No One in the World (28 page)

“You leaving me?”

“I was thinking about going, but now I'm thinking I wanna stay here and see where things can go with us, instead.”

Theresa happily pressed her body back into Blac's, giving him wet kisses all over his face.

He held her tight, knowing his sister would understand and would even give her blessing to Blac if he was genuinely serious about giving a relationship an honest go. He felt he was.

Blac pressed his mouth to Theresa's, giving her a long kiss, when his cell phone rang.

He blindly grabbed it from off the nightstand, held it up, eyed the screen, and saw that it was Eric calling. He answered the phone. “Hello.”

“Blac,” Eric said, sounding troubled. “My brother has a situation I'm gonna have to deal with tomorrow evening, and I wanna know if I can get your help on it.”

Blac questioned whether Cobi had told Eric about the two of them. No, that made no sense, considering how scared he was of his brother finding out, Blac assured himself. “Dude, whatever you need. You know I got your back,” Blac said.

A
t work, Eric sat in the cafeteria, staring into his thoughts. A tray of food sat untouched in front of him. What happened yesterday at Jess's continued to eat at him. Jess had Maya taken away, so he no longer had a daughter. It's what he had to tell himself now, in order not to go crazy. Besides, there was something else he needed to focus on. Like what was to happen later this evening.

After hearing what was said in Sissy and Cobi's secret meeting yesterday, Eric knew he could not let his brother be taken.

When Eric said he would take care of it, Sissy scrunched up her face, looked at him as though he wasn't capable of taking care of himself, let alone anything to do with Cobi, then said, “And exactly how will you do that?”

“I'll go to the meeting as Cobi in his place.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? I'll say I'm him.”

“And then what?”

“And then do what needs to be done,” Eric said.

“Pay him?” Sissy said. “Because that's what needs to be done.”

“No. This man, whoever he is, needs to be spoken to.”

“I don't understand what you're saying, Eric,” Cobi said.

“This guy ain't shit. He's a criminal. He's strong-arming you, punking
you. The only way to deal with fools like that is to punk them back.”

“What do you mean?” Sissy said, stepping in front of Cobi, as if to protect him from any more of Eric's ridiculous ideas. “Do you mean get physical? Hurt this man? Do you understand if you go as Cobi, then it will be assumed that Cobi perpetrated whatever acts you commit?”

“I understand that,” Eric said. “But what is the man going to do, go to the police to say he was assaulted while he was in the middle of trying to blackmail someone?”

“No,” Sissy said, waving off the entire idea with her hands. “There is no way that we're going to allow—”

“What other options do we have, Sissy?” Cobi said. “And don't say pay him, because I told you, I'm not allowing that.”

“Fine, Cobi,” Sissy said. “I don't know what the hell is going on with you. Maybe it's guilt, or maybe this criminal here,” she said, nodding toward Eric, “has brainwashed you. But whatever it is, you need to get yourself together, or you may find yourself in the very place he just crawled out of.” Sissy gave Eric a long look of disgust, then stormed out the room.

Now, pulling himself out of his thoughts, Eric picked up his tray, walked it through the cafeteria, and without having had a bite, dumped his lunch into the trash. It was time he got back to work.

A
usten sat beside Julia in front of a glass case at Tiffany.

A light blue velvet cloth had been spread in front of them by a smartly dressed saleswoman wearing a gray skirt suit and glasses. She stepped away from the case and let Austen and Julia make a decision.

There were two diamond rings sitting on the cloth. One was a four-carat princess cut with matching side stones, the other was a four-and-a-half-carat round.

“So which would you choose?” Julia said, not looking at the rings, but directly at Austen.

“I've been with rich men before. And they were all more concerned about their money than about me. And as you can see by what I've gone through, money comes and goes.”

“So to answer my first question,” Julia said. “If you could choose to marry either of the twins exactly as they are now—Cobi being gay, and Eric being poor—oh yeah, but with one change: Cobi is straight. Which would—”

“No. You can't just change Cobi to straight.”

“I just did, now answer the question. Cobi's a rich, straight man, and Eric is a poor guy. Who would you marry?”

Austen smiled a little at the thought of the two men. “And I know
them the way I know them now. They have the same personalities as they do now?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it's not even close,” Austen said. “It would be Eric.”

“Girl, you let that man's piece drive you crazy. Even if Cobi were rich and straight?”

“I know Eric's had a hard past and has done some things he's not proud of, but he's trying to make those things right. I like who he is. I think he's a good man,” Austen said, blushing a little.

“Ugh, you sicken me. It's a good thing you don't have to choose.”

“Ladies,” the saleswoman said, appearing back before Julia and Austen. “Have we made a decision? I know it's incredibly hard, because—”

Austen covered her eyes with one hand, pointed a finger toward the rings, and began with “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe . . .” When she finished reciting the children's rhyme, she uncovered her eyes to see that she had picked the solitaire. “Okay,” Austen said. “Wrap it up.”

I
t was 7:57 p.m., and Blac sat watching Eric sitting nervously behind the wheel of the Audi. Blac had never seen him look so frazzled.

He had his Cobi costume on—suit and tie—and would meet the blackmailer in his car, give him the briefcase of money that was sitting in the backseat, get the pictures and memory card in exchange, and that was to be it. Obviously, the money wouldn't actually be given to the man. Eric would threaten him into giving over the pictures because he would be afraid of what Eric would do to him. If that didn't work, then Eric would simply beat him until he handed the stuff over. At least that's the way Eric explained it to Blac. It was a brutal plan, but in cases like this, sometimes brutality was the only answer.

But for some reason, Eric didn't seem like he was up to the task, Blac thought, as he watched the clock on the dash hit 7:58.

The meeting was to take place in the rear parking lot of an abandoned grocery store. Eric and Blac were parked in front and down the street a half block from that store.

Eric told Blac the man would be in a dark blue Ford Fusion. The man wanted Cobi to come alone and bring the money. Eric was to park next to the man's car and climb into the passenger seat to make the exchange.

“You all right, Eric?” Blac said. “It's almost that time for you to be doin' this.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Eric said, wiping a palm full of sweat from his brow. “I guess you gonna have to get out the car now, so I can drive around.”

Blac looked at Eric. If he didn't want to admit it to himself that was okay, but Blac couldn't ignore what was obvious. “You can't do this, man.”

“What you talkin' about?” Eric asked, offended.

“Dude, you look scared as shit. You can't do it.”

Eric reached up, wrenched the rearview mirror around to take a look at himself. “Yeah, I don't know what's happenin', man, but I need to get it under control,” Eric said, reaching to the backseat for the briefcase.

Blac reached back, grabbed the handle of the briefcase before Eric. “Let me do it.”

“What? I can't—”

“Afford to let somethin' go wrong, because now you got somethin' to lose.”

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

“You got a reason to stay out of prison now, dude. You got a brother, you got money, a job, you got a future. I ain't saying somethin' gonna go wrong, but if it does, you don't want to have your ass back behind bars.”

“And you do?”

“No. But I ain't givin' up as much as you if I go back. I told her I love her last night, but Theresa ain't goin' nowhere. And I ain't planning on fucking this up,” Blac said, giving the briefcase a tug. “Just let me go, get it over with, and we can talk more about it later.”

Eric barely resisted as Blac pulled the case from his hand.

“Don't worry about drivin' around,” Blac said, pushing open his door. “I'll just walk.”

A fearful look on his face, Eric said, “You know the car to look for? You gonna be okay doing this, right?”

“I'm cool,” Blac said, already outside of the car, slamming the door.

Eric watched Blac trot off, carrying the briefcase down the street and around the building.

After he was out of sight, Eric slumped back in the seat of the car. He slapped a hand to his forehead. “What the fuck did I just do?” he said. He grabbed the car door handle, pulled it, opened the door slightly, thought of getting out and stopping Blac, then hesitated. He closed the door and fell back into the seat.

Blac was already out of sight. He fucked up. Plain and simple.

When Cobi needed help, Eric played the hardened criminal, took on the obligation, like doing deals like this was what he did every day before lunch. But what did he ultimately do? He punked out and had to hand the job over to Blac.

Eric thought about what Blac had said, and he realized he was right. Eric did have something to lose now. A brother, a place to stay, a gig he liked, and a woman that he was really starting to feel something for. Eric didn't think there was a lot of danger in what he had planned to do for Cobi. There surely wasn't as much danger as some of the things he'd done in the past for himself, but for some reason, he wasn't able to go through with it.

Eric leaned up in his seat, looked out the window in the direction Blac went. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and thought of texting Blac to see how things were going, but how stupid was that, he thought. Eric had turned his phone off in preparation for the encounter with the man, so when he looked down at the screen, he was surprised to see that he had more than half a dozen missed calls from Cobi.

Eric thought about retrieving one of the voicemails but decided against it. Whatever Cobi had to tell him, it was too late now. Eric had to deal with what was happening that moment, so he stuffed the phone back in his pocket.

Settling back into the seat again, Eric closed his eyes and knew all he could do now was pray that everything turned out all right.

Moments later, the car door opened and slammed shut. When Eric opened his eyes, Blac was sitting in the passenger seat, laughing, breathing heavily, a huge grin on his face.

“Come on. Let's get the fuck out of here.” The briefcase was on his lap, and he was pulling out a small envelope from the back pocket of his jeans and passing it to Eric.

“What happened?”

“It went down like it was supposed to. Met the motherfucker, told him I wasn't givin' him the money, and told him to hand over the pictures. He said no, so I whupped his ass till he coughed them up, then I broke the fuck out.”

Eric glanced at what was in the envelope, then closed it when he saw bare brown flesh and the tiny memory card. “How you know this all of them? He could have copies, and now he's probably more pissed and—”

“And he ain't gonna do shit,” Blac said, fishing something else out of his front pocket and handing it to Eric.

It was the man's driver's license. A tubby, middle-aged, eyeglass-wearing man named Steven Ballard stared back at Eric from the ID card.

“Motherfucker was wearing a wedding ring. I told that fool if Mr. Winslow is ever threatened by him, or anybody else with some damn pictures, I was going to come to his house one night when he was out of town and have a slumber party with his wife, and if he had kids, I was gonna include them, too.”

Eric didn't like the thought of that, didn't like the thought that Blac was capable of thinking that. That must've shown on his face, because Blac said, “I was just joking, man. But he don't know that, so we got the pictures, and your brother keeps his money. Now start the car so we can get the fuck out of here.”

W
hen they pulled up in front of Theresa's house, Blac immediately noticed the SUV with the tinted windows parked across the street.

Eric shifted the car into park, turned to Blac, and held out his hand.

Blac gave Eric some dap.

“Dude, can't thank you enough for what you did back there.”

“Ain't nothin'. That's what boys are for, right?”

After Eric's car rolled down the street and disappeared around the corner, the big SUV's doors opened. Two men stepped out, walked across the street and up to Blac. It was Bones and Rondo.

Blac quickly looked over his shoulder at the house. There was a light on in the living room window, but it was always on. He just hoped Theresa wasn't in the front room, watching.

“What you want, man?” Blac said. “I told you I'm gonna have your money. I still got four days. Why the fuck you here?”

“Four days?” Bones said. He turned to Rondo, chuckled then said, “You hear that? Man think he got four days.” Bones turned back to Blac. “Fool, that money due tomorrow. You looking at last year's calendar or something?”

“Hold it. Hold it! Cutty said I had ten days after the day I got out to get the—”

“That's where you wrong right there, playa,” Bones said, holding up a hand. “Cutty said you had six days, not ten.”