Chapter 21 #2
“Those boys are hosses,” Titus said before popping an entire blini in his mouth.
I didn’t completely understand the definition of a hoss, but I suspected he wasn’t wrong.
“Have you heard anything about what’s going down in Tucson?” Joey asked Titus.
Titus shook his head. “Outside that boy getting done for putting your boy in the hospital, no. The Chambers are folding in on themselves. Closing ranks. They haven’t missed that shit’s brewing and about to get real,” Titus replied.
Seemed Lee and Hector’s machinations weren’t lost on the Chambers clan.
And I was unsure if I was happy that it seemed they were realizing things were shaky, or the other way around.
I didn’t want them dead either.
But I did want them to disappear.
“Do you know about the feud?” Shanti asked him as the server came back with a beer for Tex.
Titus shook his head, but said, “I do now. But Rocco doesn’t play it that way. Inside business stays inside. You let it be known you got internal issues, you’re vulnerable. Miracle of that is, the other side of the Chambers clan thrives on mess. So I’m stunned he’s been able to contain it.”
He wasn’t sharing anything surprising. Knox had essentially already told me this stuff.
“You gonna eat yours?” Tex asked, and this time, I looked to him to see the question was again directed at me.
“I’m thinking caviar isn’t my—”
I didn’t finish, because Tex did a squat over the table, grabbed his empty plate, leaned my way, reached long and exchanged his plate with mine.
He sat back down and the two remaining blinis on my plate were wolfed down in about ten seconds.
“You have a sophisticated palette, my brother,” Titus remarked.
Tex slugged back some beer, swallowed, beat his chest with his fist, let out a burp that was not loud, but it wasn’t silent either, and replied, “Never waste free food.”
Titus was grinning. We were all grinning. Because Tex was never anything but himself, and that was awesome.
But I was wondering if I’d have the chance to talk with Dimitri privately about sending a message to Gypsy.
I’d have to ask when he came back to have a drink with us.
We descended into chitchat. The drink server came back with more champagne and topped us up with bubbly and vodka. Raye started devising a plan to rally some of the Hottie Squad as last-minute designated drivers. The caviar plates were taken away, and bowls of soup were brought in.
And that was when it happened.
The soup was borscht. I wasn’t a big fan of beets (could take them or leave them), but it smelled delicious.
I was able to down one spoonful (confirmed: delicious) before I heard Joey say, “What the…?”
And Harlow say, “Oh dear.”
And Shanti say, “You have got to be joking.”
And finally, Tex say, “Ah, hell.”
Which meant my attention went to the table, then it went to where everyone was looking at the opening to the VIP section, only to see Cheyenne, with four girlfriends, bearing down on our section.
“What on earth?” I got out before she was in our VIP room, her furious gaze glued to me.
She didn’t make me wait.
“You broke my car!” she shrieked.
I felt the attention of most of the patrons of the restaurant turn our way.
But I looked to Tex.
He shrugged.
Shit.
Either the Mace/Stella/Jet/Nancy strategy didn’t move quickly enough, or Tex just ignored his wife.
I looked back at Cheyenne. “I—”
That was all I got out.
“You stole my boyfriend and broke my car!” she screeched.
I tried again. “Cheyenne—”
“She didn’t steal your boyfriend,” Gem piped up. “He was hers first.”
“She broke his heart!” Cheyenne shouted.
At a quick glance, I could see we definitely had the restaurant’s attention, though this wasn’t a surprise since Cheyenne was being very loud.
We also had Cheyenne’s crew’s attention, and they seemed mystified as to what was going on.
Last, I could see Dimitri heading our way.
Shit!
I pushed back my chair and stood. “Listen, Cheyenne, maybe we can go outside and—”
“You’re a homewrecker!” she screamed.
“Is there a problem here?” Dimitri, who’d arrived at our tableau, asked.
Cheyenne and her posse swung around to look at Dimitri.
Her posse reacted (I thought I even saw one of them start drooling).
Cheyenne narrowed her eyes on him and swung to me.
“What’s is it with you!” she yelled. She then demanded of the table, “Are you bitches going to hoard the hot guys in all of Phoenix?”
Harlow brought us backward in the confrontation by stating hotly, “She’s not a homewrecker. You and Knox were barely together for six months. You never even lived together.”
“He was mine!” Cheyenne squealed.
At this juncture, it seemed her crew might have been up to take her back for a confrontation with me (though, that was also debatable considering their expressions, it seemed they might not have understood the assignment at all), but they were not aware of the extremities of the situation, because they were no longer staring at Dimitri.
They were staring at Cheyenne. And they were doing it with no small amount of alarm.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to calm down,” Dimitri said to her in a polite tone that still brooked no argument.
And Dimitri might be movie-star gorgeous, but only a fool could miss he was a man you didn’t mess with.
Woefully, that was just how unhinged Cheyenne was.
She didn’t notice you didn’t mess with Dimitri.
But she wasn’t there to mess with Dimitri.
She was there to mess with me.
And she was done messing around.
I knew this when she screamed, “You ruined my life!”
She then picked up Joey’s bowl of borscht and threw it at me.
It slammed against my front and splashed all over my dress, face and hair.
Gasps were heard all around and they didn’t just come from our table, some chairs were scraping, and Tex muttered, “And there it is,” but I stood frozen in shock.
Dimitri said something in Russian, and I didn’t know Russian, but I knew it was a foul word.
“Jesus Christ,” Titus said, pushing back his chair and getting up.
In fact, all the Angels were up.
Dimitri and Joey made a grab for Cheyenne, but she slipped away and sent another bowl of borscht flying at me.
Seeing as I was still frozen, it, too, hit me.
“Stop doing that!” Harlow yelled.
I came unfrozen when the next bowl sailed at me and I ducked, just not in time.
It hit me on my side and spattered over my back.
“Someone grab her!” Jessie yelled.
Cheyenne must have been slippery, because I got hit again.
But now I was getting mad.
I didn’t need this.
Knox didn’t need this.
Dimitri didn’t need this.
And she was ruining my dress!
I turned, grabbed my bowl of borscht, and threw it at Cheyenne.
Her crew gasped in shock at how true my aim was. It splashed right in her face.
She screeched a screech so screechy, I feared my eardrums had exploded.
Then she was on me.
We both slipped on borscht and fell to the floor.
Since I was grappling with Cheyenne, I wasn’t sure what was happening elsewhere, though it seemed there was a lot of activity.
And it did penetrate my focus when I caught Joey tackling one of the other girls in Cheyenne’s group, and beyond them, I saw Tex had hold of two chicks, apparently with fistfuls of the backs of their dresses.
What I knew was, Cheyenne was really mad.
And she was a hair puller (I knew it!).
I also knew I was mad, so I didn’t hold back.
Eventually, we rolled down the steps to the main restaurant.
Dimitri finally got hold of me, wrapped both arms around my middle, yanked me up and backed us off.
Titus got hold of Cheyenne and did the same with her.
But she wasn’t done.
“You bitch!” she screamed, pushing against Titus’s hold to get back to me at the same time jabbing a finger in my direction and, not like I could miss it when she screamed it before, she repeated, “You ruined my life!”
“Your boyfriend broke up with you months ago!” I shouted in return. “And then we got back together like…just last week! This gives you no excuse to stalk him, stalk me, and throw soup at me in a nice restaurant!”
“You never quit messing with his head!” she accused, also on a shout.
“His head was there for me to mess with because he never stopped loving me, and you missed all the clues, you moron!” I retorted, also still loud.
“You should have backed off!” she yelled.
“You should have seen the red flags and left before he scraped you off!” I returned.
“Do not put this on me!” she shrieked.
“Woman, you’re stalking me! You just assaulted me at a fancy restaurant! You ruined my dress!” I looked down. “And my shoes! What’s the matter with you?”
“You’re stalking her?” one of her friends asked.
Cheyenne’s head whipped her way.
“Yuck, you made a huge scene,” another friend said, looking around with distaste.
“I got tackled for trying to get you off her,” yet another friend, who was mildly smeared with borscht, snapped.
“You’ve totally been Carrie from that one time Big broke her heart and all she could talk about was him, and Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte got fed up with it and told her to go to therapy,” the last friend said.
She threw an arm out long and finished, “It’s Knox this and Knox that, and Luna this and Luna that.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s been doing our heads in.
And if you’re not getting it from this crazy scene, girl, you need some serious therapy. ”
“He was my guy,” Cheyenne said in a small voice.
“He broke up with you,” Friend One returned. “Deal with it.”
“Did you mess with her car?” Friend Two asked me.
“No,” I fortunately didn’t have to lie. I then went on to say, “But I had to talk to the cops about her. They said don’t engage. So obviously, I was trying to ignore her bullshit. Sadly…” I looked down at my borscht-covered self then back at her and raised my brows.
Friend Two returned to Cheyenne, and her brows were raised as well. “She had to talk to the cops about you?”
“Knox was shot. I was just trying to be sure he was okay.” Now, Cheynne was totally lying.