The beautiful view behind Angie was a far cry from the desolate area they both stood. Looking around, Jessica took in the tall grass, dirt and gravel. An old playground sat chipped and rusted in the distance. A hand hung out of the end of the tattered slide, dirty fingernails magnified under the sunlight. Jessica wondered if the man sleeping in that slide was dead, or high. She hadn’t the energy to investigate further.
Yes, this New Jersey park had one of the most beautiful views around, but years of illegal drug activity, and constant presence of hard-up junkies, had left the park desolate for years. It now looked like something straight out of a zombie movie. The people stumbling around the park were alive, yes, but as good as dead behind the eyes. Gone in their hearts. Hearts that had surely once beat for things outside of the smack they now roamed the park in search of. Hearts that would, most likely, never see the light of day, again.
It was the perfect place for a covert meet up, because no person in their right mind would ever come here by choice.
In the distance, Jessica was sure she saw a bum shooting up under the heavily graffiti-ed, leaking bridge. Once again, she hadn’t the time or the energy to pursue.
“You’re late,” Angie said, the moment Jessica climbed out of the truck.
Jessica didn’t respond. The door of her old hoopty screamed out in disagreement as she slammed it closed. Tucking her thumbs into the pockets of her black skinny jeans, she circled around until she was facing Angie, leaning back against the passenger door.
“Hot car.” Jessica’s eyes ran the length of the Bentley Angie was leaning on. “A Mulsanne? You must suck a mean dick.”
“It isn’t mine.”
“No shit,” Jessica laughed.
They shared a quiet look.
“I wanted to follow up on Knox Jefferson.” Angie got straight to the point. “The GPS I placed on his U-Haul puts him in Montreal BC. Canada, Jess. He left the truck there, but there’s no way for me to know where he is now. He could have hopped on a plane and skipped the country for all we know. Have you found anything else?”
“Is that why you called me out here? Seriously? To continue to harass me about Knox Jefferson? I told you I would come to you when I found something on him.”
“You haven’t found anything on Knox, even though I brought you the information almost a month ago. You can’t give me any information on why the Cadillac that ran down the Black’s not only has no registration on file but, for some reason, isn’t on record at all. As if it never existed. It even took you a ridiculous amount of time to get me the streetlight footage in the first place... What’s going on Jess?” Jess often complained when Angie asked her for favors, but Angie was used to that. What Angie was not used to, however, was Jessica dragging her feet.
“So you called me out here to chide me for doing you all these favors? Favors that, just in case you’ve forgotten, I don’t have to do for you, at all?”
“No,” Angie said. “That’s not why I brought you out here.”
“Then what, Colt? Spit it out. I have a long day.”
“I don’t know how,” Angie started. “And I don’t know why… but, for some reason, something in my head keeps trying to put everything that’s been happening in the last several weeks in the same puzzle…” Angie tried to find a better way to vocalize her thoughts, but couldn’t. “Something in my head wants it all to connect. And you know my head is never wrong, Jess.”
Jessica stood quietly.
Angie was surprised by the patience Jessica was showing her, almost taken aback. “Knox Jefferson skipped town because he saw Roman Romanovsky. I know it was because of Roman. Nothing else makes sense. Knox is Roman’s biological father, by way of artificial insemination. Sperm donation. But the whole point of donating your sperm is anonymity, right? Knox was never meant to meet Roman, or to even know he existed. Jess we went to his door, and he recognized Roman on sight.” Angie waited for a profanity to come spilling out of Jessica’s lips, for her to wave her finger in a quick circle, nodding rapidly to signal she wanted Angie to get on with it already. But none of that came.
Jessica just watched her.
Angie stood taller. “Knox knew exactly who Roman was. It was like he’d seen a damn ghost. Then, the next day, he skips town? But not before making a shady exchange of money at the Governors house? A few days after the Governor’s son, Reggie King, threatened me—without actually threatening me? He was angry that I was working with Roman, or more specifically, with a Romanovsky. The dirty streetlight footage you found was taken outside of the Romanovsky house. Do you see?” Angie pointed to her temples.
Jessica actually nodded, crossing her arms tight.
“Do you see the connect? The path my mind keeps taking?” Angie asked. “Maybe it’s the timing of all this that has me going to all these weird places, but we both know that whoever tampered with that footage…” Angie paused when a bum suddenly approached her with anxious eyes, and she patted her empty pockets and shrugged before he could ask her for a dollar she didn’t have to give. He turned to Jessica, who did much the same thing, before shuffling away. Angie waited until he was a comfortable distance away before speaking again, her voice much lower this time. “There are very few people walking around New Jersey with the power to alter police footage, Jess. To make car titles disappear. I did a little digging, and Governor King worked as a Police Chief for the NJPD, in the same department as Knox Jefferson. King was also running for city council at that time. He won that election the same week the Blacks were killed. The same week. Is that a coincidence?”
“Could be,” Jessica shrugged.
If Angie knew anything about Jessica Borgia, it was that she didn’t believe in coincidences. Jessica was a deep believer of the bad in people. As far as she was concerned, all people were inherently bad—not the other way around. The word coincidence was not in her vocabulary.
Angie could see on Jessica’s face that she was hearing her, regardless of what she said. “That’s not all, Jess. Get this. The district that elected King? It was the same district that the Blacks were killed in. Do you still think it’s a coincidence, Jess?”
“So you think the Governor killed the Blacks?” Jessica almost laughed.
Angie wasn’t laughing. “If he didn’t, I would bet my life that he knows who did.”
“And you think he covered it up to win some city council election?”
“Jess… all I know is that Knox Jefferson, Governor King, Reggie King, and the Blacks?… They are connected. And I can’t ignore it any longer. Maybe I’m crazy!” Angie threw her arms up in surrender. “Maybe I am, but that’s what it is, and I wanted you to hear it.”
Jessica crossed her arms over her chest. “So you don’t have a single fact to share with me today? Just a hunch?”
Angie watched Jessica for a long while. “When have my hunches ever been wrong?”
Jessica wanted, more than anything, to refute Angie’s words.
Then she realized she couldn’t.
“I’ll look into it,” she said. She turned away from Angie without another word.
Angie waited until Jessica got in the truck, started it, and pulled away, before climbing into the Bentley and driving off, as well, kicking up dust as she went.
***
Later that afternoon, Roman grinned down at Angie, stepping away from the open door of his apartment. She shuffled sheepishly inside.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” she said, breathlessly, as he closed the door behind her. “I borrowed your car, again.”
“You and I are really going to have to sit down and discuss the meaning of the word borrow. I happen to know of another really cool word, it’s called stealing. It’s when someone fucks you senseless, waits until you pass out, and then makes a swipe for something that isn’t theirs on their way out the door.”
“It’s not stealing when I have every intent of returning it,” she corrected, dropping the keys to the Bentley into his hand. “As far as fucking you senseless? That,
I can’t apologize for. It simply wouldn’t be genuine.”
Roman smiled.
“I just needed to look into something for work, Roman. I was only gone for a few hours.”
“Always working.”
“At least I didn’t keep it overnight this time.” She’d been borrowing his car for the better part of the month. Like he’d said, she usually took it when he was asleep, often after he’d just cum, because that was when he slept the hardest.
Roman watched her for a long while, eyes moving between hers, then shook his head and circled behind her to pull off her coat and scarf.
Angie had to remind herself to breathe. She’d been sleeping with him for nearly a month. Or, in his words, getting an education. At that point, Roman Romanovsky had been balls deep inside her more times than she could count, but she still couldn’t control her raging heart the moment he looked into her eyes. The moment he touched her. Everything he did always felt like the first time. He still destroyed her with one hit of those baby blues, one brush of those strong fingers.
Even as he removed her coat and scarf, hanging them, her body was responding, ready for the next ‘lesson’.
“Thanks for not calling the cops on me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” His eyes went playful as he wrapped them around her waist from behind. “I still have plans for you, none of which would be achievable if you were behind bars.”
“What kind of plans?”
“The kind that end with my head between your legs.”
She could only blush when he squeezed her from behind.
“Did you save the world today?” he asked.
“Far from it. Sometimes I feel like this job is going to drive me completely insane. This last month, in particular, has me feeling like I’ve lost my damn mind. Like, gone straight crazy. Even more so than usual.”
“Doesn’t sound good,” Roman whispered, his warm breath hitting her ear.
She smiled when he wet the lobe with his lips and tongue, kissing her gently, stealing her words and bringing her ever-churning mind to a much needed halt, until nothing in her world existed outside of him.
“Maybe this will help,” he whispered.
Angie looked down when a small rectangular box wrapped in a gleaming, violet-hued paper appeared in his hands, out of nowhere. She craned her neck to look up at him, catching his eyes.
“Happy birthday.” His eyebrows rose, almost accusingly.
“How did you know it was my birthday today?”
“While you were out painting the town in my car, I had lunch with my darling, knocked up little sister. She dropped the bomb before our food had even arrived.”
“I don’t celebrate my birthday.”
“She mentioned that, too. So I’ve decided to celebrate for you.” He shook the gift in his hand when she didn’t immediately take it.
“You don’t understand. My mom threw me a birthday party when I was five, and--”
“No one showed up. Scarred you for life, traumatized you, just the word birthday makes you break out in hives, blah, blah, blah, etcetera, etcetera. Zoey told me the whole tragic story. But is this really a birthday? Sure, you’re 25 now, officially a year older, but have I gone over the top with people? Balloons? Decorations? Have I? Do you see an obnoxiously decorated cake anywhere? No. Just a small gift. A gift, from a friend to a friend. What’s so bad about that?”
Angie broke their gaze and looked down at the box, taking it gingerly between her fingers.
“Nothing, I guess,” she mumbled.
His arms went back around her waist and, when several long moments passed, he laughed into the crook of her shoulder. “Open it.”
“You didn’t have to get me a gift. Like I said, I don’t celebrate my--”
“Open it.”
With a sigh, Angie tore into the gift, secretly elated. A black rectangular box appeared, and her breath caught. Was it jewelry?
“It’s too much,” Angie said, immediately. If the furniture, art, and random shiny trinkets that dotted every room in his apartment were any indication, Roman had expensive taste. It had her heart racing in fear of what was living in the box that trembled in her hand.
Roman took the crumpled wrapping paper from her hand before snaking his arms around her waist, tighter. “Will you open the damn box, already?”
Angie finally pulled off the top of the box, and Roman took that from her hand too, just as she caught sight of what was inside.
A silver pen.
She laughed. Here she was, expecting something shiny, expensive, and extravagant.
Too be fair, it was quite shiny.
A shiny pen.
It was a startling reminder that the man holding her around her waist was not her boyfriend, but her fuck buddy.
She knew it. He knew it. They’d discussed it to death in the month they’d been sleeping together, but some part of her couldn’t help being disappointed. She’d almost rather he bought her nothing, at all, then something that only reminded her of the part she played in his life. She wanted the leading role, but this pen all but confirmed she was still, simply, an understudy.
“See.” He reached in from behind her, and pushed a button on the pen. “It even has a reading light, so you can see your books at night.”
She already had a damn reading light! She was a voracious reader, at three books a week. She took reading very seriously. She had reading lights coming out of her ass. He knew that about her, he’d seen it with his own damn eyes!
“It’s wonderful,” she said, trying to turn off her completely irrational thoughts. The man didn’t have to get her anything, at all, but he had. “Thank you, Roman. A girl can never have enough… pens.” She almost rolled her eyes. She barely believed the words herself.
“You’re welcome.”
She felt his soft lips start a slow trail from her ear and down the side of her neck, to the low dip he knew would leave her panties drenched with one swipe of his lips and tongue.
Really? Her mind screamed. The man was going to try to get some booty? Now? After handing her a pen for her birthday?
A pen?
Once again, Angie was unable to turn off the ridiculous thoughts in her mind.
This man wasn’t her boyfriend. He didn’t owe her anything.
Even more importantly, she shouldn’t have allowed herself to expect anything.
His sexual power over her was strong, and soon, her thoughts were all but forgotten, body heating up with each new destination his warm lips hit as he travelled the sensitive skin on her neck.
He took a step forward, and his weight forced her to step forward, too. He took another step, and another, until he was leading from behind. They both walked a, slightly wobbly, path into the kitchen.
He guided them to the kitchen’s island, still placing soft kisses along the skin of her neck, getting dangerously close to that spot--the spot that would cause her to drop her new pen, along with her panties, and have him right there on that island.
But she was distracted by a single piece of paper that sat in the middle of the island. It was bright pink, so it jumped out from his black granite countertops.
Roman stopped her in front of the pink paper. She read the bold print at the top.
CERTIFICATE OF TITLE
Her head flew over her shoulder, eyes wide in shock.
Roman feigned surprise. “Look at that.” His eyes met hers. “What a perfect opportunity to put your new pen to good use.”
“What the hell is this?” she demanded.
“It’s the title to my Bentley.” He suddenly squinted, wagging his head back and forth. “I’m sorry,” he said. “The title to your Bentley.”
The pen in her hand, the same one she’d been clutching with distain since the moment she’d seen it, was starting to make much more sense. When she finally accepted that this was happening, it fell from her suddenly quaking fingers.
As if he were waiting for that very thing to happen, Roman caught it
on the counter, just in time to stop it from rolling over the edge. He used the opportunity to place his other hand on the counter, trapping her in, making sure she had nowhere to run, pressing his cock into her ass for good measure.
“I can’t take your car,” she gasped.
“That stopped being my car thirty orgasms ago. In one month, you’ve driven it more than I have all year. That’s your car. Might as well make it official. And what better day than today? Your birthday?” He pushed her up against the counter and leaned forward, pressing his finger into the title. He pulled it closer to her, until it bumped into her stomach. “All you have to do is say yes.” His lips were back on her ear as he pressed the pen into her hand. “Say yes, Angie.”
“Such a fixer,” she accused.
“You’re perfectly okay with stealing it, but the moment I try to give it to you legally, it’s a problem?” His laugh was soft and warm on her ear.
“It’s too much.”
“It’s your birthday. There’s no such thing as too much.”
She looked back at him.
“You work hard. You deserve it.”
“You understand that this car will only survive in my neighborhood for a week, max, before it disappears from sight, right?”
“A risk I’m happy to take.”
“And what about you, Fixit? What are you supposed to drive?”
“I may, or may not, have used your birthday as an excuse to visit the car lot today. And my brand new car may, or may not, be parked next to your Bentley right as we speak.”
“Stop calling it my Bentley!”
“It is your Bentley. And it’s also your pen. All you have to do is put them together. Call it restitution for twenty years of birthdays ignored. A day that should have been celebrated, because it belongs to the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.”
Angie held her breath when his eyes met hers, and the intensity in them stunned her.
“Sign the title, Mama.”
***
And sign it she did.
Claiming Roman Page 15
