Phillip stretched his arm toward it, but Alicia wrestled closer to it as well. They scrapped and brawled like the enemies they’d become…until the gun finally went off.
The Ultimate Betrayal Page 22