Snapped (34 page)

“I’m scared,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Frankie looked back at her and brushed his hand across her cheek. “Don’t be,” he said. “I got you. Nobody’s gonna hurt you.” He started the car and left the hospital parking lot. But instead of driving her home, Frankie drove to the Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

Gillian was confused. She turned to Frankie and asked, “What’s Camille gonna say when she hears—”

“I walked out on her tonight, Gigi. So she can’t say shit.” He looked at Gillian seriously. “You can’t go home right now. So I’m gonna stay with you until it’s safe enough for you to go back.” He checked them into a suite, then led the way with Gillian right behind him.

“What happened with your wife?” she asked as they walked down the long carpeted hallway.

“Shit got heated,” he said. “You seemed upset tonight, and when I was asking you what’s wrong, Camille got mad. We had a fight and I bounced.”

Gillian was speechless. She wanted so badly to spend the
next few days and nights safely at the Plaza with Frankie. But was it right? Then she thought about her father sitting slumped over in his wheelchair, pictured Baron sprawled out across the sidewalk bleeding from all the gunshot wounds he had sustained. She heard her mother’s voice mixing with her own as they screamed in the midst of the melee. And she looked at Frankie, tall and strong and ready to remain by her side for as long as she needed him. Gillian pushed the fact that he was married out of her mind and walked into the room with him.

Frankie tossed his bags on the floor beside the sofa. There were steps leading to a huge, beautiful claw-foot tub in the center of the room, a flat-screen TV and surround-sound system, a big California king–size bed near the wall. Frankie took off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a crisp wifebeater beneath his tuxedo. He put the radio on
The Quiet Storm
and helped himself to the champagne chilling on the table. Gillian kicked off her shoes and lay across the bed, propping herself up on one elbow amid a huge mountain of pillows. Frankie walked over to her and handed her a glass of champagne, which she happily accepted. He lay beside her at a safe distance, watching her in silence.

The two of them lay there for a few minutes before Frankie spoke up. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I met your father at the perfect time,” he said. “I was probably twelve or thirteen, and I was lost.”

Gillian was all ears because she could never recall when exactly Frankie became a part of the family. For as long as she could remember, he had been there. But she had been too young to recall the specifics of how it all happened.

Frankie drained his glass and refilled it before he continued.

“My father was crazy, you know what I’m saying? He used to bug the fuck out at the drop of a dime.” He paused. “I never told nobody this.”

Gillian felt honored. “Keep going.”

He cleared his throat. He wasn’t sure why he felt like telling Gillian his story tonight. But he was so eager to get it off his chest. He realized that he trusted her, because he had never shared with anyone—even his wife—what he was about to share with Gillian.

“He was crazy. I guess maybe nowadays they would call it bipolar or some shit. Back then I just knew the muthafucka was crazy. He would be different people at any given time.”

“Like schizophrenic? He had different names and personalities and all that?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. Not like that. Like . . . he would be cool one minute. He’d sit down to eat dinner and tell my moms that it was delicious. We were always quiet, me and my brother, ’cuz if we ever said the wrong thing at the wrong time, it would set him off. So he would compliment my moms on the food, everybody’s quiet, and then
bam
! Why the fuck was she looking at him like that? What, did she poison his food? How come she wasn’t eating the food she had just served him? And he would bug the fuck out.”

Gillian listened carefully, picturing young Frankie in her mind, scared and confused. “Did he hit y’all?”

He nodded. “Hell yeah. He used to knock my mother around a little. Nothing major. But he bullied her. He would corner her and punch the wall behind her, scream in her face and make her cry. She was scared of him. So were me and my brother. Then, when I got to be like eleven or twelve years old, I had a growth spurt and I got taller than him almost
overnight. He didn’t like that shit. So he started taking his anger out on me, challenging me to kick his ass so he could kill me and be justified. I used to take the beatings at first. I felt like I was the biggest one and I’d rather him beat me than beat my little brother or my moms. But as I got older it got harder to keep taking ass whippings and not hitting back—father or no father.”

“Damn,” Gillian said, her brow furrowed with genuine compassion for what Frankie had endured. She thought of her own father and all the love he had lavished upon her over the years, and she was intensely grateful. It made her realize how blessed she had been to have the loving, doting father she had been given. She missed him so much already.

“We were all scared of him,” Frankie admitted again. “I felt that if I challenged him that he really would kill me. I really felt he would do that shit. So I ran away instead. I slept at my friend Mikey’s house when his moms was out smoking crack. Sometimes she would come home and try to sober up. When she was clean, she stopped letting me be there all the time and started asking questions about why I never went home. So I would find someplace else to sleep for a few nights. Then she would start using again and I could come back. Then Mikey told me that if I wanted to get money with him, he could put me on with your pops. I didn’t believe him. We were shorties, and your father was a big fucking deal in the hood. I didn’t think he had ever even spoken to Nobles, let alone that he had the hookup for me to get on, too. But he was telling the truth and he introduced me to your father. I was like . . . I froze when I met him for the first time. He talked all smooth and he was just such a G. I wanted to impress him, so I worked around the clock to get his attention.
I stopped going to school, stopped doing anything but hustling.”

“You were still staying with Mikey?”

“Yeah. I figured out that if I gave his moms crack every now and then, she didn’t beef as much. It became like home to me. We had our whole operation running out of there pretty much. That’s the closest thing to home I had at that time.” He paused, thinking back on those days. “But then his moms got arrested and he got put in foster care. I didn’t know where the fuck I was going. I just knew I wasn’t going back home.”

Gillian nodded. “What about your mother and your brother? Did they know where you were?”

“Yeah. I saw my brother, Steven, all the time. I felt bad because by then he was older and I figured my father was probably fucking him up, too.” He paused again, thinking that this was why he allowed Steven to take advantage of him. “He was smaller than me, you know what I’m saying. Shorter and skinny as hell. I worried about him a lot. I would sneak and see him and give him money to bring to Mommy, and he told me that my father wasn’t hitting my mother no more since I left.” Frankie paused, thinking about that. “I don’t know if Steven was telling me the truth. Maybe he just said that so I wouldn’t feel bad about leaving. He knew I didn’t want to go back, but I would if I needed to protect them. Now that I was making a little money, I felt like I was invincible.” He paused again briefly. “I didn’t get to see my mother much, though. . . .” His voice trailed off at the end. He seemed pained by the truth of that. He felt guilty that he’d been the only one to escape the abuse. “She was so beat down after being with my father for so long that
she used to just sit and be quiet. She would hum a song every now and then or answer you if you asked her a question. But other than that, she never talked too much. And even now, she’s like that. It’s hard for me to see her.” He looked at Gillian. “I’m embarrassed to admit that my mother is still alive and I don’t go see her because it’s too hard.”

Gillian reached and took his hand in hers. “I can understand that,” she said softly. “Is your father still alive?”

Frankie chuckled. “Nope. He put a .45 in his mouth and blew his brains out on a random Tuesday night while everyone in the house was asleep. It was the middle of the night, and my family woke up when they heard the shot. My mother found him in the bathroom. She hasn’t been the same since.”

Gillian was so saddened by Frankie’s story that she momentarily forgot her own pain. “How did you feel when he killed himself?”

He thought about that and admitted to himself that he had felt no grief. He shrugged his shoulders. “I was just glad that he chose to kill himself and not my moms or my little brother.”

They sat quietly, lost in thought for a while.

Frankie broke out of his reverie. “That’s when your pops took me under his wing. He asked me one day why I never had to go home at night and why I never went to school. I told him I
was
going to school, every day out there in them streets. And he laughed. He liked that. I was a young dude with a gift of gab and a lot of heart. And I respected the fact that he didn’t pry. He only asked me once, and he accepted the answer I gave him. I was glad, too. ’Cuz I was too embarrassed to admit that my crazy father was terrorizing my family all along and now he was dead and I had to hold it
down.” He shrugged. “He must’ve known something about me in order to trust me like he did. He noticed that after I did my business with him, I would talk to Baron and we hit it off. So he encouraged us to chill together. Then, as we got to know each other, I started staying over. He never told me to go home or asked about my family or education again. He just let me in.”

Gillian smiled through the tears in her eyes. “He loved you, Frankie,” she whispered.

He nodded, wiped the tear that fell from her beautiful eyes. “I loved Pops more than I loved my own father,” he said. “Now that he’s gone, whether Baron makes it or not, I’m gonna take care of you. You’re not alone, Gigi. I got you.”

She looked at him, and he stared right back. They both took in the features of each other’s faces with new eyes. Frankie noticed a few faint freckles scattered across her nose, and she noticed a lone gray hair in his goatee. She also looked at his lush lips and intoxicating eyes and felt herself being drawn in.

“How come you never told your wife what you just told me? About your family.”

Frankie licked his lips. He wanted so badly to kiss her. “Because our relationship isn’t like that,” he answered honestly. “She met me when I was already in the game and never asked me how I became who I am. We were young and having fun and she just took me at face value, and I was cool with that. My family history is uncomfortable for me, so I never talk about it. She knows Steven and she’s met my mother, but I never told her why things are the way they are in my family. You’re the first person I feel like I can trust to know everything.”

She smiled. “I’m glad that you know you can trust me.”

He nodded and looked at her intently. “You can trust me, too.”

Luther crooned in the background, and both of them felt swept up in the moment. Gillian figured it was a mixture of grief, sadness, shock, and the undeniable chemistry between them. Not to mention the champagne. But to Frankie it was something altogether different. He looked at her and thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was so vulnerable and so fragile that he just wanted to wrap his arms around her and never let go.

“Camille listened to my voice mail and she heard the message you left me.” He looked at her seriously. “I didn’t know you even left me a message until we were on our way home from the party and she told me.”

Gillian was relieved to hear that. She hadn’t wanted to believe that Frankie would ignore her feelings. “So she knows about the kiss.”

Frankie nodded. Gillian didn’t know how to feel. Part of her felt slightly guilty for hurting Camille. But the other part of her was glad that the truth was finally out.

“Come here,” he coaxed, at a loss for words to fill the silence.

Gillian moved close to him until their bodies were merely inches apart. He moved a stray hair out of her face and stroked her cheek. Then he pulled her closer so that she was wrapped tightly in his embrace, their faces so close that she could smell the champagne on his breath. He could hear her heartbeat and her breath quickening despite the sound of the music playing in the background. Searching her eyes, Frankie gazed at her, hoping that she wouldn’t tell him no. He kissed her. She held on to him and kissed him back. He pulled her
tightly to him until she was nearly on top of him. He tasted the sweetness of her tongue and it made him want to kiss her deeper. Finally, he pulled away and stared at her once more.

She touched his face now. Touched that gray hair she’d noticed earlier and wondered how many gray hairs he’d grown over the years with all the burdens he had shouldered in his lifetime. She felt her heart swell with affection for him.

Frankie was undressing her and she silently let him. He zipped her out of her dress until she lay before him clad in only a pair of La Perla panties and a matching bra. He could not take his eyes off her. Every inch of her was beautiful. He caught her eyes again.

Frankie stripped out of his shirt and slacks, and realized that he was actually shy at that moment. He knew he was working with a well-endowed package. But he was still a little shy to be with Gillian in this way. She’d been his friend for so long and now here she was, nearly naked before him. He could sense her own hesitation as he lay on top of her still wearing his boxer shorts.

He kissed her. His hands ran the length of her body, stopping at her hips. She also reached for him, stroking his face, his chest, his back, and finally his rock-hard dick. She could feel how hard it was, how long and thick, and she creamed in anticipation. He pulled her panties down to her ankles and licked her from her toes all the way up her long, thick legs. He parted her thighs, feeling them quivering in anticipation. He looked at her beautiful pussy, thinking he had never seen a more exquisite work of art. He touched it, licked it, sucked it, and devoured it until she was screaming his name. Gillian was overcome by the feeling of Frankie—the man she’d loved for years in silence—between her legs, taking her to heights she’d never reached. Frankie
didn’t stop until she begged him to. He loved the way his name sounded as it rolled off her lips while she came.