A Commitment to Love, Book 3 (28 page)

She turned and faced me, her cheeks wet and gaze sad. “I’ll never trust you again.”

“I’m sorry, Sophia. I’m so sorry.”

“Stay away from me.” She put her back to me, kept one hand in her bag and the other in front of her. I knew she held a gun in that pocket book, and I wasn’t stupid enough to go after her. I’d already pushed it.

“That’s my child inside of you.”

She stopped at the door. A laugh fled her lips. “How do you know it’s your child? All I said was that I’m pregnant.”

“You wouldn’t have let anyone else touch you.”

“You don’t know what I would do, Benny.”

“You only kill for money—”

“And family, but what does that have to do with this?”

“Because, if that wasn’t my child inside of you, then I’d take my time. I would find the man, and I would hurt him. I would find you, and I would hurt you really bad. I would open those legs first though, and I would fuck you hard, so hard, that beautiful baby, that other man’s baby, it would die. And then I would leave you there. You would need to pray that someone could find you.”

Was this the truth?

Was it a fact?

I cannot say.

But the very idea of another man’s hands cupping Sophia’s full breasts and lapping his tongue within her wet folds … it drove me into madness. I thought about sick things.

Would I have killed the baby? I doubt it, but with these things, they fit in a gray area. I didn’t like hurt kids, but what if that kid hurt me? It made sense to defend myself.

“Good-bye, Benny.” She opened the door and strolled out as if I’d never said anything at all.

Was she scared, or was she being Sophia, plotting in the way she always did?

The woman scared me.

She had this futuristic method of thinking. She was a chess player of life. Every one of her plays had five different outcomes ahead of it, and she understood all those results and countermoves, before anyone else comprehended it.

“My God.” I buried my face into my hands and laughed. “What are you doing to me, God? Two women having babies by a madman. I am no father. I’m a killer, you miserable fuck! Either you’re an evil God or some devil planned the whole damn thing.”

I closed the journal and wondered to myself.

Had Sophia lied about being pregnant by Benny? Or was it Vivian’s mother that made it up?

From Benny’s point of view he barely craved his wife. It was always Sophia all throughout the journals. They had sex a lot. Way more than the few times Benny discussed his drunken nights of stupidity with his wife. On those evenings, he would stumble into the house, wake up his wife, and make love to her as he imagined Sophia’s face on his wife’s body.

Benny’s most likely the father of Jasmine and Troy. There’s a good chance. Maybe Vivian’s mother lied.

I glanced around my seat at Sophia. After that phone call with Jasmine and Troy, I decided to keep her near me. I hadn’t trusted her before, now no faith lay between us. If her own kids didn’t hold her high, I wouldn’t either.

And if she had something to do with Jasmine being away from me, I might end up killing her myself.

No more. There would be no more of these sick people, tearing us apart as if we were dolls in a playhouse, just waiting to be maneuvered and pulled on.

I won’t have it anymore.

I tilted over to get a better look at her. Snores fled from Sophia’s opened mouth. For once in the whole day of being around her, she actually seemed completely human. Something had been off with her before. What kind of women kept her cool, when she’d just heard that her daughter had ran off with a psycho? What kind of woman can stay with a man that keeps bodies in his apartment, and calls that a garden?

How bad is, Sophia? And will I have to get rid of her, too? Would she hurt Jasmine?

Maybe that was why I continued to read Benny’s journals. I poured through them. Page by page. The whole six hours I read. My head hurt so bad, I had the stewardess give me some pain medication. Yet, still I read and did my best to examine this lunatic of a man.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to kill my kids or not. I’m talking about the twins of course.

I live behind their eyes. In the boy named Troy, my anger rages. In the girl, Jasmine, my wisdom lives on. My spirit flows within their tanned skin and golden green eyes. My beast is reflected in them, and I am whole.

So I haven’t decided if I’m going to kill them or not.

With the twins, Sophia has too much power over me.

She’s confirmed my weakness.

Children.

She’s created a bond through my weakness.

My children.

From their birth I became her thug and pawn. She guides me and I turn, move, and step in the direction that she wants.

Sophia has put a target on our kids’ head, and she doesn’t even understand it all.

My love for her, though strong and electric, it has shattered. I won’t kill her, but I might take those little ones away from her, in the most permanent way possible.

Of course I say all of these bold things now, and then show up to her apartment, that shitty two bedroom that she refuses to move out of.

I show up, and the twins run to me. They don’t even know who I am. So little and innocent. They think I’m their mother’s friend. Those tiny toddler minds will forget these moments.

But they run over to me, and my insides build and tighten and rise up, and I am whole.

“This is the last time.” I escaped Sophia’s arms, rolled over to the other side of the bed, and searched for my pants.

“Last time?” She just leaned over to the side, those plump breasts, bare and on display for me.

No matter how much of a satanic siren she’d become, my cock twitched against my leg, begging for more.

“What do you mean this is the last time?” she purred.

“Last time we fuck. Last time I shoot a man and hide him in the alley. This is the last time. You call me, and it better only be about money for Jasmine and Troy.”

“I don’t need your money. I need your protection.”

“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 your 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 gun, 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 damn 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.

What would he say about my new love with Jasmine? Pussy whipped, probably. He’ll say that my affection for her will die down and I’ll want something new. But how happy has that made you, Dad?

I blew out a long breath. Jasmine’s and my families were seriously messed up. Once we reunited, I planned to take us far away from them all.

And we will reunite, tesoro.

I returned to Benny’s journals, skimming a page here or there, until Jasmine’s name came up and I was forced to stop and stare at those beautiful letters. A sigh left me, and I read on.

Sophia remains five steps ahead of me.

Jasmine called. My little Jasmine dialed my number. Her father’s friend. Vivian’s dad. A man she only now knew from our daily carpooling Monday through Friday, and the few times I could convince Sophia to let her and her brother come over, under the guise of visiting Vivian.

It doesn’t matter.

My little Jasmine called me, when the blood poured, and I answered as a beast would do. I soared down like an enraged father eagle and stabbed the rat out with my claws.

Jasmine must’ve been shaking as she spoke my name in the phone. “M-mr. Nix?”

“Jasmine, is that you?” My heart boomed fast in my chest. I checked the time and held in a curse. It was two in the morning on a Tuesday. Why would she be up? Why would she be calling? Who did I have to kill?

“M-mr. N-nix, he’s bleeding—”

“Who?”

“This man that came into my room. Troy … Troy stabbed him. He’s in my room.”

“Troy or the man?”

“They’re both in my room.”

“I’m coming. Get Troy and hide. Whoever’s bleeding, won’t be bleeding anymore. I’ll take care of it.”

I don’t know how Jasmine figured out that I would be her hero, but she simply understood it at the right moment and acted. Of the three kids, she had my brains.

Jasmine is the only one I’ll never have to worry about.

My little girl didn’t even have to tell me what had happened, but I let her. I held her in my arms. She shook against me.

The boy? Troy. He wouldn’t come close. He sat off in the far corner and stared at us with blank eyes.

The boy is now a man.