Always Unique (8 page)

Fortunately for Unique, last-minute details had Kennard ripping and running so they had next to no time alone all week. The night before when he finally came to bed, all he wanted to do was make love, but he was so tired he could barely do that.

Still, Unique knew that she would have to open up to Kennard and tell him sooner rather than later. The last thing she wanted was for someone else that may have witnessed the incident in the lobby to tell him first … or worse, for Fat Tee to manage to bump into him and drop a dime of the details of her checkered past plus God knows what else. How would that look? Like she was keeping secrets, that’s how—which she was. The problem with secrets, she thought, was that they ate at one’s conscience bit by bit. If one wasn’t careful they could consume one’s entire life. One secret oftentimes led to another, then another, multiplying like rabbits.

Unique couldn’t take it: her mind was made up, she couldn’t hold water anymore. She made a promise to herself as she rinsed off the luxurious shower gel that she was going to tell Kennard everything. Every single sordid detail of her past—well, at least the Fat Tee and Took episodes. So just as Eve had done with Adam, she would practically hand-feed him the forbidden fruit. Let the core fall where it may, because she would leave no seed unplanted. She’d tell him it all … well, maybe not
every
shiesty detail.

She’d talk about the robberies she and Took pulled off together. She would even share how while they were supposedly on a romantic vacation, Took had drugged her and then sold her to a whorehouse in Mexico for a key of cocaine and a chicken, leaving her with no passport but wanted by the law in the United States. He didn’t do it because he needed the drugs, and he sure as hell wasn’t hungry. He did it because he had a warped sense of humor and no sense of forgiveness. The funny thing, Unique thought, as her mind conjured up vivid memories of the past like a blooper reel of her life, was that although she was pissed to the highest level of pissitivity for what Took had done, she knew, deep down, that she deserved his treachery. She had crossed that invisible but very tangible line of trust first. She, too, had convinced herself that his actions were only a reaction to her action.

If Kennard wasn’t run off by then, she would also finally come clean about Fat Tee. How she and Took robbed him back in the day. How Fat Tee found her by seeing her on ESPN. Leaving the note on her Benz, following her, breaking into their house, raping and then blackmailing her. The stolen diamonds to get Fat Tee off her back, which obviously didn’t work.

She would leave no stone unturned. No more secrets. If Kennard left her, which he probably would if he had any sense, so be it. At least she would be at peace with herself. And if he stayed, which was a long shot, but if he did, their relationship would be stronger for it. They could truly be a family—him, her, and the baby growing inside her stomach.

Knowing that there was no perfect time to confess something as complex and of this magnitude, she decided to do it after the fight tomorrow night. No need to destroy the man’s mood before one the biggest milestones in his professional career.

One more day to pretend, but right now all she could do was get herself together, put her game face on, and focus on the here and now. Turning the volume on the shower radio up—tuned to Hot 97—she closed her eyes and let the water cascade over her face and the rest of her body.

The built-in steamer inside the shower melted away some of the stress she felt. The weigh-in for the fight was this evening, and Unique had agreed to meet Kennard downstairs at 6
P.M.
for photos. In another hour her makeup team would arrive, and thirty minutes later, Tyeedah would be knocking on the door.

Unique had chosen a stunning custom-made dress for tonight, a prelude to the eye-popping, body-hugging peek-a-boo she planned to debut tomorrow. She rubbed the soapy sponge across her flat stomach, which was hard and toned. She worked diligently in the gym to keep her body in tip-top shape. The fight would probably be her last stage to flaunt it before she started showing a baby bump.

She planned to make the most of it.

Entertainment Tonight, Extra,
and
Inside Edition
had already asked Kennard for interviews, and Unique wanted to look her best in case they flashed the camera on her. Unless there was a crime against being drop-dead fabulous, she had no worries about being criticized by any of the glorified tabloids’ in-house fashion police.

Just as Unique was finishing her shower, the lights went out, blanketing the bathroom into complete darkness. She figured Kennard had come back up and caught her in the shower and was in a joking mood.

“Ha-ha, Kennard, real funny. Now turn the lights back on. I’m running late as it is,” she said, while trying to feel for the knob to turn the water off.

“Maybe you will think this is funny now.” The voice shocked the hell out of her. It wasn’t Kennard.

Fear replaced the water enveloping her entire body and within a blink of an eye, a pair of hands ripped her from the shower and then punched her in the face so hard it rattled her teeth.

“Where’s your pistol now, bitch?”

Unique absorbed the punch and was still on her feet. Hell, if she made it through this mess, maybe she’d be Kennard’s next big prizefighter. She could take a blow, that was for sure. And to take a blow of that magnitude from a dude like a champ showed that if she was in the ring with a broad she’d definitely make it to the final round. But then again, hadn’t she always been the last bitch standing?

“You ain’t bad now, is ya, bitch?”

She wondered how in the hell Fat Tee had gotten into her secured hotel room. And why had she left the gun in her purse in the chair? Of course, she hadn’t expected a maniac to break into the room of a five-star hotel’s Presidential Suite.

The initial shock of the moment waning, Unique took a looping right-handed swing that clipped Fat Tee on the chin. To spend extra quality time with Kennard and to stay in shape, she had taken boxing and self-defense classes at the boxing gym. The trainer had said she was a natural. But with the slippery floor under bare, wet feet, she wasn’t stable enough to create the force behind the blow that she tried to throw.

Fat Tee wasted no time landing another sledgehammer against her temple. This time, Unique’s legs wobbled like a bowl of cheap ramen noodles before quitting on the job.

Once Unique hit the cold marble floor, Fat Tee dropped down on top of her, knees straddling her upper body. The bastard moved around like he had been slithering in the dark all of his life. Who knew shit would play out like this? But then again, Unique should have known, for it had already been written.

“I told you this wasn’t over until I said it was over. But you wanted to play rough. So,” he said, with one hand around her neck and the other holding her wrists above her head, “I’ll show you what the fuck rough looks like, bitch.”

She could smell the Hennessy on his breath.

Unique wanted to beat herself up for underestimating Fat Tee, but there was no time for woulda-shouldas. Besides, Fat Tee had literally beaten her to the punch anyway.

But regardless of how daunting the situation seemed, she didn’t intend to be raped by Fat Tee again. Unique was going to fight with everything she had—for herself and for the baby growing inside of her.

Fat Tee had enough pressure on her neck to prevent her from screaming. And she could barely breathe. The hold was similar to the way he had handled her when he had overtaken her at the house. But this time Unique was determined not to let him achieve the same results. One was her maximum limit in this lifetime to be raped by this stupid fuck-off.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” he said.

Unique tried to speak but the words couldn’t get past the grip he had on her neck.

Fat Tee sensed that she was trying to say something, and he loosened his grip … slightly. Unique mumbled, but there was no way he could discern what she was saying. She couldn’t even recognize the garbled words as they squeezed through her windpipe.

“What did you say, bitch?”

She heard the greed in his voice. He probably thought she was giving in, trying to tell him how he could rob Kennard.

She spewed off a few more, low words.

Fat Tee bent over, placing his ear closer to her mouth so that he could hear better. He wasn’t taking any chances by loosening the choke hold, allowing her to scream for help.

The side of his head was inches from Unique’s face.

She raised her head to get closer. Close enough to kiss him if she wanted to. Instead, Unique clamped onto the lobe of Fat Tee’s ear with her teeth. He screamed, “Ouch, bitch,” but she held on like a mother pit bull fighting for her pups. Yanking her head, she tore a chunk of his ear away, kindred to the way Mike Tyson disfigured Evander Holyfield in the ring.

Fat Tee screeched like a wounded mutt and jerked back, which gave her just enough to—with all the strength in her body—swing her knee upward, Tae-Bo style, toward his petite dick. Praying that size didn’t matter, she felt the softness of his testicles crunch under the hard bone of her kneecap.

Fat Tee sang in soprano, curling up on his side.

Unique hurried to her feet before Fat Tee recovered and headed toward a sliver of light, peeking under the bathroom door. She took off toward the light. Her mind quickly ran through her options. She had no time to get dressed, and Fat Tee would be back on his feet at any minute. She either had to flee the hotel room naked and get help, or retrieve the gun from her purse and help herself.

She was no more than two feet from the light—near freedom—when Fat Tee grabbed her ankle. She tried to stomp his hand with her free foot, but she hit a slippery spot on the floor and her feet skated from beneath her. She lost her balance.

Regaining his composure, Fat Tee was back on top of her. He slammed his fist into her face so hard she thought she saw the Big Dipper. She raked at his face with her nails. She felt the manicured claws dig into his flesh. She smelled his blood, or maybe it was her own blood—no, she was sure it was his—but Fat Tee kept pounding her with blow after blow until Unique eventually faded to black. When Fat Tee finally stopped, he realized that she wasn’t moving and all he saw was a puddle of blood. He smiled because he never thought in a million years that Unique would ever go out like a blood bitch. He washed his hands and looked at Unique’s lifeless body bleeding out on the floor, and said, “What goes around comes around, bitch.”

UNIQUE II: BETRAYAL

PROLOGUE

The queen-sized bed took up more than half of the space in the rented seedy hotel room. The other half contained a night table, matching dresser with a mirror, a miniature coffee table, and an armoire that housed a flat-screen TV behind its French-style doors. In the corner was a small dorm-room-sized refrigerator. Fat Tee sat at the old, rickety coffee table, which had seen better days, drinking a Heineken that the fridge had barely kept cold. Fat Tee had thought about getting a room at one of the upscale hotels now that he had a few dollars, but the plus side to staying at Bugley’s Inn was that it was inexpensive by New York standards, and for the most part the people that squatted there were too busy minding their own business to mind his.

God knows he had enough problems as it was and the last thing he needed was someone up in his business. When Fat Tee had first driven his late model Honda to New York in search of Unique, all he wanted was a little revenge for what she and her ex-boyfriend Took had done to him over seven years ago. After three months of searching the big city’s seedy areas and not locating her, Fat Tee had been ready to call it a waste of time. Then, sitting in this very same room, he saw an ESPN special on Kennard DuVall. The strikingly beautiful woman by Kennard’s side caught his eye as the cameras followed them through their New Jersey mansion. Fat Tee had to do a double and then a triple take. Fat Tee kept telling himself, “Naw, it couldn’t be.” He sat in total silence and studied the woman. It wasn’t until Kennard looked at the woman with a smile of a nigga who had been pussy-whipped and said, “Unique is the love of my life,” that Fat Tee knew for sure.

Immediately Fat Tee knew that there was only one bitch by that name capable of casting that type of spell over such a powerful man. Unique was as beautiful as she was conniving, maybe more.

This changed things for Fat Tee tremendously. Back in Virginia seven years ago, after Took and Unique had scammed him, a trail of bad luck seemed to follow him. Once one of the most hood-richest dudes to walk the streets of Richmond, Virginia, he was now down and out with a dope habit and a docket full of court cases, with no money to pay for the drugs or a lawyer. He had ended up going to prison and kicking his habit. While some used jail time to rehabilitate themselves, Fat Tee couldn’t focus on bettering himself. All he could seem to think about was getting out of jail and getting even with Unique for not only hurting his feelings but bruising his ego and stealing his livelihood.

When he found out the fact that Unique was dating Kennard DuVall, the stakes were quickly raised.

It wasn’t hard to find Unique after the ESPN piece aired. The very next day, Fat Tee just waited outside of Kennard’s office building until, lo and behold, Unique rolled up, driving a shiny red Benz. He followed her to the house she and Kennard shared in Jersey. His daddy used to install alarms so bypassing the security system was a breeze for Fat Tee. He probably should have followed in his father’s footsteps or at least chosen a different career path, he thought, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty.

The look on Unique’s face when she saw him in their house was priceless. That little housecoat she had on barely covered her perfectly round behind. He couldn’t resist, and for old times’ sake, Fat Tee roughed off and straight sexually violated her at gunpoint. And before he left he had demanded a million dollars not to expose her secrets to her rich fiancé.

So happy with her new life with Kennard, Unique had been willing to do anything not to disclose her past to him. It was no surprise when Unique—with the help of Tyeedah—dug into her old bag of tricks and came up with a plan to intercept a bag of high-quality diamonds from a courier before the diamonds were delivered to their intended destination, which was Kennard’s very own jeweler. Unique gave every last one of the diamonds to Fat Tee to get him off her back in hopes that he would carry his washed-up ass back down I-95 to Virginia.