“
Not too much older,” I
reminded him.
“
Old enough,” he said. “But
maybe that was why I sent you away to friends instead of letting
you stay with me and my roommate.”
“
I always wondered about
that,” I admitted.
“
I had to get you out of
the state and away from me,” he said. Dodger sighed. “So much has
happened to you, Tyler. You’re a different person. I’m a different
person. And I think I’ve tried to rekindle what we had before
instead of building something new.” He bent down and collected his
clothes and started pulling them on. I stepped back and watched him
silently, mulling over his words, my anger simmering before cooling
completely.
“
I’m going to give you what
you need to help you out with KuJoe, and then I will back off. If
you want to get to know me after that, the ball’s in your court.
But I won’t force you. I’ve done enough to try to control your
life—a lot of people have. I think it’s time you take the power
back.”
I was stunned for a moment; so
stunned, in fact, when Dodger pulled out his checkbook and asked me
how much I owed KuJoe, it took me a moment to remember. I tried not
to cringe when he lifted his eyebrows in surprise at the large sum,
but he made out the check to me anyway, included a little extra,
and handed it off to me. With a kiss on my forehead, Dodger turned
and left the bedroom without a backward glance.
I sighed, holding the check in my
hand, but I wasn’t sure if it was with relief or disappointment
that he was gone.
Chapter
Fourteen
“
What the fuck do you want,
bitch?” KuJoe’s voice was harsh and grating in my ear when I called
him from my cellphone, and I gritted my teeth to stop myself from
cursing him out.
“
I’ve got your goddamn
money, motherfucker,” I said.
“
You better watch who you
talkin’ to,
Tyler
,” KuJoe retorted snidely.
I snorted. “I know who I’m talking to,
Kushawn,” I replied, using his real name.
“
Ay, don’t be using my real
name like that,” he barked at me.
I jumped slightly at the policeman’s
hand touching me and looked at the officer next to me in the van.
The broad-shouldered black man gave me a slight shake of his head,
and I sighed. I knew I shouldn’t be antagonizing KuJoe, but I
couldn’t help it. He deserved it. Bastard.
“
Look. KuJoe, I’m sorry,
okay? But I’ve got the rest of your money. All of it. Where do you
want me to meet you?” I asked.
KuJoe laughed. “You got all of my
money? Damn, baby. You musta been on yo’ knees fo’ hours and givin’
up dat ass, doing all kinds of nasty ass shit.”
I winced and pulled the phone away
from my ear, breathing slowly in an attempt to still my roiling
stomach. I knew the police, who had tapped my cellphone and were
listening in on the call, knew what I did for a living. They even
knew who KuJoe was. They had been trying to arrest him for decades,
they’d told me when I called them. I’d had every intention of
paying KuJoe his money and getting him out of my life forever, but
I knew him, my former pimp, and I knew as soon as I paid him, he
would tell me I owed him more. It wasn’t about the cash for KuJoe;
it was about the fact he’d lost a commodity, me, and he’d lost a
child, his child, Stella, especially when I’d decided to have her
after he’d told me to have an abortion.
“
Don’t worry about how I
got the money, KuJoe, just tell me where to meet you.”
“
Fine. Meet me at the
warehouse right off Interstate 10 and Exit 44, in the parking
lot.”
KuJoe smacked his lips, and the sound
sent shivers down my spine—it was his sign of satisfaction. It was
also a signal he was hatching a plan, devising a way to screw
someone over. He thought he was going to meet me at the warehouse
and either kidnap me or demand more money—maybe both, and I would
do anything in order to protect my daughter. Our daughter. KuJoe
knew me well. I loved Stella. More than I had ever loved anyone in
my life.
Except Dodger.
I shoved that errant thought out of my
mind. I couldn’t think about the gorgeous billionaire right now.
The man who had once been my best friend. It would only distract
me. No. I had to focus. I had to concentrate on what KuJoe had up
his devious sleeve.
Because, while my former pimp knew me
well, he forgot I knew him too. Years of working for him, sleeping
with him, listening to him bitch, moan, manipulate, scheme, and
backstab others had given me a roadmap into the inner workings of
his criminal mind. KuJoe liked to think he was evil incarnate. He
wasn’t. Oh, he was evil, no doubt about it. Any man who would
threaten to prostitute his own daughter for money wasn’t fit to
breathe the same air as any other human being, but I knew him, and
I knew that while he would have no problem tossing my ass out on
the corner, he would kill anyone who so much as laid a hand on his
child.
The problem was, KuJoe
wasn’t sure Stella
was
his, which was why he constantly threatened me about her. I
knew she was his child and told him that she was his, but in the
line of work I’d been in when I was still living a lie as
“Tiffany,” there was just no way to be sure who the father
was.
And it drove him crazy.
That was why KuJoe was so
enraged. Because to a pimp like him, a little boy trying to be a
man like him, it was all about ownership. KuJoe had grown up with
nothing, and becoming a pimp, having girls he prostituted out, made
money off of, gave him something that was
his
. And then I came along. I was
his. And then I got pregnant and told him the baby was his, and he
just couldn’t be sure. And when I got my reassignment surgery just
months later, KuJoe’s entire view of his manhood was called into
question even more.
He had a score to settle with
me.
So, listening to him hum and agree to
meet with me at the warehouse, I knew our confrontation was not
going to go as the police and the feds thought it would.
It was going to be volatile.
Dangerous. And downright messy.
But I could feel the
darkness inside of me thickening, boiling, and getting ready to
explode. It was ready.
I was
ready
.
Which was why the feds had
placed Amanda, Tim, and Stella in a safe house during the meetup.
If things went bad, they would disappear and enter WITSEC. But I
wasn’t stupid. I had friends and clients who made people disappear
for a living—the characters on
The
Blacklist
were amateurs compared to
them.
I barely heard the officers as they
gave me instructions on what to do and say, on how to handle the
situation. I didn’t care. I had left instructions for Amanda and
Tim on what to do if something went wrong with the meetup, and
though they were tense and worried about my being around KuJoe
again, they knew I had to do things this way if Stella and I were
ever going to be safe.
And that was what I wanted. For us to
be safe. Well that and for Stella to be healthy.
And for Dodger and I to be together as
a couple, not as a client and his whore.
But those things were fantasies.
Impossible. They would take a miracle. And miracles and dreams
didn’t happen for people like me, so KuJoe being arrested, or even
killed, would have to be good enough.
****
Pulling up to the warehouse where I’d
agreed to meet KuJoe, I was suddenly assailed by memories of the
past. Not that I hadn’t been fighting them off for the past few
months, but usually it was one memory pulling at my psyche,
dragging me below the mires of my subconscious and suffocating me
until I felt as if I would die buried beneath the darkness of my
despair, hopelessness, and grief. But this time it was a montage of
flashbacks. A veritable kaleidoscope of horrors and bad dreams,
bombarding my mind, as I sat in my car, my hands gripping the
steering wheel, taking shuddering breaths into my lungs while I
struggled to hold the tattered and destroyed pieces of my soul
together.
****
The first time KuJoe put
me out on the street to sell my body. Two weeks after I met him. I
was high as a kite. My skin as tight as a drum, my hair felt
electric, and my lips were numb. I felt invincible. I was angry at
my mother, who hadn’t put out an Amber Alert for me. I was sad
Pierce wasn’t there, but drugs always made things better. The gold
Buick Century that pulled up in front of me had a fat, balding
Asian man in the front seat. He took one look at me and said he
wanted me. He paid twenty dollars for a blowjob, stopping behind a
Korean grocery store before he pulled back on the street I was
working on when we were finished. He didn’t even look at me or put
the car in park. He just gave me the money and pushed on the brake.
When I asked for a napkin, he snorted at me and asked if that night
was my first time. I screamed at him and told him men had been
using me for sex since I was a kid. He looked at me and asked if it
was my first time on the streets. I nodded and said yes. He shook
his head at me and told me I needed to learn what to do before the
streets ate me alive. Then he gave me a napkin, waited for me to
get out, and pulled away. I never saw him again.
****
“
Mr. Simpston? Are you
okay?” The detective’s voice in the earpiece in my ear startled me,
and I jerked in my seat. I nodded and lifted my hand up to the
rearview mirror, adjusting it, which was our signal to them I was
okay. I wasn’t exactly sure what was taking KuJoe so long to
arrive, but if he took too much longer, the flashbacks and
nightmares would consume me until there was nothing left but ash
and the darkness. The broken remains of my tattered soul, the
whispers of my destroyed spirit and shattered heart.
****
The first time KuJoe sent
me to an orgy, I was seventeen. There were men and women at the
party. They were all adults. Five of them. When I knocked on the
door of the hotel room, I was nervous, but I was used to that. I
was always nervous when I met a new John. But when the door opened,
and I saw how many people were inside, three men and two women, I
almost left. But it would have been my biggest payout at that time.
So I smiled and stepped inside. No one asked me how old I was. They
just surrounded me immediately and began pulling off my clothes,
giving me drinks, and touching me. All of them wanted me, and a
part of me liked that. No matter what my own sexuality, no matter
what I felt inside, had been feeling inside—thinking internally
since I was a little kid about myself. As if someone had made a
mistake when they crafted me, gotten distracted, and tugged on my
chest to give me breasts instead of pecs, given me an innie instead
of an outie at my privates, and given me ovaries instead of a
prostate and the ability to get someone pregnant. If someone wanted
me, it made me feel good. But as I always did, when it was all
over, I felt like scum. I collected my clothes and dressed in the
bathroom. Got my money and stepped over bodies. Stumbling out into
the hallway, I covered my mouth and tried not to vomit. I walked
outside the hotel and considered… seriously considered, for the
first time since coming to San Francisco, going back home. At
least
there
I was
only getting raped by one man. I even thought about killing myself.
So many thoughts ran through my head. I just knew I had to leave.
To get away from KuJoe. But he knew. He always knew. And before I
could take two steps away from the hotel’s front door, he was right
there in front of me, taking my arm. He walked with me to his car
and placed me inside. He told me, quite firmly, that there was no
leaving him. Told me he would
always
find me. Reminded me I
belonged to him. And then he brought that point home. With his
fists.
****
The only reason I got away when I did
was because of Stella and the reassignment surgery. I had wisely
scheduled everything at the same time. The Cesarean, the
liposuction, the surgery would all take place within weeks of each
other. KuJoe was smart, but he was angry with me for having the
baby, and he knew it took a while for a woman to recover after
childbirth. I just used that knowledge to my advantage. Once
everything was done, I used a friend I had met, “Zazoo”, to make up
fake documents for my new name: Tyler Simpston, and then Stella and
I moved to Los Angeles. I kept her with me for as long as I could,
but when funds got low, and I knew I had to get a job, and KuJoe
left a threatening note for me at my new place, I knew I had to
take her somewhere safe.
A car pulled up into the parking lot
of the warehouse, snapping me out of my trip down nightmare lane,
and I focused on the mission. KuJoe deserved what was about to
happen to him. He deserved to go to jail for the rest of his life,
or worse. I thought about my plan. The plan the officers didn’t
know about and glanced over at my rearview mirror, knowing they
were watching me. It would hurt, but it was worth it. I would do
anything to protect my daughter. Even risk my life to save hers.
And the only way to know she was completely safe was if KuJoe were
dead.