King: Darker Than Romance

by Shantel Davis

  Again, he shoved the gun at me. I looked at it in his hands, so shiny and black.

  I felt numb. I wanted to shoot Ellis. I had dreamt of killing him. I had spent four years with him beating my ass, ridiculing and humiliating me.

  His parents had degraded me so badly when he told them I was the reason they didn’t have grandkids and it was not even my fault. He knew that and on top of it he was fucking my momma.

  I took the gun. It was heavy in my hand. I was almost mesmerized by the feel of it. Ellis was talking but I couldn’t hear him, only the blood rushing into my ears. Without even aiming for any spot in particular, I pointed the gun at him. I felt nothing when I pulled the trigger, nothing happened. I pulled the trigger again, nothing happened. Again, and still nothing. I yelled. I reared back to throw the gun at him. King took it from my hand. I turned to find a satisfying smirk on his face. I knew then he had only been testing me. “You fucking asshole” I shoved him with all my might but, he barely budged.

  Before I could stop myself, I slapped him. King stepped back out of my reach, so I couldn’t do it again. He raised his hand to his bleeding lip, brought it down to observe the blood.

  “You hit me.” He smiled. “Seems like you’re feeling more like your old self. Good.” He laughed as if my fucked-up life and heartache was a joke.

  My mouth opened then shut, then opened again. “The moment I start trying to trust you again I find you’re still the same old King. I fucking hate you for these mind games you play.”

  His nostrils flared. I could feel his anger, like a brush against my skin. He raised his hand. I flinched because I knew he was tempted to snatch me up, he dropped his hand quickly.

  “I told you not to say that ever again, “he hissed through clenched teeth. “But I know you don’t hate me,” he said. His frown turned into a smug smile. “You’re upset. But did you think I would really let you kill him, so he could rent space in your head for the rest of our lives?” He cooked his head and stared at me lovingly. “I just needed you to be willing to do it.”

  I just stared at him wide-eyed.

  He was certifiable.

  “You’re too fucking smug for you own fucking good.”

  In the same moment I was considering slapping King again Ellis decided to make a run for it. Out of my peripheral I saw him stand. The chair fell, his large frame barreled towards the door. King moved so fast it seemed as if the gun he’d pulled from his back materialized from thin air. For a minute my heart stopped beating.

  The gun didn’t explode like I thought it would, just made a pew, pew sound. Before Ellis made it halfway to the door, he was hit with two bullets directly to the chest. I’m almost positive he was dead before he hit the floor.

  I tried to stay calm as my eyes met his slumped form. He wasn’t moving and he was bleeding so profusely that a bloody puddle quickly formed around him. My stomach dropped. Ellis was dead? I didn’t feel bad, just shocked.

  In the next moment my momma walked in the kitchen. She dropped the cup she’d been holding and freaked out. “What did you do?” Momma’s bottom lip quivered, her shoulders jerked as she broke out in sobs. She shoved King out of her path and headed straight for Ellis. “Why?” she cried, leaning over him. “You weren’t supposed to hurt him. You told me if I got him here, you wouldn’t hurt him,” she roared hysterically. She got down on the floor on her hands and knees. She lifted Ellis’ head into her lap, cradled him lovingly and started rocking him. I felt cold, like I was trapped in a frozen wasteland.

  It was surreal watching it all unfold. Was I still asleep? Was this my hell? I felt as if everything was unreal

  “What are you doing? Get up!” I yelled at Momma. She went silent. She snatched her head up in my direction.

  “This is your fault.” Her contempt for me rolled off her in waves.

  Astonished, I pointed to myself. “My fault? How Mother? I didn’t shoot his ass.” The fact that I’d tried didn’t really matter at this point.

  “It’s your fault. Because of you that fucking maniac ruins everything.”

  I turned to King. The self-satisfied look was back on his face, but he simply shrugged.

  “Tell her,” she yelled at him.

  “Because of you he killed my husband, and now the only person I ever loved.” she said before King even got a chance to open his mouth

  “James? He left you. That’s what you told me.”

  King laughed and drummed his fingers on the table. He was acting so casual about the fact that he’d just killed somebody. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that.

  Momma glared at him.

  “Your mother is so dramatic.” He shook his head ruefully. “I didn’t kill him. We argued. He fell down the stairs and broke his neck. She didn’t care. She’s been enjoying the fruits of his death and fucking your husband for the past three years with nary a fucking tear. Now it’s, ‘Blah, Blah, Blah.’ She’s heartbroken and it’s everybody else’s fault.” King rolled his eyes.

  “She only acts as if she cares now because her little fuck toy is dead.”

  “We have five minutes until my crew comes to clean this mess up,” he said waving his hand in the direction of Ellis. Momma was staring down at his body, stroking his hair like she’d lost her mind. “I’ll tell you what led up to my father’s death. Do with it what you may.” He took a deep breath like he planned to tell me everything in five minutes or less.

  “Your mother,” He pointed to her. “Tried to bargain your pussy to my father.” He pointed at himself, “so he’d stayed and take care of her. Why do you think she took Spellman away from you? She wanted you here. James got an upgrade and she got to continue living in the lap of luxury. Haven’t you ever asked yourself why James would leave his house, his cars and his bank account for her if he had simply left?”

  I hadn’t. My head started pounding.

  “I’m confused. Make this shit make sense.” I turned to King. “She said you told her that I was the reason for James leaving. She’s the reason I had to move in with Ellis.”

  King’s head snapped in her direction. He answered me but glared at Momma

  “Why would I do that? Why would I make it easy for him to have what’s mine? I suspect Mommy Dearest just wanted you gone.” he said.

  “You’re damn right I did,” Momma yelled. “I was free from your limp dick daddy, from her whiny ass. I finally had everything. The money, the house, the cars. Then you fucked it up.” She glared hard at King, while pointing at him. “I now understand why your father used to call you the fuck up. You pushed her and Ellis together when you went to prison. I lost him. He wouldn’t even talk to me for a year. Not until I told him about the phone calls and visits.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Momma shook her head in disgust.

  “Heathens, the both of you. You two only deserved each other. I knew you two had been fucking.” She faced me again. “Your bed sheets reeked of him. He wasn’t trying to hide it either. Coming out of your room in the middle of the night smelling like sex. You didn’t deserve my Ellis.”

  King chuckled as if he was proud of himself.

  She sneered at him “I bet it was your bastard she aborted, too.”

  If looks could kill Momma would have dropped dead right next to Ellis. King took a step in her direction just as the doorbell rang. He pointed the gun at her and growled. Yes, growled like an animal, before turning and storming from the kitchen. Ten seconds later he returned with two men and although we all had aged a few years, I recognized them as the men from the hotel on the night Ashley died.

  They didn’t acknowledge me or Momma. They stared at King as he gave instructions, then left through the garage door. I watched it all like you would watch a movie on TV, detached. When it came time to move Ellis, Momma freaked the fuck out. One guy pried her arms from around him while the other pulled him from her grip, then they got her sitting in a chair. One pulled zip-ties from out of bags I hadn’t noticed they were carrying; they zip t
ied Momma to a chair facing the table. She was nearly breaking her neck to see what they were doing. Ellis’s blood was all over her white short set and all over her face, it mixed in with her tears as she continued to cry.

  She must have really loved Ellis. I tried to think back to the times we’d all been in the room together. Had there been any looks of love, any affection? Nothing. They never gave anything away. Maybe they saved it all for the little clandestine lunch dates they had.

  I had a question, so I asked. “Why would you tell me to stay with him if you wanted him so badly?”

  Momma glared at me like she really hated me for just speaking to her.

  “If you could have gotten pregnant, we could have been together. He said as soon as you had the baby, we would be together. Your tainted womb ruined that.”

  I scoffed, then chuckled to keep from crying. I could have kept the truth to myself, but I wanted Momma to hurt so I told her. “Ellis had a vasectomy.”

  Momma sneered at me “Liar. You’re a got damn liar.”

  I shook my head. Our eyes connected. “That’s what the fight that brought me here was about. He blacked out when I confronted him about it.”

  Momma’s face fell.

  Feeling petty I decided to add to her pain. That’s all she’d ever done to me was think of herself. I was going to be selfish for once.

  “You know there were others, right? His secretary. Once a judge. A few of his momma’s friends, which I couldn’t understand at the time, but now I do. He liked them old.” I nodded. “Probably because y’all didn’t care that his dick couldn’t remain hard for longer than a few minutes. Y’all probably just liked fucking and sucking on some young dick.”

  My voice kept rising an octave with every word I spoke. “Did it make you feel good, Momma, fucking my husband behind my back? You thought he was really going to leave me for you? Did you think he didn’t want me because he was fucking you? Every night he came home and told me he loved me, damn near begged me to love him in return.”

  I didn’t give a fuck about Ellis. She could have had him. I was just so mad. I slammed my hand on the table. “Answer me.”

  “Fuck you,” Momma spat.

  Someone cleared their throat. In my rage I had become blind to what was going on around me. I hadn’t realized I’d been drawing closer and closer to Momma.

  One of King’s guys stared at me, waiting for something. He nodded towards my feet. I dropped my head and found myself standing in a pool of blood. It was cold.

  I whimpered. The blood from my veins rushed to my ears drowning out all sound around me. King rushed over to me; he sat his gun down. He lifted me into his arms, physically removing me from the blood, he sat me in a chair. He was talking but I couldn’t hear him. I just kept staring at the puddle and thinking, How could my own momma betray me?

  In the next moment there was another pew sound that woke me out of my daze. Momma was slumped over the chair with a bullet hole where her nose had been.

  King roared, drawing my attention to him. “What the fuck are y’all doing? Stop fucking pointing your guns at her.” Both men had stopped what they were doing and had their guns pointed directly at me.” King rushed both of them, shoving their hands down.

  Though his actions showed me differently. In my mind them pointing their guns at me meant that King had told them to point them at me.

  “You’re going to kill me too, King? You already killed my momma.”

  King’s face scrunched up. “Give me the gun, Eden. You’re not thinking straight.”

  I screamed, “What gun, King?”

  “The one you have in your hand. Baby, please.”

  I looked down. I was holding his gun at my side. I lifted it. I stared at it. I didn’t remember picking it up. It shook in my hand.

  “Eden.” King called my name, his tone heavy with worry. I looked up at him. His face was all distorted. “Give me the gun, Eden,” he coaxed. I raised it in his direction. “What are you, doing, Eden?”

  “All of this is your fault, King.”

  My conscious was screaming that it was partially my own. I’d begged him to ruin me even after he’d warned me.

  But the irrational part of me didn’t care. I aimed the gun at King’s heart, I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. I heard the pew, which was immediately followed by two bangs. I felt the burn of the bullets entering my chest. I hit the floor hard, my head banging against the tile. I didn’t even fear dying. I was just so fucking tired.

  Just as all the pain started to ebb away King called my name. My eyes flew open.

  Eden: Where it all began.

  “This is your chance to save yourself, Eden.”

  I raised my hand to my chest. My heart was pounding, but there was no pain or holes. I looked up at King, he was fine. I looked around the room, no Momma, no henchmen. I let out a heavy breath. I had imagined it all. Maybe foresight is twenty, twenty, or some cosmic being was giving me a way out of a bad future.

  “Tell me to leave.” King stared directly at me. His gaze heated my body.

  Whatever daydream or premonition I’d had was quickly forgotten. Even if I was one hundred percent sure what I saw would come to happen, I would still choose to do it. My need for him was thick and sticky, clinging to me like honey. I could feel it in my very being, like a visceral force. I shook my head. There was no way I was telling him to leave “I want this, I want you,” I said.

  He gave me a hard look. I could see the possessiveness in his penetrating glare. Something in me screamed for me to change my mind, but I couldn’t. I was too far gone.

  “No more Ken doll. No other men. Just me and you, Eden. Forever.”

  Epilogue

  King: Tatted Up Bullet Holes.

  2040

  My daughter Lilith threw her head back and laughed. “You keep telling me this story and I’m going to start believing it, Father.” She pushed herself away from the sink to turn and face me. I pulled the top of my shirt down, revealing to her the bullet hole we’d been talking about. Well, not exactly a bullet hole, a wound from where a bullet grazed me. Covering it was her mother’s name written in cursive. Her mother who sat across from me knew the routine, she pulled down her shirt revealing an actual bullet hole, right next to her heart, she had a crown tatted over it.

  I bit my lip as I stared at her. She was so beautiful. The years had been too kind to Eden. She and Lilith looked more like nearly identical twin sisters than mother and daughter. They both had their newly colored, red hair piled on top of their heads in messy buns. Lilith was just taller and slimmer than her mother and she had my eyes. She was the daughter I’d dreamt about.

  Eden rolled her eyes at me before speaking to our daughter. “I wish he would stop bringing this story up, every birthday it’s the same story.”

  I shook my head. I would never. After being shot in the chest, Eden didn’t wake up for nearly nine months. Going into labor brought her out of her coma.

  “It’s her birthday story, we tell the story on her birthday.”

  Lilith made her way to the table, she sat in the middle; she looked at me then my mother.

  “Y’all story might be easier to swallow if one of you told me why Mother shot you.”

  Eden waved in my direction. “Tell her.” She dared me.

  I shrugged. I didn’t care if she knew. I trusted her. She had more of me in her than her mother. She could handle the truth.

  “Granny and your mother’s first husband really didn’t die of Covid-19. I paid a medical examiner a lot of money to say they did, then I had them burned. I flushed their ashes down the toilet. I killed the husband; your mother killed her mother. Your mother shot me, because of all the fucked-up shit I did to her when we were younger, but she had her eyes closed when she did it, so the bullet only grazed me. My associates Warren and Jack, who are dead now shot her thinking they were protecting me. She died in my arms but was bought back by an EMT. You know for a fact that she was in a coma before you brought her o
ut, you can look that up. What you don’t know is that the first two years of your life she barely spoke a word to me. She only forgave me after I spent years groveling. She still won’t agree to marry me.” I paused to take a breath before continuing “I also had to pay for her to go to law school and play stay at home dad while she got her degree.” Eden had been practicing law for fifteen years, Lilith was following her footsteps.

  “She also told me once that she imagined everything that happened between us in the future, in book form, from both our points of view.”

  Eden blinked rapidly at me. She shook her head.

  Lilith mimicked her mother, then she stared at me hard for a moment “Something is wrong with you.” She said when she finally spoke.

  “She’s the one that says she had premonitions, but I’m the one you say this to. You wound me, daughter.” I teased, with my hand held over my heart dramatically.

  She turned to her mother, easily dismissing the truth she asked for and me. “Could you help me get ready for my birthday date?” She asked.

  Her momma smiled at her. “Yes, baby. Go get started. I want to have a word with your father.’ She cut her eyes at me.

  Lilith left the kitchen after rolling her eyes at me one final time.

  Eden just sat across the table staring at me in disbelief.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Really, Ashford?”

  “So, you’re mad I told her the truth?” I grinned.

  She shook her head one final time before getting up. “If she even starts to think what you said is true, it’s me and you. Remember, I know how to shoot a gun the right way now. My eyes won’t be closed next time.”

  I laughed, “You love me too much to shoot me again.”

  “I don’t love you anymore now than I did when I shot you the first time.” She said sassily as she walked out of the kitchen.

  The End.