I shook my head and frowned at Carl. “What we need to do is get this shit straight. She needs to stop walking around here thinking that she and Tay still have something. And you still didn’t answer me. Do you know her, Carl?”
I already knew the answer because of how he was acting, but I wanted him to look me in the eye and say it. That time, his feet didn’t move. He just left his head down and answered.
“Yeah, I know her, and most of what she is saying is true. She has been with Tay since they were young, and he was still with her while he was with you.”
“And what about the ‘arm candy’ statement? Is that true too?” I asked, wanting to get up again and slap his ass too.
I could tell that he didn’t want to answer that one, but we both stayed quiet until he did.
“I can’t really speak for Tay’von, but I know that he does love both of you—”
“That’s not what I asked you, Carl. Is Tay only with me so that I can be his arm candy?”
“It started out that way, but he really did fall in love with you. And, Connie, well, he just didn’t know how to tell you,” Carl answered, finally telling the full truth.
I got some satisfaction from Carl’s answers, but I was already planning on giving Tay hell when he got better.
Carl’s words hit Connie hard. She pulled out the chair that she was once sitting in and fell into it. She went on to speak to Carl as if I wasn’t in the room. She said she wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions until she talked to Tay, but she also knew that if anyone knew the truth, it would be Carl. She said she had been sitting at her “man’s” bedside, praying that he had a good explanation for what he had done. She had been there for three days. She had played this fantasy she had constructed over and over in her mind. He would wake up, tell her that he was sorry for everything he had done, tell her that she was the only one that he loved, and beg her to marry him as soon as he got a divorce. She had been through too much with him for him to do otherwise.
“What am I going to do about the baby?” she asked.
I looked over at Carl and gave him a “What the fuck?” face.
“It’s babies. I just found out that Tay and I are having twins. Plus, they or we will have nothing to do with you, so you don’t have to worry about us or them,” I informed her.
“Who gives a shit about you and yours? I am talking about my baby, Tay’s baby,” she answered, staring me in the eye.
“Now, if there is one thing that I know, it’s that Tay has no kids, so don’t even try to pull that shit,” I said matter-of-factly, getting heated all over again.
“I wouldn’t go off of what I know right now, because it seems like you don’t know too much. I’m talking about our baby that is still in my stomach,” the fat bitch proclaimed.
I got a sharp pain in my chest. I knew she didn’t just mention a child that was still in her stomach. That bitch was really trying to steal my shine. I should be the only Mommy to be.
She continued. “He was over my house three nights ago, when I told him. If only he had stayed when I asked him to, he wouldn’t be in this mess he’s in now. I told him that fucking with you wouldn’t bring him anything but pain, but he just wouldn’t stay. I should have known then that something was wrong. What was I thinking? I saw all the signs a long time ago. Hell, I’ve been the chick on the side for a long time now. I was just in denial. I saw how he was with you when we were out on tour. He kept on telling me that it was all for show, but I knew—”
I really was not interested in her sob story, so I cut her off. “He was over your house three nights ago?”
If I had heard her right, that meant that Tay was with her the night of the shooting. I looked from her to Carl. If Tay was really over at her house, then Carl would know, since he was with Tay that night.
“She’s not lying, Tangie,” Carl said quietly. “We went over there so that Tay could talk to her about the wedding, and to let her know what was really up with you and him, but she had some news of her own, and that’s when he found out that she was also pregnant.”
“You mean to tell me that as I was at home with that crazy bitch Shamika, who was holding a gun to my head, while you and Tay were over that bitch’s house? I could have died, and Tay would have been spending time with the other woman, who happened to be having his baby too? Oh, hell no! This mothafucka needs to wake up and start answering some questions.”
I rose from the wheelchair, walked over to Tay’s bed, and stood over him. I held him by the shoulders, and I shook him hard. It had just hit me that I had been in the dark the whole time. Not that I hadn’t been running game on Tay and sleeping with other people, but I had always been the one with the upper hand. All that time I had spent thinking that I was running shit was a lie. My plan with Carmello hadn’t even gone down right. Was I slipping?
I sat back down once I started to feel light-headed, and I let it all sink in. I looked around the room, and my vision seemed foggy all of a sudden. I wasn’t sure if it was my anger or the fact that I had just been shot. One thing was for sure, and that was that I needed to get my shit together and step up my game. Tay had a whole other life that I knew nothing about. I had always known that he was fucking around, but this nigga damn near had already had a wife when he married me. If my game had been tighter, none if this would have fallen through the cracks.
To deal with Tay, I was going to have to wait until he was up and walking. Carl would be put on the back burner until I was healthy enough to really get in his shit for keeping all that info from me. But Miss Connie . . . she was about to get taught a tough lesson. The lesson went, “No matter what, always make sure that you are the one standing with the ring on that left hand when it is all said and done. If not, you’ll be fucked.” Just like she was about to be.
“Carl, I want you to get me and my husband twenty-four-hour security. No one—and I mean no one—will be allowed to see us unless I say they can. From here on out, if anyone gets into this room without my knowledge, not only will they be removed by force, but you will also lose your job. Do you understand me?” I said, speaking directly to Carl.
All that soft shit I felt for him in the ambulance had flown out the window the minute I found out he had been holding out on me. That nigga had had the chance of a lifetime, and that was fucking me. The least he could have done was to warn a bitch about who her man really was.
“You can’t keep me away from Tay’von,” Connie objected. “I am carrying his child—”
“Bitch, so am I . . . and that doesn’t make anybody special but me. I am his wife, and what I say goes. You will be placed on a no-visitation list. If you even come close to this room, I will have you arrested. And, Connie, you do not want to fuck with me, because if you do, you will end up having that little bastard child of yours in a jail cell.”
Connie stood up and put her hands on her hips, as if she had found a new jolt of strength. I looked her up and down before settling for the “I don’t give a shit about what you’re thinking” expression.
“You can’t keep me away from him. I love him.”
“Honey, your love holds no weight over here. Your time has been up with Tay for a while now, and your time is up with me now. Carl, do your fucking job and see to it that I do not ever see her around here again. Please let the nurses know that she is not to even be on this floor.”
Both Carl and Connie waited to see if I was serious. All he had to do was look into my eyes and he knew that his job was on the line. He got up and walked over to Connie. She seemed as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing or seeing.
“You gonna put me out, Carl? I have known you too damn long for you to just put me out because that coldhearted bitch is barking out orders!”
Damn. If I had had a heart, I would have felt bad for her. She looked broken and hurt. Someone should have told her not to try to go toe to toe with me, but it was too late. Maybe if she had gone a different way about things, I would have been a bit nicer. She should have known that if I
walked in there and found everything out the way I had, not only would I bark, but I would bite her ass too and leave a goddamned mark.
“Carl, you have ten seconds to get this fat bitch out of here,” I said, meaning every single word.
Carl took her arm and tried to lead her to the door without a fight, but I already knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, especially with Carl being hurt.
Connie waved a fist in the air and yelled, “Shamika should have killed your ass when she had the chance. She used to tell me that you were an evil and worthless bitch while you were out on tour with Tay, but I . . . I just didn’t think that Tay would stoop this low. You have no—”
“Get her the fuck out of here now!” I said, my voice raised slightly.
Carl had to damn near drag her out as she kicked and screamed. I had had enough of her lip, and I was happy to see her go. I waited for Carl to get back into the room before I spoke again.
“I need you to get on top of the twenty-four-hour security now. Make sure that there is a no-visitation list drawn up, with that nutjob at the top it,” I said as I looked around the room. “And one more thing. I need to be moved in here with Tay. It seems to me that I haven’t been at the top of my game, and that’s going to change starting today. Me moving in here is the first thing that I need to do. And remember that no one, not even a nurse or a doctor, can come in here unless I say so.” I “barked,” as Connie had put it. I gave a couple more orders to Carl and then waited for him to leave me alone in the room.
Well, I hadn’t seen that one coming at me, but I thought that I had handled it okay. I looked over at Tay and watched him sleep while I thought about things. I really wished he had been up while the whole Connie thing went down, but most of all, I just wanted him to wake up. If he died because of me . . . I wasn’t even going to think that way. I knew that Tay had just as much fight in him as I did, and his babies did too.
As I got settled beside my man in my new hospital room, all I could think about was how I was going to deal with the Connie situation. If she really was having his baby, I was just going to put a plan together to make sure that my kids, my man, and my whole life were better than hers. And it would be on every level. The boss bitch was back, and I was going to make sure that nothing got past me from that moment on.
* * *
Another week would pass by before Tay woke up. I didn’t bother bringing up Connie right away, since I hadn’t heard from her or about her since the first day I walked into this room. The first thing Tay did when he woke up was call my name. And that bitch thought that she still had his heart. I was half asleep when I heard him softly call out, “Tangie.” I jumped out of bed and sat beside him.
“Baby, I’m here. How do you feel? Let me call for a doctor,” I said as I pushed the call button.
My baby looked so out of it. I didn’t know how long it was gonna take him before he was back to his old self again. For a couple of days while waiting for him to wake up, I felt like I was well enough to go home, but I wasn’t leaving my baby alone. I needed to be the first face he saw when he woke up, no matter the time. I was still very upset about Connie, but that wasn’t the main focus in that moment. I remembered what it was like to wake up in that cold-ass place by myself, and I didn’t want that for him.
When the doctor came in, I stepped to the side, and he checked everything out. Whereas I had been shot three times, Tay’s unlucky number was five.
I couldn’t wait to get out of here, just so I could start the paperwork and sue those fucking policemen. The news had been pretty much on top of their shit. All the entertainment news shows, along with the major networks, had been reporting on the shooting, Tay’s condition, and my progress. I had made what seemed like fifty calls to magazine and TV reporters. You couldn’t let anything die down in this business. It didn’t matter if you got shot, stabbed, or killed. People would want to know the when, how, and why. If you were the lucky, one of those things would push your career even further, especially in the rap biz.
While the doctor examined Tay, it hit me. I didn’t have to wait to do an interview. No. I was going to call Evengeliza Moore and ask her to come out to the hospital with her film crew. Tay and I would give interviews right there in our hospital beds. Not only would the world show sympathy for us and direct anger at the cops who had shot us, but I would drop the Connie bomb and turn her into a monster.
The world would look at her as the side chick who came to the hospital to antagonize Tay’von’s wife while both her life and his hung in the balance. Not to mention, dropping my baby news would have the world talking, and it would also make me look like even more of a victim. They were going to drag her for filth, and I was going to use the public uproar to my advantage. I was going to ruin her, while allowing our situation to soften the blow of another woman being pregnant by my husband at the same damn time as me. It wouldn’t matter what she took to the press after that. The court of public opinion would have already judged her and sentenced her to shame and humiliation.
Oh yes, the bitch was certainly back, and I had some new missions to accomplish.
Books by the Author
Rebel’s Domain: Scarred for Life
Porn Stars Porn Stars 2
Niya: Rainbow Dreams
Truth or Death (eBook)
The Bully Bangers
Pricey: Playing in Traffic The TurnOut Queens
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The Art of Deceit Page 31