Family of Lies

The God Series
God Don’t Like Ugly
God Still Don’t Like Ugly
God Don’t Play
God Ain’t Blind
God Ain’t Through Yet
God Don’t Make No Mistakes

Mama Ruby Series
Mama Ruby
The Upper Room
Lost Daughters

Gonna Lay Down My Burdens
Red Light Wives
In Sheep’s Clothing
Deliver Me From Evil
She Had It Coming
The Company We Keep
Family of Lies

“Nightmare in Paradise” in
Borrow Trouble

Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

KENSINGTON BOOKS
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

This book is dedicated to Sheila Sims, Louise Cooks, and Felice Sanchez.

I am truly grateful for the support I continue to receive from booksellers, book clubs, radio stations, libraries, and my media escorts.

Thanks and lots of hugs to the folks in the sales department at Kensington Publishing; the rest of my Kensington family (especially my editor, Selena James); my awesome literary agent, Andrew Stuart; and most of all, my incredible fans.

Lauretta Pierce, thank you for maintaining my Web site and for spending hours at a time on the telephone chatting with me!

Please continue to share your comments, thoughts, and suggestions by e-mailing me at [email protected] or visiting my Web site, MaryMonroe.org. You can also communicate with me on Facebook and Twitter.

All the best,

Mary Monroe
June 2014

San Francisco, 1984

“T
HANKS FOR INVITING ME TO BREAKFAST AGAIN,
V
ERA.
I
THOUGHT
we had already finalized the arrangements for Kenneth’s surprise birthday party.”

“I didn’t ask you to meet me to discuss my husband’s party. And you can forget about being a guest. If you come within an inch of my property, I will have you arrested for trespassing.”

The look on my husband’s mistress’s face was priceless. I had never seen such a confused and stunned expression before in my life. Her lips quivered for about five seconds before she was able to speak again. “Huh? Wh-what did I do?” was all she could manage.

“You can stop your little innocent act right now! I know you’ve been sleeping with my husband!”

“Oh. Um . . . how did you find out? I didn’t tell nobody.”

“How I found out is not important. What’s important is that I know
everything
about you now.” I had to pause and hold my breath for a few seconds to keep the stomach acid from rising in my throat, spewing out of my mouth, and soiling my eight-hundred-dollar silk blouse. “I can even tell you the names of the hotels you laid up in with my husband and the dates of every single reservation—including the ones you canceled,” I hissed. I had hired one of the best private investigators in the city, so I had an extensive report on my husband’s latest affair. “I even know what you ordered from room service.”

Lois blinked a few times. For a woman brazen enough to get involved with her much older married boss, she came across as a real wimp to me. “I hope you enjoyed having somebody spy on me,” she whimpered.

“Pfftt! I’ve had diarrhea that I enjoyed more than having somebody spy on you,” I snarled.

Her hands were shaking and there was fear in her eyes. It was a true delight to watch her squirm like a worm on a fishhook. “I guess if you know everything about me, you know I’m pregnant with your husband’s baby too! He doesn’t even know yet!” She narrowed her eyes and looked at me with contempt.

“Yes, I know about that baby! You need a baby like you need another butthole! You are a low-down, lowlife, two-faced slut, and I hope that if you ever get married, another slut fucks your husband and has his baby so you can see what it feels like!”

“In the first place, your husband came on to me, not the other way around! Here you are all up in my face when it’s him you need to be jacking! You got some damn nerve, lady!”

I gasped and shook my head in disbelief. I couldn’t believe that Lois was just as angry as I was! You would have thought that
she
was the victim in this tragic mess. I gritted my teeth to keep from spitting in her face. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, girl,” I said, speaking a little more calmly now. “I heard you grew up in the church and was raised by a good woman. How girls raised like you end up being so trifling is a mystery to me. How many other married men have you fooled around with? Are you going to abort this baby like you did the other two when you were in high school?”

“Who told
you
I had those abortions? I only told my closest friends about that!”

“Why should a tramp like you even care who told me? Like I said, I know everything I need to know about you. Whose husband are you going to fuck next?”

“Who I sleep with next is none of your business, Vera!”

“Well, as long as it’s not my husband, I don’t really give a shit. Now, there are a few things you need to know. First, Kenneth will never divorce me to marry an ignorant, nose-ring-wearing, dollar-store-shopping tramp like you—his secretary, for God’s sake!” I delivered one of my most disgusted looks across the table at my husband’s latest and most threatening girl-toy. All of his other gold-digging bitches had taken all they could from him and promptly moved on. A few had been only one-night stands.

Despite the fact that my husband had spent thousands of dollars on his whores, I had not let that bother me too much. At the end of the day, I was still the Queen Bee and the
only
woman with the keys to the castle and access to his massive fortune.

I was a lot of things, but I was no fool. There was way too much money at stake for me to make a fuss about my husband dipping his silver spoon into a bowl of grits. His trysts were what I called assembly-line sex. I believed that most men were natural-born dogs. Therefore, when it came to sex, they would hump a fire hydrant. Besides, I hated having sex with Kenneth these days. It had become downright gruesome. Just the thought of him flopping up and down on top of me with his three layers of blubber and foul sweat turned my stomach. Apparently his vile body didn’t bother his other women, but then the right amount of money could make just about anything tolerable.

I had never confronted Kenneth about his affairs and I never complained about him leaving me home alone so much. Because no matter which one of the fancy hotels he took his women to, he always came home to me.

But I was really worried about Lois. For one thing, he’d been with her a lot longer than any of the others. At nineteen, she was the youngest and the prettiest. And the nail in the coffin was the fact that she was carrying his baby! For the first time, I was worried that I would lose the best meal ticket I ever had. I was not about to let it go without a fight. And when it came to doing battle, I didn’t fight by the rules. I did whatever I had to do to win.

“You can call me what you want. But the thing is, I’m having Kenneth’s baby. I’m sure he’ll leave you and marry me when I tell him he’s finally going to be a daddy. He told me that he’s been wanting a child for years and if I—”

“Shut up!” I had to cut the bitch off. So far, everything that had spewed out of her mouth made me feel nauseous. “Don’t you think I know that, too, little girl? But . . .” I paused, leaned back in my chair, and patted the side of my head. Then I continued with the smuggest look on my face that I could manage. “At least the child I’m carrying will have his name.”

Lois couldn’t have looked more dazed if I had thrown a glass of blood in her face. “What . . . you’re pregnant too? I didn’t know that!”

“Of course you didn’t know that. But you know it now. I’m two months along. You and I will probably give birth around the same time.” The way Lois’s face looked now, I thought it was going to melt. I enjoyed watching her reaction during the few moments of silence that followed. She looked like she wanted to cry.

“You’re two months along? Kenneth told me he hasn’t touched you in
six
months,” she mumbled.

I froze and glared at Lois in outraged disbelief. The huge knot forming in my stomach felt like a cannonball. Kenneth and I had just made love a few hours ago! I couldn’t believe that he would tell this slut such a bald-faced lie! “Sister, that brother lied to you. Married men who cheat on their wives do a lot of that, you know. By him telling you he hasn’t fucked me in six months, he thought it would make you feel more special. Well, I’ve got news for you—he told his last three whores before you the same thing.”

“The last three? He told me I was the only one . . . the only one he’d cheated with.”

I threw my head back and guffawed like a hyena and clapped my hands. “And you believed him? Girl, if you knew he was lying to me when he was shacked up somewhere with you, what made you think he wasn’t lying to you? You’re dumber than you look!”

“I’m not as dumb as you think! You’re the one that’s dumb if you think Kenneth is still in love with you! He told me he’s only staying married to you because he feels sorry for you.”

My chest suddenly felt constricted, as if somebody had wrapped me in a straitjacket that was two sizes too small. It was one thing for Kenneth to tell his bitch that he had not made love to me in six months, if he really did tell her that. But it was another thing for him to tell her he no longer loved me and “feels sorry” for me. Well, I didn’t believe he’d told her that. If he had, he’d lied to her about that too. One thing I was certain about was that Kenneth still loved me. I was the kind of trophy that successful black men like him—who didn’t want to marry outside of the race—fought over. I was fair-skinned with keen features, slim, and intelligent. And just to sweeten the pot, I had become a blonde a few years ago.

“I’m sure he won’t feel that way when I give birth to his child,” I sneered. I could be just as big a liar as anybody else. And I was good at it. It was a skill that I had been honing since grade school.

“Are you sure you’re pregnant?” There was a suspicious look on Lois’s face. “I mean, a woman your age . . . uh, maybe it’s something else.”

This time I thought my face was going to melt. I gasped so hard I almost passed out. “A woman my age? What the hell—Girl, I’m only
thirty-four years old
!” I hollered. I was no longer just angry. Now I was worried too. I had spent more money on cosmetic surgery to maintain my youth than any woman I knew and here this bitch was sitting here insinuating that I was
old
. If that was true, I needed to find me some much more competent surgeons. “What the hell ‘something else’ could it be?”

“Maybe it’s just a tumor,” she answered with a sniff so aggressive it probably cleared her sinuses out for good.

“Well, you are wrong. I’ve been to the doctor. I’m two months along!” I said again as I rubbed my belly. I had paid a visit to my doctor but not to see if I was pregnant. Each time I found out Kenneth was involved in another affair, I got an AIDS test. Once when he was involved with a stripper I made him wear condoms when we had sex. He had balked about it, but when I told him I had a chronic yeast infection that could cause him erection problems, he stopped complaining.

Lois dropped her head and stared at the table as if she wanted to crawl under it. “I . . . I wonder why Kenneth didn’t tell me you were pregnant,” she crowed, looking back up.

“Kenneth doesn’t know yet. I am going to surprise him with the news at his surprise birthday party next week. And let me make one thing perfectly clear: I will
never
give him a divorce so he can marry you. Besides, a prominent man like him is not going to leave his elegant, cultured,
slim
pregnant wife for a
plump
backstreet ghetto floozy like you! You will strut your chunkified butt out of my husband’s life! And I will see to it! If I wasn’t such a lady and neither of us was pregnant, I’d pimp-slap the shit out of you right now!”

I sucked in some air, which was quite stale I noticed. I looked around the restaurant, not because I was afraid one of my friends would see me; none of them would be found dead in a low-end establishment like Denny’s. I hadn’t been in one since I was a broke-ass teenager still living in the hood back in Houston more than fifteen years ago. It had been my choice to meet my husband’s whore in this dump because this was where she belonged, along with other members of the lowlife population. I snorted and looked around the room in disgust. A black teenage female at the table across from us wore a weave that looked like a well-used mop. She had
three
whiny, snotty-nosed toddlers in tow and was pregnant again. They were eating grits off the same plate, using the same spoon. Every other patron in the place looked as bad off as the pregnant teenage mother. A toothless, middle-aged white man occupied another nearby table, gnawing on a piece of bacon with his gums. I shook my head and returned my attention to Lois. It was easy to see why Kenneth had been attracted to her. She was young, beautiful, and stupid. It was a damn shame to see so much dollar-store makeup on her caramel-colored, heart-shaped face. She had outlined her full lips with a dark brown eyebrow pencil and then slapped on enough bronze lipstick for three people. She looked like a goddamn clown. It hurt my eyes to look at the outrageously long weave hanging off her head like a horse’s tail. It was hard to believe that there was a baby growing in her voluptuous young body. I hated the ground she walked on. And I hated Kenneth for cheating on me with her. And I was going to make him pay for it until the day he died.

“Okay, Vera. I’m busted.” There was a sorry expression on Lois’s face, but I knew that the only thing she was sorry about was getting busted. “Where do we go from here?” she squeaked.

“I’m going to cut to the chase because I have a very busy schedule today.” I glared at Lois so hard she shuddered.

“Cut to the chase, then, so I can get up out of here. I have a busy schedule too,” she threw back at me, folding her arms. I was surprised she had not touched the scrambled eggs and grits she’d ordered, especially since I was paying for it.

“I can make things very comfortable for you and your baby,” I told her. “And I can assure you that my deal is a lot sweeter than one you’d get from Kenneth if you tell him about the baby.”

“You mean you didn’t want me to meet you just so you could get in my face for me sleeping with your husband?”

“I know you don’t think I’d waste my time coming into a place like Denny’s on a Saturday morning just to get in your face. Like I just said, I can make it possible for you to live like a queen.”

“Why? How could you be so mad at me and then turn around and tell me you can make it possible for me to live like a queen? That don’t make no sense to me.” The suspicious look had returned to Lois’s face.

“Marriage is hard enough without complications like you. I want you to stay away from my husband for good. I don’t want him to
ever
know about the baby you’re carrying.”

“I work for your husband, Vera.”

I shook my head. “Not anymore. I want you to resign from your job immediately.”

“Lady, I need my job! You can’t—What if I don’t quit? What are you going to do about it?”

“If you turn down my offer and return to work on Monday, I’m going to storm that damn store and beat the dog shit out of you in front of Kenneth and all your coworkers. Us both being pregnant won’t stop me! How long do you think you’d have that job then?!”

“You wouldn’t do something like that!”