Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 129571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129571 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 518(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
“Why don’t you need my money?” I looked over my shoulder. “You have a job?”
“No.”
“I’m hearing things around the block. Are they true?”
“How would I know?” she asked. “What did you hear?”
“You’re working with suppliers and got the kids out there selling drugs. I saw Sherman at the corner one night, he spotted my car and raced off in the other direction.”
“He’s afraid of you.”
“Is he selling for you?”
“You think I would do that to my own kids?”
“I don’t know. Would you?”
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
“This isn’t a house. This is a shitty project apartment.” I snatched up my jeans, stood up, and climbed into them. “Why won’t you take my offer for the house I bought you?”
“What am I going to do out in suburbia?”
“Live.”
“I’m living here.” She sat up and grabbed a pack of cigarettes off the night stand. “Mind your business. When you’re gone, I do my thing. When you’re away, you do your thing. I keep my legs closed. You keep your dick in your pants, except when it deals with your lily white wife. Other than that, we mind our own business.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
She targeted me with an angry gaze. “You did, when you put your fingers on my neck.”
Close to three years had passed and every week she still reminded me of that day. That was Sophia. She held on to grudges for years, never let them go, or evaporate into the air. She kept them close to her body and hugged them into her skin, rubbed the hate all over her, until they both were one in the same.
“I need your help.” She lit her cigarette. “I’m having trouble with this guy named Omar.”
“You heard me? I said that was the last time. I’m not killing anybody else for you.”
“Omar is making big trouble. He’s saying shit like I’ll either have to work with him, or be an enemy.” She blew out smoke. “He’s threatening your kids and me.”
I snickered.
Always the kids. That was how she got me. She could point to a man across from us in a park. If she mentioned that the man was going to hurt my children, he’d be dead before she blinked one of those pretty eye lashes.
So, I hadn’t decided, if I was going to kill the twins, yet.
They gave her too much power.
“You’re making me worse.” I zipped up my pants. “Before you, I had more control. Now my head is worse. I like to kill a whole lot more.”
“Maybe you’re better and just too crazy to see.”
“Maybe, I should do what you said, and mind my business.” I picked up my shirt and jacket and didn’t even attempt to put the clothes on in her bedroom.
She was poison.
A steel cage.
And I had to find an escape.
Fast.
A yawn fled my lips.
On the plane, exhaustion poured down my body. I should’ve just leaned back in my chair, put the books to the side, and closed my eyes to get some sleep. My guards sat alert around me. If Sophia was the diabolical woman that Benny described, I should watch my back. After that phone call, I’d told every last one in my security to monitor her and use their guns, if necessary. I didn’t give them permission to kill her, but they had my authority to point their guns right at her forehead. Jasmine’s mother or not, I was done playing games.
I flipped through Benny’s journal.
What other things do you have to say?
Benny spent tons of chapters going on and on about my father. He despised the man as the years continued. Even though they’d put him in law school, set him up in the suburbs with a wife, and even gave him an official title in the professional community, he dreamed of slicing their throats. Every last one of them. He wrote poetry about it. Long stanzas of the torture. The blood. The way my father would scream.
I skipped those chapters.
My dad hadn’t been a good man. He served as a stranger most of my life. I blamed him for Mom’s death, and even for her sick obsession of dressing me up. He never knew, but he would’ve, if he’d just stayed home sometimes. Our relationship strengthened once he became old, and I turned into a man, a younger version of him. He relished in my exploits, loved to hear all my stories of all the young girls that I would bed off in boarding school.
Once I decided to settle down and propose to Dawn, he got bored with me and told me that I would get tired of the same old woman all the time. Men weren’t meant for monogamy, he would say, anytime we talked. Although older by then, I figured he made sense. Being with Dawn damned sure didn’t stop my eyes from following other women or even my cock from coming alive, when a new one stepped into my space.