“I’m going to tell her before I go back to Washington.”
Delilah’s green eyes were pleading. “Please, Dante, don’t do this. If you’re going back to the farm anyway, you don’t want a life with her.”
“I don’t know what the fuck I want.” He was going back to Washington because once he told Chelsea that he had intended to manipulate her to surrender ownership of the company, she would tell him to piss off, and he wouldn’t torture them both by staying close. He couldn’t stay in Atlanta and remain the man he’d become when he left seven years ago. The city was possessive. It wanted to reclaim its ownership of him the same way Delilah obsessed over taking back Devil’s Music.
“Why does sex make men absolutely useless? It boggles my mind.” She slapped the table. “Focus on this. You don’t want Devil’s Music. I do.”
“You’ve got twenty-eight percent of it.”
“It’s not enough. You knew from the beginning what I wanted out of this transaction. Don’t go to her and tell her our plan just so you can walk away with a clear conscience. You think it’ll make you look noble, but we both know it’s false. Just do this for me. If you don’t, then you’re choosing her over me. That means you lied to me.”
“Delilah, be a goddamn adult about this. It’s not cut-and-dried Chelsea or you. She trusts me. She didn’t hand over her stake in the company, but she gave me something more important.”
“What, orgasms?”
“No. A hymnbook. It belonged to her ancestor.”
“Charming, but that means nothing to me.”
It meant everything to him, though. Those delicate, battered pages connected him to Chelsea through history, music, and hell.
“Dante, I warned you before that we’re on different sides and you can’t straddle the line. So you either get those shares for me or abandon me—again.”
There it was, proof of what he’d already known. Devil’s Music still meant more to Delilah than anything else. When she’d turned eighteen and their father revealed he planned to send her to college, she’d declared she’d rather die than be separated from the record label. And Dante had never stood in her way of the company—until now.
“What will you do if I kill this plan, Delilah? You’re going to shoot me the way you shot yourself when you were a kid? Or will you pull a lighter on me, like you did when the board voted you out?”
Were the tears in her eyes because he’d offended her or because he’d called her out on the truth?
“It’s my life,” she said, then fastened her gaze on the beer bottle in front of her. Suddenly she lunged for it and tried to swing it at his face. Her strength nearly knocked him on his ass. But he managed to grab her wrists and shake her hard until she dropped the bottle. Beer oozed across the table and trickled onto the floor. “Let me go, goddamn it.”
“Oh. Whoa,” a man said, jogging over. “Y’all need to take this shit outside.”
“Don’t do this,” Dante warned Delilah. In all their years coming here when they were kids, they’d never gotten into a scuffle. He didn’t want to change that tonight. “I can’t fight you and protect you at the same time.”
She kicked, landing a pointy shoe to his leg, and he growled in pain.
“I don’t need you to protect me. I never did.” She was smiling even as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Stay and fight for once in your life. Do you have the stones to do that?”
People gathered loosely on the fringes, but he ignored their cussing and commentary. “Don’t provoke me, Delilah.”
“Fuck you,” she said for a second time. She spat in his face. The contact severed his restraint and his open hand swung out, connecting with her jaw with a crisp crack and force that sent her sprawling out of her chair.
Shouts flooded his ears as he wiped his face with a sleeve. “Damn!” “Oh, naw!” “What the fuck, bruh?”
A cop broke through the ring of onlookers and hauled him up. “What the hell’s happening over here?”
“He slapped that chick,” someone said. “She fell out of her chair.”
“Shit, please. She spat on him first. I got it on my phone,” another voice chimed in. “Look, I’m just sayin’, if you gonna haul off and attack a man, expect him to retaliate.”
Dante felt as if someone had thrown him into a dense fog. What the fuck had he done? He’d never raised a hand to his sister. Jude Bishop had introduced each of his kids to his closed fist at young ages. When Dante had gotten out of line or Delilah had talked out of turn, their father had struck them—then gone about his routine. But Dante had seen Delilah’s fragility more than the meanness in her personality, and he’d always responded to her with sympathy and a drive to defend her. He’d rescued her, protected her. And now he’d hit her so hard that she was lying on the dirty floor of a hellhole bar.
“Ma’am, you want to come in and press charges?” the cop asked Delilah as she got to her feet.
Dante shook his head at her. It wasn’t to save his ass. She had who-the-fuck-knew-what in her system, and parading around a police station high might not be in her best interests. Then again, maybe being detained would do her—them both—some good.
“No,” she decided, wincing when she touched her cheek.
“You can change your mind,” the cop said.
“Good to know. Let him go.”
Dante wasn’t going to thank Delilah for sparing him a ride in the back of a cruiser. When the cop finally released Dante and strode to the bar, she said, “Satisfied with yourself, striking a pretty little woman?”
“I shouldn’t have hit you. That doesn’t mean you didn’t deserve it.”
“A matter of opinion.” She righted her chair. “How will you make this up to me?”
The fucking company. Her one-track mind always looped back to Devil’s Music. “So you bait me, I slap you, then you try to use it as leverage to get me to manipulate Chelsea?”
“I’m giving you every chance to make the right choice, Dante.”
“Holy fucking shit,” the bartender said to the room at large. “Some folks got shot up in Midtown.”
Dante and Delilah joined the crowd at the bar and he looked at the breaking news alert. On the screen was live footage of a news van on the street with emergency vehicles in the background.
His brain turned sluggish and in slow motion as he processed the limited details. Drive-by shooting in front of Opera. Multiple fatalities. Among the victims, Vitalz rapper Clint Jermaine pronounced dead. Hip-hop record label executive Chelsea Coin wounded—extent of injuries unconfirmed.
Chelsea had been shot tonight.
Dante broke from the crowd and slammed out the door.
“Don’t go to her,” Delilah screamed after him, following him outside.
“Get a cab and go to your hotel.”
“There’s nothing you can do for her.”
He stopped and, heart hammering in his chest, snatched his phone from his pocket. Why the fuck had no one called him? He whirled on her. “I’m going to ask this once, Delilah. You were at that party. Did you have something to do with the shooting?”
“God, no! I—I can’t fucking believe you’d accuse me. I left a while ago. I was here brawling with you, remember? And why would I want Clint Jermaine dead? He’s the label’s most bankable client right now. His death is a loss for Devil’s Music, and since I own part of it, it’s my loss, too.”
There were multiple fatalities in front of the club tonight and she was talking in terms of money?
“It’s crucial that the CEO gets out in front of this,” Delilah said. “I hope Emma’s not letting emotion compromise her professional priorities.”
“Chelsea was shot, Delilah,” he said. Did his words even register with her? he wondered
“And I’m sure that was painful.” She pointed to her chest, indicating her self-inflicted wound. “But whatever’s going to happen to her will happen. There’s nothing you can do to help.”
“I can find her and pray, and I can search
for the bastard who did this.” Rage thickened his blood; if he didn’t get behind a wheel soon, he’d lose his fucking grip. “She asked me to come to the party. I said no.”
“So?”
“I should’ve been with her.” He started moving again, heading for his SUV.
Delilah’s shoes tapped against the cracked concrete. “Dante, don’t walk away from me to go on some crazy hunt. This is tragic, okay, but it’s business. Shootings happen. Rappers get killed. Enemies are made. Frankly, I’m mildly surprised nobody pinned Chelsea before now.”
“Hey, Delilah. Go to hell.”
She stopped chasing him. “Oh, I suspect I will. It’ll be only a matter of time before your sins send you there to join me and Daddy.”
Dante was done talking. He slammed into his ride and drove.
Chelsea, goddamn it, you hold on for me. I’m on my way.
Chapter 13
Two days following the shooting, Atlanta police made an arrest in the murders of Clint Jermaine, Rollo Jermaine, and Ferdinand Porter, and the aggravated assault of Chelsea Coin. Moniqua Prenz’s prints were lifted from a 9mm Glock recovered from an untagged black Hyundai that had crashed and was left burning in the Bluff. Sudden brake line failure had led to the skid and crash, which had killed an unidentified driver. Yet the gunshots had come from a rear passenger window. The bullets recovered from the gun matched the one trauma surgeons at Emory University Hospital had removed from beneath Chelsea’s collarbone.
With Chelsea’s attorney and Emma running interference, Chelsea remained shielded from the press. Not that they gave up trying to find avenues to get to her. One reporter had posed as a hospital volunteer and managed to reach Chelsea’s floor before the guard in front of the door apprehended him.
After five days of being a guest at EUH and being approached daily by law enforcement for details she’d rehashed again and again, Chelsea was getting antsy to go home. Tomorrow she would be discharged. She hoped being home in her condo would help her rest. Ever since the shooting, gruesome dreams left her exhausted and in a panic, so she’d been resisting sleep. As tired and sedated as she was, she craved familiar faces.
She was even missing her parents, though she’d had a nurse boot them from her room this morning. In all the years of their damaged marriage, they’d agreed on next to nothing, but today they’d stood in front of her bed united in the opinion that she was yet another victim of the Herst Plantation.
“I told you that place is nothing but evil,” her mother lectured. “The company’s called the Devil’s Music. Y’all are only calling on Satan.”
“Herst land has never done right by anyone with the name Coin,” her father had insisted with sorrowful eyes. “Ain’t nothing going to change that.”
It hurt to speak louder than a whisper, but she’d felt compelled to raise her voice and point out that the shooting hadn’t occurred at headquarters. The technicality hadn’t carried any weight, because her parents’ minds were made up. She was playing a deadly game. She’d dodged death once when Delilah Bishop had tried to set the boardroom on fire, and again two nights ago when a bead on her dress had blocked a bullet’s smooth entry into her collarbone. Her parents doubted she’d beat the Herst curse a third time.
Determined to defy their interference in her career—and a vile bitch’s attempt on her life—Chelsea was already planning her return to the estate at the end of the week. The deaths of Clint Jermaine, his cousin, and his friend were devastating, but competitors were searching for the company’s fresh vulnerabilities. One Devil’s Music artist was responsible for the murder of another. It was beyond fucked up.
Her assistant, Teagan, texted that she’d visit this evening. Emma and Joshua had come through hours earlier, bringing breakfast and company updates—against her doctors’ advice. The medical staff wanted her to adhere to a bland diet and concentrate on resting. Drugged up and with her arm in a sling, she was still willing to discharge herself from the hospital and show up at the estate in her hospital gown if her colleagues tried to shut her out.
Her phone vibrated on her lap, and she smiled at the name on the display. “Hey, stranger.” It was a phenomenally cheesy thing to say, and she’d seen Dante just last night when he’d sat at her side and didn’t complain when she asked him to watch a Real Housewives marathon with her, but she was missing him again. She could blame it on post-traumatic shock, but she was too tired to lie to herself at the moment. “I miss you. What are you going to do about that?”
“Get me clearance and I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. Tell me what you’re wearing.”
“Freak.” She smiled, though. “A hospital gown and slippers. It’s casual Wednesday.”
“Stay that way.”
“Hmm, if you’re thinking about masturbating, hold off until you get here. I’m bored with TV and I’d rather watch you jack yourself off.”
His laughter tickled her straight through, even the places that pounded with pain.
“Hurry, but don’t drive too fast. I’m not going anyplace.” She hung up and reflected on their short conversation. She’d reminded him to drive safely because she didn’t want to lose him suddenly and senselessly the way he’d almost lost her.
It’d be stupid to keep pretending that nothing had changed between them. They weren’t young and in love. They were older and hooked on each other. That was okay. She didn’t need declarations of love, promises of a happy ending in the sunset, or shit like that.
Really, she was a practical woman. She demanded honesty and respect—and great sex. The other stuff…that was luxury, and she had enough money to buy luxury to last several lifetimes.
Money wouldn’t keep Dante in Georgia. He had his own fortune, and more reasons to leave than to stay.
This sucks sweaty balls, she thought. I’m lying here with a bullet wound in my chest, and my heart’s breaking over a guy.
She fiddled with the remote to manipulate the adjustable bed and was about to start cursing the pillow wedged uncomfortably behind her head when the door slowly opened and Emma’s head ducked into the room.
“Feeling up for a chat?”
“Yes.” Chelsea did her best to smile brightly through her weariness. “Come in, and could you help me with this pillow?”
Emma set her gold-trimmed handbag on the foot of the bed and came over to slide the pillow from behind Chelsea’s head. She fluffed it before gingerly returning it. “Good?”
“Mm-hmm, thanks.” She waited for her friend to take a seat. She lightly touched the bandaged wound and hissed through her teeth. It’d be time for another hit of Vicodin soon. “You look almost as sad as you did the night this happened.”
Chelsea remembered only shards of that night. After the bullet penetrated, she’d hit the ground and slipped in and out of consciousness. But after surgery, she’d come to in recovery to see Emma sitting nearby with swollen, teary eyes. In breathless pain and trapped in confusion, she’d croaked, “Stop crying.” Because seeing Emma Toledo cry was an indescribably sad sight.
“I hate that this is happening. Clint. You. Those other people…” Emma sighed. “I think we mishandled the situation with Moniqua. We knew she was escalating this and becoming more aggressive. What happened to Gordon Reyes’s car was a warning, and we failed to respond to it as one.”
“Blaming ourselves takes the guilt off Moniqua. We can’t do that, Emma.”
“You sound like Joshua,” she said tersely. “Talking to him about this is like trying to hold a conversation with a goddamn brick wall.”
“I’m telling you now to not let this be another point of contention between y’all. Your marriage is already hanging on by Lord knows what.”
“Weeks ago you sounded as if you thought he and I should end it because you hate the infighting.”
“I do hate the infighting, but for some reason your marriage means everything to you and you don’t want to give that man up. So if being married to
him makes you happy, I’m not going to encourage you to lose that happy. I decided to stop married-person-shaming you.”
Emma patted Chelsea’s knee. “In kind, I’ll stop single-person-shaming you. That is, if you’re still single. I’m not all that certain anymore.”
“Dante and I…He demanded me as part of his deal with the company. Now that he’s written the songs, his job is done, and I think that means he’s done fucking me, too. It’s not sweet or romantic—actually, it’s sleazy—but who cares?”
“You care. And he cares. You gave him Solomon Coin’s book and he’s wearing a rubber band so you’ll ease up on hurting yourself.”
He’d also filled a notebook with songs about her. “He told you that?”
“Yeah. We’ve been working on the tracks, and recording studios make for excellent places to share confessions. But even if he hadn’t told me that, I’d still know that there’s more than a contract between you. I know the difference between a man who’s in love and one who’s phoning it in.”
Was Joshua Drake phoning it in? If Emma thought he was, why was she accepting that in their marriage?
“You’re my friend, Chelsea, and I want you to feel something besides pain.” Emma slipped her fingertips beneath her eyeglasses. “You hate my tears, so I’m not going to sit here and cry. I came because the company’s legal team talked to one of the detectives working the case. Moniqua rejected the ADA’s plea offer. Her defense team wants to take this to trial. They’re suggesting this was gang violence. Remember, Rollo Jermaine was arrested in a raid a few years ago. A technicality got him off, but he didn’t stop working cocaine in Atlanta and LA, and he didn’t cut ties with his contacts. We knew that. Moniqua did as well, and her defense is that she was set up.”
“Fuck that. She was at the nightclub and called me a bitch to my face. She was hostile. Her prints were on the weapon and a witness said they saw her get out of a Hyundai.”
“All of that helped police make an arrest, but her criminal defense people say the evidence was manufactured. She wasn’t the driver.”
Sin for Me Page 20
