“You bring me peace,” he said as he reached his hand for mine.
“I feel like I can be more vulnerable with you,” I confessed.
“You sure? I feel like there’s something you’re hiding from me. Something you don’t want me to know about you,” he said, reading me with dark eyes. There was the whole matter of my money-making activities. But I wasn’t ready to tell him just yet.
“I don’t know what you think it is, but…”
“Don’t worry about it. In due time, I’ll learn all there is to know. Shit, you know my darkest shit.”
“Yeah, my heart still breaks for you. I know that’s why you don’t want kids.”
“Yeah, I can’t go through that again. The loss and the betrayal. And then this shit with my mother… Fuck that. I don’t wanna get into that right now. No drama tonight. I just wanna enjoy you, Peach.”
I smiled and we shifted the conversation. We talked about the spa. He asked me about my business plan and I told him and he listened like it was a pitch meeting and not a dinner date, asking questions about location and overhead and licensing that told me he was taking it seriously. He didn’t offer to fund it. But I can tell he was tempted to. He just listened. And that mattered more than any check he could’ve written.
We talked about Zephyr, and how Mekhi was barely holding it together, and how Bella was staying at the hospital around the clock. We talked about Freetown and his vision for the development and how he wanted to start acquiring land by the end of the year.
When we walked out of the restaurant, I was holding his arm and laughing at something he’d said about Rita trying to set up a GoFundMe for a male stripper. The night air was warm, the street was quiet, and I finally felt like a woman who was allowed to be happy without waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The other shoe dropped. And it crashed through the fucking ceiling.
“Dame CoCo.”
The voice came from my left. I knew it before I turned around. I knew it the way you know a sound that’s been haunting you for months. It was Timothy Baker, stepping out from the shadow of the building next to the restaurant in a wrinkled suit with his tie loosened and his eyes wild and red-rimmed like he hadn’t slept in days. He’d lost weight. His face was gaunt, his hair was uncombed. He looked nothing like the federal judge who’d walked into my dungeon six months ago with a briefcase and a secret.
My entire body went cold.
“Please,” Timothy said, and he was already moving toward me with his hands out like he was reaching for something sacred. “Please, I’ve been paying tribute every week. I’ve sentyou thousands of dollars. You won’t respond, you won’t see me, I just need one session. I’ll pay whatever you want for your time. Just one hour. Please, Dame CoCo, I’m begging you.”
He grabbed my wrist.
Everything happened in layers after that. The first layer was my own heartbeat exploding in my ears. The second layer was the look on Quest’s face as he processed what he was hearing, and I watched him assemble those words into a picture that was going to destroy us. The third layer was Quest’s hand closing around Timothy’s wrist and removing it from mine with a grip so controlled and so precise that Timothy made a sound between a gasp and a whimper.
Quest moved before I could speak. He grabbed Timothy by the collar with one hand and hit him with the other. It was a clean, devastating punch that snapped Timothy’s head sideways and sent a spray of blood from his lip across the sidewalk. Timothy crumpled, but Quest caught him before he fell and hit him again, this time in the stomach, folding him in half. Then he grabbed a fistful of Timothy’s hair and yanked his head up so they were face to face.
“If you ever come near her again, if you ever say her name again, if I ever see your face within a hundred feet of her, they will not find your body. Do you understand me?”
Timothy was nodding and bleeding and crying all at the same time, snot and tears mixing with the blood running from his mouth. Quest shoved him and he hit the ground hard, his suit scraping against the concrete. He scrambled to his feet and ran down the street without looking back.
Quest stood there for a second, flexing his hand. Then he walked to the Maybach without looking at me, got in, and started the engine. I stood on the sidewalk for about three seconds, feeling the weight of what had just happened settle onto my chest before I walked to the passenger side and got in.
He pulled away from the curb. The silence in that car was crushing because I knew what was on the other side of it and there was no way to prepare.
We drove for about two minutes before he spoke.
“What was that.”
Not a question. A demand.
“Quest…That was a judge.”
“Nah, you know what the fuck I mean.”
“He’s a former client.”
“A client of what? You a fuckin’ hoe? You sellin’ pussy! I swear to God if I been eatin’ pussy that randos are digging in, I will fuckin’… Yo' don’t fuck with me Mehar!”
“No I’m not a hoe! And don’t you ever threaten me again.”
