Eye for an Eye (5 page)

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Authors: Dwayne S. Joseph

BOOK: Eye for an Eye
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“So you finally told Sam.”
“Yes. I love my sister, Lisette, but I'll be honest . . . I told her about Ryan's advances because I wanted her to go off on his sorry ass.”
“But she didn't.”
Shante let out an angry exhale. “No. That bitch actually accused me of making everything up, saying how I was just jealous of her, and that I was telling her those things hoping she would leave Ryan so that I could have him.”
Shante stopped speaking and grabbed her cup. She didn't drink anything this time. She just held on to it.
I watched her. Studied the anger in her eyes as she looked at me. Her sister's actions had really pissed her off. I don't know why though. It was a typical reaction.
I said, “You don't want me to set him up for Sam, do you?”
“I love my sister, Lisette.”
“I don't doubt that you do, but, as I said, this isn't about her.”
“Does my answer determine whether you'll do it?”
I looked at her.
She looked back at me with nervous, tense anticipation in her eyes.
I said, “I've only ever turned down one client before.”
She clenched her jaw. “Why? Wasn't her husband guilty?”
“Her husband was pathetic, but she was a selfish, greedy bitch who didn't deserve my help.”
As I said that, Shante's cup caved in. Some of her macchiato spilled over her hand and onto the table. “Shit.” She grabbed a couple of napkins she had and wiped her hand and then on the table. “I'm sorry. I didn't realize I'd been holding it that hard. None of it spilled on you, did it?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Good.” She finished cleaning up and then looked at me. For some reason, her eyes seemed darker than before. She said, “So how did the woman take it when you told her no?”
I thought about Kyra. Thought about the shit she'd had done to me. Thought about the man in black she'd had pay me a visit. In the midst of a thunderstorm, he'd given me regards from Kyra. Regards that Marlene helped me overcome. I said, “Not very well.”
Shante nodded. “And is she still with her husband now? Or did she find a way to get his money?”
Again, thoughts of Kyra ran through my mind. On the floor of a condominium at The Exchange at 25 Broad Street. Her body riddled with pain, she was bleeding, moaning. She'd just had incredible sex. Sex that she'd been told she would never forget. A fat man named Jim had pulled me out of the thunderstorm the night I received Kyra's regards. In the condominium I gave Kyra my own regards in return. She didn't have a fat man to help pull her out of anything.
I looked at Shante as she watched me, waiting for my response. I said, “She got everything she deserved.”
Shante stared at me, her jaw tight, her gaze unflinching. She said, “I want to get what I deserve.”
“Are you willing to pay?”
“Whatever it takes.”
9
“My services aren't cheap.”
“I've already told your associate that money isn't an object for me. I'll pay whatever it costs to get the job done.”
“All because you love your sister.” She still hadn't answered my question from before. It wasn't an answer that I really needed. I just wanted her to admit the truth.
Shante bit down on her lip, dropped her chin to her chest, and then looked back up at me, her expression colder, her eyes a bit darker. “Ryan thinks he's God's gift to women. I hate people like that. People who think they can do and get whatever they want without regard to other people's feelings. People like that . . . people like Ryan . . . they need to be brought back down to earth. They need to understand that there's a consequence for everything they do.”
I stared at Shante. Stared at her eyes. Eyes filled with anger. Her fingers were around her cup again. Looked like she was going to make it spill again.
People like that.
I was a person like that.
I did and got what I wanted.
She hated her brother-in-law. She hated me too. I could see it in those eyes. She hated me, but she needed me, because only a person like that could get the job done.
I said, “Seventy-five thousand. That's what it's going to take.”
“And you can guarantee that you can do this?”
“You wouldn't be sitting here if you didn't already know that answer.”
Shante nodded. “True.”
“Have you thought about how you want this done?”
“I want my sister to see just how much Ryan loves her. I want her to see just how
jealous
of her I am. Bitch. I can't believe she wouldn't take me at my word.”
Shante paused and grabbed a clean napkin and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
“I . . . I'm sorry,” she said, tears flowing slowly. “I don't mean to break down like this. I just love my sister. I've watched out for her my whole life. Hell, I practically raised her. I've always wanted nothing but the best for her. How she could ever think that I'd stoop to doing something so low as to make up a story about Ryan coming on to me just so that I could have him for myself, really hurts.”
“So now you're looking for a little payback.”
Shante shook her head. “No.”
I said, “Bullshit. She chose him over you. Don't tell me you don't want her to hurt in any way.”
“I . . . I love my sister.”
“Why are you telling me that again?”
“Because it's the truth.”
“I never called you a liar.”
“I . . . I–”
“She chose him over you,” I stressed again. “There's nothing wrong with wanting her to hurt a little.”
Shante frowned. “I shouldn't want that.”
“But you do. Sam should have trusted you enough to believe you, because you raised her . . . gave up your free time for her . . . probably sacrificed relationships to ensure her happiness, without expecting, wanting, or asking for anything in return.”
Shante looked at me, her eyes telling me that I was right. She was pissed. Pissed at her brother-in-law for his arrogance and his false endearments. Pissed at her sister for not valuing all that she'd done.
“This is about you, Shante. This is about payback that you are looking for.”
Shante bit down on her bottom lip. Squeezed the cup just a little harder. Her eyes on mine, she said, “Payback. Does that make me a bad person?”
I shook my head. “It makes you human.”
Shante nodded.
“Are you ready to pay half now?”
10
She was there!
Rebecca Stantin couldn't believe her luck. Lisette was there in the same place, at the same time. There was no denying it. It was fate. She'd just placed the call to begin her way on the new path she'd chosen, and now she and Lisette were feet apart.
Rebecca's heart beat rapidly. Her right leg bounced like a jackhammer with nervous excitement as she stared at the woman who'd changed her life completely. For $50,000, she'd set up her husband, Bruce. Or, as the people at St. Mark's Baptist Church called him, Pastor Stantin. The good pastor was a charismatic man born with ruggedly handsome good looks and the ability to deliver the Word of God as though the good Lord Himself had delivered the speech to him with instructions to recite His words, word for word.
When Pastor Stantin spoke, he mesmerized, and only when his sermons were over did he release you. He was amazing. And for the longest time, he'd been the most eligible and wanted man in Winston Salem, North Carolina, until Rebecca, who he'd met after service one day, exchanged vows with him on a perfect Saturday afternoon in the middle of fall.
The wedding announcement had caught the entire town by surprise. Rebecca had been twenty, with only two years of college under her belt. She hadn't come from a rich or affluent family. She hadn't been an A student. She'd actually skirted through high school with a C+ average, and was barely getting by with a 2.8 GPA at community college. Rebecca was, by all accounts, as ordinary as they came, but there was one thing that set her apart from the rest.
Blessed with Halle Berry's looks and a body that many swore Halle had been determined to attain after the two met briefly when Rebecca won a beauty pageant at age seventeen, Rebecca was stunning. When the pastor announced their plans to marry, the gasps that went through the packed congregation had been deafening. There were rumors of the two seeing one another from time to time, but there were also rumors of the pastor seeing several other women as well. Although devoted to doing the Lord's work, Bruce Stantin did have a weakness when it came to the opposite sex. But unlike other parishes in which extracurricular activities such as his were frowned upon, Bruce's were practically accepted or ignored because the faith he instilled and the power to seemingly turn sinners into saints made his womanizing unimportant.
The gasps from the church members weren't released because he'd been seeing Rebecca. They were released because no one could figure out what Rebecca had done, said, or promised to get him to commit.
And neither could Rebecca.
The night he'd proposed to her had caught her completely by surprise. They'd just finished having sex, something he loved to do, when he turned to her as they lay naked in her bed, and popped the question. Initially, Rebecca thought he'd been joking. She wasn't naïve to his philandering ways. They actually didn't bother her. The Pastor was indeed a catch, but she was young, and as long as he took care of her, which he did well, then she was fine with being one of a few. She didn't need marriage.
But always the charismatic manipulator, Bruce explained in his deep baritone that God told him one night that the time had come for him to choose a bride, and that the bride he was to choose would be Rebecca. She was the one to complete him. She was the woman to have his last name, and bear and raise the next generation of Stantins who would carry on God's work. His explanation had been so sincere and moving that, with tears falling from her eyes, Rebecca said yes.
The proposal was made in early spring. The marriage took place in the fall. By winter, Rebecca realized that her husband had been an eloquent bullshitter. Bruce wanted to have her for his wife, yes, but not for the reasons he'd stated.
Rebecca quickly found out that Bruce needed to have her at his side. He wanted to move up in the order, and while his delivery and the following and money he'd amassed would help, having Rebecca as his trophy was the last and most necessary rung in the ladder he needed in order to ascend.
Bruce wanted to be famous. He wanted to be the next T.D. Jakes, but bigger. T.D. had the skill, but he didn't have Bruce's looks. Now add to that a woman who every man wanted to see and he had gold. They quickly became the black Brangelina. People adored, envied, and wanted to know about them. Their combined looks, along with his charm and oratory gift, made them marketable, and they soon became the face for a booming religious movement throughout North Carolina. With Rebecca by his side, Bruce became so popular that eventually North Carolina became too small for them, and so they moved to New York City.
To those looking in from the outside, their union was a blessed and devoted one. But Rebecca knew better. While Bruce appeared to be the perfect husband, she dealt with the fact that he had been using her. He'd been as unfaithful as he had been before they'd exchanged vows, if not more so, because he knew that Rebecca wasn't going to leave him. She was the first lady. Her background didn't matter. No one cared about her GPA, and no one cared that she'd brought essentially nothing to the table. She was simply the pastor's adored wife, and all doors were open for her.
Marriage to Bruce was complete security. She wanted for nothing. What more could she have asked for? Just play the good wife, keep her mouth shut about his extramarital trysts, and give him a son to carry on his fucking name.
Those were the things he'd say as he became physically and verbally abusive.
“Enjoy your stature, bitch, because without me you ain't shit!”
Rebecca endured Bruce's punches and kicks below the neckline until she'd become pregnant and then had a miscarriage three months in. Bruce blamed her for losing the baby. He said her ungratefulness brought about God's punishment.
The verbal and physical abuse had been hard to deal with, but the loss of her child–a child she'd seen as a lifeline–broke Rebecca's spirit, and for the next three years, she did as her husband commanded. She played her role. The only order she couldn't follow was to conceive another child–something her husband blamed solely on her.
For three years Rebecca endured. But one day she received an anonymous phone call from someone who said they knew what she'd been going through and that they knew of someone who could help her if she was willing to pay. They gave her Marlene's number, and a week later, after Bruce punched her in her belly because he'd had to make a solo appearance at a speaking engagement, she made the call. Two days after that, she met Lisette. Two weeks after that, Lisette handed her a manila envelope with photographs inside of her husband having sex with her. Rebecca's plan had been to use the photographs to force a divorce, but during their final meeting, Lisette had opened her eyes.
“Your husband's right,” she said evenly.
“Excuse me?”
“The life you have, the things you can do. They're all because you're the first lady.”
Rebecca slammed her brows together. “I . . . I don't understand.”
“What I've just handed you in that envelope is a live grenade. You can use it to get your divorce like you want, but in the process, you'll blow up not only your husband, but you'll blow yourself up as well. Now your husband may survive. He'll probably pull the “Lord has helped me to see the errors of my ways and I'm a changed man now” card. Women will forgive him because they're stupid. Men will forgive him because they're men. Despite the hole you try to bury him in, he'll find a way to climb out. But you . . . While you'll escape the abuse and will benefit financially, you'll lose something that you have that's very powerful. Your stature.”
“My stature?”
“You're the first lady. That title gives you a key that only the first lady can hold.”
Rebecca held up the envelope. “Are you suggesting that I don't use this? That I just deal with the abuse?”
“No.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“Those pictures are power, Rebecca. Power and control. Show them to your husband. Let him know that copies have been made, and that if he lays another hand on you, or says the wrong thing, or even looks at you wrong, that those copies won't be kept private. That a lot of other people will know about his bullshit.”
Rebecca's mouth fell open. “Wow.”
“You'll be able to do whatever the fuck you want to do, Rebecca, because I guarantee your husband won't want those photos released. Seek the divorce and you throw away your control.”
Again, Rebecca said, “Wow.”
A live grenade.
As Lisette suggested, she showed Bruce the photographs and let him know that she wasn't the only owner.
“Enjoy your stature, bitch, because if you give me a reason to release them, you ain't gonna have shit!”
Lisette had shown Rebecca what control was. She'd shown what power was, and in doing so, she'd opened a door to a world that fascinated and intrigued her. Lisette had given her a new lease on life and she was enjoying the hell out of it, doing what and occasionally who she wanted. She loved the Lord, but she had needs that the Lord couldn't provide, and every so often, when the itch was there, she sought to have it scratched and she didn't hide shit from her husband. Until Lisette helped her, Rebecca had no real purpose. Nothing really stoked a fire or passion.
Until Lisette, had come into her life. Now she knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to do for others what Lisette had done for her. She wanted to be a liberator, a healer. She wanted to empower women, give them back the dignity that she'd gotten back over a year ago.
She hadn't made the photographs public–and really she had no plans to give away the leverage they gave–but she had officially sought a divorce from her husband. She could do some good as the first lady, but she could do a hell of a lot more as a home wrecker.
Rebecca took a short breath and looked over at Lisette. She was talking to another woman. Rebecca was sure that she was a woman in need the way she'd once been.
Rebecca smiled and waited for Lisette to finish her meeting.

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