Sweet Giselle

by Karen P. Williams

  When he caught me staring, I looked away quickly.

  “Go shower,” he ordered.

  He tossed a towel to me, and I went into the bathroom to do what he said. When I came out about ten minutes later, with the towel wrapped around me, I held my hand out for the clothing he’d brought for me.

  He hesitated before handing me the clothes and said, “I saw you last night.”

  I gasped, my eyes wide. He must have a camera installed in the room.

  “You were definitely getting it in, baby. I only have one question for you. When you were stroking your pussy, were you thinking of your husband or were you thinking of me?”

  “You son of a bitch!” I rushed up to him in anger and started attacking him. I was throwing blows like I had done to him and his crazy girlfriend last night. “I was thinking about my husband!” I tried to slap his face. He caught both my hands easily in his.

  “Oh yeah?”

  I found myself for the umpteenth time being pulled over to the bed, because I would not go on my own free will. I was sick of that shit. I wasn’t a damn rag doll. Bryce sat down on the bed while still holding me. I struggled against him.

  “Let me go!”

  He held both of my wrists in one of his hands and took his free hand and yanked the towel off me. Now I was naked in front of him. He lay back on the bed, and before I could slip away, he grabbed me by my waist, lifted me in the air, and before I could stop him, sat me on top of his face.

  I struggled at first and continued to yell for him to let me go. But when I felt his tongue flickered inside of me, all I could do was toss my head back and moan loudly.

  He suckled on my clit and mashed his face all into my pussy.

  “Oh God!” I moaned.

  He eased back and started sticking his fingers into me. “You were thinking about your husband, huh?”

  I didn’t respond, just kept moaning as he teased me.

  “You thinking about your husband now?” he asked before flickering his tongue over my clit again.

  The pleasure was so intense that I grabbed his head and kept it on my pussy. He continued to suckle and then lick the opening of my vagina. I felt my legs grow weak, but his strong arms held me there.

  He continued to feed off of me. And when I came, I came hard and flooded his mouth with all my wetness.

  I was too weak to pull myself off him, so he tossed me aside on the bed and stood to his feet.

  And all I could feel was shame and embarrassment that I had allowed him to make me feel that way, when no one except my husband had ever done that to me before. If they did ever release me and I made it back to my husband, how would I be able to face him?

  I started crying and asked him, “Why are you doing this to me? I love my husband! So if you think that going down on me or lying on him is going to make me stop loving him, you are wrong!”

  “So you really do believe—”

  “I know for a fact that you have the wrong man. Tell me this. When and where did my husband do this? This supposed rape.”

  “In your home. Six days before you were kidnapped.”

  I laughed and waved a hand at him.

  He ignored me and continued, “She went there with two other girls. My sister ran with an older crowd. One was her friend from the neighborhood, Dreka. She’s fourteen, and her older sister, Yonique, is eighteen. The eighteen-year-old had done work for your husband before, and that night she was going to do more. Her film name is Butta. She let them tag along with her that night. I spoke to both of them myself. When Yonique told them she was going to make some money at a big mansion and she went on to describe the pad to them, they went crazy and begged to tag along.

  “Yonique said that Wingo made a call and that your husband came over to the studio, saw my little sister, and invited her to go swimming. She left with him. They never saw her again. Yonique and her little sister were both kicked off the premises without my little sister. The security guard told them that my little sister had already left. Well, why didn’t she come home, then?”

  I swallowed hard and ignored his question. What he was saying didn’t make a bit of sense, so it had to be untrue. I remembered the first time I came to the mansion. Wingo checked my ID before I was even let inside the studio. Why would it be any different now? It was not, I told myself.

  “We don’t let underage girls into the studio. We have security. He has been working for my husband for years. Trust me, he would not let them in.”

  “Then why were she and her friend let in?”

  “Listen to me! My husband is a businessman. Legit. He makes millions of dollars off the films he makes. Why would he jeopardize that by letting young girls into the studio and hurting them? Secondly, our marriage is rock solid. He keeps no secrets from me, and he does not cheat! Not with women and not with little girls!” Over the years I had seen how committed my husband was to our charity organization, how respectful he was around the kids, and Bryce was implying that my husband was pretty much a pedophile. And he was the most trustworthy man I had known since my father.

  Bryce simply stared at me and listened.

  “I mean, you sound foolish. You sound like someone who is jealous of my husband’s success and you want to ruin it for him.”

  “You know what? I’m going to let you see the shit for yourself.”

  Ten minutes later Angel had set up a television and a DVD player in front of me.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said to me.

  “Hi,” I said dryly.

  Bryce slipped a DVD in.

  I focused in on the screen. There was a very beautiful girl on the screen. Yes, she looked young, but that didn’t mean anything. I could easily pass for someone in my teens. The video was silent, but I could see her opening her mouth as if she was screaming. She rushed around the room, much like I had done when Bryce locked me in his room. She yanked on the door but was unable to get it open.

  “You know I can’t watch this shit,” Angel said before leaving the room.

  “Does that place look familiar, Giselle?” Bryce asked.

  I ignored him.

  Yes, judging from the set, the footage was filmed in my house, so what did that mean? It proved nothing. So I continued to watch her sobbing on the bed. This was also something that did not surprise me. Then I saw my husband in the film. That did not surprise me, either. I experienced something similar when I couldn’t go through with it the day I met Giovanni. In fact, to this very day there were times when Giovanni would walk on the set if the filming was delayed to find out what the holdup was. That was how we had met. It never bothered me, because my husband was trying not to waste time or money. But he was usually edited out of the film or the camera was stopped. This had to be an unedited version. But I wondered how Bryce got his hands on it. Still, there was nothing to support what Bryce was saying.

  I stood and went to the bed, saying, “I don’t need to see this. You just wasted your time trying to slander my husband! You look so stu—”

  I glanced back at the TV as I walked away, and what I saw on the screen next made me freeze and made the hairs on my neck stand. My hand went to my mouth as I watched. Not because of the fact that he was in the film, since it could be the unedited version, and like I said, if there was a delay in shooting, my husband would want to know why and would do what he could on the set to move things along. It was because of what my husband was doing in the film: stripping off the girl’s clothes while she cried and tried to fight him. But she was a very petite girl, and my husband overpowered her, so finally she was completely naked. Then he stripped down. What I saw next made me tremble. He started slapping the girl around the room. Then what I saw after this made me cry. He started touching the young girl all over. Rubbing on her breasts, her pussy, sticking his fingers in her. Then what I saw next made me sob. He was forcing himself on her. In her mouth, in her pussy, then her ass. She was sobbing as hard as I was, and although I couldn’t hear the sound, I knew as he sodomized her, she was s
creaming at the top of her lungs. And so was I.

  My knees felt weak, and I sank to the floor.

  Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Bryce walked up to me and showed me the school ID of the girl in the film. The ID said that the girl was only twelve.

  I covered my face with my hands and bawled like a baby. Who was I married to?

  The next morning Bryce came to the room with breakfast. I declined to eat. My throat was super dry from all the crying I did the night before, so I sipped the orange juice he passed to me. My husband was not the man that I thought he was. And I felt like an idiot, because I hated what he had done. It was sick. Inhumane. But, on the other hand, he was still my husband, the man I loved and with whom I had vowed to spend the rest of my life. I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know how to feel. One thing was for sure. I understood now why Bryce hated my husband and why he hated me. He thought I knew my husband was raping young girls, when in reality I had no idea. None. And I wondered how many other young girls my husband had raped during our marriage. Giovanni was a sick, sick man, and I was an idiot for marrying him.

  I changed out of my clothes into the fresh clothes Bryce passed to me, which included a dress, a bra, and a pair of underwear. I was surprised when he tossed a pair of flip-flops to me, and after I placed them on my feet, he stood and said, “Come on.”

  A few minutes later Bryce pulled into a parking lot at Mayfair Park in Lakewood. Since it was early, the park was pretty much empty.

  He put the car in park and said, “Now I’m going to give you the opportunity to stretch your legs and get some air. For your own sake, don’t embarrass yourself. I know nobody at this park got what I got in my waistband. So you need to behave, little girl.”

  I nodded.

  I was able to get out of the car. Just twenty-four hours before, this would have been a perfect opportunity to make a run for it. But now I was so confused about what to do. I felt I was in just as bad hands with my husband as I was with Bryce. On top of this, the house my parents had owned, I’d let Giovanni talk me into selling it about a year into our marriage. Now where was I going to go? I was so lost and didn’t know what to do. And since Bryce had already advised me not to try anything stupid, I obeyed. I needed to figure out what I was going to do, anyway. Why piss Bryce off and try to run away, when now I didn’t know where to run away to? For the time being, he wasn’t doing anything to hurt me. And all the times I tried to escape before, I didn’t get anywhere, and any attempt to flee now would probably end the same way.

  I was forced to walk close to Bryce, and he had a gun in the small of my back. He wasn’t playing.

  After a few seconds of awkward silence, I said, “I’m sorry about the things I said.” My voice started trembling.

  “Oh. So now you believe me? I’m not a piece of shit, dope dealer to you?” he threw back at me.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t like your ass. That won’t change. But what my husband—”

  Before I could finish, I was drowned out by loud music coming from a car as it sped into the parking lot. Normally, I would have paid it no mind. But I knew the car and the driver, who hopped out quickly and came walking toward us. It was Percy.

  “Percy!” I tried to rush toward him, but Bryce held me back and shoved the gun into my back, silently reminding me of what he had already told me.

  Percy came up to us, and before he even spoke to me, he gave Bryce a hug.

  I was in shock. They knew each other.

  “Any word yet?” Bryce asked him.

  Percy shook his head. Then he finally looked at me. “I’m sorry you had to be swept up in this bullshit, Giselle.”

  “You two know each other?” I asked.

  “You remember my story, how I did a stint in the pen and how I used to traffic in dope?” Percy aimed a finger at Bryce. “I moved weight for Bryce.”

  I was stunned at the revelation.

  “When I found out what Giovanni was doing to young girls, I had to bounce, Giselle. I flat-out didn’t agree. The first time I found out about it was a few months after y’all wedding.”

  My heart sped up when he said that—a few months after our wedding. I was getting confirmation after confirmation that my fairy-tale life really was a lie. My life with Giovanni. My happy, wholesome, solid marriage was bullshit. I swallowed, trying to get the lump out of my throat, and closed my eyes briefly. More and more, the revelations were hurting me so bad.

  “When y’all came back from y’all honeymoon, he asked me to find him a young girl. When he said young, I was thinking, ‘How much younger can he get than you?’ But the sick muthafucka said, ‘Eleven’! I kind of laughed it off, and he did, too.” Percy took a deep breath. “I wish that I hadn’t. Then maybe we would not be here now. I also wish I hadn’t taken off early that night, either. Anyway, he has help on the inside. People to supply him with his fetish. Wingo.”

  I gasped. Is that why he was missing?

  Then Percy said, “That’s all me. So would your husband have been. But Bryce wanted Giovanni for himself. He’s going to play this game with him.”

  My eyes shot to Percy. I was in shock. He had killed Wingo.

  “Anyway, when I came back to work, I’m getting ready to erase the surveillance of the night before like I normally do. But I saw a young girl that looked very familiar. That’s ’cause she is the baby sister of one of my closest friends. I watched that girl growing up. And she still ain’t fully grown up. Then I see your husband on the surveillance with her. He must have forgotten to turn off the camera.”

  So that was how Bryce got the video. Percy. There was a hidden camera in every room so that Giovanni could watch what was going on in the rooms from his office.

  “I was so shaken up. I left. It was the only sane thing I could do. Being that Wingo had worked for Giovanni for some years, and I felt that I could trust him with the information, I stopped by his crib. Never in a million years would I have thought it would be Wingo supplying him. Wingo has four little girls himself. The oldest being ten, the youngest being four. When I got there, his little girls were playing that Wii game in the living room, while him and his wife were cooking in the kitchen. I even remember what they were cooking. Spaghetti, like they were these wholesome parents.” He gave a dry laugh.

  “When Wingo saw how shaken up I was, he tossed me a bottle of Henny. I tossed some back and blabbered out that I had seen the young girl and Giovanni on the surveillance. Wingo took one look at my face and busted out laughing. Then Wingo told me that he got that girl for Giovanni. He said she came in with two other girls. One of them was a chick named Butta that works for us and her little sister. We had waited for Butta that night, but she ended up being so late that the camera crew went home. When they got there, Wingo called Giovanni upstairs and told him he had one that was fourteen and the other was twelve. He came down and got the twelve-year-old.

  “But that wasn’t the worst of what he said. He told me that several times a month he hand delivers young girls to Giovanni. He said it was like a second job for him, and for every girl he gets, Giovanni gives him four hundred dollars. He said that Giovanni always waits until the studio closes, sets the camera up, and films himself having sex with the young girls. Then he keeps the DVDs locked up in his office, and watches them.”

  I gasped and thought back to the day I was in Giovanni’s office and he put a DVD in an oak cabinet. Percy wasn’t lying.

  Percy chuckled bitterly. “But you know what’s worse than all of this?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Wingo. This is a man with four little girls, and you can do this fucked-up shit to somebody else’s little girls? And what was worse than this was the fact that his wife was standing in the same room as us, hearing the whole conversation, and she was okay with it, too. But I wasn’t. And that’s why I put a bullet in his head, so he can’t trick off someone else’s little girl.”

  I blinked and rubbed my face in between my hands. “But why is my—”
/>
  Percy grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me. “Giselle! Your husband is sick, plain and simple. A fucking pedophile that needs to be murked. As much as I appreciated all the good Giovanni did for me, I had to bounce. Bryce is like a brother to me. What Giovanni is doing is sick. I can’t have any more part of it. We kill niggas like him in the pen. So I walked away. Now my only priority is to find out what happened to Bryce’s sister.” He released me.

  “Ain’t heard nothing?” Bryce asked.

  “Naw. But I tell you, Bryce, I can’t help but feel that Brianna is scared you going to kick her ass for sneaking off, and she is scared to come home.”

  That is her name? Brianna? I thought.

  “I’m thinking the same, P,” Bryce said. “But did you talk to the sisters?”

  “They pretty much told me the same thing they told you. Wingo told her Brianna had left already.”

  Bryce nodded, studying Percy.

  “But I’m on it, so don’t worry. If we have to comb every city in Cali, we will. Hog is on it, too.”

  “Thanks, man,” Bryce said.

  “Don’t trip. We are going to find her.”

  I looked away, not knowing what to say.

  “Well, I have to get going,” Percy announced. He and Bryce bumped fists before hugging.

  When he turned to go, I said, “Wait, Percy! What about me? Bryce kidnapped me.”

  “How you think Bryce figured out where to nab you?” Percy replied.

  I gasped. Percy had set Giovanni and me up. That hurt a little bit. I understood how Percy felt about my husband, but what about me? I was innocent in this. I had always looked at Percy as an older brother who loved me.

  “I can’t be on your side, Giselle. Bryce is my boy for life. I can’t do nothing for you, baby. Charge that shit to the game.”

  “But he is holding me against my will. I did nothing wrong, Percy! Do something.”