Renee 3 Page 7

Renee’s eyes glanced at the staircase. She attempted to push past Julian, but her feet hit the brakes when he grabbed her arm and spun her in his direction. Their faces were so close that her hair slapped him in the face before landing on her shoulders.

  “Do you forget what you put me through?”

  Silence sealed Renee’s lips.

  “You kept yourself emotionally unavailable for years. You punished me, the only person who showed you unconditional love and lived with you in this depressing world known as your life. Never once did you take that into consideration. You only took it for granted.”

  Renee tried to free herself from his hold, but it only made Julian tighten his grip.

  “You took my child from me,” he reminded her.

  Renee’s entire being had gone numb, and the color in her face faded. Julian pushed her away from him, and the two stood in silence at the thought of their unborn child. Julian’s eyes went from rage to agony, and slowly Renee came to grips with the underlying pain he endured. Only then did she consider how she might have contributed to his pain. From Julian sleeping with another woman to Renee sleeping with Jared, things were bound to explode in both their faces.

  Renee slowly backed away from Julian. In that brief moment, she realized they both made mistakes.

  Julian shook off the pain and allowed anger to lead their discussion when she didn’t respond. He’d hoped that by visiting her, things would be different. Since they weren’t, he’d jump to plan Z. “I know what you’re trying to do, what you’re going to do. Don’t try building no shit in New York or Miami. Metro stripped you of those cities, not me. This shit is mine now, so keep your distance, or I’ll hurt you more than I already have,” Julian warned.

  The threat was hard and disrespectful. It hurt Julian’s soul to speak those words to her, but he needed her to hurt just like she had hurt him.

  Leaving her speechless, he got into his car and punched the steering wheel multiple times until his strength dissolved and tiredness grabbed him. This was not what he wanted, but this was how Renee made it. So if this was what she wanted, Julian had to come to terms with the fact that he and Renee would never be.

  Chapter 10

  “Who the fuck are you?” Zeke stared down Calloway and Jared, who were standing in the middle of the lounge when he flicked the lights on. His lackey walked forward, his large frame standing out like a candle in a blackout.

  “We want in.” Calloway smiled.

  * * *

  “Congratulations, Ms. Melrose, you have just purchased a one-of-a-kind.”

  Raquel admired the two-floor glass building that sat on the street of South Beach. Its open space smelled of candy and flowers, fragrances spewing from Dane’s and Raquel’s bodies. Her voice carried to the second floor and back down.

  Dane smiled. “Yes, this is a beautiful piece of property I have. Thank you for meeting me here this time of night. I just needed to give it one more look.”

  “I understand. If this were mine, I would come here every day just to stare at it.” Raquel paused and looked around. “Forgive me, I know you mentioned it before, but what do you plan to use this space for? It has such potential and will go right with just about anything.” Raquel folded her arms and walked across the floor, nodding her head at the architecture and delicate features.

  “My jewelry store is expanding, and this will be my eye candy,” Dane answered.

  Raquel’s feet terminated movement and turned in Dane’s direction. “Perfect. You will certainly turn heads with this one. These glass walls and your collection of jewelry will give off magic for the store’s outside appearance.”

  Raquel was impressed. She had done business with a lot of wealthy people, but Dane reeked of class, and her choice of wardrobe alone made her want to vomit with envy. Dane’s glass-heeled stiletto boots and limited-edition glass clutch stole Raquel’s attention. She fought not to inquire where Dane had made such purchases. Dane’s presence secretly made Raquel feel inferior, but the foreign emotion would never rear its ugly head. In the world of Raquel, women came in second to her, but now that she shared a room with Dane, she had to remind herself of this constantly.

  “You couldn’t be more correct,” Dane agreed. The effortless lie that rolled off her tongue was a tall tale created when needing a reason as to why her interest in the building existed. If the truth had been pulled from her mind and laid out on a table, Raquel would have discovered that the need for this property derived from a sentimental place and that a jewelry store was out of the equation. This was Reagan’s dream, the graduation gift she was unable to receive due to her untimely death. Dane didn’t know what she would do with this space. She had no hopes of opening a business, but she just knew she had to buy it for Reagan, even if she wasn’t around to use it.

  “What’s the name of your company?” Raquel pried.

  “Reagan’s,” Dane answered. Outside, four men were plastering newspapers on the spotless glass windows. Swiftly, they moved until no one could see inside unless they scaled the building.

  Now on the other side of the room, Raquel’s back faced Dane while she spoke. “A young lady by the name of Reagan was going to buy this place. Gorgeous girl. Then days after she told me she’d take it, I learned from the news that she was murdered in her home. Such a tragedy. I hope they catch the monster that did it. I didn’t know her well, but she had such a great aura about her.”

  Raquel located her briefcase and took out a bottle of lotion to lather her hands. When she was done, she put it back and placed her bag on one of the two chairs in the room.

  “They did,” Dane told her.

  As Raquel headed to the front of the room, her eyebrows jumped high. Her hands rubbed the vanilla-lily lotion deeper into her skin. “Really? I didn’t hear about it.”

  “Yes. They got him rather quickly and learned that he had a partner. They haven’t gotten her yet, but I have a feeling they will soon.”

  “Isn’t that something? He’ll turn over on whomever he was working with. They all do.” Raquel noticed the newspaper covering the windows. “What are they doing?” She rushed to open the door.

  “Relax, Ms. Hunt, they work for me. I’m a private person. The world doesn’t need to see what sins I commit in here.”

  “Oh, okay. I understand.” Raquel replayed the word “sins” in her mind. She found it odd that Dane would use that word, but she played along with it and laughed.

  Dane’s hand sat beside the light switch. “Would you roll over?”

  “I don’t follow you,” Raquel confessed.

  “Concerning the young girl who was murdered. You said that the murderer would turn over on his partner. I’m asking, if you knew who the killer was, or their whereabouts for that matter, would you tell?”

  Raquel did dirt she wouldn’t speak of, but in order to close a deal, she believed in saying whatever she had to to keep the client happy. “Yes, most definitely!”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” Dane expressed.

  Dane turned the lights off and, in just a few steps, made her way in front of Raquel. She wrapped her hand around her throat. Her pointy stiletto nails ripped into her neck and pierced her skin. Blood stained Dane’s ivory-painted nails. Cutting off Raquel’s breathing, Dane glared deep into her eyes.

  “Where is your daughter?” Dane questioned. Her nails sank deeper into Raquel’s flesh.

  The piercing pain ricocheted throughout her body, and her loss of air caused her to hysterically move in an effort to maintain what air supply she had left. From left to right, Raquel moved her head, her hands pinching, scratching, and fumbling with Dane’s in an attempt to be released from her hold. Her feet stomped down on the shoes she once admired. However, no movement or fight lured Dane away. Her stance was as solid as steel and never folded.

  “That’s not the answer I wanted to hear.”

  With her free hand, Dane grabbed Raquel’s index finger and, with one swift move, broke it. Nails being dug into her neck mixed with a broke
n bone sent Raquel into a trance filled with pain. Cries screeched out of her, and tears dropped onto Dane’s hand, sliding and plummeting to their death.

  “This should have been easy. You said you would tell whatever you knew,” Dane reminded her.

  Looking back into Dane’s eyes, Raquel saw vacant territory that ignited fear within her. There was no way she was leaving that building alive.

  Dane loosened her hold just enough for Raquel to breathe. “Nothing’s in your daughter’s name, which means you played it smart. Wherever she is, I have a feeling you’re responsible for putting her place in someone else’s name. How did you know her past would come back to haunt her?”

  Dane squeezed and rejected Raquel’s lungs need for air. The thought of Carmen sickened her and sent her world red. With her healthy hand, Raquel scratched at Dane. The fight in her was quickly dissolving but still holding a little bit of power inside. It wasn’t until she felt herself sliding into unconsciousness did she surrender. With the small amount of energy she held on to, Raquel nodded her head. That simple gesture was enough for Dane to loosen her hold. The second she did, Raquel’s head fell to the side.

  Carmen was her mother’s daughter. Her need to be taken care of and constant moving around were clear indications that the apple hadn’t fallen too far from the tree. When her daughter called and informed her that she was moving back home, she realized, Carmen was running from something and not just in need of bettering herself. Carmen asking for Raquel to find her an inexpensive home was a pure giveaway that something was wrong. So when Carmen arrived back home to Miami, Raquel made sure not to leave a paper trail as to her child’s whereabouts. But now that death was likely to transpire, Raquel had no choice but to force Carmen to stand on her own two feet. Their deeds had come full circle, and now it was every woman for herself.

  Looking at nothing in particular, Raquel allowed air to enter her lungs. Quickly, she tried sucking in all the air she could before she was deprived of it again. Her eyes rolled in the direction of Dane. She spoke slow and low. “Carmen is in an apartment two buildings down from my office. She’s on the top floor.”

  “How did you know I was talking about Carmen?”

  “Because at the end of the day, Madison only hurts herself and is bound to self-destruct. Besides, she’s not important enough to make enemies.”

  “Then Carmen should have taken after her,” Dane responded, her glower a combination of pain and destruction.

  After using Raquel’s neck to force her body to stand straight, Dane slid her free hand into her back pocket, where her switchblade was tucked. With the push of a button, the blade appeared. It wasn’t out of its home for five seconds before it was lodged into Raquel’s stomach. Dane pushed the blade down then up as far as Raquel’s insides would allow, slashing her internal organs. Raquel’s face emptied of any expression. Raquel’s fingers drowned in blood from her dripping midsection and failed to reattach her broken skin. Staring Raquel in her eyes, Dane watched as every ounce of life that once filled her body seeped out within seconds.

  Death was a funny thing. It was an unpredictable, memorable soul taker that robbed Dane of her humanity the day her parents passed. It was the reason she felt nothing while watching Raquel slip from the earth. Dane pushed the knife in deeper, turning it into a circle of motions, then pulling it out. Raquel’s body dropped, Dane finally releasing her.

  Snatching her clutch off the windowsill, Dane rammed her hand inside and pulled out a thin white handkerchief. She wiped the blood off the blade and dropped it on Raquel’s body. Like water, its fabric took the form of waves and danced in the air until making a landing. The four men who plastered the windows with newspaper rushed into the venue. Two men held supplies equipped to rid the building of any evidence while the others concentrated on removing the body. Getting out of the workers’ way, Dane was two seconds from the door when the middle-aged man wearing glasses and towering over Raquel stole her attention.

  “She’s not dead,” he informed Dane. “To kill and dispose of her will be extra. You called for a cleanup. We did not—”

  Dane walked over to the complaining man’s partner and, without his permission, relieved him of the gun in his back pocket and shot Raquel in the skull. The unpredictable action silenced the man who spoke a mile a minute without bothering to take a breath. He and his crew watched Raquel’s body jump, then relax. Their startled expressions roamed toward Dane.

  “There, she’s dead. Is there anything else?”

  Motormouth did not ignore the fact that Dane still held on to the gun. He shook his head slowly, rendered speechless by Dane’s cold-hearted execution.

  “Good,” she told him.

  Dane wiped down the handle with the bottom of her blouse, allowed the gun to slip out of her hands, and walked out of the building. Standing in front of the exit, Dane wanted to turn around and look at the building once more. This was the one thing connecting her to Reagan, but she didn’t turn around. If she had, she’d risk tears making an appearance, so she rushed out the door and hoped one day she’d return.

  Dane was only three blocks away from her car. The moon lit her path as she walked down the streets while crying. Tears took over her face and made her a miniature ocean. However, no sobs escaped her mouth nor pain-filled expressions sat on her face. She’d cry because every now and then the action took her over. But she wouldn’t let the world hear her pain, and she’d fight to minimize the agony her face showed.

  Dane’s cell phone rang, and she picked it up with the hand least stained with blood. “Hello.”

  “He came,” Zeke informed. “Now what?”

  “You play the part,” she told him. “Put him on your team.”

  Chapter 11

  From the back of the restaurant, Renee stood from the couch seated next to the crackling fire. Her fingers slid inside the diamond-encrusted brass-knuckle handle of her clutch purse. Once Renee stood to leave, Prue jumped up. Her red silk blouse stirred with each move she made while grabbing Renee’s upper arm. Stopping in place, Renee looked at Prue’s skinny fingers wrapped around her and gave her the nastiest snarl she could muster up. Prue withdrew her hold and began her plea.

  “Just give him a few more minutes, please.” Prue’s eyes were wide and filled with desperation.

  Renee ignored her pleas and walked away. Lateness was not only unacceptable but a deal-breaker.

  Desperate and unwilling for her meal ticket to walk out the door, Prue ran after Renee and whispered in her ear, “You need him. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have reached out.”

  The word “need” rarely, if ever, applied to Renee. She stopped in the center of the room, her mind trying to wrap itself around the fact that she did need him and she no longer had the necessities to be on top. She had to start from scratch and, therefore, could no longer be demanding.

  “Five more minutes, and if he’s not here . . .” Renee glared at Prue, leaving her to fill in the blank.

  The two women took a seat while the front of the lounge filled with people who rolled their eyes and sucked their teeth at their seating. Three minutes later, a line of people marched into the room and quickly divided. The last to enter was Zeke and his henchman, who swiftly approached the women. Prue stood to greet her son and laid dirty looks on him. Zeke avoided her nonverbal reprimand, aware of his error.

  “I apologize for being late. This is not how I normally conduct business,” Zeke told Renee.

  Still seated, Renee looked up at him and then turned the other way. Zeke took the opportunity to have a seat across from Renee. Renee looked forward and locked eyes with Jared, who was standing behind Zeke the entire time.

  * * *

  “Then it’s settled. We’re partners. Your beef is now my beef. In three months, after my team has proven themselves and you buy me out, they’re all yours.”

  Although Zeke’s outer appearance showed otherwise, internally he was doing backflips, ecstatic about not only working with Jordan but being that m
uch closer to his retirement. For years he’d dreamed of walking away. And with the money Renee was offering to buy his team and operation, he met his retirement goal by far.

  Zeke’s original plan was to work with both Renee and Carmen and take everything their purses contained. He’d use his cousin’s problems with her half-sister as a come-up and not a distraction. But Renee’s money and reputation quickly changed his mind, making him see how great an ally she would be if ever needed. He’d take Carmen’s cash, but his loyalty and manpower solely belonged to Renee, the bigger fish who wasn’t blood. Giving Carmen access to the same crew Renee needed now sounded like suicide, and now that he sat across from the infamous Jordan, he had a feeling that she was not the sharing type. Yes, Carmen was blood. However, money was thicker in the game of greed.

  Renee couldn’t ignore Jared’s presence throughout the meeting. He looked different, more demented, more . . . dangerous. During the entire meeting, the two stared at one another, ideas forming the more Renee looked at him.

  They finalized the deal, and the meeting ended with handshakes and everyone going their separate ways. Jared walked across the street to the dark-colored vehicle in which Calloway sat behind the wheel. Once seated on the passenger’s seat, Jared never got a chance to put his seat belt on before the back door opened and Renee got in. Calloway grimaced in the rearview mirror, pointing in Renee’s direction.

  “What are you doing here?” Calloway said, seething.

  “I’m going with you two,” Renee answered calmly, snapping her seat belt in place.

  Calloway turned to Jared. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to pull, but she’s one of them.”

  “‘Them’ no longer exists,” Renee replied. “Now ‘us’ is a completely different story.” She knew nothing about Dane succeeding in killing Fergus, but for him to say “she’s one of them” tipped her off that Dane was in hot water with him just like she was with her.

  Jared turned around, his ears savoring the sound of a voice lost in time. Suddenly his anger over being rejected by Renee evaporated and his need for love bloomed. Calloway took off and, after minutes of driving, pulled onto a dead-end street. He pulled out his firearm and aimed it at Renee’s forehead, the night’s darkness a shadow over his face.