Snapped (13 page)

Misa was stunned speechless. She couldn’t imagine living in a house like this. True, Frankie and Camille had a beautiful home as well. But it was nothing compared to this estate. She felt almost inadequate as she realized that her entire modest town house could fit easily into Baron’s living room!

As she looked around, she wondered how it was possible for a guy this fine and this paid to be single and have no kids. And she made up her mind that she was going to be the queen of this castle, no matter what she had to do to make that happen.

Baron pulled her close to him and snapped her out of her trance. She smiled, thrilled that she was here with this beautiful man in this beautiful home with no one to interrupt them. As he kissed her, she felt the effects of the alcohol and the weed as her head spun wildly. She lost all of her inhibitions and knew that this night would be her chance to gain entry into the exclusive club of the rich and powerful. Their tongues dancing together, Misa happily let Baron undress her and didn’t protest as his hands hungrily roamed her body. With her dress in a pool at her feet, she let him lead her by the hand to his bedroom. She stepped into the sprawling master suite wearing nothing but her Manolos, and Baron smiled seductively.

“I’m gonna fuck you real good,” he said, looking her up and down and admiring her flawless body.

“Promise?” Misa grinned.

He laughed and pulled her onto the bed beside him. As he sucked and fucked her, Misa was glad that his neighbors lived so far down the road. That way they couldn’t hear her screaming in a mixture of pleasure and pain as the night slowly faded into morning.

“I have a collect call from Jamel, an inmate at Marcy Correctional Facility—a New York State correctional facility. To hear the cost of this call, dial two. To accept and pay for this call, dial three. To reject this call and block future calls of this nature, dial four.”

Dominique pressed three, as she always did, and waited breathlessly for her man’s voice to fill her ear. Finally, she heard Jamel’s sexy bass say, “Hello?”

“Hi, baby!” Dominique could barely contain her excitement. Jamel called her often, and she anticipated each call as if she hadn’t heard from him in decades. Her telephone bills were astronomical, flooded with collect calls from the state penitentiary. But Dominique never complained. She happily paid each exorbitant bill, grateful for the calls that gave her access to her beloved for thirty precious minutes at a time.

“Hey, baby girl. I love you.”

Dominique’s smile broadened. “I love you, too, baby. I’m counting down the days till you get home.”

Jamel smiled. He was counting down as well. Just six more months to go on his three-year sentence and he could
get back to the life he’d left behind. He missed his son, missed the block, and missed his lady.

Jamel was Dominique’s one true love. She met him while she was in college. Her daughter had been two or three years old at that time, and her daughter’s father was long gone. He had enlisted in the Army and only sent checks home to his kid on her birthday. As a young single mother going to school full time, Dominique had little time to chill. So meeting men was not her priority back then. While her girlfriends were partying and dating, Dominique had been focused on being a mother and solidifying the career she’d always dreamed of. That’s why it seemed like divine intervention when she met Jamel at a card game. It was a cold night in December, and Dominique was on break from school. Octavia was asleep at home, where Dominique’s father was happy to babysit. On that night, after a grueling week of finals and papers to hand in, Dominique was getting the chance to go out and let her hair down for once.

Jamel had stepped to her almost immediately, playing her close while the spades game was going down. She was flattered, and eager for some male attention. It had been a long time, after all. That night they flirted, got a little tipsy (Dominique was careful not to drink too much or be too off point), and exchanged phone numbers. Jamel called almost immediately, and soon they were caught up in a hot, sweaty, hood love affair. Dominique resumed her studies during the week, and Jamel invited her over and caressed her walls each Saturday night. While it started out as little more than a convenient physical relationship, over time that began to change. Without warning, their steamy sex sessions were followed by conversations. And it was during those conversations that the two of them connected. Jamel was caught off guard,
having developed strong feelings for this woman whose life was so starkly different from his own.

When they met, Dominique had been a naive young girl, unfamiliar with the streets and the elements within them. Jamel had been a drug dealer with a ruthless personality who was determined to get money by any means. He had a son with a girl he swore was nothing more than the mother of his child, and Dominique was fine with that. He was, after all, such a doting father, and it was hard not to find that sexy. They were from completely different worlds. Dominique was a good girl taking college courses while getting her feet wet as an intern in the music industry. Jamel was a hustler graduating from selling dimes to selling weight. Despite their differences, the sex was incredible, and, surprisingly, their conversations were more stimulating to Dominique than any of the discussions she had with her collegiate peers. Even though she was in no rush to introduce him to Octavia, she was certain that they would all mesh as a family someday. She convinced herself that he was the man she’d dreamed of all her life.

On the flip side, Jamel wasn’t head over heels right away. To him, Dominique represented all the cute, prissy girls with an education who didn’t give him the time of day. He wasn’t college educated, but he was smart and he knew it. Jamel had seduced Dominique with his looks, his sex, and his conversation as well as his intellect. And fucking her had been like gaining access to an exclusive club that had denied him entry on countless occasions. He knew she was open and that she fell for him rather quickly. He kept his emotions in check at first, basking instead in the fact that he had her eating out of the palm of his hand.

The trouble with Dominique Storms was that she was a
rare mix of two completely different worlds. On one hand she was a well-educated, driven, and career-minded young lady who came from a stable household and never got into too much trouble. On the other hand, she was a young black woman from the projects who enjoyed rap music and an occasional blunt, and could toss back a bottle of Hennessy with the best of them. Unlike her bourgeois sister, Whitney, Dominique was an educated round-the-way girl with a weakness for guys like Jamel.

She was aware of the fact that she was among the few in her demographic who had a future ahead of them. She loved her humble yet stable upbringing and was as comfortable in a project apartment as she was in a penthouse suite. And she believed that Jamel was not the average hustler. He read
The New York Times
religiously at a time when most guys on the block were barely reading
XXL
. He was well versed on everything from sociopolitical matters to stock-market indexes. Dominique believed if Jamel were given access to boardrooms in corporate America, he could hold his own with the best businessmen. She felt that all he needed was a chance. It seemed that they were destined to be together.

Then he was arrested after making a sale to an undercover, and the exchange was caught on tape. Jamel was sent to prison for five to ten years under a plea deal. Dominique had been devastated but was determined to stand by her man. She made trips upstate to visit him twice a month; accepted every collect call (and he called every single day); sent packages, cigarettes, money, and books; and wrote him letters. Repeatedly, Jamel swore that when he came home he was going to marry her, that nothing would ever come between them. He was going to quit the game and get a job, and Dominique vowed to help him every step of the way.
She had even lined up potential interviews for him, using her own valuable connections to help Jamel get a new lease on life. He told her that he was ready to start over, and Dominique believed him—she believed
in
him.

As she listened to her man fill her in on the details of his day—the group meeting he had to take part in and the usual bullshit the COs put him through—Dominique thought about her friend Toya. Toya always lectured Dominique about her relationship with “the convict,” which was how Toya referred to Jamel. “Why are you wasting your time with that fool when it’s clear that he’s going nowhere?!” she’d ask. And all that Dominique could do was tell the truth.

“I love him,” she’d tell her friend, simply. And that was all that mattered to her. Dominique’s family also thought she was crazy. Particularly her father, who couldn’t fathom how a young lady with so much going for herself would lower her standards by spending time with a career criminal. He saw the drive his daughter possessed, and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why she wasted time with a hoodlum like Jamel. But Dominique saw something her friends and family didn’t see. Jamel was more than just his rap sheet. He was a smart man, an excellent father, and she believed that he would make a great husband. He and Octavia would eventually form a close relationship, she reasoned, and that was a major part of it. She wanted her daughter to have a father figure, which she felt was lacking in her life. She knew that, in time, everyone would see what she had seen in Jamel all along. Potential.

After hanging up
the phone, Jamel sidled back to his cube. His small area in the prison dorm was in no way glamorous, but
thanks to Dominique he still had all the comforts of home. His twin bunk bed had flannel sheets on it to keep him warm in the cold, dank jail. He wore a sweat suit, crisp new Nike socks, and a pair of Nike sandals. His locker resembled a food pantry stuffed with tuna fish, iced tea mix, coffee cakes, Doritos, Lay’s potato chips, Vienna sausages, bread, and all kinds of other snacks that kept him from having to eat the slop they served at the mess hall. Dominique sent him a food package each month weighing the thirty-five pounds allowed under the facility regulations. He realized how lucky he was to have her in his corner. She did her best to make the situation he was in easier to deal with. Each day at mail call, Jamel heard his name. He would look forward to it because he was never let down. There was always an envelope with his name written in Dominique’s perfect penmanship. Many of his fellow inmates never got packages, letters, visits, phone calls, or the multitude of other perks that his lady lavished on him regularly. Jamel was thankful that he was among the lucky ones.

His boy Skills came over and asked if he had a cigarette. Dominique had just sent him a fresh new carton of Newports, so Jamel retrieved them from his locker. Instead of giving Skills the one cigarette he had asked for, Jamel stretched his hand out to give him an entire unopened pack. Skills frowned as if confused.

“You got it like that? You giving away packs now? Let me find out your shorty got you balling like that.”

Jamel laughed. “Please! Ain’t no giveaways, son.”

Skills’s smile turned into a frown. He held his hands up and shook his head. “I ain’t got nothing to trade you for, son. I got a total of eighty-four cents in my commissary.”

Jamel waved his hand at his boy and handed him the
pack of Newports. “All I want is for you to draw something nice for Dominique. Her birthday is coming up and I want to send her something special.”

Skills smiled. “No doubt!” He took the cigarettes and gave Jamel a pound.

Skills got his nickname from the drug game. But the true skill he possessed was the ability to draw like a real artist. In jail, that talent had allowed him to barter with the other inmates for things that he couldn’t buy with the few spare dollars his mother managed to send him from time to time.

He smiled now at Jamel. “You a real lucky man, Jamel. Got you a lady with a corporate job. You get to call home whenever you want ’cuz she pays for it. She sends you all this stuff, writes you letters all the time,
and
comes to visit you on the regular. Seems like you got a real good girl on your hands.”

Jamel smiled. “Word. She’s good to me. And when I get home, I’m gonna be good to her, too.”

Skills nodded. “You better.” He went back to his own cube, leaving Jamel alone with his thoughts.

The truth was, as his release date neared, Jamel was getting increasingly nervous. He was scared to death that he wouldn’t fit into Dominique’s neat and proper world. After all, he was a thug with a long criminal record and a penchant for finding trouble. As much as he loved Dominique and believed her when she swore that she wasn’t fazed by the negativity her friends and family spewed concerning her relationship with him, he had his doubts. She loved him, and that was all that mattered. That was what she kept assuring him. And Jamel loved Dominique as well. Still, there was an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach at the thought of
changing his life at the midway point. He hoped he could live up to her expectations. The last thing he wanted to do was disappoint Dominique.

Russell rang Toya’s
doorbell and waited. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her in the time since their last encounter. He really had a thing for Toya, having watched her come and go and seen how she appeared to be a sexy, smart, independent woman. Tonight was his birthday, and he had an offer that he prayed she wouldn’t refuse. He heard her little miniature dog barking as if it were a pit bull and there was an intruder on the premises. Russell laughed, thinking that all it would take was one kick and that Pomeranian would be finished. Despite its incessant yapping, he knew that he was safe.

Finally, he saw Toya peer through her screen door. She looked at him like he was crazy to stop by her house unannounced. It seemed for a moment that she had no intention of opening the door. But, finally, he watched as she undid the latch, swung the door open, and stood there with the most adorable frown on her face.

“Can I help you?” she asked, as if he didn’t live across the street. Her greeting seemed more appropriate for a salesman or Jehovah’s Witness.