“Good,” said Paddy.
“But just beat her up like I beat up my old lady, right?”
“Right. Don’t kill her ass. But beat it really good.”
Hector smiled. “I can do that all day long,” he said, and got out of the SUV.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kari stopped her car at the curb, in front of the small Apple Valley home, and got out with her cell phone and keys in her hand. When she walked across the small patch of grass and then up to the front door, she knocked several times.
When Dezzamaine Mills finally came to the door and opened it, Kari couldn’t believe what she was seeing. When she stepped inside, and Dez closed the door behind her, she realized it was no mirage.
And Kari’s heart sank. “Dez,” she said with agony in her voice. “What happened?”
Dezzamaine stood before her boss with tears in her swollen eyes. Her face and lips were swollen and badly bruised too. Blood was weeping from the cuts on her face. “You didn’t have to come over here.”
“He did this to you?” Kari asked.
Dez didn’t respond. But when the tears turned into sobbing, Kari quickly pulled Dez into her arms. She was her employee, but she saw her as a friend too.
“He never went this far before,” Dez said as she cried in Kari’s arms. She was far bigger than Kari, and blood from her cuts were dripping down on Kari’s blazer, but Kari didn’t care.
But Dez cared. She pulled back from Kari’s embrace and began dabbing her cuts with the already bloody wash cloth she held in her hand. “That’s why I’m so upset,” she said. “He never went this far.” Then she began heading for the bathroom down the hall.
Kari followed her. She wanted to remind Dez that domestic violence usually escalated from minor to major. Sometimes quickly. Sometimes over years. Dez’s boyfriend’s escalation, apparently, had happened over years.
But Kari didn’t go there. She’d been in an abusive relationship herself. What was she going to tell her? To leave? To get out while she could? It would be like telling a mama to abandon her baby, because that was the kind of conflicted pain Dez felt. Kari had once been in that same kind of pain. She eventually got out, when her ex-boyfriend tried to beat Jordan’s ass. That was Kari’s rock bottom, although she also knew she’d stayed much too long to begin with. Dez had to get to that point on her own. She had to decide what was her own rock bottom.
“I’m so ashamed,” Dez said as she stood at the bathroom sink and continued to dab her bruised face.
Kari decided against lecturing Dez because she knew Dez was a smart girl. Dez knew this wasn’t normal. Kari just needed to see if this change in how he abused her meant Dez was also ready to make a change. “Where is he now?” Kari asked. In jail, she hoped.
“I don’t know,” Dez said, and her tears returned. “He left. He was so angry. I hope he doesn’t get himself into any trouble.”
“You mean other than the trouble he’s already in?” Kari asked. She couldn’t help it. Dez still loved that fool, and was worrying more about him than she was about herself! It was that same kind of warped thinking Kari once had. And it was debilitating.
“Did you call the cops?” Kari asked her.
Dez knew she should, as a look of shame appeared on her face. Then she shook her head. “No,” she said.
Kari wasn’t surprised. “Why not?” she asked.
“You know how the cops are when a Puerto Rican’s involved,” Dez said. “They might kill Hector. I can’t let that happen.”
Kari’s anger surged. Trying to tiptoe around the obvious wasn’t working for her. “Hector can nearly kill you,” she found herself saying, “but that’s alright? That’s perfectly fine? He can beat you down like you’re some dude, and that’s okay too? Just as long as the cops don’t harm him. Right?”
“Right,” Dez said.
“Child please!” Kari said. “That’s not right, Dezzamaine. And it will never be right. Look at your face! No sunglasses are going to cover that shit up. Not all that. And you’re worried about what the cops might do to Hector?”
Dez stopped dabbing her face, slumped against the sink, and looked at Kari. “Look, I know it’s stupid. I’m the girl who used to go around criticizing other females for letting some man lay his hands on them. But Hector isn’t just some man, Miss G. Hector is my man. The only man I’ve ever loved. And he’s been my man, off and on, for a long time. And yeah, he hits me sometimes. He knocks me down a time or two. But I’m not innocent either. He doesn’t like it when I give him lip.”
Kari shook her head. It was such a classic abuse excuse she couldn’t see how a smart woman like Dez didn’t see it herself. Even when Vito was emotionally abusing Kari, she knew what his ass was doing. Her problem was that she let him do it. But Dez was letting Hector do it and was blaming herself because he was doing it! As if the fact that she spoke up for herself gave him permission to punch her.
“And I know you want me to get out of this relationship because you’re so strong and you got out of yours. But when you love somebody the way I love Hector, walking away just . . .”
“Just what, Dez?”
“Walking away ain’t happening, okay? Because we have too many good times together. He’s a good man, and he treats me right. He just gets mad sometimes.”
“My husband gets mad plenty times,” Kari shot back, “but he’s never once put a hand on me. Not once. That’s no excuse.”
“I’m not saying it’s an excuse. I know it’s not. But your situation ain’t like mine, and Mr. Drakos’s situation ain’t like Hector’s.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kari asked.
“Y’all got money. Me and Hector ain’t got shit. We ain’t never had it going on like that.”
“Now you need to quit,” Kari said. “You need to get the fuck out of here. When I was fifteen and on my own, and with a baby, I didn’t have shit either! What I had? All men wanted to do was use me, and that’s exactly what they did to me. I was a vagina to them, not a human being. And they treated me accordingly.”
Dez was staring at Kari.
“And yeah, I let some joker abuse me too,” Kari admitted. “He cheated on me and lied to me and all of that emotional abuse I let him put me through. But he never laid a hand on me. Because if he would have touched me like that, it would have been over. And he knew it. Think about it, Dez. If Hector loves you, why would he punch you? Think about that!”
Dezzamaine’s tears returned. Kari hadn’t helped. And she turned back around to the sink’s mirror, and continued dabbing at her wounds.
But just as Kari was about to continue talking, they heard the front door as if it had been kicked open, and then they heard Hector’s undeniable voice. “Where you at, bitch?” he yelled.
“He’s back,” Dez said with, to Kari’s shock, happiness in her eyes! And she ran out of the bathroom.
“Dez, wait!” Kari yelled after her. Didn’t she hear the man? He didn’t say honey, I’m home. He said where you at, bitch! And he said it angrily. Kari hurried up front, too.
But as soon as she made it to the end of the hall, she saw Hector Estrada, Dezzamaine’s boyfriend, lean back and punch the shit out of Dez, causing Dez to stumble.
“Tell me who he is?” Hector was screaming as he punched her. “Who is he, Dez? Who the dude is?”
Kari didn’t want to get involved. She knew Alex would want to beat her ass if he knew she was getting caught up in this madness. But he was going to kill Dez!
“Leave her alone!” Kari yelled. “What are you doing?”
Hector turned when he saw Kari. And he frowned. He was ready to do exactly what Paddy told him to do. “Bitch, what you doing in my house?” he angrily asked her. “You’re the reason we got these problems. Ever since you promoted her to manager of that sorry-ass maid service of yours, she’s been acting like she’s some big shot. And you have the nerve to tell me what to do in my house?”
He began moving toward Kari. But Dez jumped in fro
nt of him. “Leave her alone, Hector!” she yelled. “She was just checking on me.”
“Fuck her!” Hector yelled. “I’m gonna show that bitch who’s the real boss around here!” And he pushed Dez aside, causing her to fall against the sofa.
Then he hurried for Kari.
But Kari was no Dezzamaine. Back in Chicago, when she lived with her drug dealing boyfriend, they called her Krazy Kari for a reason. You hit her, she hit you back.
Dez was screaming for him to leave Kari alone, but Hector kept coming for Kari. And as soon as he made it up to her, all Kari saw was red.
Before he could lay a hand on her, Kari grabbed the first thing near her, a big fat potted plant, and slammed the concrete pot upside Hector’s head. And it was Hector, this time, who stumbled backwards.
Dez couldn’t believe it. She’d never seen anybody, man or woman, hit Hector.
But Kari wasn’t finished with him. As he was stumbling, she grabbed another plant pot and slammed it against his head again. This time, he fell to his knees, bleeding. Then Kari grabbed the broom against the wall, and beat him with the handle. She beat him so hard he started cowering on his knees, covering his head. “Stop her!” he was yelling. “Tell this bitch to stop, Dez! Tell her to stop!”
But Dez didn’t say a word. It was like a lightbulb moment for her. If she would have reacted the crazy way Kari was acting the first time he laid a hand on her, maybe it would have been the last time. Maybe it would have never gotten to this time!
“Wanna hit somebody?” Kari was yelling at Hector as she beat him down. “Wanna beat on a lady? How does it feel, big man woman beater? How does it feel to have your ass beat by a woman?!”
And then she kicked Hector in the face with the heel of her shoe. She kicked him repeatedly. She kicked him so hard, and with all the force she could, that he fell over and out. Just like that. Little Kari had knocked the big man out.
But Kari didn’t rest on her laurels. She immediately hurried to Dez. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and grabbed Dez by the hand. She wasn’t waiting for her to object. She wasn’t waiting for her to say no, what about Hector, or any other bullshit like that. Kari grabbed Dez and they took off out of that front door, across that small lawn, and into Kari’s car.
But as soon as they got into the car, and Kari began speeding off, Dez looked back at her house, and then at Kari. “What about Hector?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you what about Hector,” Kari said as she pressed her phone button. “911,” she said when the speaker came on.
“Dialing 911,” the voice said over the phone’s speaker.
“That’s what I think about Hector,” Kari said to Dez. And then proceeded to tell the 911 operator, once she came onto the line, just where they could find Mister Hector.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Alex was seated behind his desk at The Drakos, with his suit coat draped behind his chair, on the phone with his New York office. Toker de Bergeron, his hotel’s General Manager, walked in with a tall black woman by his side. When he realized the boss was on the phone, he hesitated. But Alex waved them on in.
“I’m not crazy about it, Matt,” he was saying over the phone. “But not just that. Their Lipper Average too. Their competitors are kicking the shit out of them. I expected a better performance index than what I’ve been reviewing. Right. At least that.”
Alex listened.
“Could be clerical errors,” he continued after listening. “That could very well be the explanation. You might be right. But I’m not taking that risk. For them to give us the average they gave us, they had to have included passive indices that made them look better on paper. And it wasn’t a slight difference either. I’m not investing in a paper tiger. I want the real thing. Especially at that price.”
He listened for a long minute. Toker and the woman beside him, a new hire named Leslie “Lee” McCrae, had walked up to the desk and were standing in front of it. Lee was so nervous she could barely focus. It was tough enough that she was going to be the youngest woman in the upper echelons of the hotel’s management, but being in the office of the man whose name the hotel bore was something to behold. Reading about Alexander Drakos, and then seeing him in person, was an intimidating experience.
He was physically big, for one thing. With his suit coat off, she could see that he was much bigger than he looked in photographs. And very gorgeous, too, with an aura of sexiness about him even as he sat behind a desk!
Not that she usually noticed things like that about her employers. She didn’t. She would never go down that road with anybody she worked for. But there was no denying the man had sex appeal. It was too hard for anybody, including a new hire like her, not to notice.
She also noticed how he leaned back in his chair and gave her an up and down assessing look as he listened on that phone. She’d read about his rep as “the billionaire playboy,” and wondered more than once if that was why she got the job at all.
It would be, without question, the most prestigious job she’d ever had, and she already wasn’t sure if she could handle it. But her father always taught her to take an opportunity by the horns, and never let go. And she lived by that creed. But she also lived by the creed that sleeping with the head man wasn’t ever going to be one of those opportunities.
“I want a complete audit,” Alex finally said into the phone. “No. No, that’s not enough. This time I want laterals and backgrounds, too, before I put my name on it. Right. Right. Okay, Matt, let me know,” he said, and then hung up the phone.
“Hope I’m not disturbing you, sir,” Toker said as he and Lee stood in front of the massive desk.
“No disturbance,” Alex said. And then he looked at Lee. Tall, gorgeous, very serious-looking person. She looked so serious, he thought, that it was nearly to a point of looking insecure to him. Who was this? “Hi,” he said to her.
“Hello, sir.” No smile. All business. A new employee attempting to appear big enough to fit whatever job Toker was angling to put her in, if Alex had to guess.
“I dropped by,” Toker said, “to introduce you to your new Head of Hotel Security, Leslie McCrae. But everybody calls her Lee. Lee, meet Mr. Drakos.”
“Very nice to meet you, Mr. Drakos,” Lee said.
But Alex was staring at her. His hotel’s security was very important to him. His family was living upstairs, in the penthouse, until he decided if they would make Apple Valley their permanent residence, or if they would move to his home in New York. He, in fact, halted construction of their new home in Apple Valley until he made a final decision.
But while they were staying at the hotel, he needed to make sure Toke had selected the right person for the job. And that her selection was based on her talent, not her tail. “How long have you been in the security field?” he asked her.
“Six years, sir,” she responded.
Just six years? Alex couldn’t believe it. Was this some joke? He needed a seasoned veteran with instincts, not some fucking kid! “How old are you?” he asked her.
“Twenty-seven, sir,” she said.
Toker, realizing the meet-and-greet wasn’t going so well, quickly interjected. “But, I might add, sir, she’s young, yes, but she’s considered by everyone she’s worked for to be a top-tier expert in the field. She’s worked for powerhouses too. I think she’ll bring that diverse, fresh perspective you said you wanted in this organization. Her instincts are spot on. Everybody who’s ever hired her told me so. That’s why I hired her.”
But Toker could tell the boss still wasn’t convinced. He was about to namedrop from her glowing resume, to prop her up in Alex’s eyes, but the office door opened again and another heavy weight hotel executive in Alex’s organization, Bob Michaels, peered in.
“Don’t mean to intrude, sir,” he said to Alex, “but we’ve got a domestic situation downstairs.”
Toker frowned. He was Bob’s supervisor. “Why are you bothering Mr. Drakos about something like that?” he asked him. “Didn’t I t
ell you and the other directors to bring your concerns to me first?”
“A domestic situation,” Bob said to Alex, ignoring Toker, “involving your wife, sir.”
“My wife?” Alex stood from his seat. “A domestic situation involving my wife?” He began hurrying from behind his desk, without bothering to grab his suit coat. “Where is she?”
“In the lobby,” Bob said as Alex hurried toward him. “She just arrived, sir.”
Alex’s heart was hammering as he tore out of his office, with Toker and Lee, along with Bob, hurrying behind him. They took the private elevator and made it downstairs swiftly.
Lee was surprised by Alex’s reaction. She knew he was a married man, but every article she ever read about him seemed to suggest it was just a marriage of convenience, or an open marriage. There was never any suggestion that he actually loved the woman.
But that look she saw on his face when he was told his wife was in some sort of trouble seemed to fly in the face of that assertion. Her father also taught her to find out who people were for herself, never based on what somebody else told her. Especially if they were feeding her negative information.
She kept her eyes on Alex Drakos.
Alex, with Bob, Lee, and Toker behind him, made it into the hotel’s lobby so fast that staffers immediately froze when they saw him hurrying by. They didn’t know what to make of the big man hurrying like that. They didn’t know what was happening, but for Alex Drakos to be that animated, and in that kind of rush, they knew something was going on.
But Alex’s fears weren’t immediately calmed. Because, when he made it into the lobby, he still didn’t see Kari. He looked around the bustling space, and looked around again, but there was no sign of her.
“Over there, sir,” Bob said, seeing her, and Alex turned to where he was pointing. When he saw Kari escorting some woman down the hall that led to one of the downstairs guest rooms, he hurried to her.
“Karena,” he said when he arrived at her side. Before she could turn to the sound of his voice, he took her by the arm and turned her himself. His face was frowned and concerned. “Are you alright?” he asked her before she could say a word. Bob had said she was involved in a domestic situation. Alex halfway expected to find her injured somehow. Although his face didn’t show it just yet, he was relieved to see that she looked flustered, but not injured.
Alex Drakos: For My Lover Page 8
