by Tiana Laveen
“I don’t have any brothers and sisters.”
“I know…” She smiled and lowered her head. “Of course you do. What about your mother? Is she still living?”
“Yeah, my mom and I are quite close. We speak often. She’s still back home in Nevada. Harley checks in on her all the time and I help take care of her from afar. She’s not well.”
“Oh.” She ran her hand along the ball of her foot, massaging a budding cramp. She’d been sitting the same way for so long on the man’s bed, but she didn’t want to move just yet. She just wanted to be still, be a listening ear, ask questions, get to know him. “What’s going on with her?”
“She’s manic depressive and bi-polar.” He looked so tired all of a sudden, so weary. Was she imagining it? No, she wasn’t. “Everything is fine as long as she takes her medicine, but sometimes she forgets. My brother and I help remind her. She’s a good woman, has a real good heart, and she’s real smart, too. I mean…” He shook his head, as if amazed. “She was at the top of her class. Very shrewd woman; brilliant, actually. But her mind keeps playing tricks on her.”
“How long has she been this way?”
“For a long time, longer than we knew. She got the diagnosis when I was twenty-two, I believe. She’d gone to therapy and it came out she’d been sexually assaulted as a child. It wasn’t like it came out under hypnosis or anything, she just remembered, but the counselor told ’er it might help all of us if she told us what happened. We’d been through a lot with her—the mood swings, sometimes she’d lock herself in her bedroom for days on end and not eat. She didn’t know why; it was a crazy time. But the abuse, well, that was the catalyst to her mental breakdown. It was building up. At least she found out … better late than never, right?”
Tiffany wasn’t sure what to say. She dared herself to look him in the eyes, and now, she regretted asking…
He set me up. He knew what the hell he was doing.
She refused to speak for she wouldn’t be forced into this. Not right now!
Phoenix’s face was like stone, while his gaze tore into her soul. He didn’t appear depressed, or on the verge of tears; no, he looked like he wanted to pick something up and pound it to death.
A few moments of silence passed, then he spoke. “Tiffany, I read your journals. not just your records of your various business dealings and contacts… I read all of them.”
Fuck! Here we go…
“There were some interesting things in there.” She kept her head down, pressing a finger into her palm until she felt pain. “Have you told anyone about what happened to you, Tiffany?”
“No.” She slowly lifted her head and met his gaze.
“Why do you keep journals like that? You know, detailing all of your scores, people you know, incriminating stuff. Isn’t that one of the things criminals know not to do?” he asked in a teasing tone.
She shrugged. “Maybe one day, I wanted to be found out… This way I would.”
“I doubt that. I had to use a special tool to get into that thing, the one where the personal accounts of your life were written down. You kept that separate. You wanted someone to work hard to find out, maybe even give up. Not only that, you were too good at covering your tracks. A cat doesn’t cover its mess with litter for no reason.” They both laughed at that.
“When I gave you the location and lock code to the P.O. box to obtain the business journals, I didn’t think about the other ones I’d stored in there. I remembered after we’d already left Nevada and it … it terrified me that you had them.” She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself. “How the hell did you get it open? What is this special tool you used?”
He chuckled and closed his eyes, leaning his head back in the seat.
“Your criminal mind is always working, isn’t it? None of your business and always remember, I can get into just about anything.” He opened his eyes, cocked his head to the side, and smiled at her. “How old were you when it happened?” She took a deep breath, drew her knees up to her chin and stared into the fire.
“I presume you’re talking about book 3, the red and gold one, right?”
“Yes.”
“Twelve. I was twelve.”
“I asked you already if you’d told anyone and you said no. Were you afraid to tell somebody?”
“I honestly don’t know. I think because my parents trusted and liked him so much, I was more concerned about their feelings than my own. I was an only child; his daughter and I were best friends. I mean, we lived right next door to one another. And he was a boy in blue … a fucking cop. Lieutenant, to be exact.” Her stomach cramped with anxiety. “I hated cops after that. I hated men who looked like him … walked like him … sounded like him … smelled like him. To this day, I remember his scent. I hate certain soaps because of it. I started to act out after that, do stuff I had no business doing, say terrible things. My mother couldn’t wait to take my aunt up on her offer to have me stay with her for the summer. My father worked so much, he barely knew what was happening.” She guffawed, her typical reaction when she thought about her beaten and bruised heart.
“How did you hide the pregnancy, honey?” He ran his hand along the arm of the chair, his eyes warm and his tone loving. Kind.
“Wasn’t shit to hide. It didn’t last long. By the time I knew I was pregnant, the baby was gone. I’d lost it. I told him about the miscarriage—didn’t even know I was pregnant till it was too late, and I guess it scared him. He stopped messin’ with me after that. If I would’ve known that would be the way to make it stop, I would’ve lied and told him I was knocked up a long time before that. But it went on for almost a year, once or twice a week, like clockwork. He gave me money … hush money. He gave me jewelry, nice things. My parents took good care of me, but my allowance wasn’t that big. I loved all that money he gave me, Phoenix. I realized at that point, money was what made the world go ’round. You can roll around in money, naked and happy.” She smiled through eyes filled with tears. “You can toss it in the air like confetti, have an ol’ party all by your lonesome, but it doesn’t seem to take the burn of this fucked up world away, the pain of it all rubbin’ up against you, leavin’ you all raw and exposed, now does it? I needed to be somebody else. I needed to become a new Tiffany, ya see.” Her eyes narrowed on a blank wall as she fell into the misery of her memories. “One that could kick ass and take care of herself.” A tear streamed down her cheek.
“I wasn’t going to be no damn victim, some stupid little girl with no voice, some dumb bitch that just lay there and took it. I was alone, but the money was there, so I hid behind the cash. It was a good hidin’ place … and I could make more of it, and more of it, and then some more. All I had to do was use this brain to build my own green, dead president covered castle, surrounded by a gold and diamond fortress.”
Phoenix rubbed on his chin and regarded her, not in a judgmental sort of way, but with curiosity. As if they were working on a special project and he were simply jotting down notes, collecting information.
“Was he married?”
“He had a wife. She was pretty. Her name escapes me; it started with ‘B’, I believe. And they had two other kids, Devin and Whitley. They eventually moved away, to Indiana. That was for the best, because I was planning to kill him.” She rocked back and forth, her voice going monotone as she drowned in the movement of the flames. She hated the sound of her voice at that moment, but she couldn’t seem to help how the words rolled off her tongue. She’d divorced herself years ago from the emotions that experience pulled from her; it was better this way. The cold, harsh truth? She could acknowledge it, but she couldn’t quite stomach it.
“How did you plan to kill him?” Rather than invasive, she found Phoenix’s spitfire question style comforting. His tone was even, relaxed, same as how he played the guitar and sang the lyrics to that old song.
“Gable taught me how to shoot a gun before all of this happened. He let me borrow one of Aunt Shirley’s when I told him so
me story about being afraid of a bully at school. It was bullshit. I’d have said anything to get my hands on that gun. I couldn’t let it go, Phoenix. I needed him to suffer, not simply be able to walk away like that, to never pay for what he’d done to me.”
“There’s something about that, isn’t it? The uncontrollable desire to right a wrong.”
She nodded, knowing he was talking about John.
“I needed revenge more than I needed air to breathe. It was eating me up inside. At two in the mornin’ one day, I walked over to that house and waited for him to do his usual routine. He worked late on Thursdays and would come home around 2:15 a.m. I remember that clearly. I was waitin’ for him to get home, hiding in his bushes, but he never came home, Phoenix.”
“Where did he go?”
“Come to find out, he’d flown to Indiana early. He’d left the day before. He was gone. I was so angry … infuriated. I couldn’t send him on his way in style, in a big hearse. From that point on, I told myself I was going to do whatever I needed to do to survive. I hated my mama for not knowing something had happened to me. A part of me felt like she should have realized it. In retrospect though, I was really good at hiding stuff, including my emotions. I was going to stick it to my daddy for not protecting me. That man knew my father was never home, and he played on that. I hated my father, too. My parents never understood why I’d become such an angry child. Well,” she sighed, “there’s the reason and I was hellbent on getting everything in this world that I wanted. Fuck everybody else. Hell.” She shrugged. “Fuck myself, too.”
“Why did you blame yourself for this?”
“I hated myself for letting it go on for so long, for not knowing what to do.” She wiped a tear away. “Why did I care so much what people would think of me? It didn’t matter anymore; nothing mattered anymore.”
“You mattered, Tiffany.”
“I didn’t see myself anymore. I didn’t want to be that girl, the one that got raped. I didn’t want to be the girl who played guitar, made good grades but was ignored. I wanted to be accepted, to be distracted by something bigger and better than me. I wanted to prove myself! I wanted to be someone else.”
He stood to his feet, and just stayed there, as if glued to her every word. His eyes looked so gorgeous as the light from the fire hit them in just the right way.
“When you find out you’re good at something, even if it’s bad, Phoenix, you can get addicted to it. Each time I sold a kilo, each time I proved myself to a nonbeliever and climbed up the ranks, it was like euphoria. I was appreciated for my mind, not for what I had between my legs; but then I soon realized if I used them in conjunction, I could turn kings into jesters and warriors into punks.”
“You were finally getting even…” He cocked his head to the side and crossed his big, muscular arms over his chest.
“Yeah, but it still was never good enough. I came to realize a terrible thing about me over the years.”
“What was that?”
“If it wasn’t the drugs, Phoenix, it would’ve been something else. Maybe stealing cars, high stakes illegal gambling … anything to give me that adrenaline rush and outdo, outthink, and outfuck any man under the goddamn table.”
“You know, Tiffany, in my line of work, it’s not as common as some would think to find a drug dealer who isn’t also addicted to some sort of narcotic. That makes you even more intriguing to me, especially after what you’ve endured.”
“I didn’t want any China white or even weed to relax my nerves. None of that. I didn’t need no dragon to chase—keep that heroin white, right and tight, but out of sight, as I’d say. Heroin was selling like hot cakes, and it’s back in style as I am sure you already know. The high I needed came from that all mighty dollar, which promised to dull the pain. But like any other drug, the results were only temporary. Nevertheless, for a second or two, it gave me respect and power. Nobody would ever touch my fuckin’ body again unless I let them.” She waved her finger in his direction as her heart beat a mile a minute. “I was in control of this shit, you hear me? This was my pussy, my world. The money was hot, my soul was bought, and I thought I was God ’cause I never got caught…” Her eyes shimmered with a flood of warm tears until one fell, and then another. She didn’t dare look his way in that moment.
“And that’s when the music died…”
She smiled at his words, then broke out in a strained cackle, feeling like her very own soul was ablaze like the fire in front of them.
“I have no damn idea why I told you all of this. Oh yeah, you already knew. I wrote it, you read it.” She laughed again, this time sincerely amused.
“I hate that for you, knowing you have that insatiable thirst to make things right, to fix injustices that don’t follow your own set of rules, no matter how twisted others may think they are. It’s like a blood thirst, isn’t it?” He gave her a quizzical look and then, he blew her a kiss as he took several steps towards her. “You’re persistent … determined. You didn’t write this, so tell me, baby, what’s the end of that story?” He took her in his arms and she shook in his grasp, falling apart, hating her weakness, but loving his strength. With balled up fists pressed into his chest, she rested her forehead along his collarbone.
“I looked him up.” He hugged her tighter. “He’d done it to some other girls, too, but the charges didn’t stick. What would I have looked like walking away from that, huh? Maybe if I’d opened my mouth when it happened to me, they coulda been spared! Others suffered on account of me being a coward. I hate weaklings, Phoenix. It was too late to cry about it though, but it wasn’t too late to try again for that 2:15 a.m. visit.”
She raised her head and looked into his eyes.
“Tell Phoenix what you did, baby?”
Her lips curled in a pleased, all knowing grin.
“I took a road trip to Indiana. He won’t be fuckin’ no little girls no more. He’s six feet under, food for the maggots. He stole my black butterfly from me; innocence lost. All these years I’ve flittered around, wishing deep down I could get her back.”
“No need, baby. She’s been inside of you waiting all along…”
Phoenix leaned over the desk and placed various signed papers in the large white envelope. The President had just walked out of his office, leaving him there to handle the rest of the mess. The new healthcare bill would bring deep, bleeding cuts in substance abuse programs, and they’d argued about that. They’d initially discussed this in a room full of senators and congressmen until finally, it was just the two of them, standing face to face in a heated battle. It had been made clear that he needed to get on board, that his was just an opinion, and an unwanted one at that. Nevertheless, he surveyed the new proposed measures and wrote out a counter offer. Engaging in a tug of war to render a better result was better than no change at all. He sat down in the chair and answered his cellphone, frustration boiling in him.
“Yes.”
“Phoenix…”
He paused, let the papers slip from his grasp.
“Tiffany, are you okay?” he whispered into the line. He’d given her the number in case of an emergency but he’d left her alone in his house that morning with tape-recorded sessions of Gable’s interrogation. The news was bad. She needed to hear the crap for herself—best if it came from the horse’s mouth.
“Yeah. I heard the tapes. So, he’s blaming me for this shit!” She gave a woeful laugh. “That ball-less mothafucka actually said that I forced him to do this and that I shot John and the rest of ’em. It’s lies! I didn’t do it and he knows it!!”
“Tiffany, I know … calm down. This is just procedure and it comes with the territory, all right? The FBI doesn’t believe that, but now your name has been thrown in the ring. They also want to interview you. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been dragging my feet on moving you to Canada. They are heavily searching for you now. Look, let me finish what I’m doing here and I’ll be home in a couple of hours. Can you hold out?”
“Wh
ere am I going to go, Phoenix?”
At that, he chuckled.
“All right … I’ll be there as soon as possible. Relax, baby. I’ll be home soon.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tiffany had drunk an entire bottle of wine. It tasted good, rich … a vintage dated December 1988. It had to be expensive; now that it filled her belly, she was on the hunt for another. Just then, she heard the all too familiar bark of the dogs who’d grown accustomed to her comings and goings. It also helped that Phoenix had trained them to leave her be, and they became welcome companions. Regardless of the K-9 siblings being present, nothing compared to the presence of family and friends, and a warm body in her bed. It was lonely in the big house most days…
They’d make love during the night, and sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, too. She’d found the man was just as dominating in bed as he was in other aspects of his life. His cock was his gun, and he’d make her die a little each time he emptied the clip inside her sweet walls.
Beyond that, the man would go off to work, or stay in his study for hours, speaking on the phone with important people from around the world. He’d even disappeared one night and was gone for two days. No explanations, no nothing. Sometimes, she’d eavesdrop on his conversations, loitering outside his closed office door, trying to not even breathe lest he hear her snooping about. Sometimes he was talking about things she didn’t understand, using phrases she’d never heard. But, most of the time, she comprehended him just fine. That double life of his was real, and she bided her time to find out what stood behind door number three. Phoenix was a walking mystery to her, an enigma, and this made her love him all the more. He was so different from the cops that would harass her and her family during the hot summers in Chicago.
