by Love Belvin
My shoulders dropped as I paid Jason a thorough inspection for the first time. He looked fitfully sleep but with blood draining from his head. I couldn’t believe it. There was a dead man mere yards away. Again and just like Damien. More than that, I’d killed him. My teeth began to chatter; I was so cold.
“Sadik!”
“Oh, shit,” Rory grumbled. “You need for us to go?”
She and Jamil began backing away immediately. I hated it.
“Oh, fuck you, Rory!” I shouted to the top of my lungs.
I despised the expectation of my weakness. But she was right: my body was humming in inappropriate excitement. It needed assuaging only one man could give. Nipples peaked, panties soaked, my heavy eyes found the target. Those kaleidoscopic-hues irises darkened in an instant. His full lips parted as his tongue swiped the inner lining of his bottom lip, back and forth.
“The best I can give you is the back of the car, Nalib. We have to call the cops.”
Ashamed, aroused, loved, and protected, I nodded my ascent.
Christmas Day Three Years Later
“Is that the last one?” Bilan asks as I press the adhesive bow on Sadik’s motorized toy Bentley coupe.
I know he’s going to love this one. He asked for a manual toy buggy, but his poppa had something better in mind.
“Yeah.” I sigh. “This is the last one.”
“You know you made a bad move with getting just one of those things, right?” Bilan stands back with a fist propped on her hip.
I shake my head, not agreeing. “Sadik is the oldest; he’s going to get different toys, Nalib. He’s about to be four years old.”
“But he’s also the big brother to a soon to be three-year-old who doesn’t understand they’re ten months apart. Asad wants whatever Sadik gets. You know this.”
I shake my head, not wanting to fight about this on Christmas morning. The kids will be awakening and down any moment now. It only took one, and the others would soon follow. That one is usually Asad Yasin Ellis. He’s the most rambunctious of the trio. He and his twin sister, Sadia Idil, have louder personalities than my firstborn. Those two are thick as thieves, though Asad trades in his twin for his big brother often. He admires Sadik…this soon in their lives.
My baby girl allows it, though. She’s smart and independent like her mother. We named Sadia after me and Bilan’s mother. Her name was Idil, which means perfect and complete, I was told. I thought that was an ideal vibe for our first daughter. It represents Bilan’s and my story, or at least how I felt about securing her in my world: perfect and complete.
“If Asad makes a big deal about it, I’ll order him one and have it delivered to the house. It’ll be there when we get back. We can surprise him with it,” I try to placate her concern and quickly move on.
Bilan crouches next to me; her chin is propped on her fist as she smirks. She shoulder bumps me. “You’ve been a parent long enough to know it’s going to be a miserable three days until that happens. There will be lots of screaming, crying, and fighting over this one object until we get home.”
She’s probably right, but I’m still anxious to see Sadik’s face when he opens this baby. We flew in late last night. Bilan and I had the last of our staff’s holiday engagements to attend. Julius invited us to the city’s holiday party, which was the last one we did before loading our kids and their Christmas toys onto the jet and flying out to Norden, California for the annual Ellis Christmas extravaganza.
We missed the Christmas Eve activities, something the kids complained about. They wanted to bake cookies and enjoy the caroling and storytelling in the sleigh Bilan arranged for the kids in the family. As we boarded, Sadik, Asad, and Sadia griped. Once settled in, they all knocked out right away, stretched out over each other like little logs with their mouths open. Mel, the flight attendant, made Bilan and me teas Taaliba has just returned to making. Our plan was to sleep the entire flight and not sleep when we landed until after breakfast. I wanted to celebrate Christmas morning with a twist once we were done with the children and our family.
“Did you decide on what to do with Sadia’s kitchen set?” I ask Bilan.
“Yeah. I had Camille set it up. NeNe is going to want to play with her. It’s over there.” She points across the expansive living room made of all wood with floor-to-ceiling windows giving a view to the snowy grounds outside. “I got NeNe the same one, but hers is boxed and wrapped so Monica can easily ship it back East.” She yawns. “I’m so excited to see their little faces.”
My brows meet. “You’re not getting sleepy on me, are you?”
“Are you kidding me?” She shakes her head. “Awwww, hecks nah! I’m looking forward to my Christmas treat.”
We laugh, and hard. The hecks nah phrase was one of many authored by Asad. Like I said, his little personality is loud. We never know what’s coming out of that little mouth next.
I glance around at our handiwork. The gifts for the children are color-coded. It was something Taaliba came up with a couple of years ago to keep the kids from opening the wrong gifts. There were a lot of damn gifts.
Bilan hums next to me, checking her phone for the time. “We got it done just in time. You see the sun coming up over there?” She points again. “It’s almost showtime!”
I’m lost in her contentment immediately. Small events like the moment we’ve just shared over our son, something we created together, cast me in a trance. Bilan catches me after she fingers her hair. Her smile reappears and deepens.
She turns for me, pushing her arms to encase my waist. “What are you thinking about, S.Q.E., the first?”
“How so mine you are,” I answer honestly.
Bilan had been a series of metamorphoses since the first time I made love to her. After that trip to Costa Rica, her dog died and I forced her to live with me. She ran to Macen Beach soon after that and when she returned, Bilan was stronger, though she didn’t realize it. She survived my brother putting our son at risk and shooting himself in our home. Even after that, Bilan covered my family during one of our darkest periods in history. She took command when my parents were down and I was selfishly upset and in my feelings. And then, she killed a man; someone she thought to be a friend.
After shooting Jason, Bilan spiraled emotionally. She became so distraught, we endured countless trips to the emergency room and doctor’s office for the twins. She was put on bedrest two weeks after he died. We were in the papers for over a year, thanks to our surname. The Ellises weren’t new to headlines, and Bilan now being one was treated no differently. The police took their time investigating the incident. They wanted the wait to be painful, and for Bilan, it had been. She wanted to apologize to his parents, something my mother adamantly opposed.
Jason was wrong. He’d stalked her with the intention of killing Bilan that day. He had three guns in his car on our property. There was an internal campaign to prosecute both of us. However, my team of bad-ass attorneys argued I was well within my right to protect Bilan with the rope because Jason had brandished a gun at that point. And Bilan was well within her rights to shoot him because he’d fired several shots in the air. The only issue was the gun was registered to me and not Bilan. My lawyers were able to have that charge dismissed, too, just around Sadik’s first birthday. It had truly been a long road.
Bilan’s hands snake up to the wings of my back, her tits pushing into my chest. “I better be. I had a dream last night.”
My head reclines and eyes close. “Oh, shit.”
“What?”
“When you dream, I pay attention. Remember the one you had almost four years ago about the goral?”
Her eyes loll left to right above her head. “Oh, yeah. The goat.”
“Mmmhmmmm.” I nod. “It was a Russian goat. You said it was circling the family while they held in a tight circle.”
She murmurs, eyes now low. “Yeah. I remember the dream started off with Jason leading me somewhere. We were running and when I saw the family, I stopped. He kep
t going while laughing, or something like that.”
That’s news to me. Bilan didn’t share that detail with me back then. I would recall.
“That’s a striking feature of the dream, now that you mention it.”
“How so?”
“Well, months after that dream, I came to the conclusion the goral represented Popov.”
“Ah…” I can tell she recalls. “Feodor Popov. How can I ever forget him? He was the reason our family was on that travel restriction. Ugh!” Her eyes roll. “I’ll never forget that. We were all miserable.”
And he’s dead. Has been for over three years now. Kolwaski kept his word and Popov was dead the day after our deal was settled. The morning after he was electrocuted in a hot tub at one of his underground sex clubs, my father, Danny, and I were invited to see his body. My father and I shot up his corpse, not leaving a stone unturned. That was the last formidable opponent my father’s had. A nightmare ended.
“But for the most part, together. I remember that being the time you showed how Ellis blood ran through your veins. You took control while the family was under siege…with everybody.”
It’s true. Since that summer, my parents have been together exclusively. Diane ended up in Texas with a new sugar daddy. Tom got engaged to Ebony, the former councilwoman in Paterson, two years ago. They’re expecting their first baby soon. And Nena had a son with the guy she left my father for. He’s an investment broker who helped her launch a fashion line. She seems to be doing far better than she would have with my father. He wasn’t a partner she needed, only a sponsor. I’ve learned in my own marriage, partnership can take you faster and further than any other dynamic in a romantic relationship. That’s what my parents have, and my father’s physical health as well as my mother’s mental have both improved since.
“You guys made me respect you, then admire you, and left me disappointed,” Bilan shares as the sun is dawning. “I was so scared of this piece of concrete called the Ellises being reduced to liquid. I’d just had my first baby and was pregnant again. I needed you guys strong for my kids.” She kisses the tip of my nose. “For me.”
Bilan has stepped up in a way I didn’t know my family needed. She’s totally taken a load off my mother’s shoulders in keeping the family and business together. Now with a master’s degree and the necessary certifications, Bilan is the CEO of Ellis Academy, a role she still claims she never wanted. She probably didn’t because of how villainized she felt after Jason’s murder. The academy has been a long-standing institution in the state. Even the acceptance of that role was highly publicized. Bilan spent months in the paper about that, too. So many argued nepotism and having a murderer working that closely to children. She’s stepped up despite it all and has been instrumental in re-wiring the curriculum to include a balanced presence of technology, and she’s introduced a solid mentoring program.
She’s also been at my mother’s side, planning family vacations and gatherings. It was she who found this secluded, eleven-bedroom cabin home with mountain views. She planned the activities for the children, although we wouldn’t be here.
So when I gaze into her eyes, completely enamored by those freckles on her chiseled cheeks, my chest tightens with gratitude. It’s a sensation hard to explain with mere words, so I drop my mouth to hers and try it that way.
“Oh, shit.” Taaliba holds my nephew on her hip at the entrance of the room. “Ealy, I thought we’d sneak in a few pictures near the tree before your cousins awake, but your uncle and auntie want to pervert the scenery.
“Not yet,” Bilan murmurs with her back to Taaliba so only I can hear.
I chuckle, humored by her annoyance of Taaliba.
“Morning, Leeba. How’s my nephew this morning?”
She takes down the step as she sighs. “He may only be fifteen months, but I’m starting to think he gets the Christmas excitement,” she explains on her way down to us. “This joker had me up at four-forty, saying he was hungry.” She rolls her eyes while passing Ealy off to Bilan’s outstretched arms.
She watches as Bilan sings to Ealy and his face lights up. He’s our only nephew, so we get to spoil him the way Sadik had been spoiled before the twins. In fact, Sadik still gets spoiled by my father. But I understood the gleam in my sister’s eyes as she watched her only child smile. Taaliba had been completely enthralled with motherhood and in love with my nephew. Being a mother has made her more responsible, but she’s still as indecisive as she was as a child.
“You’re the only person he woke up?” Danny asks from the entryway.
Taaliba’s beam falls and she rolls her eyes. “But who got up with him, changed him, and brought him down to the kitchen to eat?”
“Who provided the seed, Leeb?” Danny uses that line often, talking his shit.
I didn’t mind; it was the same energy I kept about my children. But Danny isn’t me and likely would never be.
“Buenos días, señora Ellis,” he greets Bilan with a kiss on the cheek.
“Morning, Danny!” Bilan quickly returns her attention to Ealy.
“Good morning, Sadik.” Danny proffers his hand for a shake, to which I oblige.
“So you made it?” I ask.
“Yeah. Apparently before you guys did. It was late and everyone was asleep,” he answers, taking Taaliba’s side and pulling her into him at the waist. “And I mean everybody,” he murmurs close to her ear.
Taaliba rolls her eyes again as she laughs. “Maybe next year, you won’t be invited.”
“Wherever my little Lopez man is invited, so will I,” he explains at a higher volume and with a bite of conviction I understood, even if it did annoy the shit out of me.
“Boy, please!” she groans, unable to hide her smile. “I’ll go out and make another,” she threatens.
“All your babies’ll come from me, woman.” He pulls her into his side again, kissing her on the neck. “Don’t play.”
“You all can have your photoshoot,” I announce. “We’re done in here. Come on, Nalib. Let’s get you something to eat.” I hold my hand out for her as she’s passing Ealy over to his father.
Bilan accepts my hands and we stroll out of the dropdown living room for the hall.
“Another baby?” Bilan whispers? “By whom, Linda the herbalist?”
“Or Professor Porsha,” I agree.
Bilan snickers, dropping beneath my arm before straightening. “All these years together and a baby, and they’re still not married.”
“It’s Taaliba. She still hasn’t grown the fuck up.”
“And he’s miserable over it.”
“He allows it. Some shit I would never go for,” I declare, angry just thinking of it.
It was precisely why Danny Lopez could never fully earn my respect. He couldn’t walk the path of an “ultra-alpha,” a title Bilan still plasters on me. Having just my woman’s pussy won’t do. She had to be mine; heart, mind, body, and soul. Danny Lopez was sharing my sister’s pussy with other women, something I’d never tolerate. It sickens me now just as much as it did when I learned about it right after the twins were born.
“It’s deeper than you think, Sadik,” Bilan tries once again to defend Taaliba.
“Choose a side, Nalib,” I warn her as we turn for the kitchen, where the staff is laying out baked goods, fruit, coffee, and tea.
“I don’t have to, Sadik, and neither do you.” She rubs the side of my abdomen. “I feel your arm tensing around me and don’t like for you to be upset over what another adult does with their own life.”
I growl as we separate for the buffet table. Bilan makes herself Taaliba’s energy tea, something she’ll need soon. I settle for grapefruit juice. The moment we head for the table to sit, a series of pitter-patters sound.
Bilan’s face opens brightly. “They’re up!”
I check my phone for the time. It isn’t quite six yet. “And I bet they woke their cousins, too.”
I grab her hand to head back to the living room. Bilan’s anticipator
y giggles are joyous behind me. We’re almost knocked over by the herd of little people coming from an adjacent hallway. They’re laughing deliriously as they race for the living room. I count six heads. Ivana and Iesha are in the lead. NeNe and Iliza hold hands behind them. And trailing behind the pack is a blond afro and an orange braided head: Asad and Sadia hoot the loudest, ignoring us as they jet past.
So far, Sadik and Asad have their mother’s freckles, Sadik and Sadia have light-colored eyes, and Sadik and Asad have my mother’s blonde hair. Sadia’s hair is more of an orange so far, but Bilan says that can change.
“One’s missing,” I note.
“Where’s Sadik?” Bilan asks a tight-eyed Camille, who lunges behind them. Stacy and Lois, another nanny, are behind her.
Camille sighs exhaustedly. “You know that boy does nothing without his father and grandfather,” she shares in movement. “He’s with his Papa.”
I snort. That was my boy.
“Ready?” Bilan asks, beaming. She loves this shit as much as I do. “The sooner this is done, the sooner I’ll have my candy.” She winks, pulling me at the arm down the hall.
The kids are tearing into their respective wrapping papers as soon as Taaliba positions them in front of their spaces.
Monica steps into the room, pouting in her housecoat. “You girls couldn’t wake me up?”
“You were too sleepy, Mommy!” NeNe shouts before gasping at the pony she discovers with the last rip of wrapping paper.
“Yeah,” Monica murmurs. “Tired from wrapping all these damn gifts last night.
She walks over and greets Bilan. “Hey, sissy!” Bilan hugs her tightly.
Monica approaches me and I hug her with my free arm.
“Glad you two made it in on time. Were you able to wrap everything?” Bilan answers with a nod, her eyes on the kids. “Damn. And how were you able to get the gifts from the plane to the house without them knowing?”
“Rory and Johnson stayed back at the airport after we pulled off with the kids,” I share. “And brought them in while we were putting them down for the night.”
