FOUR DAYS LATER
Some said that I could be a bastard. That was oftentimes true, but that was only because I was ruthless when it came to business. I didn’t play about anything when it came to money.
I wasn’t a bastard with her, though. With her, I was the man I had been in my previous life. I was generous, caring, and concerned. She had destroyed that when she stepped foot into territory that she had no business. She had proven that I could not trust her.
I called Cole to see what was going on with any updates on Camilla. She had been calling me incessantly, and it was hard, but I ignored her calls and text messages.
“What’s the status?”
“Nothing new. She’s still trying to find new locations for her magazine, but your efforts to block her have worked. No one is touching her with a ten-foot pole.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. She went back to his house looking for him, but she didn’t find anything. I captured her talking to a few of his neighbors, but it’s safe to say they were no help.”
“All right, Cole. Thanks, man.”
I ended the call and swirled the ice in my gin. I glanced at my watch and noticed the time. I was supposed to be meeting with Regent, Jett, and Kanaan tonight. I sighed and pushed back from my desk. After I made sure that everything was shut down, I left my office and hopped on the elevator.
I drove today and gave Creed the day off. My car was parked in a private bay in the parking lot that could only be accessed with a key card. I had forgotten the card at home, so I left it unlocked this morning after I parked.
When I stepped off the elevator and into the parking garage, I headed toward my private bay. My mind was clearly occupied because I hadn’t scanned the area like I normally might, whether Creed was with me or not, especially around my vehicle.
“Was it you?” Camilla stepped out of the darkness behind my car. Her silky smooth voice that normally made my dick ache in my pants at just the sound of it was as cold as ice.
I spun around and stared into her flinty eyes that were as hard as brick and held the dense, opaque look of red jasper.
All the emotion and adoration that was normally there was gone.
I’d heard that she had visited both the maintenance and leasing offices last week, and she hadn’t liked the answers she had gotten.
Her key card access to the building had been revoked along with all her staff. Somehow, she had managed to walk in off the street into the parking lot.
“You already know the answer to that.” My voice was as hard as the look in her eyes and held a warning edge to it that I hoped she took note of.
“Why?”
“You know that answer too. I told you there’s a high price to pay for betraying me.”
Her shoulders sagged, and all the bravado and hardness that she’d held before slowly seeped out of her. “I haven’t betrayed you. I’ve been nothing but loyal to you, Jabari,” she insisted.
“Meeting with Samuel Bell doesn’t equate to loyalty.”
“You mean your father? Why can’t you say it? Why do you refuse to face the truth? Huh, Jamal Bell?”
My chest tightened with discomfort and fury because no one had called me that in a long time, not even my father.
I took a couple of steps closer to her, and she backed up. “You think you know the truth? You don’t know the truth. You only know the version that he shared.”
“Which is more than you’ve ever given me! All I have given you is the truth, and you haven’t shared a shred of it with me. I told you how I felt about you, and you played me.”
“You played yourself. You used me to get a story to launch your magazine to the next level, and it didn’t work out in your best interest. Yeah, that’s right; just as much digging as you’ve done, so have I.”
“I didn’t get your story to publish it. I got your story because I wanted to know the truth about the man who I was falling in love with.”
I scoffed and shoved my hands in my pockets. “It’s convenient that you want to profess your love for me now. I don’t trust a word out of your lying mouth.”
“If I wanted to publish your story, don’t you think that I would’ve done it by now? We’ve been together for weeks, Jabari, and I haven’t shared a single thing about you with anyone or in public.”
“Why would you? When I’ve let you into my inner circle, why would you jeopardize that rather than waiting for the moment to get dirt on me?
Of course you didn’t share anything. You didn’t have anything worth sharing.
Now you do. The only reason you haven’t published anything now is that I shut you down. ”
“My magazine doesn’t do exposés. I do interviews that paint my subjects in a positive light, help build or bring more attention to their brand, and encourage my readers. I don’t do trash publications.”
“Then why did you promise Sullivan Investments that you could get the truth behind my story? You partnered with my competitor to find out more information on me. They only want my downfall. Mike Sullivan isn’t just my competitor, but he has positioned himself as my nemesis.”
Her mouth dropped, and her eyes grew wide with the realization that she’d been played.
“Your nemesis? I didn’t know, Jabari. I swear that I didn’t.”
“Well, while you were researching me, you should have discovered that too. Then you wouldn’t have lost everything—including me.”
I unlocked my car and hopped inside. She attempted to stand in front of the car to prevent me from moving, but when she noticed the determined glint in my eyes, she backed up just a little.
It wasn’t enough for me to get around her, so I drove over the curb on the side of my car.
The sound of her yelling my name reverberated in my brain long after I pulled off.
I wanted to give in to her, but I had to erect the walls around my heart again to block out the pain and disappointment. The only way my heart would survive was to pretend we had never existed.
***
“How much do you think she knows?” Regent asked.
“Not as much as she thinks she does. There’s only so much Sam knows,” I replied.
The four of us had met up at Regent’s house to discuss what was going on in my life. It was the first time we had all been in town at the same time since I’d learned about Camilla linking up with my father.
“I just hope this shit doesn’t come back to bite us in the ass,” Kanaan murmured. He turned his whisky glass up and emptied it before he walked to the bar and refilled his glass.
“It won’t. We are the four most powerful muthafuckin men on the East Coast,” Jett pronounced.
“Maybe. But don’t ever forget that we’re black men at the end of the day,” Regent asserted.
We all murmured our agreements.
“What are you going to do about her?” Kanaan asked after a while.
“I don’t think he needs to do much more. He’s all but destroyed her career,” Jett professed.
“Don’t forget who her daddy is,” Kanaan replied.
“I’ve got her under control. Trust me,” I muttered, lighting my cigar.
The four of us had major secrets to protect, and those secrets bound us together; there wasn’t anything we wouldn’t do to protect them. I just wasn’t willing to go as far as I’d gone in the past to protect mine; not if it meant harming Camilla.
I had met Kanaan when I was a teenager. I had been moving a lot of weight and quickly got my game to a level that caused my name to be well known to the lieutenant over the region.
It wasn’t until some things went down in my life that I had the chance to meet Kanaan, the number one lieutenant of the kingpin, Kelvin Fields, and his only son. It was at a time when I trusted no one, but when I was about to lose everything, Kanaan proved to me that I could trust him.
Meeting Kanaan led to me meeting Jett and eventually Regent.
We all had our secrets, and we knew each other’s secrets.
If there was no one else in the world we trusted, it was one another.
If one of us went down, it could take us all down, which was why they were so vested in the outcome of Camilla and me.
“If you had her under control, would she be running around wild now? Would she be meeting up with Sam?” Kanaan challenged.
“That was before I knew the two of them would run into each other. Truthfully, it’s Sam who was out of control,” I explained.
I wasn’t sure why I was taking up for Camilla when she had betrayed me.
I was angry and hurt. The one woman I had allowed into my life in a long time, and she was quick to turn me over for a story.
She had no idea how I could have expanded and grown her business had she just remained loyal to me.
Now, I intended to decimate her business and destroy her.
The plan was to ruin her so completely that even her father could not pull her back from the brink of ruin.
“Then how do you get her back under control and prevent her from causing any more damage?” Kanaan asked as though he could read my mind.
It had always been that way between us.
“I don’t plan to ruin her just financially. Her father could help her recover from that. I plan to ruin her inside out. I’ll fuck up her credibility, her reputation, and then crush her mentally. She won’t ever be the same,” I vowed.
Even as those words dripped from my lips, I knew that I couldn’t completely crush her. Destroying Camilla would mean complete devastation, and I didn’t think that I could survive that type of destruction, not when it was done to the woman I loved.