Entice (The Fighter Romance Series - Book #2) (4 page)

“Marie, is Mitch abusive?”

She stared at a spot on the wall for a long time
before saying, “Yes. He takes great pleasure in the feelings of control he gets
from hurting a woman. He’s a bully. He goes after anyone weaker than him. He
gets on Paul every chance he gets because he knows my brother is too good to do
to him what he’d really like to, but he usually won’t pick fights with other
men. He’s a coward, just like most bullies are.
Women and
children…That’s why he targeted you.
He thinks women are weak.”

“And what about Victor?
Are you worried that Mitch will hurt him?”

“He hasn’t ever physically hurt him…yet. But, one
night about a few years ago Mitch got really violent with me and put me in the
hospital. It was the first time he’d ever done it in front of our son. Victor
was six at the time. I knew when I got strong enough I had to leave. I couldn’t
have my son growing up that way. Victor and I have been moving around ever
since. Every time I think we’ve lost him for good, he finds us. Paul won’t go
on with his own life because he’s taken it upon himself to protect us
twenty-four seven now. This has to end. I just wish I knew how to do that so
that everyone was left safe and sound.”

“Have you tried going through the court? Can’t you
document all of this, use it against him?”

“He’s a cop. He’s a well-respected one in the city,
believe it or not. He’s a bully and a terrible human being, but he does his job
well and his colleagues cover for him. I have a record. I was arrested when I
was a teenager on a drug charge. I was holding a few pounds of marijuana for a
friend. I decided to roll a joint for myself and my friends as a young, stupid
kid would do. I was smoking it in a bathroom in the park. The cops busted in
and my friends ran faster than me. Mitch was a beat cop then. He arrested me.”

“Oh wow!”

“Yeah…he booked me in and then took me into an
interview room. He was really sweet and he told me that he didn’t want me to be
saddled with a record for the rest of my life…a drug charge. It
was an “
Intent to sell” charge because I had so much dope on
me. I started thinking that he wanted sex at the time, but he didn’t ask for
anything and I was a scared kid…I wasn’t offering it. He told me that he was
going to let me go and to stay out of trouble…I was so naïve…”

“What did he do?”

She smiled, sadly, and sat back down. “He let me go
and then every time I turned around, he was there. He’d be outside my school or
at the fast-food place where my friends and I hung out. No one wanted to hang
out with me after a while of that. Who wants a cop following you around when
you’re a teenager, right? The attention sort of went to my head though… Messed
with it, I guess I’d say now. Eventually he was the only one I had to talk to
and we started seeing each other…socially.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-six,” she said.

“And you were…?”

“Fifteen.”

I was so shocked I couldn’t even form the words.
That made him not only a creep in my mind, but a pedophile. “That’s…”

“Illegal?” She laughed. “Yes, I know. But he didn’t
sleep with me until I was sixteen and once I was pregnant it made me a
consenting adult…it’s all legal mumbo jumbo, but he held it together…he was
wonderful to me in those days. I thought he was my savior from a crummy life
and I tried hard to be a good wife and be grateful for everything he was doing
for me. I didn’t find out until Victor was two that he’d actually gone through
with the booking that
night
. Somehow he had made it
look like I bailed out and I had a “failure to appear” on my record that I knew
nothing about and the charges were still pending. It’s too late with statutes
and all of that for them to put me in jail for it now, but not too late for him
to use it against me in a battle for our child. So when he hurt me so bad that
I started fearing he would kill me, I took Victor and ran.”

“What about your injuries when he hurt you? Wasn’t
that documented? Why wasn’t he arrested?”

“I was so afraid of him…and afraid of what he’d do
to Paul if Paul found out he was hurting me and went after him. I made up
stories, and I never called the police. Paul would have tried to kill him and
ended up dead or in jail. He had the whole police force to back him up…Paul had
no
one.
”

“I’m so sorry, Marie. That sounds awful.” I thought
about the siblings and all they had gone through to protect each other and I
was genuinely touched by it. Marie had tears in her eyes and my heart was
breaking for her. If she was lying, she was really, really good.

CHAPTER
FOUR

By the time I got back to my apartment it was noon
and I was already exhausted. I didn’t know how Marie did it…or Paul. Being on
the run, picking up your entire life and moving it…always looking over your
shoulder…It had to be exhausting. I was worn-out just from finding out about it
all…and recovering from the scare Mitch gave me too. I parked in my usual spot
and found myself looking around and over my shoulder as I walked up to the
door. My hands were shaking when I slipped the key into the lock. I kept
alternating between asking myself what I was doing getting into this mess, and
telling myself that these people needed all the help they could get and there
was no reason why I shouldn’t help them.

I stood inside the door of my apartment for a few
minutes…listening. I started letting my imagination work overtime on the way
home from
Marie’s
. Mitch is a cop. What if he broke
in? I closed the door behind me and locked it and then I picked up the only
thing I saw that I could possibly use as a weapon…my umbrella. It was one of
those with a hook on one end and a point on the other. It wouldn’t take out a
bullet…but in hand to hand combat it would give me an edge.

I tiptoed through the living room and threw open the
kitchen door. I glanced around to make sure that no one was there. My heart was
pounding in my chest but no amount of telling
myself
that I was being ridiculous was working to calm me down. I made my way back
through the living room and down the narrow hall. I was for once thankful I
lived in a small place. I opened the door to the extra bedroom and flipped on
the light. I went over to the closet and opened it. I stepped back and held the
umbrella out in front of me like a sword. I struck at the clothes in the
closet, beating at imaginary monsters like I was seven again. I did the same
thing in my room. I was about to pronounce it all clear. All I had left was the
shower.

I swear it was like that shower scene in
Psycho
; as I pulled open the curtain and
aimed my umbrella…my fucking phone rang in my pocket. I screamed and dropped
the umbrella. The sound of it clattering to the porcelain floor of the shower
startled me again and I dropped the phone. I fumbled for it and when I finally
had it in my hand and saw who was calling, I wanted to throw it against the
wall. My mother always had impeccable timing.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Jessie! I didn’t think you were going to answer.”
After I heard her voice, I wished that I hadn’t. I could tell from her tone
that this was not going to be good. I considered hanging up before I even heard
it. “Jessie! Are you there?”

“Yes, Mom.
I’m here. What’s wrong?”

She instantly went on the defensive. “Why are you
saying it like that? I don’t only call you when something is wrong.” Bullshit.

“I didn’t mean to insinuate anything, Mom. I don’t
want to fight with you today, okay? What’s going on?” Tell me what you need.

“Tyler is kicking me out.”

Damn, that was the one thing I was afraid of. Tyler
was my mother’s latest in a string of younger men. She meets them in bars and
moves in with them within weeks. All goes well until they tire of her neediness
and realize that her looks really are only skin deep…then they toss her out.
She hasn’t had a job in over a year. I have no idea how she can stand to always
let someone else support her.

I took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“I need a place to stay,” she said in a whiny voice.
It was the sentence I was hoping not to hear, but expecting. The last time I’d
lived with my mother was while I was in college and dating my ex-boyfriend
Justin. The whole situation was…ugly, to say the least.

“Mom, you know I love you…but it’s not a good idea
for us to be under the same roof.”

“You would let your mother be put out on the
street?” Here it comes, the guilt.

“I’m not kicking you out, Mom. Apparently, Tyler is.
This is why I keep telling you that you need to get a job and take care of
yourself so that you don’t have to depend on these men.”

“Now you’re going to lecture me? So this is what I
get from my daughter? A lecture and an “I don’t care if you sleep in the park?”

“Geez, Mom! I didn’t say that.”

“Please, Jessie…just for a little while. I’ll get a
job, okay? I’ll move out as soon as I can. I won’t get in your way.”

I don’t know why I even try. She always guilt-trips
me into doing what she wants. What I have to feel guilty about…I really don’t
know. I wasn’t the one who was a terrible parent. “Okay, Mom. That’s fine. I’ll
get the spare room ready for you. When will you be here?”

“Tyler bought me a bus ticket. I’ll be there in the
morning.”

Trying not to let her hear me sigh I said, “Okay,
Mom. I’ll see you then.”

“Oh wait!”

“Yes, Mother?”

“I saw Justin.”

If there was one name that brought the weight of the
world crashing down onto my shoulders quicker than my mother did, it was that
one. “Mom, I don’t want to hear about—”

“Honey, he misses you.”

“Are you kidding? Are you still buying from him?” Justin
was my own personal nightmare. He was gorgeous and intelligent…and he was a
drug dealer and although he didn’t use his own product, he loved his alcohol.
It was an explosive combination that I’d been too young and inexperienced to
see in time.

“No!” she said in an indignant tone. “That is so
insulting! You know I’ve stopped using.”

“So you say.” In my defense, it definitely wouldn’t
be the first time she lied to me about her pill use. OxyContin had been her
drug of choice. “If he’s not dealing to you, why were you seeing him?”

“I wasn’t seeing him. I ran into him. He was at the
bar where Tyler was playing and we started talking. He told me he was happy for
me that I’d gotten clean. Honey, he had tears in his eyes when he talked about
you. He misses you so much. All he wishes for you are good things.”

I was gagging on the bile that had come up from my
stomach. “Justin cares about two things, Mother, himself and money. You know
how long I struggled with that and how hard it was for me to get away from him
when I finally figured out I couldn’t change him. Why would any mother want her
daughter to be with a man like that?”

“He’s a good boy.”

“Are you freaking kidding me? He’s a ‘good’ boy?
He’s a drug dealer, Mother!”

“It’s a rough economy. He’s just trying to make a
living. Not everyone is handed a good start in life, you know?”

I growled into the phone and said, “He took the easy
road for him, Mom. He doesn’t want to go to work and have to answer to a boss.
He thinks the rules are for everyone else. He wants to live his life as if it’s
one big party.” I realized then I could have been describing her. She and
Justin were made for each other, really. “If you want a place to stay there
will be two conditions: No drugs and No Justin! Do you understand me, Mother?”

“You don’t have to yell.”

“I’m not yelling,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Try this, Mom…since you seem to have an easier time putting things in
perspective when it’s about you. When you think about Justin, remember the time
you were at his apartment and it got raided. Remember the time you did in
jail…away from your kid because of that. Remember that he wasn’t in the least
bothered by letting you take the fall for all of that. He’s not a ‘good kid.’”
You need to get over that. He’s a man, and a dangerous one to boot.”

“Okay, Jessie,” she said. She had the ability to
morph from a poor, misunderstood old woman to a teenager to a little girl and
back again in thirty seconds flat. She could also be a raging bitch in between
if it suited her purposes. She was what she thought she needed to be at that
moment in time. She was a master of manipulation and whether or not she was
using, she had an addict’s personality. I knew that her living here was a
mistake…but what the hell was I supposed to do? I wouldn’t be able to live
knowing that she was homeless either. I was so tired of all the drama.

*******

I needed a respite from how I was feeling after I
got off the phone. I spent the rest of that day pampering myself. It was
something I rarely did, but I was on the edge of letting my nerves from
everything that had happened take over. I took a long bubble bath and
deep-conditioned my wild hair. Then, I slathered lotions and creams all over my
body. I got dressed just in a tank top and pair of shorts and put my still wet
hair into a smooth braid down the side of my head. I sat down and painted my
toenails and fingernails. It wasn’t as good as a day at the spa, but by the
time I finished I felt a whole lot less stressed. I knew it would all return in
an instant when my mother arrived the next day. She’d bring a suitcase of crap
with her, I was sure. But for that night, I wasn’t going to think about it. I
was just about to go see what I could round up in the kitchen for my dinner
when there was a knock on the door.