Ruthless (39 page)

Still…it's hard to digest the news that Jasper's dead. When I doused him with the rubbing alcohol last night, then struck a match and watched his head go up in flames, a part of me went up in that fire with him. Burning him, although not planned, also burned away something dead inside of me. That part of my spirit he strangled when he fucked into me, when his goon fucked into me, when he'd beaten me and threatened me. And I'd allowed him to do it. I let him kill me. Gave him permission to keep strangling the rest of me until there was almost nothing else left of me.

And now I only hope I'll be able to rise above the ashes.

“I still don't know who the
Calm One
is,” I finally say, stepping away from the window and walking over to the bed. I lie back on it. “Sometimes I can still smell being down in that basement with them niggas. Sometimes I still hear them jeering at me. Still see their dicks dangling in my face. The Calm One, whomever he is, kept me safer than I would have been had he not been there. He didn't let any of them niggas go too far.”

“And if you did know,” she asks, drawing several shaky breaths, “what would you do? What would you say to him?”

I stare up at the ceiling. “Honestly, Mona. I don't know. I think I'd want to know why he was there. He never participated. And I'd want to know why.” I let out a sigh. “Oh, well. Maybe I'm not supposed to ever know who he is.”

“Maybe,” she says, taking a deep breath. “Somethings are better left alone.”

I sit up on the bed. “Yeah. I agree.”

“Anyway, I think we both have a lot to let go of, Pasha.” She tells me she's decided to get into therapy to deal with the sexual abuse and her feelings toward JT. “It's time for healing, Pasha. For the both of us.”

I pull in my bottom lip, reflecting on everything I've gone through over the years with Jasper—the good, the bad, and some of the scariest. I have a lot of scarring from what he did to me. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to keep my tears at bay.

“I think you're right,” I finally say.

Mona sniffs back what sounds like more tears. “Jasper was my cousin. And I loved him. But I hated him for what he'd put you through. Now I feel so bad for cursing him out the way I did the other day. I couldn't hold it any longer. I ripped into him, Pasha. Called him everything but the child of God. And now he's gone. I'm just glad it's finally over. Worrying about whether or not I'd one day get a call that you…that something awful happened to you would have killed me. I
know
he wanted you dead. Well, maybe not dead, but he wanted you hurt—badly. He wanted you scared. He was such a fucking ruthless asshole.”

I close my eyes, clutching the phone. “Yes, he was.” I swallow, blinking back tears. “Very ruthless. But there's always someone more vindictive and more vengeful and more ruthless out there, waiting for the right moment to strike.”

“And it looks like Felecia and Jasper both fell into the same fate.”

There's silence between us. I can almost see Mona's wheels spinning in her head, thinking, wondering. She knows, I'm more certain of it. She may not know how. But she knows someway, somehow, I played a role in their demise.

Don't ask. Don't Tell. Or simply deny.

“Where's Avery?” I ask, feeling the need to change the subject,
glancing at the time. 9:28 a.m.

She sucks her teeth. “Ugh, don't get me started on him. He and Mario left up out of here for some tattoo party or some mess one his boys was having up in Connecticut last night and them fools haven't gotten back, yet.” She huffs. “I told Avery don't have Mario coming back here looking crazy with a bunch of tattoos all over him. I told him to let him wait until he's eighteen. But, he told me to fall back and let them have their father-son bonding time. Really? And he couldn't take him fishing to bond? Mmmph.”

I chuckle. “I didn't know either one of them were into tattoos.”

“Girl, please. Avery has a big-ass tattoo over his shoulder, but you wouldn't know it unless you catch him in a tanktop. After he got that panther on his shoulder, he…”

My heart drops.
Panther? Avery has a tattoo of a panther? Oh dear God, no!

No. No. It can't be!

My mind quickly scrambles back to the basement. The long muscular legs, the Duke basketball shorts, the white wife beater, the face mask, all come into view. The way he nervously shifted his eyes from me, not allowing me to see them, the way he walked, his body build, were all strangely familiar to me. His left shoulder, the sleek panther stretched across his skin finally flashes in my head.

I blink, again, as a single tear slides down my cheek, then another. I pull in a deep, pained breath. Then ask her what shoulder Avery's tattoo is on.

I hold my breath, slowly feeling myself becoming lightheaded.

My knees buckle the second she says what I already feared.

“His left shoulder.”

There's always a price to pay…

S
itting behind my desk, I pull out the folded piece of paper from my purse, holding it in my hand for a few moments before finally opening it. I stare at the names on the list.

J
AH

K
ILLAH

JT

L
EGEND

AJ

F
ELECIA

J
ASPER

M
YDICKNEEDURTONGUE2

T
HE
C
ALM
O
NE

• • •

I close my eyes. Try to erase their images from my mind as I shift through the snapshots. I don't want to forget. But I don't want to remember, either. I shouldn't have to forget. But I don't want to be haunted by the memories. I don't want to be tormented by the ghosts of their dirty deeds.

Or by my own.

When I finally lift my lids, my eyes are blurred with tears. There are still names missing from this list. Still niggas who have gotten
passes only because no one was willing to give them up. But I am so okay with that. Really. I meant what I said about the message being sent. And now with Jasper's murder, and the way in which he was found, all on the news, they know. They all know.

And if they don't, shame on them.

I swallow, choking back tears as I reach for my pen, drawing a line through their names. Every name on this list affected my life in some form, disrupted my world in some way. Their deeds stained in my memory. But the ones who hurt me the most, the ones who meant me the most harm, are the ones who were dealt with, most severely.

I reach for a handful of tissue, dabbing under my eyes, then blowing my nose. Pulling out a W
ITE
-O
UT
correction tape, I white-out the names of those who were exterminated; the ones who had their lights shut, the ones who caused me the greatest pain. Felecia and Jasper.

Then I white-out Legend's name.

Next, I stare at JT's name. Had Booty not bodied him, I would have tortured him slowly with the others. Still, he got what his hand called for just the same. I white him out. Although there's a line drawn through Killah's name, I circle it.

Wait, wait… didn't I hear that name somewhere?

Yes.

My mind goes back to the night I sat parked outside in the SUV with Lamar, across the street from The Crack House. Ugh. The name alone makes me cringe.

“…All I do is let you use me, nigga! I let you ‘n' ya bum-ass nephew Killah lay up on my section-8…”

Ohmygod. So that's who he is. Killah. Dickalina's crazy-ass man's nephew. I pull in my bottom lip, taking my pen and circling around
and around his name, wondering what I should do with this. Wondering if it even matters. He hadn't really done much the night of my kidnapping. Not like Jah'Mel had. And Booty already handled him. Mmmph. He's lucky he's still breathing. But that may all change if Booty ever learns that it was him who got JT's dick out of her freezer for me. That nigga owes me. And I intend on holding him to it until his debt to me is paid in full. So far he's proven himself redeemable.

I scratch his name out, blackening over it with the pen until it is no longer visible, until the ink bleeds through the paper.

I stare at Calm One's name.
Damn you, Avery!
Since this morning, I've been playing my conversation with Mona over and over and over in my head, sifting through it, dissecting it. Trying to find an answer to my most troubling question: What the hell am I going to do now?

Do I tell her? Then run the risk of having her learn that he'd also answered one of my sex ads wanting his dick sucked. Do I share with her our long email and IM sessions full of sexual confessions? Do I risk her finding out that I'd met him early in the morning at a park and was tempted to climb into his truck and throat his dick, even
after
finding out who he was? Do I tell her I stuck my hand through his window and stroked
her
husband's big, thick dick? That my pussy moistened? That my mouth watered?

No. That would destroy her.

But the question is, “Who am I really protecting? And why?”

There's a knock at the door. I quickly fold the paper, stuffing it back inside my bag, clearing my throat. “Yeah? Come in.”

The door opens and Mel pops his head in. “Uh, Pasha, there's a situation out front that's about to get ugly if you don't come handle it.”

I frown. “Mel, I can't. Not now. Please. Just handle it. Do whatever you have to do.”

He shakes his head. “Pasha, you not hearin'
me.
You need to come out front. This chick is goin' ballistic, yo. And she's
not
tryna hear it. Lamar's out there now tryna calm her ‘n' get her to bounce, but she actin' like she's ready to knuckle up. Yo, you need to come out here before…”

I put a hand up, stopping him as my cell rings. “All right, all right. Tell whoever's out there carrying on I'll be out in a minute.” I glance at my cell. It's Bianca. “But right now, I need to take this call.” I wait for him to shut my door, then answer. “Hey, girl.”

“I heard what happened to Jasper. It's all over the news. Just wanted to see how you were holding up.”

I rake my fingers through my hair, drawing several shaky breaths. Not out of guilt for my role in Jasper's demise. Now whether or not he was already dead before those bullets were finally pumped into his head is beyond me. Fact is, he was still breathing, though barely, when he was tossed out of the van. Maybe the fire to his head killed him. Maybe those bullets did. Either way, at this moment, it doesn't matter to me. I don't need to know. I don't want to know. I wanted retribution. And I got it.

“I'm torn,” I admit, pulling out the list and staring at it. I inhale slowly, my gaze never leaving Calm One's circled name. I choose my next words spoken very, very carefully. “Jasper hurt me deeply, Bianca. A part of me is relieved he's gone. That man put me through—no. Correction. I
let
that man—put me through emotional hell. He was the cause of me being laid up in that hospital bed in a coma for four days, fighting for my life.”

Bianca gasps. “Ohmygod, Pasha! Noooo. And
you
…”

“Yes, I stayed,” I answer for her, picking up on the question
lingering in her tone. “And I still married him. And I never reported it to the police. I did what I felt I had to, for me and for my unborn child, at the time.”

She gasps again. Shocked that Jasper had beaten me almost to death knowing I was pregnant with his child. I don't go into any further details, particularly about being sexually assaulted by a string of niggas he recruited. I decide it's best she think it was a domestic dispute gone ugly rather than a jealous-crazed nigga punishing me for cheating on him; for sucking a bunch of random niggas; for posting online sex ads soliciting niggas for their hard dicks—and sometimes their wet tongues on my pussy, behind his back.

I decide she doesn't need to know that I was the infamous Deep Throat Diva on the Nastyfreaks4u website. Not that she would judge me. Still, some things are best kept to oneself. Booty and Mona knows. And those are already two, too many.

“Pasha, I-I,” her voice cracks. “I'm so sorry you had to go through all that. I only wish I could have been there for you.”

I smile, closing my eyes, crumbling the list in my hand. “You're here now.” We talk a few minutes more. I tell her I'll let her know when Jasper's funeral services will be, then end the call. My cell rings again. This time it's Nana.

I sigh, reluctantly answering. “Hi, Nana.”

“Looks like you've been given
a ram in the bush.”
Her voice is calm, her tone distant and cold. “I saw the news.”

I shudder. “Everyone has.”

“It's time you make amends, Pasha. Get right with God. You took the word of a lying, cheating, thieving man over the word of your own flesh and blood.” She pauses, swallows, then pushes a strained breath into the phone.
“You
let the devil incarnate destroy your relationship—”

Not today, Nana. Not to-fucking-day!
I quickly cut her off.
“I
didn't let the devil destroy my relationship with Felecia. She did. And the sooner you get it through your head, the better. But if you want to believe that your precious gran'baby was so wonderful, then do so. She
fucked
Jasper. She
fucked
me over. Not the damn devil. I made amends with that the day her casket hit the dirt.” She gasps. Opens her mouth to say something, but I shut it down. “Nana, I love you. But I don't
need
your judgment. And I'm
not
in the mood for your religious soapbox. Now if you don't mind, I have to plan a burial for a man who not only fucked my flesh and blood, but who tried to have me killed. I'll keep you in my prayers as I'm sure you will with me.”