by Kenya Wright
That was the only thing I disliked about her.
It took another hour to convince her to come with me. And she truly didn’t agree until the police did their show of carrying Max’s covered dead body out and casting yellow tape in front of his doorway.
The whole performance was too haunting for her to say no. In her gray eyes, death mingled with sorrow. When she packed her bags, guilt sliced through my heart.
But did I even have a heart? Darkness festered inside of me. It bred and overpopulated in my core. Sin nestled deep down in my soul.
Without Dawn, I would have no proof of humanity. Her love had triggered a mutation within a monster. In some ways, my obsession for Dawn was part beast and man like one of those shapeshifter movies. A creature lived inside of me. When she was around, I peered out of two pairs of eyes. And like the moon for a werewolf, when she looked at me, my whole body howled.
Dawn’s presence always woke my beast.
It worked. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Chapter 18
Freddy
The next day
I turned to my new security guard, a black guy named Smoke.
He wore his usual—black hat, dark pants, and leather jacket. No shirt. It was like he wanted to be a conductor to the sun or some moving solar panel of energy that sucked up the heat. In some ways, the outfit symbolized how bad he was. Who else but a crazy person would wear a leather jacket on a Miami summer day.
What was I thinking when I hired him?
Dawn lived in a rough neighborhood full of diversity. Mostly artsy types and hippies. Most of all the ghetto surrounded it. Instead of using my typical guys, who stuck out in this urban jungle with their European accents and designer suits, I used a new guy that I hoped could fit in.
Smoke had beat out the applicants, but he’d failed to produce any results.
Was it a mistake to use him?
I could’ve called my old bodyguard Lotus to handle this. People would describe her as slim, Japanese, and a sweet smile and tiny stature. But when the need for violence came, she ripped chests open and shattered jaws. She was the only woman on this planet that terrified the shit out of me. Her fighting skills were ruthless. Her mental strategy flawless. Her family had been protecting mine for years. It made sense for my father to make Lotus my personal guard. The only problem was that Lotus developed an intense crush through the years from watching me, coming close to trying to get rid of the girls I played around with. Due to that, I kept my distance with her and my father shifted Lotus’s duties to guarding his wife.
No. Lotus would end up killing Dawn, not protecting her. I’ll have to deal with this guy.
I glared at Smoke. “Where’s Dawn?”
“Bruv, I told you that we lost her.” For a big man, Smoke made a good show of appearing scared.
He probably could’ve crushed me with one hand. Not that I didn’t have muscle. I stayed in the gym. Had to make sure I could move the pecs for the ladies on the beach. Once Dawn stole my heart, I doubled up my weightlifting time. I had to be stronger and faster to get her love.
I’d just come from the gym—dressed in gray. Sweat clung to my skin. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. In that moment, my heart beat too damn fast. It could’ve been the dopamines bouncing in my head or the fact that Smoke had called and said that there was an emergency dealing with Dawn.
What the hell is going on?
I stood in the center of Dawn’s empty bedroom. She was nowhere in sight.
I’d kept my distance, bringing by cakes and cookies that I’d made once a week. Every now and then I left a note. Besides that, I didn’t bother her. The fact that she hadn’t filled out a restraining order on me made me grateful. Eventually, one cake at a time would crack that wall around her heart. One day, the bricks would crumble and I would walk through. Until then, I’d planned on being patient and focused.
And everything had been going just fine. No word from Max on his gambling debts. He stopped begging me for money. My father checked in earlier this week, wondering if my cooking hobby had continued. For some reason, it tickled my father, hearing about me wearing an apron and kneading dough.
Everything had been business as usual, until today.
Where the fuck is Dawn?
None of the baking mattered if I had no one to deliver it too. Where had she gone? And with who? There’d been no reports of another man. If there had, I would’ve gotten rid of him. I had no time for competition. Wrangling Dawn’s heart from her stubborn cold hands was hard enough.
I stared at Smoke and tried to keep the rage off my face. Money could only gain so much loyalty. I hated the way my dad or Max talked to their security as if they were doing these guys a favor by hiring them to protect their lives.
Stay calm.
Besides, Smoke didn’t seem like a guy who would let anyone disrespect him. I didn’t get the feeling that he was chained to money like most. He had an air of confidence which always triggered unswaying independence.
“We’ve lost her,” he said.
I studied him. It was like I was in a surreal dream. “What do you mean you lost her?”
He shrugged those huge shoulders. “She’s gone, bruv.”
An exasperated breath left my lips. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
He nodded. “See. We had her on the roads.”
“Roads?”
“South Beach.”
“How is South Beach the roads?”
“Doesn’t matter, bruv. It just is.”
Jesus. I should’ve never let Max convince me to hire this guy.
Smoke was a South London hood. He’d moved to Miami years ago but never dropped the rough dialect and heavy accent. I never understood half of the things that Smoke said.
Smoke continued, “We were all around the building. There was this store that sold swim tings.”
“Bathing suits?” I checked.
“Yeah.” He circled his big arms around him and then pointed to an imaginary image. “See. And bruv, dem man just surround the whole place. Catties rush out like it’s a fire. We check for love. She gone.”
I have no idea what he is saying.
“Gone,” Smoke said again.
“Wait.” My heart slammed into my chest. “What do you mean?”
“She disappeared.”
“Dawn disappeared?” I asked.
“Yes.”
With Smoke’s garbled language, I wasn’t understanding one thing. I attempted to clarify the situation. “Dawn disappeared from South Beach?”
“Yeah, man. And so, my mandem and me—”
“Who?”
Annoyance laced Smoke’s response. “Mandem.”
“Who’s that?”
“All of us.” He gestured to the guys back in the living room. “My mandem, we run back to her place.” He sliced the air with his hands. “Gone.”
I jumped back. “What?”
“Gone. Garms too.”
Confusion filled my head. “Garms?”
“Her clothes and shoes, man. Gone.” Smoke nodded. “Luggage gone. Food still here. But her main tings. Gone.”
“Everything?”
Dawn is gone? Am I hearing this guy right?
I looked around Dawn’s bedroom. I’d been in here once before when she was out volunteering. These past months had kept her busy. Tons of police shootings and causes for her to march in the street and rally about.
Although well into the 21st century, America had returned to the 1960s. People were back in the streets protesting about constitutional rights that I’d thought the American people had already decided on—civil liberties and reproductive rights, equality, and abuse by the police. With all the chaos of this country, I’d only stayed here because of Dawn.
And that woman had made me love her even more. Every weekend, she stood on the corner with others, screaming and raising her signs. Constantly resisting corruption in society and making sure she fought for the unprotected. There’d been pictures tak
en by my men of her passing out blankets to homeless people. Another night, I spied her sitting at a candlelight vigil for victims of a shooting states away.
Because she stayed involved, I read the papers more, kept up with politics more, and wanted to do more. She had me giving money to causes and staying up-to-date with things that happened in the news. Where once I ignored reality, she’d forced me to deal with it and try to change the world.
And now, where are you? Did you fly off to protest a pipeline or are you off at the Capitol pissing on the White House’s lawn?
I’d heard a phone recording of hers with a friend last week. She’d confessed to her buddy that she was going to take a break from the politics, go to the beach, and try to relax.
Where did you go?
Everything looked normal. Above her bed, there was a poster of a curvy Statue of Liberty sucking off a man with a huge, bulging penis. Someone had drawn NRA on his hat. I’d had my men put in cameras within the frame. There were tons of footage of her watching the television screen as riots and fires burned up American cities.
In these past months, she cried more.
My chest burned with rage at the sight.
Where the hell are you?
I headed to her dresser. Like Smoke had said, there were no clothes in the drawers. I checked the others and spotted a pink book.
“See.” Smoke came to my side. “The only thing that she left was a planner in the underwear drawer.”
“Planner?”
“Diary,” Smoke said.
“You reviewed the tapes during her missing days?” I asked.
He nodded. “Nothing.”
Where did she go? Why and with who? Was it that fuck-face guy that called my suite in Monte Carlo?
Everything had been perfect on that night. I’d had Dawn to myself. She’d agreed to let me taste her. It had all been perfect, and then this mystery guy called and destroyed it all.
That moment hit my mind.
On the balcony, wind whipped through her hair. I lifted Dawn up, let her body lean into the rail, and wrapped her legs around my waist.
“Are you ready to say goodbye?” I asked.
“To what?” she whispered.
“Everything.” I thrust inside of her. I couldn’t give her time to think about what I was saying. I took her right there. Pumped that lush sex. Made it all mine. I marked her flesh with me.
“Hell no.” I clenched my ass cheeks with each shove of my cock into her, trying to go deeper than anyone could possibly get. “This won’t just be tonight.”
“Oh, you like this, don’t you?” She rode my rhythm, took my cock like I knew she could, and then encircled it with even more pleasure. “Oh, tell me how much.”
“You’re heaven,” I groaned. “You’re fucking paradise.”
Smoke knocked on Dawn’s dresser. “Bruv? Are you here?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
“The room looks so bait.”
“Bait?” I asked.
“Suspicious. You think she ran off?”
I picked up Dawn’s diary. “If she was running off, then she probably would’ve taken this with her.”
Something’s wrong.
I gripped the book.
She’s gone for three days. What if she just went on a trip?
I looked at him. “We still have people watching her father’s house?”
“Yeah. No activity.”
“No emergencies or anyone driving someone off to the hospital?”
“No. She ran off, man. I know it. Everything is rushed.” He pointed to the table being on its side next to her desk. It wasn’t much of a convincing clue, but I didn’t like that she’d gone somewhere without my knowing it.
Three days? Anything can happen in three days. She could meet someone else. Or maybe. . .Mr. Douchebag paid her a visit.
I didn’t know this guy, but I really wanted to get to know him. He owed me a redo with Dawn. Due to this asshole, she was scared as hell to start over with anyone else.
“What do we do?” Smoke asked.
I flipped open her diary. Beautiful handwriting decorated the pages. I lifted it up and smelled it. Her perfume greeted my nose.
Smoke smirked. “You’ve got it bad, innit?”
Ignoring him, I turned to the first page and read the first three lines.
On the day I met Caden, everything changed.
He was a man of games.
Twisted mind fucks.
I flipped through it some more. The name Caden appeared on every page.
So, Mr. Douchebag is named Caden.
Smoke disrupted my thoughts. “I think it’s funny that she took everything but left her diary. Or is it funny?”
“No, it’s not funny.”
“I’m saying, man. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
I turned more pages and Caden’s name decorated more sheets. The whole diary had been dedicated to their love affair.
“Maybe she left it for you,” Smoke offered.
I looked up from the book. “Why would she do that?”
“As a clue.”
“Clue?” I wasn’t usually this slow, but I wasn’t in the business of taking relationship advice from a guy wearing leather in ninety-eight-degree weather. “Why are you saying it’s a clue?”
“Because she’s gone, man. And no letter.”
“She could’ve gone on a trip.” I closed the diary and held on to it. “Hmmm. But what trip? She was supposed to be going to some yacht parties with her friends. Nothing more than that.”
“She told you this?” Smoke asked.
“No, I have someone listening to her phone calls.”
Smoke’s eyes widened. “Bruv. . .”
“Don’t.” I held up my hand. “I hear enough shit from my brother about it. Then again, he can’t talk. He was going crazy over her too.”
“Your brother, man?” A smirk spread across his face, but he did his best to hide it. “You were both into the same woman?”
“Yeah.” I walked over to Dawn’s shelf and touched some of the books. On the two bottom shelves, heavy, leather volumes crowded the space. Most of them had legal mumbo jumbo words written in gold. In the middle shelves, romances and mysteries stacked the level. Many of the covers appeared worn and torn at the edges. “It all started off as a game. My brother and I liked to pick a gorgeous woman and do a little healthy gamble for her panties.”
Smoke laughed.
“What?”
“No disrespect. Real bruvas don’t compete like that. We’re too wild with the catties.”
“Hey, I get it. After meeting Dawn, I’m done with competition.”
A wrinkle creased over Smoke’s forehead. “There’s always competition.”
“No. Not with her. I won’t have it.” I slipped my fingers on the top row of Dawn’s books—leather bound fairytales of knights battling dragons and evil witches trapping princesses. It was all the classics. I left the shelf. “With Dawn, I won’t share and I definitely won’t have some other guy around her. She may not feel the same way for me now, but she will.”
Last time I talked to Max, he’d called me a Joker and handed me a joker card from his newly opened deck.
Max loved his expensive cards. It was so beautiful. The joker card could’ve been on display in an art museum. All black with a CGI-inspired tessellated profile—the whole deck had cost hundreds, glimmered like diamonds, and smelled like money. An artist had handcrafted each image, spending days on every card. There was so much detail in the Joker. Dark lines outlined him. On his face, he wore a huge silly grin, but in the background, a mirror stood against the wall. There, the Joker frowned and tears streamed down his face.
“This is you.” Max put the card in my hand. “You’re a fucking joker. You know that, right?”
I turned the card over and took in the sleek design. It was thick and more of a lightweight metal that was so thin it mimicked paper.
“What’s does a joker symbolize?”
I asked. “You know I’m not a card player like you.”
“It’s the trump card in most games. In the 1860s, players changed the rules. Sometimes people needed an extra trump. The joker did that. Still does.” Max pierced me with his gaze. “A joker can do anything. He’s the wild card. That driving force in that great pursuit of happiness.”
I laughed. “What’s up with the serious monologue?”
“This is a special moment for me.” Max grinned. “I want you to take this seriously.”
“Why am I taking this seriously? You’re just going away for a few days.”
“It could be more.” Max took out a sheet of paper and wrote down more things that he wanted the servants to pack in his suitcase. Of course, he couldn’t pack it himself. We hadn’t done that in years, not since Mom had been alive.
“Just don’t forget what I said about being the joker,” Max said.
I studied the card “This joker reminds me of the Fool in those tarot cards mom used to look at.”
Max didn’t comment, but he barely did when I brought our mother up.
“Are you saying that I’m a fool too?” I smirked. “If so, I’m going to pound you.”
“No.” He glanced at his closet. He’d been walking through that space all day, taking note of the shelves of shoes and ties, racks upon racks of suits and shirts that he’d never worn.
He looked at me as if he’d forgotten I was there and then tapped the side of his head. “Remember that. You’re the joker. Don’t ever forget.”
“Why?” I asked.
“With all the pussy in the world, you’re still drooling over Dawn. That’s why!”
My joyful mood evaporated. “What does Dawn have to do with this?”
“You’re the one fighting to get her love back. Maybe you are the fool in the tarot cards.”
“You’re barely over her.” Part of me wanted Max to fight it. Finally, declare that he didn’t think about her anymore or hate that she’d picked me over him.
Shrugging, Max put his back to me. “I don’t think about her as much as I used to.”
That response wasn’t good enough, but I took it. “Have you left that apartment across the street from her house?”
“I’m selling it to someone.” He picked up one of his many bottles of alcohol and twisted the cap. “I plan to be out of there by the end of the month.”
