“Sorry i’m late, Master, i had some last minute paperwork to finish up on the Roman Numeral Homicides,” Natasha told me before sitting down next to Niki. “It’s taken a few days to keep the case off the front page, but Cap managed to talk to some folks at Cox to keep it down to a few lines on the air.”
“Thank heavens for that,” Sinsual replied, clasping her hands in relief. “I want to thank you both for helping Dominic with these cases, ladies. you have both done your new Master proud, indeed, and you have My thanks on behalf of the lot of us in the community.”
“Which reminds me, Master,” Natasha explained, “the information regarding the location of the suspect has been confirmed as DeKalb County Jail for now. She will be held there until sentencing, and she’s expected to be sent down to South Georgia if she’s convicted. The D.A. is sympathetic to life imprisonment, but he wants the death penalty.”
“Thank you, My slave, I will make the visit now to assess her mental state, to hopefully see if she’s remorseful about this whole mess,” I told Natasha.
I hoped that she would see her issues and beg for leniency, but I was operating on complete assumptions right now. The proof was in the pudding, and I intended on getting exactly that. I needed to see it with my own eyes.
Hopefully.
~Epilogue~
I felt a sense of obligation to her.
I think that’s the word for it.
Maybe it was more along the lines of easing my guilt over what happened to Simone. Maybe it was more that I couldn’t shake the blood that was on my hands. I needed to feel like I’d done something more, I guess, to ease my own conscience.
I kept a close eye on the pending case and trial, not so much that I was making sure that justice was served, but more in that I wanted to see if there was anything that I could do to keep the judge from throwing the book at her.
Unfortunately, four homicides and attempted murder of an officer of the court (Niki) doesn’t offer much leverage for me to plead for leniency in sentencing.
I made my way to the DeKalb County Jail where she was being held until trial, and a rush of emotions went through me as I signed in to ask to speak with her.
Trepidation didn’t even cover it.
Guilt was going to override my first words. ‘I’m sorry’ will never cover it, no matter how many times you say it.
I sat down at the table and twiddled my thumbs, waiting for Simone to face me, glass between us, and probably speak the first words to me since we were in college.
Let’s not get it twisted; I was angry that she murdered a woman that was once the center of my universe.
But at the same time, I had to answer for my own sins in this mess, no matter how long ago it happened. I could only hope for forgiveness as well as forgiving her for committing these egregious acts.
She was dressed in the standard issue prison orange, and she looked like she’d already acclimated to prison life; her hair was already corn-rowed, nails filed down to next to nothing, very little femininity showed outwardly at all.
This was not the woman that I’d dealt with in our youth.
I guess that’s what happens when obsession takes over.
I had hoped for a profanity laced tirade from Simone once she saw that it was me that was on the other side of the pane glass window, but I was about be disappointed in putting my defenses up so soon.
“I was wondering when you would come to see me,” she uttered, her face absolutely emotionless.
“Simone, I…” I hesitated, not quite sure what words I wanted to say. “I honestly don’t know the words to say, except to say I’m sorry that you’ve ended up here.”
Her eyes got wide, and the storm that I expected finally began to show. To be real, I put the apology out there first because I knew that psychologically speaking it would have brought out the true feelings of the person receiving the apology.
“It’s been fifteen years, Dom, fifteen!” she sounded controlled over the phone, almost as if she was expecting me to say what I said. “The best thing you can come up with after all this time is ‘I’m sorry’?”
“Actually, no, that wasn’t all,” I replied, intent on her not trying to take control of the situation. “I had all these thoughts in my head as to what to say to you, and after seeing you like this, after all these years, I honestly feel a lot of things. Contempt comes up first in my head. Why in the hell did you kill all of those women, Simone?”
“Because you promised to marry me, you son of a bitch,” she contemptuously yelled, but not loud
enough to arouse the guard’s suspicions. “You promised me, and then you went and married that trick Sherrie, even after I told you that she wasn’t right for you.”
This conversation was going downhill fast.
“Simone, you weren’t the one for me then, what made you think that I would have wanted you after you went on a killing spree?” I tried to explain things to a brick wall. “We could have never been together.”
“So what was that bullshit proposal, huh?” she put it out there, trying to evoke those memories. “You kept asking me over and over again.”
“I wasn’t lucid, and you knew that,” I said, shaking my head with every word. “What the hell made you think that I wanted to marry you when I was with Sherrie junior and senior year?”
“Yeah, you’re right, you were a ho back then, and you’re still a ho,” she smugly intimated. “Don’t forget, I had one of your bitches. You should thank me for training her ass for you to take, motherfucker.”
The more that this conversation progressed, the more I began to realize that my optimism was wasted on a person that was slowly but surely asking to be put away for the rest of her natural born life.
Oh well, you can’t blame a bruh for trying to see the lighter side of murder.
If it’s my fault, so be it.
I can live with that.
But I’m not in the mood to play Captain Save-a-Hoe anymore.
“I came here to try to see if there was anything, anything that I could find to compel me to try and keep you from 25 to life in max security,” I finally stated after hearing my Blackberry go off. “Enjoy the block, I’m done.”
All of a sudden, Simone started getting slushy on me. “Wait, I didn’t mean it, Dom, wait!” I heard her yelling through the earpiece.
Those would be the last words I would hear from Simone.
I walked away, free of the self-inflicted guilt that had worn me down over the past few weeks.
It was a shame to see that though, because I honestly had intentions of trying to get the court to not be so harsh, that she had psychological issues that needed to be addressed rather than throwing her in a hole somewhere in South Georgia to rot for the rest of her adult life.
Oh well, sue me for being a pseudo-bleeding heart.
That won’t happen again.
I jumped in the truck after leaving the building to get my thoughts together. As much as I knew I could chicken out, deep in my heart, I knew it had to be done.
I turned the ignition, steeled by the resolve that I needed to complete the circle.
There was one last thing to finish.
I just hoped that she was in the forgiving mood.
“What are you doing here?”
I stood on the porch of my ex wife’s mother’s home.
This was something that needed to be done. I owed it to Sherrie to do this.
“Mrs. James,” my throat went dry almost immediately, “I wanted to come by to inform you that Sherrie’s killer has been brought to justice.”
“So, you actually were able to find the person responsible after all?” she asked, her eyes still full of the
same contempt as she showed the day of the funeral. “Well, I guess that business partner of yours was able to keep his word. I will have to thank him properly.”
Deep down, I figured she wouldn’t give me any credit for helping to close this chapter in her life.
In her mind, I wa
s responsible.
I never turned the knife, but I was always responsible.
That would never change in her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am, Kane kept to his word,” I lied. It was probably best to keep it that way. She never really liked me with her daughter; I was the ‘pretty boy’ that would be the death of her daughter because she would die of a broken heart.
Knowing that those words were so prophetic was not of much comfort for me. They were a chilling reminder, and they probably always would be, that choices made could affect you in times to come.
“These last few weeks, I did a lot of praying, Dominic,” Mrs. James began. All I could do was to prepare for the onslaught; this was what I deserved in some ways, but in others, I didn’t. “I can’t ever forget what you’ve done to this family by allowing Sherrie to be taken from us. But, I can forgive you and pray that you will not do this to another unsuspecting soul again. You need to change your ways, Dominic; they cost you a woman that was ready to come back to you if you weren’t so thick-headed to realize it.”
That admission cut through me with a fury that nearly knocked me to my knees. This was the second person that informed me that Sherrie was having second thoughts about us.
The tears flowed freely at that moment. I didn’t hold them back this time.
“Mrs. James, I thank you for forgiving me. I know we were never on good terms, but please know that I always respected you,” I told her, still letting the tears flow. “I will never darken your doorstep again.”
I walked down the stairs from the porch without as much as another word and hopped into my truck. I felt a lot better about facing that final task. I felt a weight was finally lifted from my shoulders.
I looked to the heavens and mouthed a final goodbye before pulling off to head to work.
Sherrie would have been proud.
“Dom, I have a Jane Doe at Inner Sanctum that I think you might be interested in checking out,” Natasha was on the phone explaining.
“Go ahead, Natasha,” I had Ramesses in the truck with me. We had just left the Palace on a routine security check when I got the call, “Ramesses is with me as well.”
“Good, because this one’s a bit unusual, Sir,” she replied back, trying to maintain her discipline and professionalism at the same time. “The Jane Doe was chained down, looks like asphyxiation is the cause of death, but we won’t know until the M.E. gets the body for the autopsy.”
“Anything else that sets out as extraordinary?” Ramesses asked once I put the phone on speaker. “Is there anything on the scene that the other detectives might be over looking?”
“No, Sir, I don’t think so, but that’s why I’m requesting the firm’s services, Sir,” Natasha answered again, sounding like she was on the move around the crime scene. “Lieu thinks that your expertise might help with the investigation.”
“Alright, My dear, tell your Lieu that we will be on the scene in the next 15 or so,” I told her before hanging up the phone.
“What do you think, Dom?” Ramesses asked me.
“Natasha wouldn’t have called unless there was something there that the other detectives on scene
wouldn’t have picked up on,” I told him. “I think we should look into it, since we now have the attention of a few county homicide units. After all, this is what we do, right?”
Ramesses laughed and replied, “Yeah, young’un, this is what we do.”
Acknowledgements
Unlike my Chronicles series, this is a complete work of fiction. There are some characters that you know and love, and there are some that you have been newly introduced to. You might see them down the road, who knows? That’s the beauty of an author’s mental ‘universe’, you really never know who’s coming in and out, and who stays and goes.
I wanted to try and figure out what else can I come up with to keep myself busy. After all, I still have a few months before I think about releasing the next in the Chronicles series, and a lot of the fans (damn, it felt good to say that) kept emailing me, wanting the next one to come out sooner.
I couldn’t help what happened with the way that this series started. I was chilling with my wife one night and in the midst of us falling asleep, Dom showed up out of the blue on me. The thing was, he wasn’t in his uniform, but looking like something out of a ghetto PI novel, edgier than Shaft, but not quite so rugged that I couldn’t do anything to reign him in.
We came to the conclusion that the ladies might enjoy seeing a male Dominant with an edge to him, completely different in style from Ramesses, just to test things out a bit. But, I couldn’t make him too rough around the edges because he is a businessman now, and you have to have some acumen about you.
So, I rolled a lot of the PI’s that I’ve read about in the past, and tried to take pieces of them and create the Dom that you just read about. I also wanted his new girls, Niki and Natasha, to be vastly different from the girls that belong or belonged to Ramesses and Neferterri mainly because I wanted a challenge in creating new submissive characters, based on others that I have either observed in the scene, or know personally.
I know you get sick of hearing that, but, it works, so you’ll get over it. LOL
As always, I couldn’t have done this book without my Beloved, who has now begun to understand the crazy process that has to be done to put a book together and doesn’t cause me too much madness over it now.
To my mother and sister, I have no words to describe the love and support that you showed when I first began this venture, and your acceptance of my lifestyle. Thank you for understanding, and for also keeping an open mind with the type of material that I have been creating and giving me honest critiques.
To our extended Leather Family, Sir Deme and His solamente, AMP Sir EZ and His girls, mlfu and mlfd, my mentor Master Obsidian and His namaste, as well as my Beloved’s mentor Master Zeus, DragonMaster Sable and His girls, butterfly and kioko, and Lady Velvet G, thank you for your support when I first started cranking this book writing thing. We don’t call a lot of people in the community as a whole “Family” often, but we consider you as such.
Brother Strange and the crew out in L.A., thank you all for the love and support shown by the support of the first book. I have no words (yeah right) to express how much it has meant.
To the founders of Black BEAT: Lady Z, BG, and Diamond, thank you for the full on media blitz that you put out there for CONU, and for your personal purchases and support as well.
I know I’m forgetting some folks, and for that I do apologize, but please know that if I hadn’t done so here, that I will at least personally let you know what you contributed in one form or fashion.
Now, for my surprise…
I’ve put in the first chapter of Legacy: Book Two of the Chronicles of the Nubian Underworld, which is due out in the summer of 2010.
Enjoy the snippet and Peace to you and yours.
Chapter Snippet
Legacy:
Book Two
of the
Chronicles of the
Nubian Underworld
~Two~
Neferterri
“So, let Me get this straight?” I looked my husband in the eyes as we walked into the currently constructed home that was soon to replace the house that we were in the process of renting out to family members. “We’re going public with the Palace?”
“No, babe, we’re not exactly going public; more like, semi-public,” Ramesses answered, taking in the larger space that we would soon be moving into.
“There are some rules to this new idea that I have. In fact, if it works, we may very well be duplicating this idea in different parts of the country.”
I hated when he pulled the cloak and dagger talk with me. Ever since Amenhotep left, my husband had been a rather bit more engaged into the comings and goings within the local BDSM community, and that’s saying a lot, considering that we really weren’t completely “plugged in” to begin with. But then again, considering that we’re both ent
repreneurs now, instead of working in corporate America full time, some priorities could be readjusted and balances could be struck. During the day, since the kids were in school, it’s easy to get some marketing done, things like that. I managed to talk both my mother and my mother-in-law to retire from their jobs and share the responsibility of taking the kids to their respective extra-curricular activities, for operating expenses and “mad” money, so to speak. They were more than happy to take retirement and use the money we were giving them to do with what they wanted.
I was getting used to the idea of having a lot of businesses to handle. We had begun the process of opening a daycare center, a mail center, and we expanded my husband’s photography studio to include not only commercial work for his former apprentice, but to open the possibilities for doing fetish work as well. Combine that with Liquid Paradise, and now the idea of turning the Palace into a “bondage ranch” type of place was starting to get my juices flowing. There would definitely not be a dull moment, that’s for sure, and all of it has been bankrolled thanks to Amenhotep wanting to make sure that His extended family was taken care of. Not to mention, making more money for him as well; after all, he is a businessman above all else.
The other idea I had to get used to was enjoying our submissives, without the time constraints that working a normal 9-to-5 demanded. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all of our girls when they are in our care and charge. But there is something different about the interaction that sajira and I have. It feels deeper somehow, as if we’d done this dance before sometime ago. All I know is it’s going to be an interesting ride to say the least. Damian, on the other hand, was a little easier to figure out. With him, everything seems to ebb and flow so smoothly between us and he is definitely picking up on my patterns and tastes quite nicely, indeed.
But for now, I needed a few answers from my husband regarding the plans for the Palace, since that is the one business that I have the least amount of ‘hands on’ direct contact with, just as he allows me to run Liquid the way I see fit and chooses to stay a silent partner with. It’s not that I wouldn’t trust the decisions and vision, but I’m just a nosey bitch, so sue me.
Deviant Intent: OBSESSION Page 20
