by Edwina Fort
I rested my other hand on the top of his head leaning down so that only he heard my words.
“I understand why you did it, Stanly. It’s something about Angel, right? Something about her calls out to the primal side of you. I know, Bo… Yo’ mistake was not realizing that I too had fallen under her spell. As a matter of fact, I’ve become obsessed with her. She in my bloodstream, man, and I can’t f**king focus without her. Between me and you, I’m the terror you should have prepared better fo’. You should have known I will never stop until I have her back. You always had a problem on yo’ hands, Bo. You- would- have- never- known- peace.”
When I stood his gaze rose to mine and for a minute, I let him see my need for her in my eyes. He should have known better. He should have known that I didn’t have it in me to let her go. It was the fact that he didn’t and that he’d tried to take her away from me that had the rage settling back in my gaze.
This time when I hit him and his body crashed to the floor, I followed and continued to punch him. I let all the pain, fury, fear, and yes, uncertainty I’ve felt over the last week come through each blow.
I could hear my men trying to stop me, telling me that it was enough, Stanly was dead, but I couldn’t stop. At some point, Wayne, Maddox and Lannox tried to pull me off him, but I was unmovable. I could not stop pounding his f**king face.
Not because he’d taken Angel away from me. Not because I’d been more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life this past week. Not because I’ve dealt with the constant pain of a raging migraine.
No…
None of those reasons were why I couldn't stop hitting him.
It was the idea of her coming to him to help her get away from me. It was knowing that there was a good possibility that his and her mother’s words were true and Angel had willingly walked away from me, leaving me alone.
Chapter 16
A Woman Scorned
Heaven Has No Rage Like Love to Hatred, Nor Hell No Fury Like A Woman Scorned…
William Congreve
Hitta
“Hitta! That’s enough, man! Come back to us, bro! Damn!” Wayne grabbed my arm, but I snatched away from him to deliver another blow to the face that no longer looked human.
Maddox and Lannox joined him in trying to pull me off this mutha f**ka. Their attempts only enraged me more. They were trying to get between me and the bastard who took Angel’s love away from me.
I’ve never in my life had a love so pure. I didn’t even think it was possible for a hood nigga like me. But there she was, filling my senses with her sweet scent, calming the beast inside me, making me feel like a king, looking at me with eyes that said I was worthy of her.
And this son-of-a-b*tch took it away!
“Get the f**k off me!” I yelled shaking all three of them away from me like rag dolls.
“F**k it, stand to the side, I’m going to knock his big ass off!” Wayne told the twins before he charged me.
I grunted when his body slammed into mine, but it did not move me, neither did it penetrate through the red haze that clouded my vision as I continued to pound this smug bastard’s face. I felt like he was laughing at me. Even though he was dead, I wanted to destroy all possibilities that this mug will ever wear a smirk again.
Yeah! I’d f**king gone insane!
The sound of Wayne’s expensive shoes slapping against the floor as he continued to try and push me over only testified to how much effort he was putting into his action.
“Got damn it, don’t just stand there! Help me!” he yelled at the twins.
They gave each other one last look before they too charged me. Their combined effort sent me slamming back to the ground. Growling in my throat, my energy was now focused on getting them the f**k off me.
Maddox was the first to go flying. Wayne soon joined him. I balled up my fist to take out Lannox, but Maddox threw himself in front of the blow nearly wrapping his whole body around my arm.
“Whoo, boss! Clamy doony! Donna poond Lannox. He says your wee lass luvs you, mon!”
It was those words that sliced through the red haze clouding my vision. My fist stilled as my gaze shot to Lannox. Desperately he nodded confirming Maddox’s words. I relaxed and all three of my men collapsed in an exhausted heap around me.
Slowly the rage that was pumping like a piston through my veins began to evaporate along with the temporary insanity that settled over me. After getting to my feet, I looked at what was left of Angel’s foster father, his blood dripped from my fists.
I brought my shaking hands to my head that was pounding fiercely now that my fury was abating. The pain was so intense it nearly took me back down.
Still on his knees, Wayne struggled to catch his breath as he loosened his tie. “Goddamn! Felt like I was wrestling with a silverback f**king gorilla.”
Bent over with his hands on his knees, Maddox held up his hand, he too struggled to catch his breath.
“She luvs you, mon! This minger was lying!”
I shook my head, I wanted to believe them, but for the life of me, I couldn’t let go of Stan’s words. As I looked down at his dead body, I realized that this bastard had won, because he truly had the last laugh.
I grunted. “Yeah well, she’s going to have to prove it to me.”
Stepping over Lannox where he still lay on the floor trying to catch his breath, I headed towards my truck.
“Before our plane touch the ground in California, I want to know what hold this mutha f**ka had on her.”
The Narrator
With a smirk on her face, Shantell stopped her phone from recording after Hitta declared Angel was going to have to prove her love to him. Using the skills she’d picked up from her father, who had been one of the best PI’s in the Chicagoland area before he was murdered, she held very still where she squatted down between the two garbage cans so that he wouldn’t see her as he got into his truck and pulled off. Minutes later, Wayne emerged from the garage talking on his phone as he headed for his car parked farther down the alley.
They’d brought their victim to a side of town that was abandoned by most. Inhabited only by fiends and prostitutes, nobody will ever think to look for evidence of the missing doctor here. She continued to hold very still as Maddox and Lannox removed the body and cleaned up all signs of them being there.
No doubt, the twins will do what they did best and the good doctor here will become another John Doe. It was a shame… She’d had such high hopes for him. If she had known he was such an imbecile, she wouldn’t have wasted her time and energy sending him the information he needed to go after what he craved.
She had all but given him that nappy-headed, geeky black b*tch on a platter. And what did he do? Put all his cards in the hands of a crackhead. The twins had f**king followed her from the gym. She led them right to him.
Not wanting to take the chance with Lannox’s creepy ass, Shantell didn’t move from her hiding spot until they were long gone. It would be just her luck she stands up to find him farther down the alley watching her.
She’d been surveilling Hitta ever since he’d called it off with her and she couldn’t shake the feeling that Lannox was on to her.
A few weeks before she’d gotten fired, she carried a stack of papers into Hitta’s office to file away like she always did. While in the drawer, she quickly changed out the battery in the little recording device she kept in there. When finished, she left, pulling the door closed behind her. Since it was no big deal to see her come in or go out of his office, nobody paid attention to her. Maybe it was paranoia that made her casually glance around the gym to make sure, but when she did, she nearly tripped over her feet when her gaze connected with his where he leaned against the wall across the open space watching her with a knowing look.
It took everything she had to keep a straight face and not run back into the office and remove the bug. If Hitta found out she was spying on him, she was dead. There would be no questions asked; she would become the next Jane Doe to wash up fro
m Lake Michigan. That whole week, she was paranoid waiting for the ax to fall on her operation.
The fact is, she’d invested too much in Hitta to let a mute or an ugly tea-drinking b*tch ruin her chance of securing a ring from him. And Shantell will get that ring, even if she had to kill for it. Let there be no doubt that he was not someone she was willing to let slip through her fingers.
She’d began hunting him well before they actually met. Her father and his partner ran a very successful private investigation firm, one that made them both extremely wealthy. After her dad died, it came to light that he’d squandered his half of the company and it was his partner keeping it afloat.
When it was all said and done, her family found themselves in debt. They lost their nice house and all of their nice things, she couldn’t show her face around her friends because she’d become poor.
It was then her mother pulled her to the side and told her how she’d used her looks to trap her father into marriage. She explained that her grandmother had trained her in the art of snagging a rich man and that it was time for her to teach Shantell so that she could help pull her family out of the muck they were in.
Shantell has always been a very sexual being. But her mama told her that rich men weren’t always the best at sex and that she was going to have to learn how to please herself until after she’d gotten her benefactor to marry her and become pregnant with the child that would secure all of their future. She said only then would it be safe to acquire a lover that could take care of her sexual needs.
Not surprisingly, they realized that Shantell was a natural at being a gold digger. At first, she put her focus into snagging a professional basketball player. But then, she and a few of her girlfriends had gone to Vegas for a weekend and ended up at one of Hitta’s fights. She’d taken one look at him and knew that he was the one for her.
In spite of what her mother said, she didn’t just want a rich man. Shantell wanted a rich man who could f*** her the right way. And she had enough sexual experience to size Hitta up and see that he carried all the signs of a man who knew how to handle a woman’s body.
She and her friends followed his prefight media tour for weeks trying to get past his security team long enough to get his attention. The problem was there were fifty other women with the same idea, who too seemed to be following the tour. She had to do something that set her apart from the other groupies.
Soooo…
She cornered one of his security guards in the washroom at a nightclub and struck a deal with him. She’d pleasure him and in return, he’d help her slip past the crowd of women and behind the red divider rope that separated the untouchables from the have-nots.
Shantell could remember the rush she’d gotten when she’d finally entered into Hitta’s space. He was way more powerful up close than he had been from afar. Strength oozed from him, dwarfing every other man in the club.
She’d pulled every trick in her arsenal to end up at his hotel room that night. And just like she’d figured, he was an amazing lover. In fact, he was the best she’d ever had. He was the first and only man to put her to bed.
Yes, he wore her completely out…
However, thinking that they had made a connection that night, she was disappointed when he woke her up thirty minutes later and kicked her out of his hotel room, saying that he needed to get some rest for his training the next day.
That was a setback she hadn’t counted on, but Shantell wasn’t the giving up type. She’d already picked out their wedding colors. It took several more attempts, several more sexual favors for her little security guard friend, and several more hotel rendezvous with her big strong fighter till she had finally gained a more permanent spot in his schedule.
He’d gotten her the apartment of her dreams, the car of her dreams, and a wardrobe that made all of her friends green with envy. She was on top of the world.
The challenge came in becoming pregnant. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get him to go into her without a condom. It didn’t matter how drunk he was or how tired, he always managed to get a damn condom on his very impressive man flesh.
Most times he flushed it afterward, but there was one time he slipped up and tossed it in the wastebasket by the bed. She waited till he went to sleep and used a turkey baster to draw his seed from the rubber. The next few weeks, she and her mother were some praying sistas, praying that Hitta’s seed would take.
When she got her period, they both cried. Hitta gave Shantell enough money to help her mom pay her rent, but it wasn’t enough to keep her mother from having to go back to work. She had two little brothers who now had to attend public school. She needed to get Hitta to marry her so that she could have access to his bank accounts.
Shantell began dropping hints, showing him beautiful star couples in the magazine and telling him that she would make a gorgeous bride worthy of him. Like him, she was serious about her work out and had the body to reflect it. She told him that they could do something like a fit couple's wedding.
It seemed like the more she hinted that she was ready for marriage, the more he stayed away from the home she had created for him. She’d followed him a few times and saw that he was messing around with random hood rats, nothing that she should be worried about and never one more than once.
She wanted to yell at him and demand he stop cheating on her, but she knew that would only push him to stay away more than he was already doing, so she held her tongue and pretended like she didn’t know. Her mother told her she should start flirting with Wayne, saying that he would make a very nice plan B.
Shantell would have agreed if she wasn’t so f**king sprung on Hitta. Her mama didn’t understand what it was like to be loved by a thug nigga like that. He is a complete beast in the bedroom and made her turn into putty in his hands. That sh*t was important to her. She will never find another man that put it down like that.
No!
She wanted him! Nobody else will do!
But then something happened. He brought home that little bratty b*tch Carmen after her mother got arrested. She’d taken one look at Shantell and decided that she didn’t like her, and no matter what she did, the little b*tch still didn’t like her.
It wasn’t long before she started telling her uncle to leave Shantell and that was when she began to notice him pulling away from her. Because she and Carmen could not stop arguing in those days, the little brat spent most of her time at Wayne’s place.
That was just fine with her until Hitta started staying away sometimes for weeks at a time. She became desperate at the thought of losing him and in a panic, told him she was pregnant.
Shantell will never forget the look on his face. It was a mix of disgust, disbelief, and amusement. It was then she realized getting a ring from him was going to take strategy. As far as she was concerned, he’d just declared war on her.
She loved him. She was perfect for him. All she needed to do was to get him to see it too. After putting on a performance worthy of an Academy Award, she managed to convince him; that bought her a little time. He’d even began to come home more often than he had been, although he was still cheating on her and still using a goddamn condom when they had sex.
Her mom was pressuring her to do whatever it took to get pregnant by him, even if it meant drugging him. Shantell didn’t give that suggestion the time of day. Her mother didn’t know Hitta, although not from the lack of her trying to integrate him into her family. She’d invited him to every event that they had, but he was always too busy or just flat out didn’t want to go. Her mom had offered to make him dinner many times. Again, he would always turn it down or say he had something very important to do.
Because of this, her mother had no idea of how rough he was. She didn’t know that her baby girl had gone out there and fallen hard for a goon that would snap her neck if he even thought she was trying to drug him.
Anyway, when it looked as if she would not be able to get away with her pregnancy lie a day longer, she faked a miscarriage.
Once again putting on a stellar performance, she convinced him that she was so broken up about losing the baby she was thinking about killing herself; that bought her some more time.
But after that, he began to stay away for several weeks at a time. And then the day came when the ax fell and he came home and told her he was moving out. Of course, he used Carmen as an excuse. Shantell begged him to stay, assuring him that she and Carmen could get along, she would make sure of it, but his mind was made up.
It was while his men were moving his stuff out of their place that he broke up with her, completely cutting her off. She’d tried everything to get him to change his mind, but no matter what she did, he wouldn’t take her back. Her mom told her to forget about him and to focus her energy on Wayne. Shantell refused. She loved Hitta and was a good woman to him! He’d ruined her for other men. She wanted him and was determined to get him back.
Although it was humiliating as hell, she went to him and begged him for a job at his gym, knowing that if she could just be around him, she could convince him of what he’d lost and make him want it back. She even seduced other men in attempts to make him jealous.
It was working, he was noticing her. He’d even began to flirt with her. And then she showed up…
Angel!
That f*cking black, fat b*tch! That f*cking tea-drinking, man-stealing whore!
She saw the look in his eyes when he looked at Angel; it was like he was hypnotized. He’d never looked at Shantell like that. He’d never looked at her with such need…
Balling up her fists, she stood from where she had been hiding between the garbage cans. She’d rather die than let Angel have him. She’d seen him first! He was hers! And goddammit, if she couldn’t have him then nobody will!
Now that her plan A had failed, it was time for her to implement plan B. Once she succeeded and Angel left Hitta for good, she will be there waiting for him with open arms. Then she was going to handle that little b*tch, Carmen. Hitta’s twin assassins weren’t the only ones who could make a body disappear.
