Chapter 12 - Ashton
My jaw clenched, and all I wanted to do was fuck someone up.
I had no idea who was messing with Chanel, but I wanted them to pay.
The most frustrating part was not having a specific target.
At least when Muffin fucked around, I knew exactly whose face to smash in.
With Chanel, I had a faceless target. That fucked with my mind something terrible, which contributed to a bad attitude when we arrived at her building to find the police at her unit.
“Ms. Dubois, somehow, someone made it into the building and into your apartment.”
“The hell you mean ‘somehow’? The hell y’all been sitting here doing in the twenty minutes it took us to get here?” I demanded.
He looked at me, and I recognized the starstruck look in his eyes. It was the same look most fans had when they met me in person. I wasn’t about being personable at the moment though.
“Mr. Santoro, I assure you that we’re working on determining the answer to that right now.
We are interviewing all the staff, looking at security footage, and a full-scale investigation in her apartment is ongoing.
There has been some vandalization. I’m not sure if anything is missing or not, but we would like for you to do a walk-through with a couple of our officers to determine that,” an officer stated.
As he was explaining that, a short, petite officer walked up behind us. It was the same woman who arrived at Alex’s house when our fight broke out. I wasn’t happy to see her, but she wasn’t focusing on me, but the other officers and Chanel.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Officer Goode, we were—”
“Tommi!” Chanel exclaimed, as she turned toward the female officer and grabbed her. They hugged tightly as Chanel cried. I felt useless for the moment, but I wasn’t leaving her side. After she cried for several moments, and the woman comforted her, she stepped back and looked at me.
“Ashton, this is my cousin, Tommi.”
It clicked in my mind that Chanel had been at the station when I was released. That was how she knew that I was there.
“We’ve met,” I grumbled.
Tommi smiled at me and then turned back and started speaking to the officers. They explained again what occurred.
“I’m confused. I live in a secure facility. People cannot get in here that easily.”
“Which is why we’re thinking it’s an inside job and looking at all the staff who were on and off duty tonight, along with the security cameras,” the original officer explained.
“I’ll do a walk-through with her to determine if anything is missing,” Tommi declared. “Where are we with getting security footage?”
“Officer Pommel is getting that now,” the lead officer explained.
“Are you coming?” Tommi asked as she took Chanel’s hand and led her into the apartment.
Rage tightened every muscle in my body as I saw what they had done to her apartment.
All I wanted was to grab her in my arms and press her face against my chest, to protect her from seeing the destruction.
Someone had come through with the same red paint that they had used on her car and spray-painted her walls and furniture with the words Whore, Homewrecker, Slut, Thot, and You reap what you sow.
It was hard for her to see her apartment that way and keep herself together, but with both of us on either side of her, she made it through.
It took almost an hour for us to finish the walk-through.
Nothing had been taken, but things had been damaged.
Something slimy had been thrown across her bed; food had been tossed out of the refrigerator onto the floors, counters, cabinets, and appliances.
Her couch and chair cushions had been ripped with a knife. The TVs had been smashed, and several picture frames were broken with some of the pictures still intact and others destroyed. She walked to her office and found her files destroyed and her computer smashed.
She broke down crying, especially when she noticed that her awards had been damaged as well.
“Do you have any of these files that were destroyed backed up?” Tommi asked.
Chanel nodded as she sobbed so hard that her body shook.
“What about your things on the computer? Are they backed up?”
She nodded again but couldn’t speak. That was all I could take. Against my better judgment, I pulled Chanel into my arms and held her.
“Chanel, honey—” Tommi began.
“Give her a minute. She can answer all the questions you want later.”
“We need to get it while it’s still fresh,” her cousin explained.
“And I said give her a fucking minute!” I barked.
The woman didn’t jump or budge but eyed me with equal rage. “She’s my cousin, and I want what’s best for her too.”
“I don’t doubt it. But right now, this is what’s best. I’m not about to argue with your li’l ass over this either. Keep pushing, and I’m gonna push your tiny ass right out that door.” Chanel was petite, but her cousin was shorter and much slimmer than she was.
“Nigga, I’ll put a bullet in your ass before you can lift a hand at me.”
“Aye! Don’t be fucking threatening me.” I mugged the shit out of her, shoved Chanel behind me, and walked her cousin down until she was on the threshold of the room. “Now get the fuck outta here.” My voice was a low, deep growl.
She narrowed her eyes at me and replied, “Only because she hasn’t shut your ass down for talking to me like that will I step away and give you space. But you’ll have to deal with me later.”
I slammed the door in her face and turned back to Chanel. I pulled her into my arms and held her while she finished crying.
I lifted her chin with my fist and stared into her teary brown eyes. “Hey, you can’t stay here tonight. You need a safe place to go,” I suggested after a few minutes.
“There is no safe place to go.” Her usually seductive voice trembled with fear.
“I promise there is. Just get whatever you think you’ll need for as long as you’ll need it. I’m not talking about one or two days either. We’ll have to give them time to investigate, get this place cleaned up, and then figure out your next steps. I’m thinking two or three weeks minimum.”
“I can’t let them run me from my home, Ashton,” she argued as her cousin and another officer stepped back into the room.
“And you can’t stay here when there’s an unknown psychopath on the loose either,” Tommi countered.
“I’m sure they won’t be so quick to come back here after all this attention.”
“Ma’am, I hate to be the one to admit it, but sometimes the perpetrators are bolder than you might expect. When you’re dealing with someone like this, who may have mental health issues, they aren’t predictable. It would be best for you to leave home for a while,” the lead officer stated.
“We can’t have you here while we do our investigation, Nelli,” Tommi explained, calling her by a nickname I had never heard before but sounded like it stemmed from childhood.
Chanel wiped her face and sniffled. Nodding, she replied, “Okay. I’ll get some things.”
As she packed her bags, I turned back to her cousin and the officer and explained everything that happened at the stadium. They were both aware of it but were not aware that the same color paint had been used in both instances
“You ready?” I asked when Chanel finished packing.
“Yeah,” she replied softly.
I took her bags while she hugged her cousin who whispered to her.
The entire ride to the elevator, she held her head high, faced forward, and pressed her shoulders back.
She maintained that aura throughout the lobby and parking lot.
It wasn’t until we were in my truck that her shoulders slumped, and she rested her head against the window. I reached over and squeezed her knee.
“Where are we going?”
“To my place first and then to a safe space.”
Her head popped up.
“Trust me.”
After another twenty minutes, we reached my place. I picked up Titan and a few things we would need. He happily hopped in the back seat, and I let the window down for him.
“Where are we going?” she asked after a while.
“Some place safe that’s outside of the city limits.”
“How do I know that you’re not the one terrorizing me?”
“One, I was on the court when your car was damaged, and I was with you when the apartment was damaged, I’m assuming based on the timeline the police gave.
Two, I have no interest in terrorizing you when I’ve got so much shit going on in my life.
Three, though you’re a pain in my side, you’re kind of cool, and I like having you around. ”
She smiled and reached back and rubbed Titan’s muzzle.
“Besides, I need you to trust me right now. There’s not a soul in this world that I can trust besides you.”
“What about your family?”
“I said in this world, and by that, I meant the sports world. I can always trust my family, but I also have to protect them by not dragging them into this. The less they know, the better off they are, and I don’t want my parents worrying about me.
They’ve got enough on their shoulders running a restaurant, my brother and sister-in-law are trying to have a baby, and my sister is as unhinged as they come.
“She’s looking for a reason to whup Muffin’s ass, and if I give it to her, she’ll be in county next.
One of the things my father always prided himself on, is his kids not having a record.
I’ll be damned if I’m the one to break that.
The other things are his risotto, classic Margherita pizza, and his wines. ”
“Your dad owns a winery?”
“He does.”
“I learn more and more about you the more that I’m around you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re about to learn just how protective I can be now that you’re in someone’s target. Just like I didn’t let anybody fuck with Muffin, that same protection now applies to you.”
She reached over and patted my hand. “I’m so sorry. With everything that happened, I forgot to ask how you’re doing. I know that it had to be hard for you playing that game tonight.”
“What do you mean?”
“I read that your divorce was finalized. That can’t be easy, and I’m sorry this is happening to you.”
My heart squeezed and filled with gratitude. Along with Amélie, some of my teammates thought we should go out and celebrate. Finally, someone who understood.
“It wasn’t. But being here for you has pulled my thoughts away from it.”
Titan barked. She looked back at him and smiled.
“As handsome as you are, don’t get offended. But damn, you and your dog look an awful lot alike.”
I laughed. “I’ve heard that before, but what the hell does that mean?”
“Your big heads, expressive faces, muscular bodies, and smooth appearances.”
I shrugged, laughed, and patted Titan’s head. “What can I say . . . I’m a dog, I’m a mutt,” I sang the lyrics to the song “Mutt” by Leon Thomas III and Chris Brown.
“You’re crazy.”
“No, that’s what the blogs are claiming me to be.”
“Somehow, I doubt that,” she declared with a smile that ripped my heart to pieces.