Sweet Giselle

by Karen P. Williams

  “What you want me to get you?”

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

  He stood, leaned over me, and planted a deep kiss on my lips. “Why don’t you go take a nap? I’ll be right back.”

  He helped me to my feet and walked me to one of the bedrooms. Once there, I sat on the bed and he pulled off my shoes. I lay back, relaxed my head on the pillow, and closed my eyes. And for a few minutes, I could feel Bryce massaging my feet.

  I guess when he saw that I was more at ease, he kissed me on my forehead and left the room.

  When Bryce came back, I was still awake. He sat on the edge of the bed, and I could hear him fiddling with something. “I got you some fish tacos. They say it’s good to eat fish while you’re pregnant. Something about it being brain food. There’s cabbage on these, too.”

  I sat up in the bed.

  Bryce unwrapped one of the tacos, pulling back the white paper, and started feeding me.

  I didn’t have any interest at all in eating, but Bryce was right. I needed to feed the baby. I finished off one taco and washed my prenatal pill down with the apple juice he bought for me. Then I lay back down.

  Bryce left the room with the leftover food and trash. When he came back, I watched him strip down to his boxers and wife beater and get into bed with me. He held me from behind and protectively placed a hand on my stomach.

  “You good?”

  I was silent before licking my dry lips and saying, “Bryce, what’s the holdup? My husband is dangerous and wants to kill us both. What are we waiting for? Why don’t we just leave?”

  He sighed before saying, “Because I have a drop to make. I’m not some millionaire like your husband, baby. You know how I make my money. I need to make some more before we leave. I’m also in the process of selling the house in Paramount I held you at and the one in Chino. Plus, I have to make sure my mother is straight.”

  My body relaxed. It made sense. Money didn’t fall out of trees, after all. “Where are we going?”

  “Decatur, Georgia, will be the best bet. I mean, I ain’t trying to live a fast life anymore. That country life may be just what you, I, and the baby need.”

  I had never thought about living in Georgia. I didn’t know too much about it, except what I watched on TV about those housewives. I tried to have confidence that Bryce knew what the best choice for us was, the way I had always had confidence in my husband and had felt without a doubt that he knew what was best.

  Bryce kissed me on my neck. “What do you want? A boy or a girl?” he asked me.

  “I want a little boy. How about you?”

  “Don’t matter to me. I’ll be happy either way.”

  With our current situation, it was so hard for me to bask in the joy of being pregnant. I mean, I was happy about having a growing life inside of me. But given the circumstances I was hella worried. We were hiding out. I was still married to my husband. He wanted us dead. It was all too much. To think about cribs, baby names, and what type of food I would serve at my baby shower ... Nope, I couldn’t do it.

  “When are we leaving?” I asked, pressing.

  “Tomorrow night.” He started rubbing my nipples, turning me on. “Now, before I fuck the shit out of my pussy ...” He flipped me onto my back and pulled up my dress and started sucking one of my nipples. I moaned, despite my racing thoughts. He pulled away from my nipple and said, “Do you have any more questions?”

  I shook my head as one of his fingers dipped into my pussy. He rode me hard that night, making me scream so hard, I prayed that Percy didn’t hear us. And as good as it was, and despite how tightly he held me, I still had my worries.

  Chapter 24

  The urge to pee woke me up. It was still dark, but I didn’t know how late it was. Bryce wasn’t in bed with me. I got up and walked out of the bedroom to the bathroom. After I peed, I washed my hands and left the bathroom.

  The light was on in the living room, which I thought was weird, because it was late. I jumped when I saw a man sitting on the floor near the front door of the house. He was also holding a gun.

  When I screamed, he stood and said, “It’s okay.”

  It was Hog, the one who came with Angel the day I killed Bear. “Where are Bryce and Percy?” I asked.

  “Can’t tell you all that. Just relax, and go back to sleep.”

  I raced into the bedroom, calling, “Bryce! Bryce! Percy!” I went into the kitchen as well. They weren’t there. I rushed back to the living room door. I was worried they had gone out and were preparing to do something stupid to get back at Giovanni.

  Hog blocked me from going outside.

  “Let me out, please.”

  “Naw. Go back to sleep.”

  “Let me the fuck out!” When he refused to move, I ran toward the door that led to the garage, opened it, and slipped inside the garage.

  I saw Percy and Bryce seated at a table. There were guns scattered on the table. Bryce was pulling the safety off of one, while Percy was loading bullets in another one. Something was going down.

  They didn’t notice me standing there until I yelled, “Bryce! Percy! What are you about to do?”

  Percy and Bryce froze at the sound of my voice.

  Hog was behind me and said, “Aye, yo, I tried to stop her, but I didn’t want to put my hands on her.”

  Bryce nodded at Hog. Bryce laid the gun on the table. He finally made eye contact with me.

  “I knew you were keeping something from me. You said you had a drop. Bryce, tell me that that is the truth, because I don’t believe you for shit!”

  Bryce didn’t respond. He just looked away. Percy was tight-lipped as well and looked at Bryce, refusing to make eye contact with me.

  My suspicions were mounting, so I asked, “You guys are going to kill Giovanni, aren’t you?”

  Silence was the response I got.

  Percy stood to his feet and walked toward me. Although I kept my eyes locked on Bryce, who wasn’t looking at me, I felt Percy brush past me.

  “Come on, Hog,” Percy said.

  “Bryce!” I yelled. “Answer me!”

  Bryce shoved the table back and stood to his feet. “Yeah, and what you care for? Why are you concerned if I do plan on killing him? I mean, after what he did to you and to my family, Giselle, you should be happy!” He narrowed his eyes at me. “But you’re not!”

  “Baby, listen to me. You have no reason! No reason at all to feel jealous about Giovanni. I hate him. I love you! I want to be with you. But this is just too much. Like you told me before, this has gone too far already. We don’t need any more bloodshed. No one else needs to die.” I bit my lip before saying what my deepest fear was. I didn’t want to say it, but I did. “Because what if the person that dies is you?”

  He looked so insulted. Like I was saying he was a weaker man than Giovanni.

  “I’m not saying Giovanni is a better man. He’s not. Not by far. Despite your mistakes, they can’t possibly add up to the ugliness of that man. But ... I just don’t think you can beat him.”

  “Giselle.”

  “Let’s just go away, like you said. Let’s just leave!”

  “Giselle, I want this to be over, too. But this needs to be done. Do you know that I beat myself up every day for sending you back to him? I let my fear force me to do it, when all along I should have just deleted that fool and been done with it. But I thought he was more powerful than I was, instead of just taking my chances. I feel so stupid, because I could have lost you and my baby.”

  “But you didn’t. I’m still here.”

  He took a deep breath. “You are just going to have to trust me.”

  “Bryce, don’t do this. Leave the shit alone. Promise me you will.”

  I bit my bottom lip, felt the tears. Waited. And nothing. He refused to budge.

  That was when I crumbled to the floor, sobbing, because I knew. I knew deep down there was nothing I could do or even say that would stop Bryce from doing what he had made his mind up to do.
/>   Bryce rushed over to me, picked me up, and held me in his arms. “Stop crying, baby.”

  I buried my face in his neck. “I’m tired,” I said between sobs. “So tired. I want this to be over.”

  He carried me back to our bedroom, saying, “It will be.”

  I woke up to Bryce’s arms around me. I snuggled in his arms, taking a deep breath. The truth was, I didn’t know how long I had been asleep or even if Bryce had left me again.

  So I turned over in his arms and asked, “What time is it?”

  “Five in the morning.”

  “Oh. Did you?”

  “No. I just told Percy and Hog it was on hold. So they went over to some strip club to have some drinks and chill. Niggas still ain’t back yet.”

  I snuggled closer at that.

  “But it’s still going down, so I don’t want to talk about it. You just shut it down momentarily.”

  I yanked myself away from him, but he pulled me back into his arms. Why didn’t he get it? What if he wasn’t able to kill Giovanni? What if he got killed instead? I loved Bryce, really loved him. And what if I lost him?

  “Baby? Baby?”

  I wouldn’t respond. I was too busy crying again, thinking about Giovanni killing him.

  He chuckled, released me, and said, “I need to go take a piss.”

  I wiped the tears off my face with balled fists and watched him walk to the door.

  Bryce opened the door, then turned back and looked at me. “I love you.”

  As he said this, I gasped as I saw something poke through the crack in the door. The more the door opened, the more I realized what it was.

  “Bryce!”

  But it was too late. By the time he turned around, a man had taken the butt of his weapon and bashed Bryce with the weight of it. I screamed as blood gushed out of his head and he went down. Next thing I knew, three more men rushed into the room with guns drawn. They all rushed Bryce and started beating him with fists, feet, and their guns. I screamed at the top of my lungs, hoping to alert someone. All that did was get the attention of one of the men. He came toward me with his gun aimed at my head.

  “Bitch, shut the fuck up before I bust you in yo’ muthafucking mouth.” He kept his gun aimed at me.

  I looked at Bryce and watched them continue to whip on him. One of the men was stomping him. Another took his gun and slammed it down on Bryce’s head. I saw blood splatter on the carpet and on their shoes. I stood by, helpless, unable to help him as they beat him damn near to death. The way Giovanni was beaten when I was taken. When his body was limp and he wasn’t moving at all, they stopped. My heart pounded as I bawled. Was he dead? I told myself no. I forced myself to believe he had just been knocked out. That was it. The three men snatched Bryce up and carried him out of the room.

  The man with the gun on me grabbed me roughly, yelling, “Come on, bitch!” and pulled me after the other men and Bryce. Percy and Hog were lucky to have left the house. Not us.

  Bryce was tossed into a huge black van, and I was forced into another black van. The men scattered to both the vans, but the one who had aimed a gun at me rode in the van I was forced into. I feared that these men had been sent by my husband. If they were taking me to my husband, I knew Bryce and I were going to die. I just knew it. And despite the fact that the man with the gun pointed at me had told me earlier to shut the fuck up, I couldn’t stop crying.

  Then he said, “Yo. What the fuck I tell you?”

  The butt of his gun slammed into my temple. I was no longer crying, or doing anything, for that matter, because I was out.

  Chapter 25

  Okay. Here I was, back in a place I so did not want to be. And ... just the mere thought of what was to come almost caused me to piss on myself.

  I sat in a corner of the room, cowering and shaking, while my husband sat on a couch and stared at me. We were in the studio of the mansion, on the main set. I knew that no matter how much I screamed, no one would hear me. The studio was soundproof.

  “So you decided to come home. No. Wait. You didn’t come home. I found you. I told you this before, Giselle. Having money buys you all the information you need. You are stupid, and you insulted my intelligence by assuming I would not find you and that lousy hoodlum motherfucker.” My husband gave a cold laugh. Before I could respond or beg for my life, which was what I wanted to do, my husband stood, came toward me, and gave me a hard punch in my face.

  He held me by my hair and punched me in my face repeatedly. Then he took my head and slammed it against the wall. My head started pounding, but Giovanni didn’t seem to care. He continued his assault, beating the fuck out of me. At one point, he punched me in my mouth so hard, I ended up spitting out blood, and I could feel where another one of my teeth was so loose, it was barely hanging on to a piece of my gum.

  The men that had taken Bryce and me were standing around, laughing at me getting attacked. These were Giovanni’s goons.

  Despite my trying to get away, Giovanni continued to beat me. He was pulling plugs of my hair out of my head. One of my eyes was sealed shut, and both of my lips were busted. My nose started to bleed from a punch he had landed. Now he was kicking me all over as I lay curled up on the floor. All of my soft body parts were slammed into by his hard shoe. I screamed from the pain of it. But he continued until I was trying to slide my body away, because I was too weak to crawl or walk. All that did was make him angrier, and he continued beating me.

  “Bring them in here.”

  The four men walked toward one of the filming rooms and went inside. Two of them brought Bryce out. I expected that. I knew they had him. They shoved him in a chair and shackled his wrists and feet with handcuffs. Damn. He couldn’t help me. But the sight of the next person the other two men pulled out caused me to moan loudly. It was my brother. Dear God, what have I done? I had risked his life in this.

  They shoved Brandon down to the floor. He was just as beat up as Bryce and I were. But they didn’t put him in handcuffs.

  “Here are the handcuff keys.” One of the goons tossed a set of keys to Giovanni. He placed them in one of his pockets.

  I looked back at Brandon. He was silent. And he looked scared, and there was nothing I could do about it. “Giselle!” he cried.

  “Brandon,” I sobbed.

  “Brandon, let me tell you something about your sister. She is a fucking ungrateful bitch who allowed another man”—Giovanni pulled a gun out of the waistband of his pants and aimed it at Bryce—“that man to not only fuck her, but also to impregnate her. After all of this, I offered to forgive her if she aborted the bastard growing inside her, and I was going to take her back. I really was. As my wife. But the dumb whore ran off again to fuck him! The man who kidnapped her.”

  My brother’s facial expression changed. Brandon stared Giovanni down like if he had a gun, he would shoot him.

  “And, unfortunately, you are going to have to pay for her sins,” Giovanni added.

  My body grew numb. My mouth started moving, but not one sound came out. All I could hear was my own heartbeat. I ignored my pain. I rushed toward Giovanni, flung myself onto him as he aimed his gun at my brother, who dropped to his knees and had his hands up, begging him not to shoot him. Giovanni slapped me, causing me to fly back and drop to the floor. Bryce made a move, but three guns were aimed at him, and plus, he was shackled. I sprang to my feet again and ran in front of the gun to shield my brother. I could still hear only my own heartbeat ... even though I was begging Giovanni. One of his goons snatched me up, dragged me away. I fought him with all the might in me. I punched him, bit one of his hands, and managed to escape.

  I raced toward Giovanni to snatch away the gun and could feel my feet making progress. I had only a few more steps to take when I was grabbed from behind. My feet could no longer feel the floor, as they were in the air as I was being carried back. My arms shot out in front of me, and I continued to beg. That was when I heard it. The bullets going from my husband’s gun into my little brother’s bod
y. Three of them. Each one felt like it was going into my body. I dug my fingers into my scalp and screamed at the top of my lungs as my brother’s body jerked back and forth with the force of the bullets before he went down.

  “Brandon!”

  His body twitched.

  I struggled to get away, but my captor held me in a full nelson.

  “Brandon!”

  I collapsed backward into the man’s arms and cried loudly.

  My heart was crushed. My brother was gone.

  That was when I heard more gunshots ring out in the room. I looked up as two men came from nowhere. When the cloud of smoke momentarily cleared around their faces, I saw it was Percy and Hog. The guy holding me shoved me away and returned gunfire. I dropped to the floor, and all the men in the room, including Giovanni, were now firing at Percy and Hog. I rushed over to my brother and dragged his body to a corner of the room.

  His eyes were cold and lifeless, the same way Lexi’s were, which told me he was dead. Bullets whizzed past me, hitting walls and shattering windows. I watched one of Giovanni’s men go down. I covered my head with my hands and stayed on my knees as more bullets flooded the room. Hog rushed farther into a room, firing like crazy at Giovanni’s goons. Another one went down.

  Giovanni’s other two men and Giovanni fired back more fiercely. One of Giovanni’s bullets hit Hog in his knee. He remained standing, even though blood gushed from it. Percy took another of the goons down, while at the same time Giovanni’s last goon concentrated on firing at Hog. He continued to fire a stream of bullets into him, and Hog’s body rocked back and forth with the impact.

  A look of rage came over Percy’s face. “Muthafucka!” He started firing like crazy at the last goon.

  Giovanni ran and ducked behind a chair.

  Two of the bullets connected with the goon’s arm, making him drop his gun. It skidded on the floor and stopped a few inches from my brother. Another bullet got him in his leg. He spun around in a circle before falling to the floor.

  “You punk bitch!” Percy kept firing and walking toward the goon. The bullets continued to hit him. The goon was laid out flat, and Percy was still firing bullets into him.