A Test of Love: Interracial Erotic Romance (Chasing Love) (3 page)

Chase shot up from the chair. “I’m handling this. No one has to be hurt—”

“You’ve been handling this psycho for years by cuddling and taking care of her!” Benny argued.

“Okay.” I raised my good hand in the air. “I can’t deal with any more arguing. A lot has happened tonight. I need to rest, Benny.”

“Are you asking me to leave?”

“Yes.”

“I’m saying the things that need to be said.” He lowered his face.

“I understand, but I’m just stressed out and exhausted. Give me a day to process everything.” I pushed some hair out of my face. “And check on Vivian. If she’s up, tell her I love her so much and that she better not do anything like that again.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” Benny’s shocked expression changed to a neutral mask. He leaned my way and landed a peck on my forehead. “I’ll be back in the morning to discuss your living arrangements.”

Oh, god. He’s not going to give up.

Benny headed to the door, stopped, and peered over his shoulder at Chase. “You still don’t know which one of them is doing the killing? Do you?”

“Stay out of it. Call your friends back.” Chase’s hands shook at his sides. “I have a new investigator looking into who shot Jasmine and reviewing all the reports from the other murders.”

I remembered the envelope Benny had given me today with information on Chase’s dead girlfriends. The first one committed suicide with sleeping pills. Chase found her on the bathroom floor. Someone poured chemicals into a pool while the second one swam. The stuff burned her skin and lungs. She died immediately. As for the last woman, a person attacked her as she left Stone Industries late at night. During all three killings, Chase had been near; in each case, it had been a date night with the victim.

“But which one do you think tried to shoot my daughter?” Benny asked.

“I don’t know which one of them is doing it,” Chase admitted.

“Well, you had years to get it together. You were dumb enough to get my daughter involved in your crap.” Benny stood in the doorway, smiling. “Now I’m in it, and frankly it doesn’t matter to me which one did it. For Jasmine’s safety, if they’re all dead, I won’t lose any sleep.”

The door slammed behind him. A shiver of fear crept up my spine.
If they’re all dead? He couldn’t possibly mean he’d have them all killed.
I have to talk to him by myself. I need to find out who these friends Chase and he are referring to and what are his plans for finding the killer.

“You’re not staying with him.” Chase disrupted my thoughts. “He’s too dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?” I shuddered.

Chase clamped his mouth together and seethed. “Just trust me. Benny isn’t just a lawyer on Stone Industries’ corporate staff. His friends and he have been doing business with my father since he started his first company. Once Dad retired, I took over and found myself dealing with them.”

“His friends?”

“If he gets involved with this, a lot of people will be hurt.”

I wasn’t stupid. I’d known Benny all my life. He would pick Troy and me up, take us to school, and drop us back off. If I had really thought about how weird it was for a first-grade friend’s father to show so much interest in his daughter’s friends, I might’ve guessed that Benny was really my dad. But, it never seemed odd. He was just always around, helping us out.

Benny did more things for me then my own mom, things beyond the average person’s expectations. He even hid a murder for me years ago. Troy killed one of Mom’s boyfriends when we were twelve. While she was passed out on the couch, the guy would corner me in the hallway after I took showers, tell me to open my towel and be quiet or he would kill my mom. So I did it. By then my older brothers were incarcerated in the juvenile center. It was just Troy and me. When I told Troy about the towel incidents, he slept under my bed, scared that the guy would sneak in and try to rape me.

One night the guy tiptoed into my bedroom and lay on the bed alongside me. I pretended to sleep. He shook me, and without any hesitation, Troy stabbed a steak knife through his neck. I didn’t wake up my mom. Nothing got her up when she was high.

Like always, I called Benny and told him everything. He raced across town to our crappy housing project in the middle of the night with four men. My mom slept as they cleaned up all the blood in my bedroom, took the corpse away, and coached Troy and me on how to act and what to say if anyone asked questions. The whole time during the coaching process, Benny held us. His huge arms wrapped around our small shivering bodies and never let us go, unless it was to wipe our tears.

The next week, a homeless guy discovered the body behind an old abandoned building several miles away from our project. The cops never questioned Troy or me. No one discussed that night again. Benny and Troy never brought up the situation. Everything continued as if nothing ever happened.

Who was Benny besides the man I knew?

I never discussed this with Vivian, but I imagine he had connections with a mob or some sort of criminal organization. Weird things happened when Benny entered a problem. Benny was a lawyer, but he was something else, too. Thugs followed him around. Things disappeared when they caused Troy, Vivian, and me any harm. In fact, no one had seen Vivian’s boyfriend Noc after he had gone to jail for beating her; by now, he would have been released. Missing pictures were posted outside of Drunken Lyrics asking people to call the police if they knew about Noc’s whereabouts.

Chase interrupted my thoughts. “You’ll stay with me.”

“Not you, too.” I closed my eyes for a few seconds. The ache at my temples shifted to a pounding in my head. “You and Benny need to relax. I have guards, and I’m a grown woman. No one is going to order me around.”

“When I said you’re living with me it wasn’t a proposition, suggestion, or question. Someone tried to kill you.” He leaned forward until his face was a few inches away from mine. “As far as I’m concerned you’re either in my new condo or I’m staying with you and Vivian.”

“Neither.” I opened my eyes and he captured my lips, dipping his tongue into my mouth. Something fluttered in my chest, but I wouldn’t cave that easily. I tilted away from him. “I’m serious. I’m not staying with you.”

Knocking sounded from the door. Chase rose. A man I assumed was my doctor stepped in. “Good. You’re awake. Ms. Montgomery, how are you feeling?”

“I’m getting a headache, but I’m feeling better.”

“Before you begin,” Chase interrupted. “Dr. Scott, can you talk to me outside for a second?”

“About what?” I didn’t trust Chase right now. He’d said Benny was dangerous, but he also acted irrational whenever it pleased him. Additionally, he was only my. . .I didn’t know what Chase was to me anymore, boyfriend, guy I’m dating, or over-possessive-rich-guy-who-wouldn’t-let-me-go even if I could walk away from him, which I realized I couldn’t.

“I just need to talk to him.” Chase headed to the door. Dr. Scott followed without even looking to me for assistance.
The doctor understands who’s paying the medical bills.
I sighed and prayed tomorrow would be a better day.

Chapter 4

TROY

How many men could say they were madly in love with their sister? Not many, thank the lord.

But I still wondered where one was and if I could ask him for advice.

I sat next to the love of my life with my hand wrapped around her limp fingers. Viv slept in the hospital bed. Her eyelids shuddered every few seconds. As the heart machine beeped, so did my heart. It boomed in my chest, reminding me of why we both sat in this predicament.

I shouldn’t have run from her. She deserved better.

But what she asked for, I couldn’t give her. In any other situation, it wouldn’t have been a question. When she was Viv my forever crush, my eternal longing, when she was home and hope all wrapped into one, then hell, yeah, I would’ve obliged and made love to her.

She’s not that Viv anymore. She’s your sister, dumbass. Sister.

She had begged me to make love to her, and I had run out of that apartment as if my life depended on it.
Sister.
It hurt to think of her that way, let alone whisper the truth for all to hear, but it was my reality from now on. I had to suck it up and deal with it.

Sister.

The first day I met Viv, I loved her. At six she was pink cheeks and blond pigtails. She punched me in the stomach for pulling one of the curls that dangled from the side of her face. It didn’t hurt, yet I fell down like an overdramatizing actor, screaming in agony. Jazz told her to ignore me and go play on the slides. Viv couldn’t. She saw what others didn’t, something special in me. Why, or how she saw it, I would never know. Most of my family only saw the worst in me and used those things to define who I was. If someone promised Mom a million dollars if she could name one good thing about me, she’d be speechless.

Not Viv.

First time I went to juvie, she flooded me with mail. Sometimes I got two letters a day from her, all soaking in her sweet perfume.

She romanced me, never truly confessing her feelings but not holding back that much either. The older I got, the more prison institutions I was thrown into for fucking up. Still Viv wrote, long after my family had given up. Sure, Jazz sent letters once a week, preaching about how I could do better or raving about this or that ingredient in some stupid dish, but Viv’s words were what I waited around for at mail time. Her letters improved with her age. Less perfume, yet when they came, I closed my eyes and imagined myself next to her, analyzing the softness of her flesh. She sent pictures too, ones with her on the beach or with little pink boy shorts as she stood in front of a canvas of her art. She had to know what she did to me, had to guess in her head how many times I’d stroked my dick as I longingly stared at those photos.

In the hospital room, my dick stiffened. I let go of her hand.

Sister. She’s your sister, man.

All my life this blue-eyed sweetheart slickly courted me. When I got out this last time and showed up at her and Jazz’s apartment, she had to know why I was there. I could smell her arousal as she sat next to me rolling a joint. She craved me, slyly rubbing against my arm each time she walked by.

Fuck. Forget about that.

In the hospital room, my dick refused to go down. I rose and headed out of there.

Sister. Chill, man.

I had to check on Jazz real quick anyway. She said she would stay away from that rich fuck, Chase. Next thing I heard, she’s shot and that motherfucker was right next to her. Benny gave me the news. He was all polite-like, even seemed scared to talk to me.

Let that bitch-ass be scared. He’s lucky I can’t get at him like I want to.

Benny hung with thugs. Only difference between his thugs and me was that they wore suits and hid their guns behind expensive jackets.

“What’s up?” I nodded at two of his guys standing outside Viv’s room. The one who nodded back at me had a huge scar on his neck. I headed to the staircase and considered that scar.

Definitely a sharp object with a jagged edge. Whoever cut him grabbed something quick and tried to rush for the jugular. Either way, I bet the guy who tried is no longer breathing.

I’d seen enough fights in the yard to guess at the origins of wounds. After reading about animals or some other scientific oddity, injuries were a hobby. I boxed when I could, fought when I didn’t have a handle on my temper, but science books on any topic kept me motivated to wake up another day even behind bars.

I arrived at Jazz’s floor in no time.

Only Jazz and Viv would end up in the same hospital on the same day. They’re going to get me killed.

Even more men guarded Jazz’s door. None was so blatant like downstairs. It just looked like eight burly men lounging outside. Some read magazines in chairs. Others messed with their phones. They all knew I had walked up, though. I could sense it in the air: That odd energy around me seemed to pause. It was like that sensation of someone watching me. I got that a lot when I stepped onto an elevator with an old white woman or even walked behind one at night on an empty street. Her breathing would pick up as she noticed all the tattoos on my arm. I never tried to hide who I was, even when Jazz pleaded with me to conform.

The man closest to the door looked up at me as if warning my behind to tread carefully.

“Jazz is my sister,” I said.

The guy returned to his phone. Just when I was about to open the door, it opened on its own. The scent of blood thickened the air. I knew who it was before I saw his face. Weird thing about him, that odor usually clung on his clothes whether he knew it or not.
Blood.
Just this odd smell I always sensed from him.
Blood and death.
Every now and then I caught a scent of cologne, but most of the time, to me, he smelled like blood.

“Son of a bitch will be dead as soon as she leaves him alone,” he muttered and bumped into me. “Shit. Troy? I’m sorry.”

I stayed there, waiting for him to be the one to walk around and get out of my way.

Sometimes it’s the little things.

“You want to kill Chase?” I frowned.

“He’s trying to buy your sister’s love. You know that, right?” He got behind me, which forced me to turn around. I hated dangerous men in a room with me where I couldn’t see them. Cursing under his breath, Benny paced in the center of the waiting area. “He bought your mom a house and paid for private school for your nieces and nephews.”

“I heard. I haven’t talked to Mom, but my niece Valerie goes crazy about her new school when I call her.”

“The moment Jasmine comes to her senses and ends this with Chase is the very second he kicks them out of that shiny new home and school.”

“You hate not being the only rich white guy in our lives, huh?”

Benny paused and glared at me with a smile. I closed my mouth. He never hit me, but he could’ve. Mom never stopped the others from beating me. Why would she stop my dad? One of the men on my right coughed into his hand. Benny waved him away.