“It definitely would,” he remarked. “What do you have in mind?”
“Well, maybe a little impromptu locker search? It could ban her from graduation, or maybe get her tossed in juvy for a little while. I need to really drive a point home,” I said seriously. Brian blew out a breath and ran his fingers down my spine.
“Okay, Camilla.” He finally caved. I rewarded him with a long kiss that made his dick grow beneath me. “Can we please just, you know?” His brown eyes darted around the office then fell on my breasts. “For old times sake?” I kissed his lips again and frowned.
“I’m on my period.” The lie slipped out easily and he believed it. He nodded quickly in response and stood up.
“You said you put the bag in her locker right?”
“Yup.” I grinned from ear to ear.
“Let me look at the cam footage and edit it a little, then I’ll conduct a locker sweep. I won’t have to do much after that, it’ll be up to the police.”
“Okay,” I feigned concern. “Do you think I’m being too harsh, Brian?”
“Oh no. You’re being a good big sister. I’d hate to see Christina start down a dubious path like that.”
“Me too,” I nodded. “Thank you so much.” I hugged him and then slipped out of his office. I wasn’t sure if Chris would get detained but it would be fun to find out. I knew at the very least her ass wouldn’t graduate with her class.
When I got back to my car, Laurel looked at me with raised eyebrows and wide eyes. “Okay, it’s done. Let’s go,” I beamed.
“Mr. Lomax fell for it?”
“Fuck yeah. He thinks with his dick.” I shrugged.
“You had sex with him?” She gasped.
“No Laurel. If I would have fucked him he would be trying to arrest her himself.” I laughed and dug in my purse. When I pulled out a roll of cash, Laurel looked positively confused.
“What the hell is all of that for?” She asked taking it in her hand.
“It’s for you. I just used up a part of your inventory. You’re gonna need that money.”
“God, you just think of everything don’t you, Camilla?”
“I try. I don’t always get it right though,” I admitted.
I dropped Laurel off at Xavier’s so she could rest and fix herself up, then I sped over to my Dad’s to see if he’d made it home. Upon driving up I saw his car in the driveway so I hopped out and went in. “What are you doing here, baby girl? I thought you were working.” The bruise on his jaw had turned angry and dark. I wished I could just wipe it away.
“I came to check on you.” My voice was small and quiet. I could tell he was mad at me and I couldn’t rightfully blame him. I was sleeping with his enemy. “Look dad, no matter what happens, I love you.” I wrapped my arms around his solid frame and buried my face in his chest. He was tense at first but then he melted into the hug. “I’m so happy you found me and came back into my life. I know I’ve fucked everything up…I guess I get that from Dana.” I sniffled and Dad laughed a little. “I want to apologize for falling in love with Emmanuel but…” My words turned silent.
“So you are in love with him?” Dad asked sadly.
“Yeah. I know it’s not right and I’m sorry you feel like I betrayed you. I never wanted to add more pain to your life.” The tears wouldn’t stop rolling no matter how I tried to fight it.
“Camilla, I love you more than life itself. I will fight Manny a million times to defend your honor but if you love him then…I guess all this shit is in vain. Nobody put a gun to your head and made you be with him. It’s just a hard fucking pill to swallow that you actually chose him.” His voice was flooded with raw emotion and it nearly choked me to hear him sound so angry and hurt.
“I know. I’m so fucked up,” I cried. “I never meant for it to come to this though.”
“Do you know what he’s planning, baby girl?” He asked, searching my eyes for an answer. I blinked the tears away and shook my head. I had no idea what Emmanuel was planning but if he told me I wouldn’t like it, I knew it couldn’t be good. “He just said I wouldn’t like it,” I sniffled.
“Shit,” he grumbled. “Well, whatever happens just know I love you too and I forgive you.” He kissed my forehead and pressed me close to him.
“He won’t kill you, Dad,” I told him before leaving.
“I know. Sometimes there are things worse than death though, Camilla.” Hearing him say that sent chills through my body. Emmanuel would surely deliver a fate worse than death if I’d made him promise not to hurt my father.
I wanted to scream.
I hated this fucking war and I hated even more that it was all over me.
As soon as I reached my car I called Emmanuel. “What are you gonna do to him?” I sobbed into the phone.
“Camilla, just let me do what I have to do. I told you I wouldn’t hurt him.” His voice was calm on the other side.
“I want to know what you’re gonna do, Emmanuel.”
“I can’t tell you. It’s best if you don’t know.” He ended the call and doom fell all around me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dana
Manny's stupid Keep the Peace rally was happening later in the day and I knew everyone would be running around to get things together. It was the perfect opportunity for me to finally finish retrieving my things from the pool house so I could move into my new home in Atlanta.
I contemplated heading to New Grace to talk to Camilla once more but I knew her mind would be on the rally and after walking in on her and Manny all over each other the other day I didn’t want to chance it happening again. As long as I had time to chip away at Camilla, my plan would still work. She would need more time than I’d anticipated though. Manny really had his fangs deep in her.
Ding! The sound of my phone made me jump out of my skin. Rashad was texting me and it sent disgust pulsing through my core.
Rashad: I’m in town big sis! Let’s talk.
Me: No. I’m busy.
Rashad: No? Come on. It’s either you come to me, or I come to you. I’m trying to give you choices, Dana.
Me: Fine. Where and when?
Rashad: I know a diner…
He gave me the address and I cursed under my breath before putting it into my GPS. My little brother had me driving all the way to some in the middle of nowhere mom and pop diner where truckers got food before hitting the road.
I spotted him outside when I pulled up. He flashed me a smile and opened my car door for me. The tank top he had on bared his full sleeve of tattoos all the way down to his knuckles. I cringed. “You don’t like my art?” He frowned noticing me eyeing his arms the huge one on his shoulder was particularly chilling its eyes seemed to haunt me.
“No. Not my thing,” I said.
“What is your thing big sis? Leaving your family behind?”
“Are we going to go inside and sit?” I huffed. I already knew Rashad wanted to pester me about our past but he could at least do it inside.
“I’m not hungry,” he said, his eyes cold.
“So you brought me to a diner because?” Loud trucks thundered all around us, making me jump. Rashad laughed.
“Did you know it used to be a church?” He quizzed.
“Manny filled me in on all the details. Behind the diner, if you walk a little there’s still a cemetery there.” His feet carried him away from me and I instinctively followed.
“So?” I frowned.
“So, I need to tell you some things that you’ve been too much of a cobarde to find out yourself.”
“Coward? I’m not a coward, I just know when to put things behind me,” I snapped. It was just like him to make such a dramatic statement taking me to some silly cemetery.
We stopped at a small patch of land dotted with crumbling headstones and deteriorating stone angels. Rashad laid a hand to one of the angel’s heads and uttered something under his breath.
A prayer no doubt.
I was shocked that such a fuck up could
still turn to prayer.
“Rashad, stop the damn dramatics. What is it that you want to tell me?” My hand rested on my hips as I watched him closely.
“Dana, did you ever stop to think about me or mom or Nicole in all these years?” He asked. He’d changed from cold to full of emotion once he mentioned our mother and sister. I averted his strong gaze and shrugged. The headstones felt like they were closing in on me.
I shuddered.
“Of course I thought about you all,” I scoffed.
“But you never checked in on us?”
“For what? I was done with Santo Domingo and everyone in it.”
“But we were your family!” His voice ripped through the still air. I jumped at the harshness of it. “Do you know what it did to Nicole when she found out you’d just left? She thought every year that you would write or visit.” He shook his head and a sad laugh escaped his lips. “When she saw your face on TV for the first time she lit up like a Christmas tree. She said ‘that’s my big sister’ she thought you would send money because you were so famous.” I shut my eyes against his words. They hurt too much to hear. I didn’t want to listen to them anymore.
“I don’t care Rashad!” I screamed. “I left to make a better life for me and Camilla!”
“You don’t talk right now, Dana!” He exploded at me and I cowered, shutting my mouth. “You need to listen. You need to hear this.” Tears started to pool in his eyes dangerously close to slipping down his cheeks but he wouldn’t let them. “I tried to tell Nicole that you had changed but she didn’t hear me. You remember how stubborn she was? She just knew you would come home and bring Camilla… ‘She named her after me…Camilla Nicole’ she just knew you would bring her niece back.” His voice was eerie as he recounted his conversations with Nicole.
“Well, Camilla can go see her. She’s grown now. She can go see every fucking body in Santo Domingo if she wants to. I’m never going back there,” I said bitterly. Rashad glared at me and moved inches from my face.
“Camilla can’t go see Nicole.” He said through clenched teeth. The tears finally fell, rolling quickly down his brown face. “She died ten years ago, Dana.”
His words…they were wrong.
They felt wrong.
They felt scratchy and hot and like they were melting into my flesh. I swallowed down the huge lump in my throat. “No…” I shook my head. It couldn’t be real. Rashad was lying to me.
“Yes,” he seethed. “She had a brain tumor the size of a fucking golf ball that killed her in months. It was a tumor they could’ve removed but mom didn’t have the fucking money. I worked my ass off with three jobs trying to come up with it but it wasn’t enough.” He wiped his face with his tattooed hands and shook his head.
“Oh my God,” I cried out. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Why didn’t you care enough to check?!” He threw his arms out and I cowered again. “You know, mom died of a broken heart just three months later? Yup.” He rested against a headstone and looked out at nothing in particular.
More wrong words.
More heat and pain and heaviness.
“Rashad, why didn’t you tell me?” I sobbed. I lowered to my knees in the soft soil. I didn’t care about getting my clothes dirty. The pain was too much to continue standing. The guilt was too heavy.
I’d left my family and they died without me. I could have helped when Nicole had the tumor. I could have sent money! She could still be here to be mad at me like Rashad was. What the hell had I done?
All in the name of running away from myself…
“Rashad I’m so sorry.” I was wracked with sobs. My belly was sore from crying so hard. “I’m so sorry for all of this. I…I did awful things by leaving like that.” I could barely see anything through my tears but I made out Rashad kneeling beside me.
“Could you ever forgive me?” I asked with emotions still in my voice.
“Yes,” he said sadly. From his back pocket, he pulled a white handkerchief and passed it to me. I dabbed at my eyes and gave it back. “Dana, you’ve done too much. You’ve caused too much pain.” He shut his eyes and it looked like it hurt him so much to even speak to me. I understood where all of his hatred came from though.
I would hate me too. “Pray with me? Remember like in Catholic school?” He asked. I nodded and bowed my head with him.
I could hear the rustling of him making the sign of the cross. My mind could not focus on Rashad’s words, though I know I should have been immersing myself in prayer, I needed it. All I could see were the faces of my mother and sister, knowing I would never see them again and though I chose to leave them behind I always thought I could go back one day and repent. Now, that time would never come.
“Oh Lord Jesus Christ most merciful Lord of the Earth. I ask that you receive this child into your arms so that she may pass in safety from this crisis as thou hast told us with infinite compassion…” I heard Rashad’s voice fade back in. It was firm and full of conviction. It was deeply wrong though. His words were wrong like everything else had been so far.
He was reciting the Dedication of the Soul.
The final portion of the Last Rites.
My eyes flew open just as I felt him yank my hair into his fist. “Rashad no!” I yelled out but it felt like my voice was garbled and being sucked into a vacuum. Tears spilled onto my face as I realized my brother was going to kill me.
The gleam of his brutal blade shone in the sunlight. He held the handle with the same handkerchief I’d wiped my tears with. “Tell Nicole and Mama I said, hello.” Those were the only words he spoke before he delivered agonizing pain to my chest, my throat, and my stomach. I was so cold and suddenly so weightless.
The last thing I saw before my lids got too heavy to hold open were the pale yellow eyes of a vicious tattooed wolf covering Rashad’s entire shoulder.
Then blackness.
Chapte r Twenty-Three
Trevor
Rashad called me from his usual unrecognizable number while I was packing for Santo Domingo. I was gonna heed everyone’s advice and just lay low. I made a mental note to add Rashad’s name to his number in my contacts before answering. “What’s up?” I said pinning the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“Um Trev, Hermano. You need to come quickly.” I didn’t like the way his voice sounded. It was too calm and quiet. I couldn’t shake that sense of doom that gripped me either.
“What’s wrong, Rashad?” I asked immediately.
“I need you to meet me somewhere.” He gave me the address of a mom and pop diner in the middle of nowhere and I dropped my clothes to rush over there. I had no idea what I would find but I knew it wouldn’t be good.
My palms were slick against the steering wheel and I knew I was speeding but I didn’t care. My heart raced along with my car.
Rashad was smoking a cigarette about 100 feet away from the diner and I could tell before I even stepped out of the car that something in him was feral. “Trev, follow me.” He turned abruptly and I followed behind him. The crunch of the gravel under my shoes sent shockwaves through me. Like I was walking into the den of the devil.
I saw a figure.
A figure on the ground in a pool of dark liquid.
Mud?
I moved closer, following Rashad.
Dana’s face came into view. It was twisted in agony. Her limbs were bent wrong and would have been uncomfortable for anyone who was alive. I lurched forward and vomited once realization set in on me.
Dana was dead.
I knelt beside her and cradled her head in my trembling hands.
“What the fuck did you do?!” I screamed out. The air rippled with my sorrow making birds flee from branches.
“I didn’t do anything, Trev.” He smirked through a cloud of smoke. I laid Dana’s head down gently and glared at Rashad.
“What the fuck do you mean you didn’t do anything? Dana is dead!”
“Oh, I know. I can see that.”
�
��Rashad why man?”
More evil smiles.
“Hey, Trevor. Catch,” he chuckled. My instincts betrayed me as I caught the bloodied object in my hands. Then recognition assaulted me. He might as well have stabbed me with the fucking knife.
I was holding Dana’s murder weapon with my bare goddamn hands. Her blood soaked into my pants from where I knelt beside her. Sticky strands of her hair wrapped around my fingers from where I held her head. Her DNA wound around me creating a fortress. I let the knife fall to the ground and I shook my head. “You can’t do this to me.” I felt angry tears threatening to fall. “I hated her but I would never have killed her.”
“Well, this scene says differently,” Rashad remarked with a nonchalant shrug. A thick but hollow feeling swelled inside of me as I watched Rashad destroy his phone and pull out another. “Hello, 911? I’d like to report a murder…”
I was completely stuck.
I couldn’t move.
I’d been set the fuck up.
Thoughts poured through my mind all at once. Camilla. Dana. Rashad. Manny. I stood to my feet and watched Rashad end the call with the cops. I’d hear sirens any minute. “Why?” Was all I could muster to say.
“I knew you’d never go along with this shit.” He said looking at Dana’s stiff body. “See Trev, you lack that icy calculating edge. You’re too much of a lover,” he explained. I shook so hard with rage that my teeth were chattering. What could I do though? Fight Rashad? Kill him?
Either way, I was going to prison.
“I needed someone willing to be cold,” Rashad spoke with an unnerving smile. “But still someone who would be willing to take control of the whole thing. I couldn’t pull this shit off by myself.” He gestured around us and then looked at his sister who lay bleeding out all over the grass.
“Emmanuel,” I growled. Rashad just smiled silently. “Rashad, was it Emmanuel?” I pleaded with my voice.
“Rashad died here with Dana.” He rubbed the wolf tattoo on his shoulder and cracked the joints in his neck. “I’m a fucking Wolf now.” He started to move away from the scene, his wicked laughter permeating the air.
Twisted Revenge Page 16
