4. Kim
KIM
Ihated when Deuce left every time that penthouse door closed behind him, it felt like reality settled back over the room.
It always felt like everything was temporary when it came to me and him.
That was the word that stayed crawling around in my head no matter how hard I tried ignoring it.
No matter how many nights Deuce spent tangled up in my sheets or how many times he held me like I was the only one he still went home to his wife.
I stood barefoot in the middle of the penthouse living room with one of his t-shirts hanging off my shoulder while rain slid down the massive windows overlooking downtown Detroit.
The city glowed beneath me, the headlights cutting through wet streets.
Life moved while mine felt stuck between being chosen and hidden.
I wrapped my arms around myself and stared out into the skyline before finally walking toward the kitchen island. His scent still lingered in the air, cologne and weed. Deuce carried that smell everywhere he went and somehow it always stayed behind after he left.
I grabbed the bottle of wine sitting open on the counter and poured myself another glass before climbing onto one of the stools.
The penthouse looked expensive, everything black, gray, or white.
There were no pictures or personal touches, no evidence of another life.
That was the point this place existed separately from the rest of his world.
For a long time, I convinced myself that meant something, like maybe this was ours private and untouchable. But eventually, I realized secrecy and intimacy weren’t the same thing. I took another sip of wine while my thoughts drifted someplace, I hated visiting.
The hospital again, bright lights and cold bedsheets.
Doctors speaking carefully while avoiding eye contact.
I remembered laying there after my second miscarriage staring at the ceiling while blood soaked through another hospital gown.
My body felt empty and broken. It kept betraying me at the exact moment happiness started feeling real.
Deuce sat beside the bed gripping my hand so tight I could feel the tension in his fingers.
Neither one of us said much that day. What was there to say?
Sorry your baby died? Sorry your body failed again?
Sorry the man you love already has a healthy child with another woman while you can’t even make it past the first trimester? None of those words fixed anything.
The first miscarriage crushed me emotionally.
The second one made me angry. By the third I started becoming somebody I barely recognized.
I stopped sleeping and eating right. I started picking fights with Deuce over little things because underneath every argument was the same question screaming in my head.
Why her and not me? Why did Alisha get the happy ending while I kept losing pieces of myself trying to build one?
I slid off the stool and walked slowly through the penthouse. My heels clicked softly against the marble floors while thunder rumbled outside. The walls themselves knew I wasn’t supposed to stay too attached, but I already was.
That was my problem from the beginning. I wasn’t built to casually love somebody.
Deuce was impossible not to love once he got his hands on you.
I met him when I pretended to be a buyer of illegal guns.
My father is an FBI agent and had started building a case on Deuce.
I didn’t even want to go. Doing favors like that for my father irritated me.
For one I hated to pretend like I was somebody I wasn’t.
Fake smiles, and rich criminals practically drooling over my beautiful ass.
I walked into the restaurant that night anticipating getting the information I needed and getting the hell on.
But when I walked in and saw how fine Deuce was, I forgot what the hell I was there for.
He was tall and muscular, and his brown skin glowed under the lights.
Diamond chain sitting against a black button-down shirt halfway open at the top.
He looked expensive without trying too hard but with a hood swag.
He was the type of man your mother warned you about while secretly understanding exactly why you ignored the warning.
I caught him staring at me from across the room and when he smiled that’s when I lost my damn mind.
I only approached him because of my father.
Agent Brown had been investigating Deuce’s trucking company for almost a year by then.
His company had been moving illegal firearms through state lines hidden inside shipments.
The Feds already suspected him, they just didn’t have enough to charge him yet.
Which is where I came in at. My father knew beautiful women made men comfortable.
Men talked too much when they felt desired, that's why he always used me as a decoy.
“Networking,” he called it. Manipulation dressed up professionally.
“Just pay attention,” my father told me before I left. “Men like him expose themselves eventually.”
I should’ve stayed away right then, but instead I walked straight toward Deuce.
Our first conversation lasted almost an hour.
He made me laugh harder than I expected and flirted openly without sounding lame.
He looked at me like he already knew I was trouble and wanted me anyway.
The first night we slept together it happened after too many drinks and even worse decisions.
I still remembered him pulling me into this penthouse by my wrist while we stumbled into each other laughing.
The chemistry between us felt reckless from the start.
One bad choice turned into another before either one of us cared enough to stop it.
After that night we kept finding reasons to see each other. First, it was excuses and then habits then feelings got involved. I walked into the bedroom slowly and sat on the edge of the mattress and my thoughts instantly went to his wife. Alisha gave him what I couldn’t, a child and a stable home.
Meanwhile I was hiding inside a penthouse downtown praying another pregnancy wouldn’t end in blood and heartbreak.
Eventually resentment started creeping in no matter how much I tried fighting it.
Not because Alisha did anything wrong personally but because she woke up every day living the life I wanted.
My phone rang against the bed beside me. It was my dad. I stared at the screen before answering. “Yes dad?” I answered.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” Straight to business as usual my father never cared much about easing into conversations. Especially when work was involved. “I’ve been busy.”
“With that criminal I’m about to put away for a long time?” I rolled my eyes. “Why do you care?” I asked, irritated with the whole conversation.
“Because you’re too emotionally invested.” There was that accusation. He said it, like feelings were some embarrassing weakness instead of the entire reason this situation became toxic in the first damn place.
“You pushed me toward him,” I reminded him.
“I told you to get evidence against him not sleep with him.”
“Well things happen.” I replied.
“That man is dangerous.” He spat.
“So are you.”
My father dedicated his entire life to catching men like Deuce. Street dudes who turned illegal money into legitimate businesses. Men who learned how to move quietly enough to avoid prison. What my father never understood was Deuce wasn’t some heartless criminal to me.
He loved hard and protected the people around him and took care of entire families financially. The streets made him what he was long before I met him, that didn’t excuse everything, but it made him human.
“Do you still believe he cares about you?” my father asked.
I closed my eyes briefly. “Yes.”
“And his wife?” I smacked my lips. “What about her?”
“He’s still going home to her every night.”
I stood up from the bed and walked back toward the living room before answering. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me.”
My father sighed again like I irritated him. “Kimberly, married men always say…”
“He didn’t feed me dreams,” I snapped. “That’s not what this was.” Because it wasn’t that Deuce never promised to leave Alisha, that was probably why I stayed so long. He never lied about loving his wife, the problem was he loved me too.
“You’re losing focus on what I need you to do,” my father said.
“No, I’m tired.”
“Tired enough to finally help yourself?” There it was the real reason he called. Not concern or fatherly advice. He wanted enough evidence to make an arrest.
“What do you want?” I asked flatly.
“Routes, shipments schedules and warehouse locations.” He damn near begged.
“You really think I’m giving you that?”
“You know what happens if he gets indicted.”
“Yes,” I replied quietly. “I lose him.” My father went silent for a second after that. Probably because hearing me say it out loud made everything more fucked up.
“I need you to think clearly,” he said finally.
“I am thinking clearly.”
“No, Kimberly, you're thinking emotionally.”
I didn’t even respond, I just hung up. I know my father was going to curse me out, but I didn’t care.
Maybe, emotions were exactly why everything got complicated in the first damn place.
After I hung up, I tossed my phone onto the couch and walked straight toward the windows again.
Rain was still sliding down the glass. While across the city, Deuce was probably home laid up beside his wife pretending his life wasn’t falling apart.
The night everything seemed to change between me and him I finally snapped.
We had just left another doctor appointment after my third miscarriage.
I was numb the entire ride back to the penthouse, I didn't speak or cry.
I didn't react at all until he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a drink like life was just supposed to continue normally. That’s when something inside me snapped.