Saint's Sacrament - Sins of the Father (24 page)

Xenia
rolled her eyes and set plates of eggs and grits in front of Dakarai and Hassani.

“Yeah,
Mommy! Where’s da toast?” Dakarai asked around a mouth full of eggs, following his father’s lead.

“You see what you did?” she whispered as she lifted Isis higher on her hip. “Look, I have to get ready to go. You can make your
own
toast and make the boys some, too.” And with that, she sauntered off up the steps.

“But it would only take you a second!”
he hollered out as he gripped his fork.

“You’re right, so that means it would only take you a second as well.”

“But baby, you make it so much better than me!” he whined. Xenia continued on, ignoring him. “Ain’t this ’bout uh…”

“Saint, watch your mouth around the kid
s!” she hollered out.

“I was gonna say beaut! Ain
’t this ’bout a beaut…” He snickered.

~***~

“Well, are you excited? Only two weeks until the show starts.” Shianne walked briskly, her trusty iPhone in hand. “You’re off next week for the trip, and then when you return, voilà!”

“I
know! I am excited and it happened so fast. I have no idea where the time went.” Xenia smiled as she took another sip from her diet coke. “I hired someone to take over the radio station. I’ll still do the weekend edition but at least that is taken care of and I can rest easy.” She sighed in relief, while tossing a wad of paper in a nearby trashcan. “I can’t wait, Shianne. Thanks for being so helpful these last few weeks.”

“Oh
, please.” Shianne pushed her glasses up her nose. “It’s my pleasure.”

Sinclair glared from the sidelines, his arms folded and his face
twisted so tight, it looked as if an invisible fist were around it, crushing it to death.

What the hell does this joker want now?

“Uh, Shianne, can you give me a moment?”

“Of course.” Shianne tossed Sinclair a
curious glance and walked away, her ponytail swaying behind her. Xenia’s heartbeat pounded out a tune inside of her core. Her breath became labored as she took quick steps toward the bane of her existence.

“Sinclair
.” She put her finger in his face. “Nice stunt you pulled at the meeting today, trying to make me look bad in front of my colleagues. When is this little game going to stop?”

Sinclair shrugged, looked down at his cuticles then back up at Xenia. “When I get tired of you
,” he declared, tapping his foot as if music were playing. “And besides, everything I said was true. I just wanted them to make sure they had the right woman. You’re a deal breaker. If you don’t bring the show higher ratings, its death rests on your shoulders. You have no television experience, Xenia and it isn’t something you can learn overnight, though I do applaud your crash course efforts.”

Xenia veered back, containing herself. Her mouth dropped as a laugh of shock rang out from between her lips. “You are a music producer! Yet here you are on a television show
set! What nerve.”

“I
have
experience, extensive experience, sweetie.” He jabbed an ink pen in his mouth and twirled it around like a toothpick. “With music videos and big corporation commercials. You have
none
.” Then he threw the pen on a table and glared at her before grabbing a chilled bottle water from a nearby cooler and taking a long, slow gulp.

She refused to respond. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of
taking his bait. Xenia had daydreamed of ways to get rid of the S.O.B., but as of yet, nothing came to mind.

“I’m not saying you can’t pull it off, but I’d hate for you to be the final nail in the coffin.”

That was it. She’d had it. Clicking her teeth through a tense smile, she started to turn away.

“This is about your damn ego. You just can’t let it go, can you?
I didn’t do what you wanted me to do. You just keep on! I mean, damn! What the hell do you want from me, Sinclair?!”

He leaned in close to her, so close his warm breath tickled her skin.
Wincing, she pulled back, fighting the urge to bodily push him away. Instead, she checked their surroundings…

Too many damn people…

She didn’t want to cause a scene, but she was tempted to say the hell with it and smack the shit out of the man, right then and there.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” He took another sip
of the water and casually put the cap back on, turning it ever so slowly. “I don’t
want you
, Xenia… This isn’t even about you. I want your husband.”

“Ha! I had no idea
Sinclair but sorry to break it to you, he isn’t interested in men,” She mocked as a mixture of confusion and anger made a sticky stew inside of her.

“Funny
.” He grinned. “But, I think your husband understands
completely
why I am here. Matter of fact, I know he does. He figured it out. I suppose I didn’t initially give the heathen enough credit. I did my homework on him, but I see he left you out of the loop. Why don’t you ask him about it, hmmm?”

“So
now you want payback? If it isn’t because I left you for him, then what is it? I don’t need to ask Saint, you are standing right here, waving something over my head instead of just telling me. Oh, grow up already!” She stabbed herself in the chest with her index finger. “You will never get far in life, Sinclair, by behaving like this. You’re a waste of human space.” She turned away from him in disgust.

“
Let’s be real here for a minute, baby. Your ass is still fine, don’t get me wrong.” He scanned her slowly from her head to her feet, running his thick, wet tongue lustfully across his bottom lip. “But pussy is a dime a dozen. I’ll admit it right here, right now. I never loved you, but I cared about you.” He looked to his left and to his right, a disgusting, greasy smirk on his face. “I tried to get you to come my way and you refused, so now I’ll just have to break
that
motherfucker down. It requires more energy, but I’m up for the challenge.” His grin quickly faded, and his lips turned downward in an evil frown fit for a deranged lunatic.

“Sinclair, you are
barking up the wrong damn tree.” She couldn’t help but smile, knowing full well what Saint was capable of. “You do not want to try and do anything to my husband because trust me,” she sneered as she looked the man up and down, “he would demolish you with one breath.”

“Oh, that might be true, Xenia
, but I have help. You see,” he popped his collar, “your husband has a lot of enemies, people that would love to make him taste a little humble pie. I appreciate the meeting with him, in retrospect. It gave me a better clue as to who I was dealing with. He’s smart.” He cocked his head to the side. “He has a way about him. He even looks a bit intimidating, but I don’t scare easily, Xenia.”

“Then why did you call me to report him to me that day,
huh?! Like a little wimp!”

Sinclair laughed and turned away, crossing his arms. “
You
really
have no idea what he did, do you?” He broke out in loud laughter, catching the attention of others. Xenia smiled and waved at the onlookers, her curiosity peaked. She moved closer to him, hitched her arm around his and ushered him to a more private location. Before long, they were inside of her dressing room, the door closed.

“Let me tell you somethin’—”

“Pipe down, Xenia.” He nonchalantly waved her off. “There is
nothing
you can tell me but I realized as I probed your mind, tried to talk with you all these weeks, and our discussion right this second, that you’ve been in the damn dark. All this time, I thought you knew, wow… Your husband ruined my damn life! Do you even know why I left California, Xenia? Why I just allowed you to up and leave?”

“You said it yourself, you didn’t love me and you wanted to search for new opportunities.”

“Bullshit!” he spat angrily. “I mean, what is love, anyway? I had enough for you, that is all that matters, but I still felt like you were my woman. That was bad enough, but not to warrant what I have in store.” He grinned and rubbed his hands together like the shitty fly that he was. “No Xenia, your goon of a husband, on the day of your damn wedding, yeah, the day you married a man you’d only known a few days—he threatened me. I had gotten into a little legal difficulty, shall we say. To refresh your memory, it was regarding that contract with Dawn Records.”

Xenia swallowed
. The faded memories swam to the forefront, becoming more vibrant. Sinclair had been a nervous wreck, but she wasn’t privy to the details.

“
They were suing me and it got ugly. I had tried to stop by to see you, to simply say goodbye because shit,” he threw his hands in the air, “I didn’t have much money for a decent legal defense and for all I knew, I was going to jail!” His face betrayed the agony, the deep seeded angst. Then, just as quickly, the lines of worry were gone to reveal a fresh smile. “…And Saint was at your home, helping you get some of your things packed up. You were upstairs I presumed and that motherfucker took one look at me and told me if I didn’t get my ass out of there, he would let Lenny, the CEO of the record company, know about my selling some of the rights away to the songs. That wasn’t even brought up in the litigation! No one knew about that!” His teeth clenched as he released his dirty secrets, scattering them at her feet as if no longer giving a fuck. “I have no idea how that asshole husband of yours even knew about it! I know you didn’t tell him, because I hadn’t said a word of it to you! I was in a lot of debt, and that was my only way out, Xenia—to sell those songs! I needed to see you one last time and get a few of my things from your home, clothes ’nd shit I had over there and that man, as if it is even befitting to call him that, marched right up to me like some crazed mental patient escapee and told me to turn the fuck around and never come back.”

Xenia’s muscles, her bones, her pores—every part of her
—filled with uncomfortable warmth, growing hotter and hotter as each second passed. She searched her memory banks and suddenly recalled, after Saint proposed…she was upstairs grabbing some articles, and he was downstairs packing some of her papers away for her job, on her behalf. She’d heard the doorbell, but in the frenzy of activity didn’t pay it much mind, figuring Saint had answered it. When she came down and questioned who it was, he’d said something to the effect of, ‘Someone trying to sell some garbage…’

“But it didn’t end there! Somehow
, two of the artists found out about the selling of the songs, contacted Dawn records, and that was my ass! Your husband did that shit, Xenia! I had to do time!”

“Why were you there, Sinclair?”
she asked, her voice low, her temper raging. “Why in the hell were you
really
at my house?”

“Like I told you, to get my stuff.”

“No.” She shook her finger at him. “I know my husband better than that, Sinclair, much better. If he said that to you, then you were after something. I told you I’m not the same girl from ’round the way! I know what I see before me now, and he is full of shit! Get the hell out of my dressing room!” Rage made her voice tremble, rage at not knowing the truth, rage that this man from her past continued to pester her and now threatened her husband, and rage that she’d even dated the slimy motherfucker from the get go.

His eyes dulled as he apparently took her cue
—realized she wasn’t playing with him. She reached to her side and held up a glass vase in which perfect purple tulips and lemon and cream calla lilies danced about in clear water.

“So help me, God!”

The sound of shattered glass and the splash of water hitting the back of the closed door as Sinclair disappeared, running with all of his might, echoed throughout the room. She turned toward her mirror, not sure what to do, who to call or what to say. Things had spiraled out of control. She didn’t want Saint involved in this anymore but how could he not be at this point? The man had stood there and admitted his plan—there was no mystery here. He wanted her husband destroyed. She’d felt like a fool, believing he was simply pining over her; oh no, it was much worse than that. Saint had driven him away, apparently somehow read the slime ball right then and there and in an act to protect her, caused a backlash that had come home to roost.

Saint had to have known…

She slipped into her chair, holding her forehead.

Damn it! He must’ve known all this time after I told him Sinclair was the producer, what he was up to. Jesus…

She grabbed her cell phone and immediately dialed him, hoping it was all a misunderstanding. But she knew deep down that it wasn’t. She also knew, whatever Saint had to say about the matter was going to be painful…
very
painful…

~***~

“Not four fucks were given… no haters were on the scene. So the king of his castle spread open the legs of his sexy, horny Queen.”

“Saint, you have issues
. Please don’t repeat that little nursery rhyme at the conference.” Lawrence grinned as he jotted down some summaries. Saint burst out laughing and looked around Lawrence’s office, taking note of the Native American artifacts, the beautiful, lush plants and the small water fountain in the corner. Such a tranquil space, equipped with soft native instrumental music with a jazzy vibe playing in the background. His office was like a spa and therapy room all in one.

“I like how you have it in here, man
,” Saint said as he gripped the back of the chair in front of Lawrence’s mahogany desk. “You’ve done some nice upgrades.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that.”
Moving too fast over his desk, Lawrence knocked over his coffee. Hot liquid spilled on his hand and spread near his computer. “Damn it!”

“Hold up
.” Saint snatched a wad of nearby Kleenex and dabbed at the spillage. His hand grazed against Lawrence’s as they both worked diligently to clean up the mess, and in that instant, he jolted, as if an electric current had shot through his body. Standing straight, Saint froze as Lawrence continued to move about, oblivious to his state.