Chapter 11 #7
“So then one day he came to me with this bag,” I said.
“A bag of money. Set it on the table, sat across from me, and asked me to be his wife so he could get his green card and stay in the country before immigration caught up with him. He promised he would look out for me for the rest of his life. Needless to say, he really meant that shit.”
Layla opened her mouth.
Then, closed it.
Then, opened it again.
“So you married him,” she said slowly.
“I meaaannn —”
“LAUREN.”
“Keep your voice down —”
“Did you or did you not marry this man?” she whispered at full volume somehow.
“Things were complicated and we sort of —” I tilted my head, “— fell in love in the middle of it. Which nobody planned.”
Layla stood up, walked to the kitchen, came back, and sat back down. She needed a full lap apparently.
“Okay,” she said, visibly trying to regulate. “Okay. And then what?”
“And then he lost his mind a little bit.”
“How? He tried to —”
“Girl, no.” I shook my head firmly. “Big Bane would never put his hands on me like that. He just —” I exhaled, “— tried to get me to be his getaway driver.”
The room went silent.
“His,” Layla said.
“Getaway.”
“Driver.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She looked at me for a very long time. “And what did you say?”
“I said absolutely not because I was on my way to medical school and I was not a ride or die, I was a pre-med student with a future. He begged me to and I went off on him. We are already married. I felt like what he was asking was too much for me. We had the biggest argument of our entire relationship and I left.” I finished my wine.
“But he still checked on me. Every year on our anniversary without fail, flowers showed up wherever I was.”
Layla sat with her hand pressed flat against her chest like she was monitoring her own heart rate.
“So when you accidentally called him —”
“He was on the first flight to Baltimore,” I said. “Showed up, demanded I come home, booked the ticket before I finished arguing about it, and told me he’d handle the rest.”
Layla stared at me in disbelief. The wine was almost gone again, but I realized we just went through two whole bottles. She looked like a woman who had just watched six seasons of a show she didn’t know she’d been missing.
“You just kept all of this from us,” she said finally.
I rolled my eyes. “When do I ever talk about me?”
“Lauren.” She grabbed my hand before I could pull it back and turned it over, running her thumb along the inside of my ring finger, and then she went completely still.
I closed my eyes briefly.
“Lauren Renée.”
“Layla Rue—”
“Is that a —” She yanked my hand closer to her face and tilted it toward the lamp light, squinting at the small delicate ink sitting on the inside of my finger where a ring would sit. Her mouth dropped open in slow motion. “Girl. Is that a TATTOO?”
“Keep your voice —”
“A TATTOO?” She was holding my hand with both of hers. “Miss MD got a tattoo wedding ring? YOU got a tattoo? YOU?” She looked up at me and then back down at my finger. “Miss I Don’t Do Anything Permanent got a whole tattoo on her ring finger?”
I snatched my hand back and tucked it against my chest.
“I ain’t want nobody all up in my business,” I said flatly.
“So you tattooed your business onto your body and then hid it for however many years —” Layla was on her feet now, unable to sit still, gesturing with her wine glass. “Girl, you have a RATIO?”
“A what?”
“A ring tattoo! That’s what they call them!” She pointed at my hand. “MY sister is really out here with a ratio and a whole Nigerian husband and she been sitting on this information like it was nothing —”
“It was private —”
“Fuck that. It’s a WHOLE MARRIAGE, Lauren. This is bigger than when I found out about Lance and my math coach—”
“Who told you?!”
“Our brother wasn’t as slick as he thought he was, and he broke that dude’s heart. You know how awkward it was for him to be hugging the dude as he cried over our brother?”
“Layla —”
“Does Mom know?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But she’s a judge!”
“That doesn't mean shit if we got married in another state.”
She sat back down and picked up her wine glass and put it back down without drinking from it.
She looked at me.
She looked at my hand.
She looked back at me.
“I cannot believe you,” she said. “I genuinely cannot believe you right now.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, now you know. You’re the first person I told so don’t say shit to anyone until I do.”
She had no answer for that, and that seemed to frustrate her almost as much as the tattoo did.
She opened her mouth to respond and then my phone lit up on the cushion between us.
Big Bane.
I stood up, picked up my glass, and smoothed my shirt down.
“Well.” I leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head. “Goodnight, sister.”
Layla grabbed my wrist. “Wait — you cannot leave me sitting here with all of that. You cannot do that to me right now, Lauren—”
“Love you.” I grabbed my phone and started walking toward the hallway. “Good night.”
“LAUREN.”
I kept walking, listening to her groan behind me, the sound of wine bottles being gathered up in the kitchen punctuated by what I was fairly certain was her talking to herself about what she had just been told.
I smiled to myself as I headed down toward the guest room, away from the noise of the main floor, into the first quiet space I had been alone in since Baltimore.
I had just closed the guest room door behind me when my phone lit up again.
I answered it and put him on speaker, setting the phone on the dresser while I pulled out my overnight bag.
"You good?" he said.
"I'm fine." I could hear something in the background immediately. "Are you watching my TV?"
"Yes. This Mackenzie Shirilla case is crazy as fuck." He said it with complete conviction. I heard him chewing. "Let me be in that back seat. I'm choking her the second she went over eighty in a neighborhood. Davion ain't deserve that."
“No, he didn’t.”
His chewing got so loud, I had to turn him down. "You’re eating in my house."
"I got food from Mama Koko’s before I got back," he said. "They got real food out here."
"Bane —"
"Go shower, you sound tired."
I rolled my eyes and connected my Bluetooth headphones before I took my clothes into the bathroom. The water was hot by the time I stepped in.
"How was the flight?" he asked quietly.
"Fine," I said, reaching for the guest body wash. "My family was very happy to see me."
“I bet, you need to spend more time with them.” He got quiet for a second and then said, "That the African black soap scrub you got works wonders. Got me feeling like a new man."
I stopped. "How would you know?"
"I used some for my shower. That stuff is no joke."
"Stay out of my stuff, Bane."
I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, "Yes ma'am."
I heard him switch gears.
"Nah, nah, nah — back it up." His voice picked. "So she planned the whole thing? Then did it anyway?"
"Mm hm," I murmured.
"?ni tó ń ?e èyí kò ní ?kàn rere," he muttered under his breath.
It meant a person who does something like this has no good heart inside them.
I had heard him reach for that phrase enough times over the years to know that whatever line existed between him being upset and him being genuinely disturbed had just been crossed.
"Where is Strongsville?" he asked.
"Ohio," I said, half asleep.
"Ohio." He repeated it. "That's like a two hour flight."
I squinted. "What you gone do, take a flight over there too?"
"Hell, I might." He said it with complete sincerity. "Her parents need an ass whooping for the child they created and released into the world without a warning label. Somebody should have caught this early."
I laughed in spite of myself. "Bane —"
"I'm serious. You don't just wake up and do something like that. This was building for years and everybody around her just kept looking the other way." He got quiet for a second.
"I went down a rabbit hole on her case," I said, scrubbing my arms. "She formed a relationship with a Black girl after she was sentenced… Started dating her inside."
Bane went quiet.
"That's actually consistent with a specific predatory attachment pattern," I said, more to myself than to him.
"Certain personality profiles will seek out whoever offers the most emotional access in a given environment.
It's not a genuine connection, but more about proximity and opportunity.
She needed a target for that attachment style.
" I paused. "Which means that woman needs to be very careful when she gets out. "
"Wait. She had a Black girlfriend?"
"For a little while, yeah… before she moved onto the next one"
"What?!”
“They broke up and then she just went on to the next victim."
I could hear him processing it as the TV volume dropped.
He had turned it down to give the conversation his full attention.
"See this is exactly what I'm talking about.
This woman couldn't handle not getting her way and people lost their lives behind it.
That ain't a crime of passion, that's some bullshit. "
"It really is," I said quietly.
"Black people need to stay completely away from her and anybody who moves like her," he said, and his voice had lost all the humor now. "Because she will do it again. People like that don't stop. Disgusting don't even cover it."
"I agree completely.”
“Not my wife agreeing with me.”
“Why did you have to stay behind?" I asked, working the scrub across my shoulders.
He sighed, choosing his words.
"It's better we don't talk about it."
"Bane, don't —"
"He still breathing. Calm down, babygirl."
I pressed my lips together. That was all I was going to get from him. I exhaled and let it go.
"What did you do after I left?" I asked.
"Changed the oil in your car," he said simply. "Fixed your brakes too since you needed new ones and clearly wasn't going to do it yourself anytime soon."
I smiled at the tile wall in front of me. "Thank you, Hubby."
He went quiet.
"Don't tease me when I can't do nothing about it," he said, his voice dropping, "and you still out here heartbroken over an off brand of me."
I smacked my teeth. "Nobody said I was heartbroken."
"You ain't have to."
I went back to washing and didn't respond to that because he was right. I was only distracted, but what Malcolm did really fucked me up. We both knew it and giving him the satisfaction wasn't something I was prepared to do tonight.
He was quiet again, listening, and I knew he was listening by the quality of the silence.
"You know I’ma handle you when I see you," he said.
I turned the water down. "That's only if I allow you to."
A low, wicked chuckle rumbled out of his chest.
"You talking real brave for a woman I know inside and out," he murmured. "I remember the woman who needed my hands wrapped around her throat just to catch a breath while I was putting it on her. Let’s not act like I forgot every single tear you cried when I was breaking you down. You only get this mouthy when I’m not standing in front of you. "
Whew.
A sudden wave of heat hit my stomach, making my knees shake. He knew exactly what he did to me, and he knew damn well nobody else in the world could ever make me cry from pleasure the way he did.
"Then come on back," I said, keeping my voice even. "Forget about him."
"Hmmm." He considered it for a second. "Yeah, can't do that. You're my wife and you don't deserve what he did to you. That's fucked up and it needs consequences."
I nodded, not arguing because there was nothing to argue with.
After washing the rest of my body, I turned the water off and reached for my towel.
"You miss Big Bane," he said.
"Nope."
He chuckled as if that was the funniest thing he had heard all night. "I miss my babygirl."
I stood there in the steam of the bathroom and the smile came before I could do anything about it.
"I just wanted to check in before you went to sleep," he said. "I love you and I'll see you soon."
"I love you too, Big Bane." I reached for my cosmetic bag. "Good night."
I heard the TV volume shift up and his voice came back, deeply offended by whatever was happening on screen.
"He was a new friend?" He repeated the words. "Bitch, I got your new friend right here." Then he switched into Yoruba again. The case genuinely got under his skin, and even without understanding every word I could tell exactly what he was saying by the tone alone.
I laughed to myself, drying off and working my body butter into my skin, listening to him commentate while he sat in my living room.
"Where the fuck is Strongsville again?" he said suddenly.
"Ohio," I said.
"Why would you —" He stopped. "Okay that don't make no sense. This whole case don't make no sense."
I put on my overnight clothes, pulled back the guest bed covers, and climbed in. I took one earbud out, left the other in, and reached for the last of my wine from the nightstand. I finished the last of it while I just let him talk.
His voice filled the quiet of the room and I closed my eyes. Somewhere between his third opinion on the prosecution's strategy and his genuine outrage at a witness's timeline, I felt my body finally release my front of being okay.
I was almost all the way asleep when I heard him.
"What other shows you been watching without Bane?"
I smiled into the pillow and didn't answer.
He kept talking anyway.