No One in the World (30 page)

“As long as I'm living, you'd know I'd never allow that, Cobi,” Sissy said with conviction. “P&G is still buying whatever shares it can get its hands on, but I've convinced most of our board members not to sell just yet. Don't worry, we're still in control.”

“Good. I knew I had nothing to worry about with you in charge,” I said, taking a bite out of one of my buttery corn muffins.

“You seem like you're in just a wonderful, click-your-heels-together mood today. What's got you so bright and shiny? I imagine not having to pay off yet another blackmailer.”

“That's right, and you still have to thank Eric for his part in that.”

“Sure,” Sissy said. “On the day I find out what his part in it actually was. You never know. He could've been the one running the scam.”

“Whatever. Just be happy with me right now. It's a good time. I have you, my brother, and this thing with Austen isn't necessarily the nuclear bomb I thought it was going to be.”

“Oh,” Sissy said, a smile of surprise on her face. “So you're liking her now, huh? Who knows. Maybe in five years, you two—”

“Yeah, don't go that far. But she's nice, and I do like her,” I said. “And Eric called me an hour ago. I know this means nothing to you, but the mother of his child decided to allow him to see his daughter. Isn't that wonderful?”

“No. You were right, that means nothing to me,” Sissy said, poking her fork at her catfish.

“You're going to grow to love him one day,” I said confidently.

Sissy looked up at me with a face as serious as I've ever seen on her, and said, “Cobi, understand this. I know he's your brother, but there is simply something about that man I do not like. He does not deserve to be considered part of this family. I think if you continue to see him that way, he will cause you great harm, and for that reason, I will never, ever grow to love, like, or even tolerate him. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, holding the stupid smile on my face, trying to pretend Sissy wasn't as serious as she said she was.

After lunch, and for the next six hours, I was receiving phone calls and text messages from Blac at the rate of about a dozen an hour. I avoided them. I didn't answer the calls or check the voice messages. I simply ignored the texts, until half an hour ago, when he called me six times, back to back to back.

“Hello!” I answered the phone angrily. “What is it? Why are you calling me like this?”

“I need to see you,” Blac said. He didn't sound the same. I detected worry, almost fear in his voice.

“Well, if I'm not picking up your calls, or returning your texts, don't you know that means I'm busy?”

“Cobi, I said I need to see you. I really need to see you, please.”

Sitting at the bar of a small place called Eva's on South Wabash, I told myself I wasn't going to wait a minute longer than the time we had agreed upon.

I had told myself that I was going to start distancing myself from Blac because of the situation with the photographs. It was a close call, but thanks to Eric, I had managed to escape it.

If one clown with a camera was able to capture pictures of me with another man, how hard would it be for another? I could no longer expose myself like that. Tyler had been right all along. Maybe I needed to be as paranoid as he was.

I glanced down at my watch and saw that it was eight o'clock on the dot. I pulled a ten-dollar bill from my wallet and was prepared to toss it on the bar to pay for my beer, when Blac walked right up to me and tried to give me a hug and a kiss. I pressed my hands into his chest to keep him back. “What are you doing? Not in here.”

“Fine, then let's get a room,” Blac said. He looked jittery and scared.

“No. We're not getting a room.”

“C'mon. I promise I'll make it worth your while. The best you ever had it.”

“I said no. Now, either sit down so we can talk, or I'm leaving.”

Blac looked left and right, as if he thought someone was after him, then sat down beside me.

“Have a drink,” I said.

“Don't want a drink, but I need something from you.”

What else could this man want, I thought? I gave him sex and a total of $13,000. What else was there? “What is it, Blac?”

“I need money. Like tonight.”

“How much?” I asked out of curiosity, not because I intended on giving it to him.

“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

I smiled, knowing this was a joke. When he didn't smile with me, I said, “You're joking, right?”

“I'm not joking. Does it look like I'm joking?” he said, sweat starting to appear on his brow.

He looked like a desperate, frightened man on the verge of doing something stupid. “What in the world do you need money like that for?”

“Don't have time to explain. I'm in trouble, and I need it, and you're the only person I can get it from.”

“Then you're not getting it.”

“Look,” Blac said, grabbing my arm hard. “I told you I'm in trouble. I need this!”

“For what? What did you do?” I said, speaking in a harsh whisper.

“Drugs,” Blac finally admitted. “Drug deal gone wrong, okay!”

“Drugs! And you want me to give you money for drugs? If word got out, do you know the damage that could do to—” I stood up, shaking my head. “No. I'm sorry, but you're on your own on this one.”

“Sit down, Cobi,” Blac said.

“I told you—”

“I said sit your motherfuckin' punk ass down,” Blac said, forcefully. “Now listen,” Blac said, digging in his back jeans pocket, pulling out a yellow envelope, and laying it on the counter. “I'm about to make you an offer your ass would be smart not to refuse.”

Y
esterday, when Blac took that briefcase from Eric and started around that abandoned grocery store to meet the blackmailer, the thought of stealing that half million dollars only crossed his mind once. But it crossed very slowly.

He could've taken it, paid Cutty his money, had $350K left, then headed down to Wisconsin and even taken Theresa with him. They could've bought a small house or something, lived off the rest for a good little while.

As Blac turned the corner and spotted the blue Ford Fusion, he asked himself, would he have actually been able to get away with it? If Blac did choose to play it that way, Eric would've surely told Cobi, and with all the money and resources that Cobi had—not to mention the fact that he was a fucking state's attorney—Blac would've been nabbed and thrown back in Joliet before he crossed the Illinois state line.

So he didn't steal the money but instead walked up cautiously to the driver's side of the Ford like he had intended.

The pudgy, balding, bespectacled man had his eyes trained on Blac from the moment he came around the corner. From the driver's seat of the car, he leaned over and said, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Mr. Winslow sent me. I got the money,” Blac said, hoisting the briefcase up so the man could see.

“Get in the fucking car!”

Blac laughed to himself. The man was trying to act hard, but Blac knew he was scared shitless. He could tell by the bitchy high tone he heard in his voice and by the way the gun the man was pointing at Blac was trembling.

“Easy,” Blac said, opening the door and lowering himself into the passenger seat. “We don't want nobody gettin' killed out here.”

“Shut up. Open the case. Let me see what's inside.”

“You got the pictures?”

“I got the gun,” the man said, pointing it in the direction of Blac's face. “Open it.”

Blac did what he was told. The man's eyes lit up at the clean, crisp, neatly stacked bills that filled the briefcase.

“Now close it and hand it to me slowly.”

Again, Blac followed orders, measuring the man's every movement, knowing his opportunity was about to come.

“Easy,” the man said, reaching with his other hand, while still holding the gun on Blac.

Blac lifted the case, then quickly turned it wide. Using it as a shield, he forced it into the gun, thinking if the man did manage to squeeze off a shot, the case and the bills inside might at least render the bullet nonlethal. But the man did not shoot.

Blac wedged the gun and the man's hand between the briefcase and the seat. Then with his free fist, Blac struck the man three times hard in the face.

Steven Ballard dropped the gun, his nose squirting blood from the last blow.

Both Blac and Ballard scrambled for the weapon that slipped down between the two front seats, but Blac came up with it and pointed it in between the man's eyes, a wicked smile on his face.

He took the pictures off the man, as well as his license, and left him with the warning that he would come to his house and kill his family if Cobi was ever threatened again.

The thought hadn't struck Blac till he was halfway around the building, then it hit him all of a sudden. What if Cobi wasn't as agreeable as Blac hoped he would be?

Blac dropped to his knees and quickly sifted through the thick envelope
of photos. There were pictures of himself with Cobi, and snapshots of another good-looking guy with a thick mustache. Blac took a longer look at the man's face and figured this had to be the senator Eric told him Cobi was fucking. Blac's leverage had just gotten stronger, because the photos were juicy as hell, shots he was sure Cobi wouldn't want to be leaked to the public.

He divided the pictures evenly into two piles, slipped what he would give to Eric back in the envelope and pocketed his.

Now as he sat at the bar with Cobi, he was glad he had thought to give himself this bit of insurance.

Cobi sat there on his stool, shocked, staring down at the photos. He looked up at Blac. “How did you get these?”

“I need that money tonight, or you'll see those pictures on the Internet and every fucking TV station in this country.”

“I said, how did you get these?” Cobi said, waving the photos in his fist.

“Eric.”

“You're a liar. Do what you want with the pictures. I won't be blackmailed. I'm not giving you the money. I don't care what kind of trouble you're in,” Cobi said, standing from the stool. “And from now on, stay your ass away from me and my brother. Now that he has me, he no longer needs people like you in his life.” Cobi turned and started away, but Blac ran up, grabbed him by the arm in the middle of the bar, and spun him around.

“Eric don't care for you like you think he does.”

“You don't know what the hell you're talking about, and I'm still not giving you the money,” Cobi said.

“Really?” Blac said, spitefully. “If he did, why is he fuckin' your fiancée?”

I
t wasn't true, I told myself as I hysterically burst through the front door of the mansion. I had sped home, telling myself that Blac had made everything up. Eric hadn't given him those photos, and he definitely wasn't having sex with Austen, the woman that I was starting to believe could make me appear, at least to the outside world, normal—the woman I was going to marry.

I stumbled onto the second floor, breathing hard, fighting the images that danced through my head. Was it a jealousy of the flesh that enraged me? No. I was gay. I didn't want Austen like that. It was the principle of the entire matter. I welcomed Eric into my home, accepted him as my brother, found him a job, and how did he repay me? By allowing his criminal friend to jeopardize all that I worked for and fucking Austen in my house?

No! It cannot be true,
I thought, mere steps from Eric's door. I threw the door open to find his room empty.

I felt foolish. I had allowed Blac to manipulate me into believing things that I should've known could've never been true. Eric was my brother, and although we've been apart all our lives, he wasn't the kind of man to—

I froze when I heard a groan coming from Austen's room.

I spun around, raced down to her door, pushed it open, disgusted
at what I saw. Austen was in bed, naked, on her back, her legs hiked in the air, my brother, holding himself above her, pushing himself into her, both of them, sweating, thrusting, moaning so loudly, and so lost in themselves, they must not have heard the noise I made entering the house and must not have noticed me standing in the room with them.

I stood there in utter shock for a moment. Finally finding the strength to speak, I yelled, “Eric, get the fuck out of my house!”

B
lac parked Theresa's car one street away from her house. He cautiously walked through two backyards and made his way to the back of Theresa's house.

Moving through the driveway, he listened for the voices of any of Cutty's men toward the front of the house. Not hearing anything, Blac continued in that direction.

Standing out front, he didn't see the truck down either side of the street.

Feeling his heart start to slow, he walked up to the front door.

He was easily past his deadline by two hours and was surprised Cutty's men had not been camped out front, ready to shoot him on sight.

It would be only a matter of time if he didn't get Cutty's money, Blac thought, sliding his key into the front door lock. He needed a plan. Cobi wasn't going to budge, so Blac had no choice but to go to the other man in the photos, the senator.

He would do that first thing tomorrow morning, he thought, pushing the door open. And if this senator was a smart man, he would give up the money without a hassle, and everything would be fine.

As soon as Blac entered the house and closed the door, he knew something was terribly wrong.

One of the lamps in the living room was on the floor, the shade crumpled,
the base shattered. There were sofa cushions scattered about, and two of the kitchen chairs were flipped over.

Blac froze, his eyes wide, his pulse revving again.