CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
He arrived long after Grayson, Vincent and Pauly had left. He just showed up and rang the bell at the private residence door. The guard at the gate buzzed in and told her that he was on the property. Which surprised her.
“Did you tell him his son isn’t here?” Toya asked.
“No ma’am,” the guard responded. “It’s not my job to tell Governor Carrington anything.”
Former Governor Carrington, Toya wanted to say.
We have a black governor now! But then she realized it didn’t even sound like the guard that was usually at the gate.
His voice was much higher-pitched. But then she remembered that security had been beefed up.
Maybe it was one of the three men that worked for Vincent that was also at the gate.
“Thanks for letting me know,” she said and released the intercom button. And then he was ringing the bell.
She knew Grayson’s father could be a very harsh man with a nasty tongue, but she also knew she desperately needed that same man to come through for her.
She knew it was wrong on every level to allow that state’s attorney to bribe Grayson with dropping the charges only if she could get an endorsement from his father, but those charges against her were wrong too.
And she wasn’t risking a lifetime in prison to stand on a principle nobody else was willing to stand on.
She needed Sebastian Carrington to come through.
That was why she opened the door.
To her shock, Seb was smiling. “Hello there.”
“Hello, Mr. Carrington. Gracie isn’t . . . I mean, Grayson isn’t here.”
“It’s Governor Carrington,” he said in a nice-nasty tone, “and you’re the one I want to see anyway.” He entered the home whether she wanted him to come in or not. But since it was his son’s home, she closed the door behind him.
Besides, she was too curious. “You want to see me?” she asked him.
“That’s what I said,” he said as he made his way to the sofa. “Could I get a glass of water please?”
“Yes sir,” she said as she headed for the kitchen.
But as soon as her back was to Seb, he grabbed her cellphone that was sitting on the coffee table. She had been using it: It still was showing her message screen. That was when he quickly turned the volume down to zero. Then he turned the phone facedown.
But what he didn’t know was that within seconds of him turning her phone down to zero and hiding her screen by flipping the phone facedown, her phone began ringing.
It was Grayson. But neither of them could hear it ringing or see it come up on her phone’s screen.
His scheme worked. And then Toya returned with a glass of water.
“Thank you,” he said as she handed it to him and sat back down beside him.
“I came to discuss the endorsement.”
This interested Toya very much. “Okay.”
“I wanted to let you know that I will endorse Emily Preston.”
Toya smiled. “Thank you sir. Thank you very much.”
“You want to know why I’m going to endorse her?”
“No sir.”
“I thought long and hard about what happened here earlier. I was a bastard, I admit it. I was rather salty towards you, and for that I apologize.”
Toya was thrown at first. She didn’t expect an apology! What was going on here?
“First of all, I’m not a racist okay?”
Uh-oh, she thought. Red flag. It had been her experience that whenever somebody declared they weren’t a racist, they usually were. But she needed this man. She was willing to hear him out.
“My anger had nothing to do with your race. It’s just that my son has run through so many females in his lifetime that I’m fed up with him. He’s forty-four years old and still hasn’t married. That’s insane to me. Isn’t it nuts to you?”
Toya had thought about it. “Maybe he just couldn’t find the right woman.”
“But he found her now,” Seb said and put on that smile that charmed the whole state of Maryland.
Toya wasn’t charmed; there was still a lot about the man that she couldn’t recommend. But she was relieved. “Thank you,” she said.
He took a sip of his water and then looked at the glass. “On second thought,” he said, “I think I prefer something stronger than water.”
Toya was about to stand up, but he stood up instead. “Stay where you are. I’ll get us both something stronger. Like a good old glass of gin.” Then he smiled that smile again. “Dealing with that son of mine, we both need it.”
Toya smiled, too, and then Seb made his way into the kitchen.
“Are you staying here fulltime now?” he asked as he poured up two glasses of gin.
“No sir. I’m just here temporarily until I get my own place.”
“That’s wise. No ring, no shacking up is my motto.” Seb pulled a clear bag filled with a white substance from his pocket and poured it into one of the drinks.
“I like my independence,” Toya said as she made her way to the kitchen too. Seb had just put the now-empty bag back into his pocket by the time Toya walked up. “That’s why I prefer my own place. I like gin on the rocks,” she said. “What about you?”
He was stirring her drink. “No, I’m good. But here,” he said as he handed her the spiked drink. Then he made his way back into the living room. “I don’t like my spirits watered down.”
“I’m the opposite,” Toya said as she put her glass underneath the refrigerator’s icemaker and allowed a few cubes to drop in.
“When I was governor,” Seb continued, “I had so many decisions to make every single hour that a heavy drink always hit the spot for me. And it’s still true now,” he added as she made her way back into the living room with her drink.
“But back to this endorsement,” he said as she sat back on the sofa beside him. “I don’t want to do it at the press conference.”
“Why not?”
“Because it could backfire. I’m supposed to be there to endorse one guy, but I endorse that gal instead? That won’t be a good look for me.”
Toya thought about it. “You got a point there,” she said.
Then Seb lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said, they clicked glasses, and then both of them began drinking.
Seb watched as Toya took a nice long drink. Then he sat his glass down and smiled. “In less than a minute,” he said, “you’ll be dead.”
Toya looked at him. “What?”
“You’ve been poisoned with deadly poison. Fast-acting poison.”
Toya’s eyes began to water and she placed her hand on her throat.
“It’s burning, isn’t it?” Seb had a grin on his twisted face. “That’s the beginning.”
“What have you done?” Toya asked hysterically as she threw her glass down.
“Then you’ll start choking,” Seb said.
She began coughing as if she was choking.
“Then you won’t be able to breathe.”
She began gasping for breath. “Oh no. Oh no!”
“Then the final step: foaming at the mouth,” he said deliciously. “And then you’ll be dead,” he said with spite.
As soon as she said those words, Toya pulled out that big fat butcher’s knife she held in her opposite hand and slung it under his throat. “You’ll be dead before I will, motherfucker!” she yelled.
Seb was so floored he dropped his own drink. “But your drink?” he said with a confused voice.
“You think I was stupid enough to let your ass fix me a drink after the way you treated me?” Toya said. “That’s a glass of water I was drinking.”
Seb was still confused. “But how did you know?”
“I remembered what Grayson said to me at that country club.”
Seb was looking at that thick knife. “What did he say?”
“He told me that when it came to you to never let my guard down. And I never did,” she said.
But just as she was saying it, Seb pulled out his small pistol and aimed it at her stomach.
But just as Seb was about to pull the trigger, the front door bust wide open and Grayson and Vinnie ran inside. They both saw that gun.
Grayson was about to shoot his father dead, but Vinnie knocked his gun upward and shot Seb himself. He was the man who turned his own mother against him. He shot that asshole repeatedly, and he did so with pleasure.
Toya, stunned when Seb pulled that gun on her, dropped the knife in relief as Seb fell to the floor and Grayson ran to her. She stood up, and he pulled her into his arms.
“He used a silencer to kill Vinnie’s guys at the gate, along with my guard,” he said to Toya.
“He tried to poison me,” she said to him and he and Vinnie looked at her. “He thought I was drinking his poison, but I switched it behind his back and grabbed that knife.”
Grayson was even more relieved. “Thank God you was able to defend yourself.”
“You told me to never let my guard down with him, and I didn’t.” Then she looked at that gun Seb had pulled on her. “But he still managed to get the upper hand.”
“Not anymore,” said Vinnie. “Not anymore.”
Toya was grateful that Vince wouldn’t let Grayson kill his own father. But she was also grateful that a man who would poison her for no rational reason was gone. She pulled Vinnie into their hug too.
Grayson had tears in his eyes. Not because his father was dead. But because he knew where he belonged in this world now. Because these two people in his arms, Vincent and Latoya, were his real family now. And they were more than enough.