A Commitment to Love, Book 3 (27 page)

“I think we should talk to Mom,” I said, predicting the expression that immediately fell on Troy’s face.

He scowled. “I thought I made a good case for why we should not trust her.”

“Who else understands Benny better than us?” I asked.

“But then who else has the most to lose if Benny is dead?” Troy added.

A skeptical look plastered on Viv’s face. “But if she has the most to lose, then why would she help Chase find Jasmine?”

“Maybe, she’s trying to kill Chase,” Troy suggested.

“Don’t even say that.” A shiver ran through my body. “I would fucking kill her. Mom or not.”

“Could you? You can’t even kill Benny.” Troy stared at both of us. “None of us can do it. In some twisted way, we love him.”

“And he loves us,” I said.

“Does he?” Vivian still wore her skepticism. “He’s not the man that I loved. In fact, he pretended to be that man. He was never my father. Those great childhood memories that I have of him left my mind when he tortured Dawn right in the same household we stood in. No, he’s not my father. He’s evil, and we got to do what all people do in the movies, we have to take down the evil. I don’t even care if I mentally survive it.”

For the first time since being around both of them, Troy walked over to Vivian and held her in his arms. “You’ll survive it. I’ll make sure of it.”

Uneasy with their display of affection, even though it was innocent, I looked around to make sure none of Benny’s guards witnessed the simple hug. “We call Chase and we talk to Mom.”

“Naw.” He pulled Vivian closer to him. She buried her face into his huge chest, and a little bit of me yearned for that sort of touch that only the man you loved could give. “Talking to Mom is not an option. In fact, we can’t trust her. I want to talk to Sherman.”

“You paint him as Mom’s puppet. How’s talking to Sherman going to help?”

“True. Sherman would talk, but not much. He’s no thinker. He’s a follower, and Mom would’ve told Sherman to keep his mouth shut on certain details. But the shit that Mom never thought to tell him to be quiet on, that’s the stuff he’ll tell us. From there, we can figure out what’s her aim. Right now, her being involved makes me crazy uneasy. If she’s trying to take Benny down, then we can sit back and let the cards fall where they may, but …”

Vivian didn’t appear to be leaving his hold anytime soon, and I couldn’t take anymore. I wasn’t a fan of any of my siblings’ public display of affection. For the past couple of months, I’d believed that Vivian and Troy were brother and sister. It was now hard to see them as unrelated.

“But what, Troy?” I put my back to them.

“But if she’s trying to get Chase killed, then we’re all screwed, and then we’ll have to think about not just getting rid of Benny. We’ll have to get rid of—”

“No.” I put my hands up. “Let’s just stop right there. I can’t even kill Benny. Now you want me to consider taking out Mom. We’re not the fucking mafia, Troy. You’re an ex-convict with bad luck. Vivian and I are out-of-work college students. That’s it. We’re not an army of murderers, we’re the people the military protects.”

“But our brother Sherman is something else. He’s what we need. He’s a murderer, and he loves it.”

I kept my back to him. “You think Sherman would help us?”

“As long as it doesn’t violate anything he has going on with Mom,” he said.

I twisted his way. Troy moved his hand off of Vivian’s butt and back to the center of her back.

Oh God. They’re like horny teenagers. Really? We’re in a church.

I coughed. “So you’re going to ask Sherman to kill Benny or at least help us, and if he says no, then the odds are that Mom’s interest isn’t in Benny being dead?”

“Yeah,” Troy said. “Then she’s working for Benny, and that’s not good for your fool in love. Let’s hope Chase is watching his own back.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “let’s hope.”

Viv leaned away from Troy’s chest, and she did so in a way that seemed like it pained her. Her face distorted into a hurtful expression—mouth lowered into a frown, eyes half-closed with grief, arms limp to her side. “When are we going to call him?”

Troy left a peck on her check and then backed away. “I have no idea. Benny being gone made it a bit easy.”

For all Troy and I knew, Benny had already discovered that we’d called Chase hours ago.

Earlier, Troy had grabbed the phone from his secret hiding place in the mansion, a torn up master suite on the west wing. We’d tiptoed downstairs. Way downstairs. Even deeper than the first floor. We had lowered ourselves to the bottom of the house, until finally stopping at the wine cellar.

Where else could we call him? Outside of that decrepit mansion, the guards made sure we held no phones and talked to no one.

When Troy closed the cellar door, he maintained a low tone. “I don’t think Benny figured we’d be down here. The phone barely gets a connection. I’ve used it three times down here and he’s said nothing, so I’m thinking that’s a good sign.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“It’s encrypted calling. Got the phone from one of Chase’s guys last year. The stuff is supposed to even block out NSA.”

“I doubt that.”

“Doesn’t matter. This is the only choice we have.” He gave the phone to me. “Be quick.”

In the wine cellar, I’d dialed Chase’s number.

Excitement fluttered in my chest and then traveled up to my fingertips. I craved his voice. His touch. Those moments when he’d made me fall to the ground, double over, and laugh. I missed the way he moaned. Hadn’t been able to touch myself since he’d been gone. My body ached for him. My fingers didn’t satisfy like his.

And then he answered, whispered my name, and sounded so broken, I couldn’t deal with it.

“Are you okay, Jazz?” Troy’s voice brought me back to the Abbey.

“Yeah. I’m just anxious about everything.”

He pressed his index finger against his forehead. “Let that shit make you stronger and keep your mind on the goal.”

“I will.” I signaled for them to come with me. “We might as well check out the rest of this big place.”

Troy chuckled to himself. “Why? Are there more famous dead people under our feet?”

“Hopefully.”

Vivian held Troy’s hands for a few seconds, let them go, and then dragged herself to my side. “So the plan is to call Chase, whenever we can?”

“That’s the plan.” Troy centered his gaze on her. “I’m not happy about it, but what else are we going to do? We deal with Benny. Protect each other’s necks and stay cool, then wait it out.”

“Do we tell Chase where we’re at?” I asked, too scared to hear the answer, but understanding that the question had to be floating secretly around us.

“I don’t want to tell him. That motherfucker’s crazy for you. He’s liable to run the streets, butt naked, screaming out your name.

“That’s not exactly a bad thing.” I walked away from Poet’s Corner.

“You two are going to get us killed.” He laughed.

But, I stopped.

No. Not killed.

Ceased with walking. Of course he’d been joking, but I couldn’t breathe enough to even laugh. My lungs constricted. My soul ached. People had already died due to us being together. Regardless of why or who did what, women and men had been killed, when Chase and I decided to love each other.

How selfish were we going to be? Would Chase and I really get us or my loved ones killed?

C
HAPTER
15

Chase

I
never discovered the path to sleep that flight. Benny’s life was too interesting. I read more and more about him. He was a sick man who’d twisted my life into sadistic knots of pain and heartbreak. Static filled the pages. Illogical thoughts that mingled between pure logic. On one line madness flowed, on the other complete nonsense.

And then suddenly, Benny began to make sense.

Sophia.

She is why I walk this earth.

Her mind and spirit, they keep me safe in this dark road.

She is the light at the end of this cold tunnel.

She wraps me within her warmth

And I am a kid again, folded beneath the warm, softness of my blankets, smelling the scent of apple tarts in the kitchen, hearing the sweet lullaby of my mother as she whispered it to my younger brother.

That had never been my life, but it was what I dreamed it would be. A mother that loved. A younger brother that idolized me. My whole family soft, warm, and smelling good.

And that was Sophia.

And I did my best to consume her as much as possible.

Scar monitored her anytime I flew off out of the country for business. When I returned, I spent all of my free time with her. I took Sophia out on elaborate dates, the sort a black girl from South End would never experience in her lifetime. She had three boys. Bad and whiny in every way, but I kept my mouth closed. Did my best to show them what men looked like. She would need them to be there for her.

I forced them to grow up.

Sophia. Warm, soft, and smelling good.

Once I started spending money, she warmed to me. Made those freezing nights warm. Gave me new images to dream about, when I did my best to shut out all those torturous cries.

Sophia.

She told me she was pregnant.

I wrapped my hands around her neck and squeezed it hard. She didn’t even struggle. Just stared at me like she’d expected the whole thing. Dead eyes. The kind bad girls got from bad men. They burned through me and proclaimed that I was nothing more than her slave.

I let her live and released her neck. “I don’t need this shit right now.”

She fell back onto the bed and gasped over and over. Finally, tears spilled from her eyes. It was the only time I saw her cry. She would never do that again in front of me.

“I didn’t do this by myself.” She rubbed her neck and panted, her chest rising and falling fast. “I knew you didn’t love me! I tell you I’m pregnant and you try to kill me.”

“I do love you. I just can’t have any more kids. You know she’s pregnant.”

“Oh, say her name! Just fucking say your wife’s name!”

“Hey.” I raised my hand in front of her. “Keep it down. The hotel might call security.”

“Let them. Your ass needs to go to jail for putting your hands on me.”

“I lost myself.”

“Fuck you, you bitch ass motherfucker. Always talking about how you have morals and those rich guys don’t. Next moment you got your goddamn hands on me.” More tears fell, and my heart cracked inside.

That didn’t happen much.

I wasn’t sure if it was a normal thing or not. I mean, I watched people get upset when others did shit and I thought to myself,
who really cares
. Sometimes I felt like I was acting. Other times I did feel bad, but that didn’t happen much.

I just had a thing about people fucking with kids.

The shit made me hot mad. So I went with it. Kept myself normal.

“I told your ass that you need to use protection because if I get pregnant I am not having an abortion. I told you.”

“You said that you were on birth control.”

“I am. That shit isn’t a hundred percent.”

“It’s not goddamn fifty percent either.”

“You know what? Fuck you.” She rose from the bed and started frantically looking around for something. “I’m out of here. I don’t need you anyway. I can take care of myself. You don’t want to be a man and help me with your child, then keep it moving. I’ve done it before and I can do it myself.”

“Sit down.”

“Putting your hands on me like I’m not anything. I bet you wouldn’t put your hands on that white bitch at the house though. I bet you fucking shine her damn lily white crown and smile up in her face.” She spotted her pocket book and slung it over her shoulders.

Rage blazed in my head. One thing I could never deal with was Sophia leaving. It was hard enough to not be around her all the time. The moments that I could spend time with her were pure joy. The times I had to say good-bye hurt more than an actual gun wound did.

“Don’t leave. Please, Sophia.” I held my hands to my sides. “I’m sorry. Sophy. So sorry, baby. Don’t leave me.”