No One in the World (22 page)

“Sure,” Paul said to me. “Eric,” Paul then said to my brother, “just go to the office next door. Tiffany is in there, and she'll happily show you everything you need to do.”

Eric shot me a concerned look.

I sent him a reassuring one back, letting him know everything was fine. When he left, I closed the door, then turned back to Paul. “I truly appreciate this.”

“It's your company, Mr. Winslow. I just work here.”

“How many times have I told you, it's Cobi. Now like I told you before, this is something my sister doesn't know about and doesn't need to know about. She still has some issues with our brother she has to work out. So let's try to keep this a secret until they iron out their differences.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Winslow.”

O
ne hour later, Sissy walked into her office for the meeting with me and Austen. She was carrying a cup of coffee. “Sorry, I'm late, you two. I have a meeting in half an hour.” She set down her purse and briefcase. “So we'll have to get right to it.” She grabbed a legal pad from her desk and sat down in the chair facing us. “Okay, I wanted to have a huge wedding since it's for my big brother, but there's just ten days till Cobi's birthday, so we'll have to do this a week from now. That means we're going to have to scale way down. Is that okay?”

“That's fine with me,” I said.

Sissy turned to Austen.

“Whatever you think is best,” Austen said.

“Good,” Sissy said. “If you like, you can have as much input on dress and ring selection as you want. But I'm thinking the wedding should be intimate—only a few people there. We can rent some beautiful location downtown. Maybe we can take a couple of photos to leak to the press and some of the magazines. Yes?”

I hadn't even heard Sissy because my mind had wandered back to last night.

My driver's side seat had been reclined all the way. Blac was beside me, kissing me passionately. I was squirming and throbbing, and he was rubbing me, playing with my belt, playfully threatening to unbuckle
it, which is exactly what I wanted, but I grabbed his hand and stopped him.

“I so want you to do that,” I said, breathing heavily, smiling up at him. “But I can't let you.”

“Why not? You scared of how good it'll feel?”

“Because I'm seeing someone. Well, kind of seeing someone.”

“Why isn't he here instead of me?”

“It's complicated.”

“Oh.” Blac laughed, lifting his hand and caressing the side of my face. “He's married, isn't he?”

“I guess.”

“He's at home with his wife and kids, and not here, because he's ashamed of who he really is.”

“I'm not going to say that for sure.”

“You don't have to, because you know it's true.” Blac traced the rim of my ear with the tip of his finger. “That's the kind of relationship you want? Locked in the closet? If you were mine, I would—”

I looked Blac directly in his eyes. “It wouldn't work between us.”

“Why not?”

“Because we're different. We're from different worlds, and it just wouldn't work.”

“Then why am I here right now?” Blac whispered seductively in my ear.

“You want me to tell you the truth?”

“That's exactly what I want.”

“Because you're sexy as hell, and even though a relationship won't work, I think there could be something that does work between us.” I gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “I shouldn't even be thinking that. I don't know you. You could be crazy, out to get me. That stuff really goes on.”

The smile on Blac's face suddenly disappeared, along with his playfulness. He began to move away from me as though I had offended him. I grabbed his arm.

“What do you think I'm doing?” Blac said, angry. “You think I'm trying to take something from you, blackmail you for money or something?”

“I'm just saying, it happens to people and I don't know—”

“You don't know if I could be trying to do that to you, is what you're saying,” Blac said, upset, going for the door handle.

I held tighter to his arm. “Don't go. If you say you aren't doing that, I'll believe you.”

“I'm not,” Blac said.

“Cobi!” Sissy said, snapping me out of my daydream. “I said will you be fine with photos published in some magazines,
Jet, Ebony,
stuff like that?”

“Yeah . . . yes,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Good. And there is a social event, fund-raiser of some sort at the museum in a couple of nights the two of you should attend,” Sissy said. “Can you do that? It'll be a good opportunity for the world to get their first look at you as a couple.”

“Works for me,” Austen said.

“Sure,” I said, still having an issue taking my mind off of last night. I looked up and saw Austen staring at me, a mischievous smile on her face.

After the meeting, once Austen and I had stepped out of Sissy's office, Austen said, “You were really somewhere else, weren't you?”

“Yeah, I guess. Was thinking about a few things.”

“Was it a guy?”

I shot her a disturbed look, feeling very uncomfortable. “I don't think that's appropriate conversation considering this situation.”

“It's absolutely appropriate considering the situation. I was thinking about this last night. We're about to be married—man and wife. But we aren't going to share a lot of what comes with that. I mean, we aren't gonna be lovers, so why can't we be great friends?” Austen smiled, rubbing my arm. “So was he cute or not?”

B
lac pulled Theresa's Chevy Malibu to a stop in front of the old building that used to be a Goodyear Tire store on the West Side of Chicago. Theresa had been happy to let Blac drop her off at work today and take the car, after he told her he needed to drive around and try to find a job.

She actually believed that I took that crap she said about me changing who I am seriously,
Blac thought, stepping out of the car and walking up to the building.

The big store windows had long been knocked out and sealed up with bricks. The building was set far back in an abandoned warehouse park. Rusty, barbed-wire fence surrounded much of the area.

Blac knocked on the steel door four times, then paused.

A curtain swept back from the narrow, rectangular-shaped window in the door, and a pair of eyes narrowed on Blac, then disappeared.

When the door opened, Blac was taken to a large back room where there was a sofa, a table, and a desk pushed back in a corner. There were framed posters on the paint-chipped walls of Al Pacino as Scarface waving a machine gun. A solemn-looking pit bull terrier was chained on a short leash, gnawing on a bone in another corner.

“What you doin' here, Blac?” Cutty asked. He was lounging on the leather sofa, staring up a huge flat-screen TV mounted high up on the
wall. He was quickly tapping the buttons on a PS3 controller, as was a dangerous-looking man with a missing front tooth who sat beside him.

Two big-bootied women in skintight jeans and fresh blond hair weaves sat on either side of the men. Their eyes were half open, and Blac assumed they were high on whatever Cutty had offered them.

“I said, why you standin' in my face, Blac?” Cutty demanded. “Unless you got my money and you ready to even up.”

“Naw, I don't got it yet,” Blac said, apologetic.

Blac didn't want to put all his time and energy in getting the money from Cobi, and at the last minute, the man gets wise and leaves him in the lurch. He needed a backup plan, a just-in-case plan, and that's why he had called Cutty this morning.

“I wanna know if you can hook me up with a little something to sell . . . on consignment.”

The man next to Cutty turned and stared at Blac as though he had just committed the greatest sin of all.

Cutty paused the game. The room went silent as he stared down Blac and said, “Ain't that how you got in this shit to begin with? Why in the hell would . . .” Then Cutty stopped speaking. A look appeared on his face that suggested he knew Blac's reasoning behind the request. Cutty stood from the sofa, walked over, stopped just short of Blac, looked up in his eyes, and said, “You ain't trying to make loot selling drugs to pay me back, 'cause you know you won't have my money, is you?”

Blac thought about telling Cutty the truth. Maybe he would work with him, help him out, sympathize even. “No,” Blac said, changing his mind. “I just got a lot of time on my hands, and I figured I could be makin' both of us some dollars in the meantime. That's all it is, on my word.”

“I was about to say,” Cutty said, turning back around, dropping himself back on the sofa with the drugged women, and picking up his controller. “'Cause if you know you ain't gonna have my money, I might as well have Bones kill your ass now.”

“That man ain't got yo' money, Cut,” the man sitting beside Cutty said. He looked at Blac again with cloudy brown eyes. “You ain't gonna have Cut's money, is you?”

“I don't know what you talking about,” Blac said.

The man glared at Blac for a long moment, as if testing his sincerity,
then he said, “I say you have Bones kill his ass now. He playin' you, Cut, like he did the last four years he was inside.”

Cutty slowly stood from the sofa, the controller still in his hand. “Is that what you think, Drake?” Cutty said to the man.

“Yeah. Sho' as shit. I can see it on his face. He playin' you.”

“I wanna get this straight,” Cutty said. “You saying I'm getting played.”

“Yeah, and let me tell—”

Before Drake could finish, Cutty reared back, wound up, and threw a blow that caught Drake on the corner of his left eyebrow with the hard plastic controller. Blood streamed from the wound. Cutty leapt on top of Drake, and using the controller as an extension of his fist, he struck Drake in the face over and over again, till the controller was covered in the man's blood. The women scurried from the sofa, averting their eyes from the malicious beating.

Blac ran over to Cutty, grabbed him by the arms. “Cutty! Cutty! You're gonna kill him!” Blac yelled.

Drake's face was painted a shiny red, and his eyes and lips seemed to be swelling before Blac's eyes as he wrestled Cutty off the bleeding man.

Cutty angrily shook Blac off of him, glared at him with death in his eyes. “Don't have my money, motherfucker, and you gonna wish I took it that easy on yo' ass.”

A
ustin Harris was the family law attorney I took Eric to meet. He was a tall, well-built, good-looking guy who always wore a serious expression. I had met Austin five years ago at a downtown function for local attorneys and seemed to bump into him around town at least a couple times a month. We'd have short conversations and always promise to get together for golf. Professionally, Austin Harris had a reputation as an outstanding attorney. I had referred scores of people to him, and they were all more than happy with his services. I knew he would take good care of my brother.

Austin Harris sat at his desk thoughtfully rubbing his chin after Eric told him his story. He picked up the papers Eric had given him and glanced over them again.

“So, oftentimes a petition for adoption is filed at the same time as the petition to terminate a parent's rights. You said she wants her boyfriend to adopt Maya.”

“That's right,” Eric said, his voice low.

“Okay, this is what's going to happen,” Austin Harris said, leaning forward on his desk, looking directly at Eric. “The day after tomorrow, at the hearing, Jess is going to argue why your fatherly rights should be stripped. She will use the testimony of family and friends to support what she says and hope the judge sides with her.”

“It's just a judge, then? One person that's gonna say yes or no to me being able to keep seeing my daughter?” Eric asked.

“That's right. Basically, she's going to try to discredit you. You need to tell me all the negative stuff now, what's going to look bad to the judge, so we can know how to defend against it.”

“I told you everything,” Eric said. “I was raised in the foster care system and been to jail a few times. That ain't reason to do this to me. Is it? Take my child.”

“You were gone for more than half your daughter's life,” Austin Harris said. “That might be her reasoning for wanting to try.”

“I couldn't help that. I was locked up.”

“Were you paying child support? Sending any type of financial aid?”

“I told you. I was locked up,” Eric said, distraught. “And even if I wanted to, she disappeared. I had no idea where she was the last two years.”

Austin Harris stood from his desk, crossed his arms, glanced at me, then back to Eric. “You say you treated the child well. You never abused or neglected her or anything like that?”

Eric looked surprised by the question. “I would never do that. I love that little girl.”

“Good. Then that's all they have, that you've been to prison. That's how they're going to try to take Maya. You say you're working now? You have a job?”

“Yeah,” Eric said, pride in his voice. “At Winslow Products, in the records room.”

“Great,” Austin Harris said. “And you have a stable address?”

“Austin, he lives at the mansion with me,” I said. “And will live there as long as he likes.”

“That works,” Austin Harris said, smiling. “They're going to try to say a man like you doesn't deserve his daughter. In two days, we're going to prove to them that you're no longer the man they think you are.”

T
hat's right, she had our asses followed,” Austen said.

Julia took her break in one of the back rooms of her salon, a lavender curtain pulled across the doorway as she and Austen sat at the table and spoke.