Unfaithful Ties (30 page)

“Yeah.
why are you acting weird dad?”

Malik quickly observed his surroundings. “Let’s go to the checkout
” He said.

“Dad is something wrong?”

“No Mac,  just hurry okay.”

“But we haven’t had the chance to go
bra  and panty shopping  yet. I want one of those cute lacey ones like the woman was wearing last night.”

“We’ll do that later. Right now we have to go”

Mackenzie’s face wrinkled. She was bemused and couldn’t believe he didn’t object to her wanting a sexy bra. Clearly her dad’s head was somewhere else.
What’s up with my dad
? She wondered.

Malik scurried to the cash register, paid for the few items, and he and Mackenzie rushed to his SUV.

“Seriously dad, you’re worrying me. Is everything okay?” She asked, and clambered in the back passenger seat.

After plopping down into the seat, “Mackenzie just hurry up and put on your seatbelt
”  Malik encouraged.

“Fine but I just want you to know that you’re acting weird, even for you”

“Kids always think their parents are weird. Or lame” He said reversing out of the parking space. Quickly he pressed the brakes. It was too late. The sound of fiberglass colliding and Mackenzie’s fearful scream chimed in his ear. Someone had just crashed into the back passenger door.

“Mackenzie baby are you alright?” He wanted to know.

“I’m good dad. That just scared the crap out of me”

“Are you sure?” He asked.

Out of nowhere a familiar snarky voice screamed at him. “Don’t you look before you reverse out of a space?”

“This is just not my damn week” He yelled
,  hitting the stirring wheel once he’d realized who the woman was. Angrily he yanked open the door and got out. “This is fucking unbelievable. What? Are you stalking me now Regina?”

“Now why in the hell would I do that?”

“Because you’re fucking crazy that’s why. You destroy my damn furniture, my clothes, send threatening text messages to my phone. And don’t you for one second think that I believe that this is just a coincidence”

“Da-a-
addd, I know that it’s almost December but you do know that we live in Florida right? It’s hot in here” Mackenzie shouted, peeping her head through the crack in the door. “Toss me the keys. I need some AC”

Malik tossed Mackenzie the keys. “Just crank up the ignition, nothing else”

Grasping the keys. “Thanks” She said and closed the door back.

“
Aaaawww isn’t she the cutest?”

“I’m warning you, leave my daughter out of this.”

Regina smirked. “I’m warning you that I’m just getting started”

“This psychotic bullshit stops today even if I have to get the police involved.”

“And tell them what? Better yet, prove what? You can’t prove anything. There were no witnesses when I walked into your home. It’s not my fault that you didn’t lock up. The texts that you’ve received didn’t come from my phone. And this is simply a careless accident on your behalf. You didn’t look before you reversed.”

“I have plenty of evidence.”

“What you have is circumstantial evidence.  It could very well be anyone” She smiled.

“Is this a game to you? My daughter could have been seriously hurt. Don’t you have a heart?”

“Awww.... the insensitive womanizer is questioning whether or not I have a heart.” She said, squeezing both Malik’s cheek.

“Don’t fucking touch me” Malik snapped, elbowing her away. “You are a beautiful woman. You can have any man that you want. So why are you wasting your time on me? Torturing me isn’t going to make me want to be with you.”

“This is no longer about me wanting to be with you. This is about me making sure that you and guys like you realize that women are not toys. I am so sick and tired of men thinking that they can just screw a woman and treat her like nothing ever happened between them”

“I told you upfront that I wasn’t interested in anything serious.
You should really consider getting some help, your ass is psycho. ”

“Trust me Malik you haven’t seen anything yet
” She said dialing the cops on her cellular. “Pretty soon you’re going to regret the day you met me”. And she headed back to her vehicle.

“I already do” Malik said clasping both his hands behind his head. He bit down on his bottom lip, walked around to the hood of his vehicle, slid down on top of it and waited for the police to arrive.

****

It was no longer about Revenge.

In Regina’s mentally deranged mind this was a lesson, a lesson being taught by a woman with a battered heart. A woman that’d grown impatient because so many men had misused her, and there was plenty. It was time that someone took responsibility for their part in her misery.

For nearly eight months she hadn’t taken the medication that treated her severe bipolar medical condition. She was sick of taken pills. Not realizing that without treatment her behavior was somewhat neurosis, to say the least. Her mind was an agglomeration of obscurity, caused by a wounded heart, past betrayal, lies, and stonehearted men. Mentally she was over the edge. Daily she made folly decisions: decisions that could physically hurt her and innocent victims. Certainly she showed no concern for her victims. She’d learned that it was best not too. After all no one had ever cared about her.

How could this have happened? Regina wondered. “All you had to do was love me and none of this would have happened.” She said as she drove down the busy road. “Everything was planned exhaustively. The way we met. Your divorce. It was all a part of my plan.  How could it have backfired on me?” She said aloud. “We were supposed to become one”

Since the day she’d heard Malik’s voice, she was overly obsessed with him.  He’d called her sister’s house to arrange a parent teacher conference to discuss the unruly behavior of her niece Karina, one of Malik’s students. She fell in love with his voice and soon fell in love with him. Surreptitiously, she stalked him for months. She became acquainted with his daily schedule and regimens.  It wasn’t long before she was stalking Jennifer, and learned that she was having an affair. Her deranged thinking persuaded her to pretend that Malik had hired her as an infidelity investigator.

Regina was driving down the road reminiscing about the day it all started.

“Excuse me Mrs. Shaw” Regina said to Jennifer as she walked out of she and Malik’s home one morning. “My name is Regina Tillman. You mind if I still a few minutes of your time? I believe I have some information that you’ll want to know”

“You have my ears” Jennifer said.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Go ahead” Jennifer said and sat down too.

“I’m a infidelity investigator. Your husband hired me to investigate you. He thinks that you are cheating and he wants to make sure that you don’t walk away with a dime” Regina explained pulling out a few photos that she’d captured. In black and white the photos proved that Jennifer was indeed being unfaithful. “I’m just coming to you woman to woman. He’s on to you. I suggest that if you don’t want to be with him, you should leave while you can. Take everything that you want with you because if I don’t give him the information that he wants he’ll just find someone else that will. I’m going to tell him that I don’t suspect that you’re having an affair. I’d hate to see you lose everything”

“That bastard” Jennifer hissed. “When did he hire you?”

“A few months ago”

“I’ll pay you double what he’s paying you. If you are able to successfully seduce him.”

“I doubt that it’ll work he doesn’t seem like the cheating type.”

“Give me a break. Do they ever?”

“Look I just think that it’s best for you to divorce him, and soon.”

“I’m planning on leaving him anyway but I thought I had a little bit more time.” Jennifer said, scratching her head. “I’m curious, why’d you come to me with this information?”

“I
guess  I just didn’t want to see another woman lose everything. And I certainly didn’t want to have to live with knowing that I could have done something to prevent it from happening.”

“Well I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure. Listen, I could get into a lot of trouble for doing something like this. So let’s pretend this visit never happened.”

“What did you say you’re name was again?” Jennifer joked. “Your secret is safe with me”

She had almost hit a pedestrian riding a bicycle before she realized she was in a daze. “I’m so sorry” She yelled out of her window. “I’ve worked too hard to be with you and in a perfect world we could have been together” Regina mumbled. “It wasn’t a coincidence that I had a flat tire a the convenience store that you visit daily at exactly 6 o’clock. No...no..no. Mr. Shaw that took persistence, planning and hard work. You men always manage to fuck everything up. Not this time. Not without learning a valuable lesson”

She slowed down at a traffic light and giggled to herself as she recalled what the police had said to Malik earlier. “Sir I doubt that this woman would intentionally drive her car into yours especially when it’s obvious that you have a child in the car.”

If only the officer had known the truth. Regina was psychotic and all of her actions were carefully planned.

****

“I don’t know what this woman is going to do next” Malik confided to Kenny, they’d been on the phone for the last thirty minutes. “Mackenzie turn off the light and go to bed. It’s 8:45 and you have school tomorrow.” He said, as he whisked by her bedroom.

“I am dad I just had to try on my new lip gloss to make sure it’s popping. Can’t wear dull gloss to school dad.”

“I don’t care about all that. Go to bed” He demanded pulling open the hall closet door. He was searching for the iron. “And you will not believe this” He continued. “I told the police that Regina deliberately crashed into me and the damn man just looked at me like I was a lunatic. I don’t know what else this woman is capable of. Is she going to black her eyes and storm into the police station claiming that I did it to her?”

Kenneth laughed. “I don’t think that she’ll go that far”

“You don’t know this woman man. You don’t see the rage in her eyes. I think that she’s capable of just about anything. I’m serious man she’s on some 
Thin Line Between Love and Hate type of mess
.” Malik explained. “Mackenzie if I tell you to cut that light off again and go to bed, you can forget about getting tickets to see Mindless Behavior” He promised her, after noticing that she was still looking in the mirror. When the light flicked off and Mackenzie’s bedroom door slammed, he continued. “I’m damn near scared to go to bed at night.”

“Are you serious man?” Kenneth laughed. “I think you’re exaggerating. She can’t be that crazy. What she did to your house was deliberate. But I think that the collision was just an accident. No one in their right mind will risk harming themself just to harm someone else.”

“That wasn’t an accident. The woman deliberately hit me today with my daughter in the car. I’m convinced that she’s fucking insane”

“If you’re that convinced just go down to the station and file a restraining order.”

“I am but I have a feeling that they’re just going to laugh me straight out of the station like they laughed at me today. I don’t think that delusional ass woman cares about a piece of paper that says she has to stay away from me anyway either. Damn I fucked up”

“Damn man she has your ass tripping for real”

“She’s crazy for real Kenneth. But I’ll talk to you later I need to hop in the shower, a very sexy lady friend is coming to see me tonight”

“
Aight man” Kenneth chuckled. “ That’s what’s got you into this mess”

****

Malik was wrapping the cord around the iron when the doorbell rang. He hung his attire on an hanger, peeped in Mackenzie’s room, saw that she was sleeping and headed for the front door. He glanced through the peephole to assure himself that it wasn’t Miss Psycho standing on the other side of the door, then opened it. He grabbed Veronica by the hand and pulled her inside.  “I thought you’d never call.” She said.

“I told you I would” Malik told her grabbing her by the waist. “I’ve been starving for you since you left yesterday.”

She seductively bit down on her bottom lip and slid her fingers down Malik’s chiseled chest. His broad shoulders,  and tightened abs made her melt. He was gorgeous with an flawless body and the dampness between her legs longed for him, and only him. “Mmmmm” She moaned. “Starving huh? You really no how to make a girl lose her mind.” She said wrapping Malik’s arms around her waist and guided them towards his bedroom.

“
Mmm, you’re so sexy” He said, enjoying the feeling of her ass against his hardened manhood. “I think that you have the world’s softest ass” He joked. “Feels like you’re not wearing any panties”

“I’m not and that’s a good thing because it feels like someone is ready to get straight to it” She laughed. They made it into the bedroom and she didn’t waste any time pulling Malik’s dick out through the slit in his drawers “
Mmmm, daddy is so big and hard, just like I like it.”