“I’ll destroy her.”
“You’ve already done that.”
“She hasn’t seen nothing yet.”
“And she’ll win more money from you.”
“Won’t matter. Her reputation will be in even more tatters than it’s in now.”
George should his head. “You’ve always played too rough, you know that? You don’t have to annihilate your enemies. Destroying them should be enough.”
Vince nodded. “Yes, it should be. But it’s not.”
Then Vince stood there, with his hands in his pockets, as if he was pensive.
“I thought you was glad to be rid of her,” George said.
“I am. But I’m tired of failing in the most important part of my life.”
“Marriage number three?”
Vince nodded.“Right.”
George considered his friend. Here George was this never-married, always eligible bachelor with nothing but open relationships. Yet his reputation was that of a wholesome family man. Vince, on the other hand, had many lady friends, but he was in fact a one-woman-at-a-time man even though his reputation was that of an unrepentant womanizer. But he wasn’t. He was far from it. But nobody would believe it. “What’s next?”
Vince exhaled. “I think I’m going to go to my house in Connecticut for a few weeks. I’m bushed. I can use some peace and quiet.”
“You?” George smiled. “Give me a break. You’ll be married again before the year is out. Mark my words. Which, as your lawyer, only helps my bottom line. But as your friend?” George’s smile slowly dissipated. And he shook his head. “Slow it down, partner. Just say no to love this time around. Try lust for a change. You ever tried lust for a change? It’s quick. It’s easy. It’s gratifying. And guess what? It’ll never, and I mean never, cost you fifty-five thousand dollars, let alone fifty-five million. Keep love out of the equation.”
“It was never in the equation,” said Vince, to George’s shock, as he left the room.
CHAPTER FIVE
When she left the shelter and got in her beloved Mustang, she had to pump the brakes a few times to get it to crank up. Then she was off to work.
She loved her Mustang. She was proud when she saved up enough to buy it used. And although it still gave her decent miles to the gallon, she knew it was on its last legs. She was going to have to invest in another one sooner than she could afford to, but she knew it was just a matter of time before she had to get it done.
But positivity, she thought. Remember positivity? Stop looking at the negative and be positive!
But she still turned off Kendrick Lamar singingLutherand turned on JHud singingSpotlight. Which was spot-on. Because she got tired real quick of living under everybody else’s critical gaze, too, and how they complained about everything she did. And how they treated her as if she wasn’t worthy of love or happiness or anything but what she could do for them or what they could get out of her. Especially all those trifling-ass, sorry-ass men she used to know and love. The only thing good that came out of all of those bad relationships was that their cheating and conniving only made her shell harder and harder to crack. Now she didn’t take crap from anybody. Including those catty-ass ladies at the salon who claimed to be her friend but was only watching, keeping thatspotlighton her, to see her fail too.
But this time next year she was going to open her own salon, have her own clients rather than the clients the salon assigned to her, and do her own thing. It was tough in Brooklynto launch out on your own with those high-behind rents and the fact that there was a salon every few feet in her neck of the woods, but despite those odds she was still going to do it and going to be successful at it. That belief was what got her up in the mornings. That belief was what kept her going during the day.
Forget that it had been nearly ten years since she first made that pledge, and she’d made it every single year since. The closest she’d ever gotten to opening anything at all was when she went in together with her then-boyfriend/partner who took the downpayment money she’d been cobbling together for years and skipped town. She got so angry with that fool that she got a gun from a drug guy she knew and started searching for that asshole like she was Dog the bounty hunter. Thank God she never found him or he would have been sleeping in his grave and she would have been sleeping in prison for the rest of her life. When she came back to herself, she decided that nobody, nor any amount of money, was worth ruining her life over. She moved on.
That was two years ago. She had to start over from scratch. Again.
When she stopped at a red light and looked further up the block and saw somebody she knew standing on the corner jabbering with another guy, she couldn’t believe it. “What the hell? No he didn’t lie to me like that!”
As soon as that light turned green she hurried through that intersection and slung her car over to the side of the road. She sat her coffee in her cupholder and her croissant on the armrest and quickly got out. She hurried across that sidewalk.
“JoJo?” The guy standing next to him on that corner was hitting him on the arm. “JoJo, ain’t that that girl?”
JoJo Riley frowned. “What girl? And stop hittin’ on me, man, what’s wrong with you?”
“Look!”
JoJo finally looked where his friend was pointing and that was when he saw Ricki hurrying his way. “Ah shit!” he said as he stomped his feet and turned around in frustration. Because he knew it was too late for him to make a run for it now.
