“Same,” Clarke laughed. “He had me design and build a home for him.”
“Me too,” Berkley said with a nod. “He had me kill three niggas for him.”
All our attention was on her, and we waited. Berkley shrugged and continued to lean against the wall. She wasn’t supplying any more information than that. Berkley didn’t look ashamed, or the least bit phased by her declaration.
“I designed the necklaces you all are wearing,” I finally said once the silence was too much. I noticed the necklaces the first night I was here. The small initials with their birthstones had taken me a few days to make.
“Ah, so she does speak,” Berkley laughed. “I was wondering what your voice sounded like.” She pulled some money out of her pocket and walked across the room to hand it to Clarke. “Looks like you were right.”
Clarke took the money and pushed it into the front pocket of her dress shirt. I raised my brow, and she smiled, then went back to working on her piece. “We bet to see how long it would take you to speak finally. Berkeley had you down for day one, Spelman for day five. I knew it would be today. You’re stubborn but nosey as hell. You’ve been watching us for a week.” She looked up shyly and smiled. “All we had to do was get you interested in something you wanted to talk about. Jewelry is your go-to.”
“Sports is Spelman’s and building shit is Clarke’s,” Berkeley said, coming to sit next to me on the couch across from my bed.
“And you?” I asked.
“The mind,” she yawned, tapping the side of her head. “Been that way since I was a kid, which is probably why I went into psychology.”
“Yet, you killed three niggas for Tulane,” I replied, and she shook her head. “Oh, you were joking?”
“Nope,” she denied with a laugh. “I did kill three niggas a few months back, but it wasn’t for Tulane.”
“Who was it for then?” Clarke asked.
Berkeley and Spelman shared a look before Spelman opened her laptop and started typing. Berkeley laughed softly, then shrugged her shoulders.
“Doesn’t matter,” Berkeley replied. I watched the two of them for a few minutes before I gave up. They had their secrets, justlike I had mine. “Alright, so let’s start discussing why we were brought together.”
“According to Tulane, it’s for our protection,” Spelman said without looking up from her laptop. “He had a meeting with the St. Thomass and Stones.”
“The Stones?” I questioned her, and she nodded. “Which Stone?”
“All of them,” Spelman answered. “The parents and sons.” She looked up at me and tapped her index finger against her chin. “Amethyst is your boyfriend, right?”
“No,” I laughed even though it wasn’t shit funny. “He was my best friend, and we were trying to figure out what we were doing, but then my husband died, and he disappeared.” I rolled my eyes, then rested the back of my head on the headboard and sighed. “I buried my husband, mourned what I thought was a decent marriage even though I found out I was tricked into said marriage because I thought I was protecting Amethyst because I agreed to marry Grant to pay off a debt from an accident were I thought I killed a woman and lost the race so I was down too much damn money even to think.”
“Umm, wait pause, what the fuck did you just say?” Berkeley laughed.
I lifted my head to see them all looking at me with their mouths wide open. I’d literally dropped a million bombs on them and didn’t even think about it. I didn’t know these women, yet I spilled all my secrets to them without a second thought. There was a familiar bond that we’d developed over the last week, even though I wasn’t talking. I’d watched them interact with each other as well as how they dealt with me. They gave me space when I needed it, but at different times, like this one, they ended up in the same room as me. It was like we were drawn to each other even though we were strangers.
“Which part?”
“Which part?” Berkeley laughed, then held up her hand. She approached the bed, then made a waving motion with her hand to get me to move over, and I did. After she climbed into bed and got comfortable, she crossed her arms and nodded. “Alright now, I’m ready to hear this shit, start from the beginning.”
I sighed, wiped my hand over my hair, then dropped my hands into my lap. “Eight years ago, when I was in college, I raced.”
“I stole cars,” Berkeley shrugged.
“I worked at a chop shop,” Clarke interjected as she worked on her carving. “I don’t care for driving; it’s too much going on. I get overwhelmed.”
“I put together the races,” Spelman said with a laugh.
“We all have a thing for cars?” I asked, and they nodded. “Damn.”
“We can get back to the car shit later, I want to know the backstory on the shit about a crash and killing someone,” Berkeley said, shaking her head.
For the next twenty minutes, I gave them the backstory on Amethyst and my relationship, and on my marriage—or lack thereof—with Grant. Finding out that he had kids, and how Quincy had set a trap for me to fall into.
“So, why hasn’t Amethyst killed your ex’s brother?” Berkeley asked, and I shrugged. “Sounds like he’s wasting time.” She’d laid down sometime during the story. She lifted her head and twisted her lips. “You don’t have to like it, but that’s what it sounds like to me.”
