Wicked Intentions (17 page)

Growing up she’d always thought that if they just had a little money, Eve would be home more often. She wouldn’t have to go hungry at least once every three days, she wouldn’t be teased in school for always being the Goodwill kid…she wouldn’t suffer. However, if the Hollis’ family were anything to go by, money was no guarantee for happiness. But then again she would’ve preferred to cry in a large house in Long Island then in the one bedroom flat in South Bronx.

Dragging herself from her thoughts, she dialed London’s number. Her friend’s excited voice immediately welcomed her. “Okay, details!”

“Lon. Don. You need to see this house.”

“Is it bigger than Razor Sharpe’s?” London asked mentioning a popular rapper whose house they’d seen on a TV show dedicated to showing the life of the rich and famous.

“Bigger.”

London gasped, “Stop.”

“I kid you not,” Shakira stated. “Our whole block could fit in their backyard. They’ve got gazebos, pools…child.”

London sighed wistfully, “I’m gon’ have a pool when I’m rich.”

“What you need a pool for?” Shakira asked. “You can’t even swim.”

“Bitch, don’t hate. And the swimming pool’s for my dogs,” London informed her before her voice took on an interested tone. “What’s the wild- wild Hollis witch like? Did she cast a voodoo spell on you the moment she saw you?”

Shakira chuckled. “Your New Orleans is showing again.”

“Stop diverting,” London reprimanded. “What’d she do when she saw you?”

“Actually she was pretty cool. A look here and there, but no spells.”

“Oh!” London actually sounded disappointed. “Sounds boring.”

“You’re so blood thirsty.” Shakira shook her head. “Anyway, how are the rehearsals going for your first official gig as an
Extreme Expressions
artist?”

“Chiiiiiild…” London immediately launched into a description of her and the Xin Monster’s practice. Only yesterday, they’d gotten confirmation that were on the school’s roster and were set to have their first gig in the coming week.

“Don’t force Enzo to sing if he doesn’t want to,” Shakira advised when London explained her efforts to get all the band members more involved in the performances.

“But everyone only knows me.” London asked, “What about the boys?”

“Have you talked about it with them?”

“Yeah, but they’re all just like
London you know you’re our brand ambassador
.” London’s voice dropped to a deep baritone as she mimicked her band-mates. “
We can’t have five lead singers
…ra ra ra. You know how the boys can be.”

“You know, some people actually like to be in the background,”

“Lies. What people?” The rise in London’s voice reflected her disbelief. “Who doesn’t want to be a star?”

“Well, me for one.”

“That’s cause you’re retarded,” London dismissed. “Eve dropped you on your head when you were a baby. I was there.”

“You weren’t even-”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

A loud rapping on wood interrupted Shakira’s words, drawing her attention to the bedroom’s door. “London, someone’s at the door. Call you later?”

“Sure,” London said. “And come with a breakdown of your dinner menu. I wanna know how those rich people eat like.”

Ending the call, Shakira entered the room and crossed its expanse to pull the door open. Her eyebrows shot up her forehead when she saw the person standing there.

CHAPTER 19

“What do you think?” Nathan asked.

“She’s not a killer.” The conviction in Danny’s voice was explicit.

“She doesn’t look like one,” Zeke corrected. He leant forward and tapped his cue-stick against the blue ball. The ball rolled forward over the green fabric hitting a red ball and sending it straight into one of the six pockets lining the table. His brothers both groaned in disappointment.

“Disgusting,” Danny complained even though he wasn’t actually a part of the game. He was seated on a barstool with his back against the counter, a ginger ale in his hand as he watched the game. He turned his attention to Nathan. “Kira’s not the type to hurt anyone.”

“You just met her,” Nathan said even though he agreed with Danny. The time away from Shakira had given him the space he needed to solicit his brothers’ advice. Danny was understandably upset that he hadn’t been briefed about what was going on in Nathan’s life before now but the kid couldn’t hold a grudge if it came with superglue. He’d jumped right into sharing his opinions.

“Maybe it wasn’t deliberate,” Zeke suggested. “An accident?”

“No,” Danny refuted the argument with a firm shake of his head. “She’d have to be really dumb to kill the guy and then let herself get caught sleeping beside the body.”

“What he said,” Nathan agreed as he took his position by the pool-table though it made him feel even more stupid. It had taken his younger brother less than five minutes to figure out a fact that had taken him weeks. Of course Danny had the advantage since he was the most extroverted of them and seemed to have a better understanding of human nature but that was still no excuse.

There was silence as Zeke and Danny waited for Nathan to shoot. When he did, the ball was completely off the mark which drew amused guffaws from his brothers.

“My dog could beat you at this,” Zeke ribbed. Sobering up and pushing his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose, he asked, “Randall found Eve in Jamaica?”

“Yup.” Nathan sighed. “She’s living it up on the beach.”

“Well at least now you know that Shakira’s not a con-woman,” Zeke said as once more he leant against the table and aimed. “All you gotta prove now is…” His breath hitched as he thrust his stick sending another ball straight into the pocket. “…that she’s not a murderer.”

Nathan nodded in agreement. Finding out what was going on with Shakira was not just about proving her innocence it was also about keeping her safe. Just the thought of anything happening to her was enough to give him nightmares. “I’ve got Randall trying to figure out what the FBI have on her, and what Alim and the thumb drive have to do with anything.”

Danny shook his head as his gaze shifted between the other two men in the room. “I don’t understand why the two of you like this sneaky investigation plans bullshit,”

“It’s called strategy,” Zeke said.

“No, it’s called invasion of privacy,” Danny corrected as he tilted the brown bottle against his lips. After taking a huge gulp he turned to Nathan. “If you want to know what’s going on with her and the FBI why not just ask her?”

“So she can say what?
I didn’t kill my ex-boyfriend
.
The FBI are just confused about me
,” Zeke mimicked, giving the worst impression of a woman that Nathan had ever seen. It drew a reluctant chuckle from both Nathan and Danny. Zeke added, “You obviously don’t know women.”

“I know them better than you two.” Danny pointed his finger at them. “When she discovers this…your ass is toast.”

“When?” Nathan’s head snapped towards Danny. “Don’t you mean if?”

“You obviously don’t know women.” Danny mimicked Zeke’s words. Holding Nathan’s gaze, he said, “She’s going to string you up by the balls, slice off your dick and burn your hair.”

Both Zeke and Nathan winced at the imagery. Nathan didn’t think Shakira was capable of quite that much violence but he wasn’t ready to risk it. More to convince himself than to convince Danny, Nathan said, “She won’t find out.”

Danny simply laughed.

“In any case I plan to ask her. I just haven’t found the right opening,” Nathan explained. “It’s not something she likes to talk about and there’s no way I can start the conversation without telling her how I got my information.”

“Then tell her,” Danny said.

“Don’t listen to the kid.” Zeke advised Nathan, “Look, if you’re gonna blub at least wait until you have something to offer her. Like movement on her case, Charlie’s password, why Alim is following her…something like a peace offering.”

That actually made sense.

“It’s not gonna wooooooork,” Danny sang.

Zeke hit Danny’s arm with his cue-stick. “Shut up.”

“That fucking hurt,” Danny complained as he rubbed the injured arm.

Zeke arched his eyebrows. “What did mother say about sparing the rod again?”

“I hate when you listen to Mother.” Danny made a grab for Zeke’s cue-stick but Zeke moved it to his left hand thwarting him. Throwing Zeke a narrow-eyed this-isn’t-over glare, Danny said to Nathan. “You know there’s a way you could shorten your prison sentence. Just be honest with Kira about what you did, apologize and then tell her you love her. She’ll be angry but eventually she’ll forgive you.”

Nathan immediately snapped into standing position and his gaze zeroed in on Danny as his brain cells latched onto what they considered as the most important part of Danny’s whole speech. “I don’t love her.”

“C’mon. I saw the way you look at her.” Danny waggled his eyebrows. “You even threatened to kill me when I flirted with her.”

“We always threaten to kill you,” Zeke dismissed.

“True. But I felt the vibe this time.” Danny hissed and shook his shoulders in a mock tremble.

“Your imagination is working overtime.” Nathan derided even as his mind reeled, tossing and testing Danny’s assertions. It spun excuses of why he was not in love with Shakira. It was too soon. Just the other day he’d been too suspicious of her. He wasn’t the kind of man to fall in love. “I do
not
love Shakira.”

There was less conviction than he would’ve liked in his voice. True to form, Danny caught it.

“I’m sorry, is this the part of your
strategy
where we all pretend to be stupid? Cause I missed that memo,” Danny mocked. “Any blind idiot…even this one…” His leg shot forward as he kicked Zeke. “…can see that you have some serious feelings for this girl.”

Nathan was struck speechless. He turned to Zeke expecting him to refute Danny’s assertion.

Zeke’s response was a shrug and a “What the kid said.” before he lunged for Danny.

Nathan was in deep.

The silence in the room was stifling - terrifying even - but Shakira would be damned if she’d be the one to break it. If Edya wanted to rack up the tension to inferno levels with silence then she was up to it. Beyond Shakira’s ‘come in’ when the woman had unceremoniously presented herself at the door a few minutes ago, there’d been no words exchanged.

Shakira stared at Edya.

The older woman stared back at her.

And the silence persisted.

Edya seemed undisturbed by it. Dressed as she was in a pastel purple skirt suit with a string of pearls wrapped twice around her neck and her black hair perfectly coiffed in an austere chignon, she was the epitome of blue blood. She sat daintily on the white loveseat, a blue booklet clutched in her bejeweled hands and her gaze unwaveringly fixed on Shakira. Shakira would’ve matched her position if the edge of the bed had a back-rest. She settled for crossing one leg over the other and then linking her fingers on her knees.

Shakira almost cackled with glee when Edya finally gave in and broke the silence. Her amusement however waned when Edya’s first words were, “So, Shanita-”

“Shakira,” she corrected.

“Shanice,” Edya persisted. “Who’s your father?”

The question caught Shakira off-guard because she was not expecting it. “Excuse me?”

“I know your mother’s some kind of prostitute,” Edya said pleasantly. “But who’s your father? Is he a convict or did they shoot him in a drive-by.”

This time Shakira’s “Excuse me?” was even more high-pitched. Who the hell did this woman think she was? Shakira had no idea who or where her father was but that didn’t mean she was going to kowtow to the older woman’s disrespect.

“Don’t act so offended.” There was no change to Edya’s almost pleasant expression or in the inflection of her voice. It was as if the woman didn’t realize how insulting her words were. “We both know where you come from. It’s a reasonable assumption.”

Reasonable assumption?
Shakira wanted nothing more than to slap the reasonable assumption from the woman’s thin lips. She dug her nails into her palm to keep herself from standing up and doing just that. Her voice was tight with restrained anger as she answered, “My parents are none of your business.”

“They are when you’re trying to trap my son.”

The words falling from Edya’s lips were so outrageous, so infuriating, that Shakira couldn’t think of one thing to say that wouldn’t irreparably damage her relationship with the woman – if even there was one. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Shakira mimicked, “Trap your son?”

“It’s the only explanation for why he brought you here,” Edya returned with a shrug. “You’re not his type.”

Shakira didn’t know if she was being insulted for being poor, too skinny, black, tall, non-Jewish, something else…or a combination of all the above. “How would you know his type? You haven’t even seen him in over a decade?”

“You’d be surprised the things I know about Nathan.” The woman’s blue eyes flickered with something resembling tenderness. However, the thought that Edya could have a tender bone in her body was so absurd that Shakira instantly shoved it into her ‘this witch’ closet. Her opinion of Nathan’s mother was only reinforced further when the older woman said, “You’re pretty enough I suppose.” She capped the backhanded compliment with a tilt of her head, a slow perusal of Shakira and a “But I don’t get it. Did you tell him you’re pregnant?”

“I am not pregnant,” Shakira ground the words through her teeth.

“Of course you’re not.” Edya’s lips turned up at the corners into what could’ve been a smile but since the rest of her face didn’t move, Shakira wasn’t sure. “But that not what I asked. Your kind can pretend to be pregnant just to get a man. Did you tell him you’re pregnant?”

Her kind?
This. Had. Gone. Far. Enough.

Shakira exploded off the bed. “My relationship with your son is our business. Now if you’ll excuse me I’d like to unpack.”

Edya didn’t respond to Shakira’s sudden bout of temper or her standing up. Instead the older woman’s eyes narrowed and her gaze intensified. To make her point, Shakira turned to face the bed and consequently the black suitcase. Her fingers shook as she tagged at the zip but she shut that down with a firm mental reproach. Nathan’s mother was a vampire for weakness and if Shakira showed it she would gleefully suck it up.

Ignoring Edya, Shakira withdrew hers and Nathan’s clothes from the suitcase before walking over to the closet and grabbing a few wooden hangars. Edya tracked her movements closely but did not say anything – neither did she leave.

Shakira was in the process of hanging up Nathan’s suit for the wedding when Edya spoke again. “You don’t look like the type to kill.”

The comment was so strange that despite Shakira’s intentions to ignore the other woman, her attention snapped towards her.

Not waiting for a response, Edya added, “Clearly you’re a gold-digger like your mother but you’re not a killer. Who do you think killed Charles?”

Shakira’s pulse came to a screeching halt, her words went on holiday and her blood froze into one large icicle of shock. Turning completely to face Edya, the suit still in her hand, she stuttered, “H..h…how do you know about Charlie?”

“My dear, I’m Edya Landa-Hollis,” the older woman proclaimed grandly. “I know what you ate for dinner last night.”

“Charlie is none of your business.”

“You’re right. Your dead boyfriend’s none of my business. And he shouldn’t be Nathan’s either.” Edya sighed as she sat straighter on the loveseat. “Let’s cut to the chase.”

“Please.” Shakira covered her shock with sarcasm. “Let’s.”

“I don’t want my son involved in your…
issues
.” Edya placed the blue rectangular booklet on the side table beside the couch. “I’m willing…” She opened the booklet, picked a pen and scribbled on one of the pages. “…to compensate you for that to happen.”

Shakira struggled to wrap her mind around what was going on here.

“Don’t play naïve with me” Edya continued with the same irritating nonchalance. “The last man you were with ended up dead and they still haven’t found out who did it. Maybe it was an ex-boyfriend of yours. Maybe it was your father. Maybe it was the people your boyfriend was fixing matches with…I don’t really know – or care.”

It was almost like she was reading from the book of Shakira. For a woman who’d been back in Nathan’s life all of one day she knew a lot – too much even. How had she found it out? Before Shakira could ask all the questions plaguing her, Edya tore out a leaflet from the booklet.