Welina Hou #10
“Y’all have tried and failed to take my spot.
I know you were the ones who attempted to run me off the road.
I could’ve almost respected it if my wife hadn’t been in the car with me.
Then having some random try to blow my shit up?
And insulting me by not hiring a professional?
That’s the part that pissed me off most. Damn, put money on the table if you're serious about your business.”
“A spoiled rich kid wanting to talk to me about hard work. Business! You wanna sit here and talk to me about us like we ain’t shit. We been here while you were out there playing tin soldier.”
“I’m tired of hearing you talk. If you want your last words on earth to be about another man then so be it. James, you got anything to say?”
James’ head was lolling back and forth and I watched blood trickle out of his mouth.
“Ori, that was rude.” Asha was censuring me and I immediately remembered that James’ ass couldn’t talk.
“My fault. I forgot Auntie Yolo snatched your shit. My fault; that was inconsiderate. Ablest even. I’ll make sure I do better.
But now you both have to suffer for fucking with my mother, me and ending the life of my father.
For trying to put the FEDs in Consortium business all cause you couldn’t get your way and then putting everyone at even greater risk by backing out of the deal.
Thank God you were just as inept with this as everything else or else we all would’ve been in serious shit.
Oh, and for even thinking you could covet my wife, burn in hell. ”
I hit the button allowing the kiln to drizzle out the molten rock. The first drops, glowing bright neon red before they hit the ground causing steam to rise from the ground.
“What the hell?” Theo made the mistake of looking up as more lava spilled from the kiln hitting him squarely in the face.
He didn’t get the chance to scream as the lava burned up all the liquid in his skin and mouth before sliding down and continuing to burn its way down his body setting his clothes on fire.
James was crying as he watched his son burn.
I allowed him the chance to live long enough to torture him with the sight of his failure before releasing more of the lava from the vat and pouring down over his head like a sheet of raining fire.
The amount of lava that I released caused the floor to destabilize beneath their chairs and I knew they would be stuck in the concrete.
It wouldn’t matter. These bodies would be incinerated before the end of the night and the kiln would be in storage until it was time to use it again.
Hopefully, I would have a little while before that was necessary.
My wife and I stood there silently as the flames continued to consume them. All that was left at the end of it were their skeletons covered in the still smoldering but hardening lava. Their deaths completed the business that needed to be done to make my takeover official.
Asha squeezed my hand and I knew she felt just as relieved as I did that it was all over.
“You know what? Maybe I was wrong. It might be a minute before I want barbecue again.”
The windows from the balcony off the bedroom were open the noise from the city filtering in.
After we’d gotten home, I wasted no time washing the blood off my body and my wife, my mistress, the one who ruled every part of me, rewarded me beautifully with unfettered access to her body.
Like the man starved I was, I licked every inch of her skin my lips kissing away the scars on her thighs with more reverence since I knew where they’d come from.
We’d gotten dressed and of course were late to our coronation dinner.
It lasted until the wee hours of the morning and no one thought of the bodies that had been encased in rock and buried never to be found again.
To the world my uncle and cousin were thieves who were on the lam with active warrants issued but no one would put forth the effort to find them.
They had no assets or loved ones to give for them so they would fade into the background.
The same couldn’t be said for the woman who had harmed my wife.
That Margo’s ass was going to serve the rest of her life in prison was a small consolation for the way she’d tortured my wife and then befriended her.
I’d always vowed that I would never hit a woman but I thought about losing all my honor to choke the life out of that weird bitch the way she deserved.
Instead, I channeled my anger into passion and the joy that simply having my wife with me brought me.
Asha was the strongest ray of sunshine on a frigid day bringing a warmth with her that I knew was reserved solely for me.
And the way she melted beneath me and with me so trusting was an intentional act I would never take for granted.
I’d given my wife peace from the troubles that usually plagued her mind and in return she’d give me a lover and a partner that I knew I could always count on.
More than a fair trade.
“Is this seat taken?”
I was pulled out of my revelry by the sweetest voice I could always hear no matter how loud my thoughts or the sounds around me. I smiled down at the woman in red who was waiting for me to give her the okay to take the seat next to me.
“By all means.”
Her grin broadened beneath the mask she wore, which concealed features I had already mapped out by heart.
She slid into the leather of the seat and my arm went directly behind her to balance on the back of the chair.
Her hair was hanging down her back in big curls barely concealing the way her back was bared in this dress.
She glanced at me coyly beneath her mask smiling slyly. “You see something you like?”
“Love is more like it. Just trying to figure out who let you out of the house in this dress.”
When her head went back and she gave that throaty laugh I was ready to get out of here.
“I let me out of the house like this. Besides, my husband knows that it’s going to end up on the floor sooner rather than later so why put much of an obstacle in his way?
” She winked at me before holding up her hand to catch the bartender’s attention.
“He sounds like a lucky man.” My hand was making the smallest of circles on her exposed flesh before I pulled on one of her curls and watched it bounce back into place.
“I almost beat his ass when he said he wanted a room in here.” Hakeem was standing in front of us with eyes locked on me as Asha giggled at his words.
“Almost doesn’t count. The next time he asks you something like that you need to shoot his ass.
” It was Hakeem’s turn to crack up and I was staring at the side of Asha’s head like she’d forgotten herself.
Hakeem sat a glass down on the counter before moving it toward Asha.
Her preferences were on file so they knew what to bring her when she requested a bartender.
“Damn, it’s like that?”
She shrugged and took a sip from her drink before nodding her approval. “You shoot or I do. And I’ll be aiming at both of you.”
“What did I do?”
“You lied for him. I still owe you for every tear I cried but I’m letting it slide because a miracle was performed in my eyes.”
“Lazarus and Hawaiian Jesus rolled in one.”
“Lazarus? Ah, ‘cause he rose from the dead. That’s brilliant, actually. But why Jesus?”
Hakeem gave her a do you know who you are look. “He has to be the son of God if he’s out here getting your easy forgiveness.”
Asha’s lips tried not to smile but failed. “You think it was easy?”
“He’s still upright and breathing so… yeah, kinda. You're not really the forgiving type.” A second look of knowing was on his face remembering the way she’d poisoned him.
She laughed again and I knew she would never apologize for what she’d done. “And yet you’re still breathing so…”
Hakeem shook his finger in agreement before backing up. “Point proven. Y’all have a good evening.” He knocked his knuckles on the countertop before he turned to help someone else.
Asha’s eyes were on me as she continued to take down her French 75. “I more than plan to.”
“Sounds like a promise.” I didn’t want to rush her but I was damn sure going to take her out of here soon.
“Oh, it is. But I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and life is going to go back to what it was.” We looked around the room from where this all started and noticed the aerialists were back up on the ceiling.
“I haven’t proven to you that I’m real yet? That I’m not still gone? I think my ladder and I are slightly insulted.”
“I can still feel you and probably will for several days, so no, that’s not what I meant.” We hadn’t come up for air since I’d been back over a week ago. Even coming here tonight was a surprise to me because I didn’t think she would have been up for it.
I looked at her curiously wondering what she meant. “Then what?”
“I keep thinking I’ll wake up back at GW and in my office never having met you. That ābo had found another way to help Eritrea and all of this would have been another figment of my imagination.”
“You want to know the easiest way to ensure that all of this is real?”
Her eyes rolled with irritation but the smile was one of pure desire. “If you start talking about your piercing I swear I will call it a cock for the next month and gross you out.”
“If you think hearing that word would stop me and my dick from wanting you and then subsequently reminding you why we’re not to be toyed with then you’ve forgotten who you married, Semira.”
She pushed my arm playfully but she let her hand fall down the plane of my body. “The way to know I’m sane, what is it?”
“Because the mind you had then would’ve been too afraid to conjure up something like this.
The hurt that scared you that made you disbelieve that any of this could be possible would’ve imagined something harder.
Where you were a happy little farmer getting what you needed off your pigs.
You might have had sex but it wouldn’t have been with any type of connection because you have known how to separate your mind from your body for survival.
But this…all encompassing passion? Allowing yourself to feel?
Your brain wouldn’t have given you a dream world that would have left you so vulnerable because your mind is always going to protect you first.”
I kissed the top of her head feeling her breath on my chest as my reassurance that this wasn’t a dream and she was still with me. I had the same fear despite knowing my mind was sound. Well, as sound as it could be.
“I love you, Ori. Thank you for keeping your promise. No matter what.”
“You watched me murder a man with my bare hands and didn’t flinch.
I wasn’t about to lose you. Not someone who could handle me at my worst, as I lost control.
I always desired a woman with strength because I assumed my mother’s weakness without my father was the reason she was gone.
And even though I know that isn’t the truth of what happened now you still meet every desire of my heart.
So saying I love you is too gentle a word.
The emotion goes far deeper than anything I could ever give voice to.
Now, come play with me in our room for the night.
” I held out my hand to lift her off her bar stool.
She submitted easily as we walked toward the elevators.
We were going to the executive level so a car was waiting for us within seconds.
We stepped through with fingers intertwined and as soon as the door closed she looked up at me with a smile.
“I promise to be here when you wake up this time.”
“Even if you’re not, just know this time I’ll go to the ends of time itself in order to find you.”
“Why?” Those eyes, no longer guarded, looked at me filled with love.
I could tell her a bunch of different reasons but I knew one would suffice above all.
I scooped her up and carried her over the threshold of the elevator and into the hallway. Asha was giggling in my arms as she let me hold her close.
“Because I love you. It’s just as simple and as complex as that.”