Chapter 33 #2
“You like it?” she asked, doing a half twirl.
The deep red fabric fell to the marble floor and clung to every curve of her body, dipping as low as it could tastefully go in the back.
She’d picked the dress with Ace and her newest piece of jewelry in mind and she smiled seeing his appreciation for it.
“I love it. So does every other motherfucka in this bitch,” Ace nearly growled.
“Well you’re the only one who’ll be taking it off,” she whispered seductively in his ear, trailing one sharp nail down his chest.
“Damn right,” Ace said, discreetly gripping a handful of her ass.
Joy giggled as she let him bring her into his embrace. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders grinning from ear to ear. Her smile dimmed when she looked over Ace’s shoulder.
She thought her eyes were playing tricks on her when they landed on Julius Chapman, Jermaine’s father.
“What’s wrong?” Ace asked, sensing the shift in her immediately.
“Nothing,” Joy answered too quickly even for her own ears, shaking her head as if it would clear the hallucination from her mind. When she looked over Ace’s shoulder again, he was still there. The older, slightly thinner version of the man who’d tried to break her.
Ace’s eyes narrowed on her. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I… I have to use the ladies room.”
“Okay,” Ace nodded. “I’ll take you.”
“No,” she said with more force and speed than intended. “I’m fine. I’ll be right back.” She offered a smile to soften the blow. She didn’t wait for Ace to speak again before rushing off in the direction of the restrooms.
Joy burst through the door of the ladies room and stared at herself in the mirror, her heart hammering in her chest. Not with anger or fear but anxiety.
Why was he here?
She didn’t think a Senator from Texas had any business in New York. Was he there for her? Would he out her to Ace? Things were finally starting to look up and she didn’t want to give up everything she’d worked for.
Joy talked herself down, surmising that it was just a coincidence and she would just need to ensure she stayed out of his way. After calming herself, she walked out of the restroom only to be slammed against the adjacent wall.
“You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to get my hands on you, little bitch,” Julius growled in her face, spit flying as he spoke. “You thought you could almost kill my son and get away with it?”
“Yeah,” Joy gritted under the weight of his forearm on her throat. “For all this trouble, I should have followed through. If I ever see him again, I won’t be so careless.”
A fist to the side of her face silenced her.
“You have a lot of mouth for a bitch with no family,” he spat.
Joy flinched at the words, the reminder a greater pain than the punch he’d just thrown.
Joy wasn't surprised by the vitriol Julius spewed towards her. Even though he and everyone else in town knew Jermaine was a womanizing, abusive prick, like many oldest sons to powerful men, his flaws were overlooked and forgiven because of his status and enabled by daddy’s money that paid off whoever needed to keep quiet.
Julius and Joy had always bumped heads. Julius had wanted someone meeker and more agreeable as a daughter in law but knew an alliance with the Thibodeauxs was the best option for gaining power in the Texas underworld.
The Chapmans had wanted Joy’s head on a spike for what she did to Jermaine, not out of loyalty or love for their son, but to make an example out of her.
To bring her down a peg from the high horse everyone assumed she sat atop and make her conform to the ways of their family rather than running the Chapman house and everyone in it like it was her show to direct.
“Yeah I heard your daddy kicked your crazy ass out. Imagine my surprise when I found out you were hiding here like a sewer rat. A soldier with no army. Just pathetic.” He looked down at her with pure disgust. “A waste of a pretty face.”
Joy pushed against him but it only made him grip her harder.
“I wonder if Ace King knows his whore is a fucking deranged monster. Maybe I should tell him. Maybe I should tell him about your time in the mental institute. Tell him what you did to my son. How fucking useless you are that your own daddy wanted nothing to do with you,” he laughed in her face.
“I think that’s exactly what I’ll do,” he continued on, his fingers digging into her skin and his words digging into every fear and negative thought she’d had the past several weeks. “Pop this little bubble you think you have here then make you pay for embarrassing my family.”
His eyes trailed the length of Joy’s body and the dress that had made her feel beautiful only a few minutes before now made her feel gross.
“Maybe I’ll see what my son was getting all those years first,” he said licking his lips.
Joy’s face grew hot and her ears began ringing. She’d be damned if she let another Chapman man take anything else from her. She’d be damned if she let any man take something from her she wasn’t willing to give.
Not her body.
Not her freedom.
And not Ace.
She turned her head as much as she could and saw a large diamond shaped on top of a pedestal within arms reach. She grabbed the statue and swung, hitting Julius across the head. The impact caused him to release her with a grunt and fall to the ground in front of her.
The force was enough to make him delirious and he could barely move but Joy didn’t stop. Her mind was gone as she sent blow after blow to the man’s face and body. After a while, she no longer saw Julius, but his son who’d terrorized her for years.
She saw Cleveland.
She saw her father.
She saw every man that ever benefited from her abuse and made her feel worthless.
She saw a man who would try to take away the sliver of happiness she found.
By the time she stopped, Julius’s face was unrecognizable and her hands were covered in blood.
Her chest heaved with labored breaths, her ears feeling like she was under water as the episode subsided but her anger remained.
“Rose…” His voice cut through the haze and made her whole body freeze.
Slowly, she looked up and found Ace standing at the entrance of the hallway, eyes wide but with something unreadable in them as they flicked from Joy to the battered man at her feet.
Joy’s whole body was arrested and she felt like a deer in headlights.
“Baby,” he whispered, taking a small step forward.
She opened her mouth to explain herself and plead her case.
Her mind spun with how to talk herself out of this, to explain away the blood and fury covering her.
Before she could, a commotion erupted at the front of the building as glass shattered, pierced by the unmistakable pop of bullets.
Screams and sirens sounded as attendees scattered to get away and the security alarms informed them all too late of the intruders.
A ringing in Joy’s ears returned that had nothing to do with the siren sounding throughout the banquet hall as her senses sharpened and her eyes swiveled for any indication of what was going on.
With one final look, Ace jumped into action, pulling a pistol from beneath his suit jacket and letting off shots. He covered Joy, and through the tunnel of her focus, she heard him tell her to run, but she already had her gun out, sending returning fire as masked gunmen rounded the corner.
Jrue, Remy, and the twins found them and Ace pushed Joy and April behind him as the men made a wall of protection on their way to the exit.
When they rounded the corner though, there were even more gunmen blocking the front exit. A few politicians and their guests ran out the back and the intruders made no move to stop them.
“Joy! April! Go evacuate with everyone else,” Ace yelled, covering behind a pillar, peeking around to send a shot then getting back behind it.
“The hell we will,” April said defiantly. She crouched behind a wall, coming up briefly to let off shots of her own.