“To hell. For you. And your old man.”
“You keep William out of this!” Joy yelled.
Sloane slapped her hard across her face. “You keep his name out of your mouth!” she yelled back. “You whore. You piece of trash. I’ve been slaving for him all this time and you just hit the scene and he’s treating you like you’re some queen. A ghetto queen is all you are. A hood rat of the first order!”
“Takes one to know one bitch,” Joy said, and Sloane slapped her again.
“You better hope I don’t get free,” Joy said angrily.
“She has nothing to worry about there,” said Melissa. “Freedom is not the name of the game today. Revenge is.”
Joy frowned. “Revenge for what? I don’t even know you, lady.”
“And what do you have to do with these people, Tony?” Tess asked him.
Melissa smiled. “So this is your old lady, Tone?”
“More like my ball and chain,” said Tony. “A nagger, that’s what she is.”
“Why didn’t you turn her?” Melissa asked. “She’s the best friend. I would have paid a pretty penny for her cooperation.”
But Tony was shaking her head. “She ain’t got it in her. She’s straight lace through and through. She would have called the cops on my ass if I told her anything about what me and Colin were planning to do. Then he got his ass killed when he was supposed to kill Joy after I crashed into her car. So I took off in that SUV. I knew if Joy saw my face, the jig was up.”
“It was already up anyway,” said Melissa. “You and Colin Becker didn’t do shit the way it was supposed to be done. And then Felicity’s flat ass failed too.”
“They were looking for Felicity,” said Joy.
“They’ll find her at the bottom of the ocean. That bitch long gone. But after she failed, that’s when I knew I had to take matters into my own hands. I’ve been paying people to do my dirty work and it was backfiring left and right. I knew I had to handle this myself.”
Knocks were heard on the front door. Melissa nodded to Sloane. Sloane hurried over and looked out the peephole. “It’s Mr. Skeffington,” she said.
“What do we do now?” asked Tony.
“What do you mean?” said Melissa. “He’s why I propositioned every one of you in the first place. He’s the main event. Let him in, Sloane.”
Sanchez and Tony pulled out their weapons and aimed their guns at Joy.
Joy was amazed when Sloane took a moment to fix her hair and smooth down her dress as if that shit mattered now. And then she opened the door.
William’s heart was hammering, but he did all he could to maintain his composure. He did not want to give away the factthat he had information. He wanted it to seem as if he was just dropping by. But when he saw Sloane open that door, he was floored. “Sloane? What are you doing here?”
Sloane closed the door behind him. “You didn’t want me,” she said. “All that time and you didn’t give me the time of day. Now you wonder what I’m doing here? I don’t have any allegiance to you.”
William was baffled. Who said she did? But then he saw Joy. And his heart sank. Then he saw that her legs and her arms were taped. And Tess was bounded too. And who were those other two men and the older woman? “What’s this about?” he asked.
Joy could see the fear in William’s eyes. And the fact that he had on glasses told her that he had been working at his computer, received information, and rushed to her apartment. But what information could he have received when she was just hearing about this craziness for the first time herself, and it still didn’t make sense?
“Sit down, Mr. Skeffington,” Melissa said as Sanchez forced him down in the chair and trained his gun on him. Melissa sat down in the chair across from him. And she stared.
Then she shook her head. “Mr. Skeffington. That’s what every last one of us called you, wasn’t it? After all those years of service, you were still Mr. Skeffington to everybody. That barrier was always there, protecting you from us when it should have been the other way around.” She smiled what Joy could see was as bitter a smile as Sanchez had smiled. “It should have been the other way around,” she said again.
“What is this about?” William asked genuinely. He was still at a lost. He still had no concrete information as to why Joy was targeted by these people. “What is this about?”
“It’s about you, Big Man.”
“Then why are you holding Joynetta? If it’s about me. Why don’t you let her go. And her friend. Let them go if it’s about me.”
“Oh but I can’t do that. Sorry. Just like you killed my joy, I’ve got to kill yours.”
