Chapter 29
29
Now…
I hated this woman, and I was sure it showed, not that it was a fact she was unaware of anyway. Hell, the feeling was most certainly mutual. She hadn’t arrived alone but with Zaccai, Moody, and Layla in tow. Bo’s son, Tavares, had accompanied her as well. I knew him because I’d been a bit of a stalker of Bo for many years after he obliterated my heart. I knew exactly when Tavares had arrived.
After his three security guys checked the building, Bo led me inside and let the door slam just as his family approached it, flipping on a light switch and illuminating the massive, hollow structure he called a compound. There was a long glass table with black chairs in the middle of the space and little else. He pulled a chair out for me and dropped into one next to it. Together, we watched in silence as the others filed in. One thing about the Pierce matriarch was that she was always going to put that shit on. The gray pantsuit she wore paired with lime green pumps was gorgeous and so was she. She was a beautiful gray-haired bitch who looked much younger than her age. Layla was her mini me as far as style, and she was pretty, too—light skin, freckles, little pixie nose, doe eyes. I wasn’t sure how she survived being married to Bo.
“You bringing your woman to company meetings now?” Zaccai asked Bo. For some reason, he was on crutches and had a cast on one of his legs and a boot on the opposite foot. He must’ve fallen and hurt the other leg or something after Bo shot him.
Damn.
“Why not? You brought yours, didn’t you?” Bo shot back.
Mother Pierce dropped into a chair across from us and flapped her hand. “Not this again. You didn’t even want Layla. You don’t care about her seeking comfort with your brother, do you?”
What the fuck?
How did I not already know this? Probably because I never bothered to stalk Zaccai’s lame ass, but still, wow .
“Oh, I don’t give even half a shit who she fucks. She had to get it from somewhere because she damn sure wasn’t getting it from me.”
Zaccai shook his head. “So, you tryna pretend you ain’t fuck your wife for her benefit?” Zaccai asked, nodding toward me. “We ain’t stupid, Bo.”
“No. I did fuck her from time to time out of duty,” Bo said, shrugging “She enjoyed it.”
That shit made my skin crawl, although I never believed he didn’t fuck her.
“Turned out, I wasn’t her first choice, either. She had a man before and during our marriage. Not exactly sure why she decided to fuck with you when she had other options,” Bo replied. “As a matter of fact, me and Layla were friends until…well, I won’t get into that.”
“Nah, go ahead and say it,” Tavares spoke up. He was a handsome young man with a nasty ass attitude from what I could tell.
“The only thing I gotta say to you, son , is that I should’ve left your ass on the street where I found you,” Bo admitted.
Tavares shrugged. “I always knew I was a temporary project for you. You know, take the troubled teenager off the street, buy him shit, clean him up, and expect him to worship you. That’s what you did, ain’t it?”
Bo sighed, tapping his finger on the table. “No, I actually cared about you. Didn’t know you were as fucked up as you ended up being. I also didn’t know Layla was nasty enough to fuck you, but at least she waited until you were nineteen.”
What?!
“Kiss my ass, Bo. At least I didn’t sit around pining for a mediocre bitch for decades,” Layla said.
“Mediocre? Mediocre?” I uttered, my hand moving toward the gun nestled in my ankle holster beneath my slacks.
“Don’t bother, baby. I’ll kill her,” Bo said, resting a hand on my arm.
“Enough! What are you going to do? Shoot her like you did your brother twice? Shoot up this building like you did my house?” his mother asked with a scowl on her perfectly made-up face.
He did what?!
“It was only the foyer,” Bo countered.
“Bo, why is she here?” the matriarch asked, her displeased eyes on me now.
Fucking mega bitch.
Bo grasped my hand, squeezing it. “I called this meeting on neutral ground to let you all know Memphis and I are married now, and she will join me in running The Agency.”
Zaccai shrieked, “What?! She ain’t even blood! I should be running this shit! Not her ho’ ass!”
Bo hopped up and was around the table in what felt like a literal flash, his gun pressed to the side of Zaccai’s head.
“I told you to keep your mouth off her, didn’t I? The first two bullets didn’t get my point across?” Bo bit out.
Zaccai lifted his hands. “Okay, okay! My bad, man. I’m just…I’m shocked.”
“Anybody else got some shit to say about her? Please speak up but know that she’s the only one in here who’s safe from death,” Bo announced.
“All I have to say is…welcome to the family, Memphis,” his mother offered.
“Um…thanks?” I replied.
I had my chef prepare a bunch of meals and bring them to Memphis’s high-rise instead of him cooking them here. Now that she was my wife, I didn’t want to share space with anyone but her. We were sitting at her modern-looking glass dining room table, eating blackened chicken with asparagus when she finally broke a silence she’d settled into when we left The Agency’s compound earlier.
“Your mother threatened to kill me. That’s why you married that woman. You made some kind of deal with your mother to keep me safe,” she stated, her voice bearing the certainty of a new revelation.
I stopped mid-chew and looked up at her to find her pretty eyes on me. Swallowing my food, I nodded and confirmed, “Yes.”
“That’s why you’ve been keeping tabs on me all these years, having me followed and I didn’t even know it.”
“It is. You’ve had the best security money can buy.”
“So…you made the deal but didn’t trust her to keep up her end of it?”
“Correct. I…” Falling against the back of my chair, I shook my head. “I adored my mother for a long time despite her overbearing personality, but the thing with me and you, the way she acted, it opened my eyes to a lot of shit about her I’d been blind to.”
“Like what?”
I bit my bottom lip and stared down at the table. This was some uncomfortable shit, but I owed so much to Memphis, especially the truth. “She doesn’t like me. Never has.”
“You think that why? Because she fucked us up or because she gave you that horrific name?”
I chuckled. “Both, and other things. You know me and Zaccai don’t have the same father, right?”
“You don’t?!” Her voice had risen about three octaves.
“We don’t. My dad raised him as his own, but she was already pregnant with him when they met. She always coddled Zaccai, protected him. When my pop passed, she threw me into running The Agency, hoping I’d fail. She actually said that shit. She said she knew my dad would want his real son to run things, so she was gonna let me fuck up and then give it to Zaccai. Now, she tries to act like she chose me because she knew I’d succeed.”
“Bo…”
“She pushed me into that marriage, and I had to leverage some shit to get out of it.”
“Leverage what?”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, I refused to give her a biological grandchild. Pulled Tavares off the streets instead. That kinda backfired, though. She loves his ass more than I do.”
“He hurt you. I’m sorry about that.”
I shrugged. “I ain’t no angel, either. It’s all part of the game.”
“Yeah.”
“I got you back. That’s all that matters. It’s all I ever wanted.”
She stared at me for a moment before standing and walking around the table to me.
“Scoot back,” she ordered, and like the obedient pet I’d become for her, I did.
She slipped into my lap, wrapping her arms around me, the scent of her favorite parfum—Aqua Universalis—permeating my nose. Her lips met mine in a long, lingering, dick-hardening kiss, and when she pulled back, a look of horror covered her face. My eyes widened as I reached up to wipe the blood first from her face and then mine. Her nose was bleeding.
“Baby, what the fuc?—”
She hopped up and raced out of the dining room before I could finish my statement. I followed her and was met with her slamming and locking the bathroom door.
“Memphis, let me in!” I shouted. “What the fuck is going on with you?!”
“Go away!” she growled.
“Hell no! You’re my fucking wife. Something is wrong, and it’s scaring the shit out of me! Don’t make me kick this door in!”
The lock on the door clicked, and I yanked it open to find her sitting on the toilet holding a towel to her nose, her eyes shimmering with tears. She looked so vulnerable, a word I’d only associated with her one other time in all the years I’d loved her, the morning we woke up with guns to our heads. Truthfully, seeing her like that was really what made me let her go, even though it tore my heart out the fucking frame.
Kneeling before her, I reached up and moved the towel. “Looks like it stopped.”
She nodded, a single tear escaping her eye. “Bo, I’m scared. I’m really scared. I keep feeling dizzy, and now this…”
“Dizzy? Memphis…” Holding her soft face in my hands, I admitted, “I’m scared, too, but we’ll get you to a doctor and see what’s going on.”
She shook her head. “I don’t trust doctors. You know that.”
“I get that, but we don’t have a choice.”
“Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’ll just go away.”
“Let the doctor tell you that.”
“I’m not?—”
“Memphis, I’m not trying to be insensitive, but I ain’t tryna hear that shit. I just got you back, and I don’t want nothing cutting my time with you short. I don’t give a fuck if I have to sedate your ass, tie you to the bed, and force a doctor to come here, you getting checked the-fuck out!”
She lifted her head, fixing her wet eyes on mine. “A female doctor, then.”
“Done.”
This shit hurt—watching the baddest woman I’d ever known look so afraid, so...defeated as she listened to the doctor go over her lab results. I was in fucking shambles. If whatever was going on was going to take her away from me, I was going to fucking kill everyone I knew and a few people I didn’t know. I was going to become a prolific mass assassin. Wait, I was already that.
“The values I’m most concerned about are your red blood cell count, hemoglobin, and hematocrit. They’re all out of range, elevated,” the doctor was saying. “You say you’re not a smoker, right?”
“Correct. Why?” Memphis replied, her eyebrows in a tangle.
“Well, smoking can effect these values, but that’s obviously not the case in this instance.”
“Okay…what’s going on, then? What’s wrong with me?”
“You will need to undergo further testing for confirmation, but these test results coupled with the symptoms you’ve been experiencing—dizziness, light-headedness, nose bleeds, headaches, blurred vision…”
I didn’t even know half this shit was happening! My got damn heart was breaking knowing she was dealing with this alone. She hadn’t even told her family.
“…I believe we’re dealing with Polycythemia Vera,” the doctor finished.
“W-what is that?” Memphis stammered.
“It’s a blood disease.”
Memphis blinked a few times before saying, “Okay. How do we treat it? Is it curable?”
The doctor nodded, giving Memphis a reassuring smile. “It’s very treatable, but first, I need to refer you to a colleague of mine. Dr. Sandra Sutton. She’s an excellent oncologist. She’ll want to do some genetic testing?—”
“An oncologist? I have…this blood disease is-is cancer?”
“Yes.”