King of New York (27 page)

Never has a
woman consumed him with jealously the way Sierra does. Chad’s a bad boy; he’d
never allowed a woman to control his heart until he met Sierra and now it seems
she may have broken his heart.

Sebastian and
Chad are both being held back. They’re both fuming with anger as they try to
get away from the hold of the two doormen and the restaurant staff. They shout
insults at each other as they’re unable to throw blows.

“You fucking
bastard, how the fuck are you going to try and kiss my lady, you crazy ass
stalker,” shouts Chad across the corridor to Sebastian.

“Shut the fuck
up, you ignorant fool. I was only kissing her goodbye, you insecure son of a
bitch. Or are you mad that she was with me instead of you?” he laughs mockingly.

Chad becomes
infuriated at the comments that Sebastian makes about Sierra being with him. He
lunges forward and gets away from the hold of the doormen and punches Sebastian
on his jaw and they start brawling again. The restaurant staff call more people
to restrain them and they tell them to calm down or else they will both be
thrown out of the restaurant forcibly.

Chad does not
want to stay in the restaurant any longer so he drops three hundred-dollar
bills, not wanting his lady to pay, and walks out in anger, leaving Sierra to
run out after him.

He forgets that
he has left Sierra inside all by herself. However, she follows him out,
shouting and hollering.

“What the hell’s
your problem? Why did you have to do that?”

Chad is shocked.
He’d not expected this type of reception from her and he is disappointed at
her.

“What the fuck
do you mean by what is wrong with me? You are the fucking one standing there
about to kiss an absolute fucking stranger. What the fuck is wrong with you!”

“Do not take
that fucking tone with me, Chad. He’s just a friend that I bumped into when I
was making my way back to you from the ladies’. Now how do you expect him to
feel about my boyfriend? You’re acting like a fucking lunatic. I told you I don’t
like violence.”

“Fuck you and
your stupid notion about violence, Sierra. You don’t fucking appreciate what I
do for you,” he says, with pure frustration in his voice.

“Who the fuck is
he, Sierra?” Chad asks with a strained calmness in his voice.

“He’s just a
random guy that I had sex with once when I was in London, long before I met
you, baby.

“Don’t fucking
lie to me, woman,” he shouts thunderously, not believing her story. “I asked
you whether there was anyone apart from Tom that you’d been with, and you
fucking lied to me. You fucking lied, Sierra. How can you just forget to tell
me about a guy you slept with?”

Sierra looks
visibly scared of this Chad that doesn’t bear any resemblance to the man she
knows and loves.

The beast in him
starts to rear its ugly head, as Chad shouts with rage: “He’s lucky I don’t
have him disposed of. This is my fucking city. How dare he! How dare he walk up
in my fucking city and address my woman.” He stops shouting and controls his
anger as he sees the fear in her eyes. He doesn’t want her to see the real him;
the King of New York that can be a ruthless man if need be. He still loves her
but his rage overpowers his emotions.

Sierra moves
towards him to give him a hug and console his rage but because he’s so agitated
he pushes her. He doesn’t realise his own strength and she falls backwards
violently. Chad is mortified at himself as he sees the look of horror in her
eyes towards him. His heart sinks because he knows he’s blown it with her.

Sierra gets up
with tears in her eyes and slaps him with all her might. He grips her tightly
but she fights to be freed from his embrace.

“Please don’t go,
don’t leave me, Sierra.”

She wriggles and
tries her best to get away from him, but he is far too strong.

“Let me fucking
go, Chad!”

Anger consumes
him and he squeezes her neck tightly, feeling both love and hatred. He wants to
kiss her, to fuck her as his lips softly touch hers. He breathes roughly, his
lips quiver, eyes rage and his hands shake as he tries to control his lust,
anger and frustration. His grip hurts her flesh as he fights not to choke her
with his anger. Hot sweat runs from his forehead and into his cold blue eyes.
Hesitantly, he lets go of her. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he knows he has
done so already.

“Fuck you, Chad
Perry. I never want to see you again, you fucking son of a bitch. I hate you!” she
screams.

Sierra runs back
into the restaurant. He runs after her to tell her how sorry he is, but the men
at the door stop him from going in. All he can do is watch in disbelief as
Sierra goes into the arms of the green-eyed monster – Sebastian.

Chad’s whole
body feels like it’s going to explode with rage as he tries his best to get
past the doormen and enter the restaurant to retrieve his most precious vessel
– his heart that Sierra holds.

For the first time
since he was a child he feels a sharp pain in his heart, something like the pain
he felt when his father left him and his mother. But unlike the boy he used to
be, he doesn’t cry, because a man like him can never show such weakness.

However, he feels
hurt as he sees her in the arms of a stranger that has come and turned his
world upside down. He feels like the world is ending and only she can save him,
but he’s pushed her away by literally pushing her and suffocating her. He curses
at himself for allowing his emotions to take him over.

He has always
been scared of love, afraid of the weakness and vulnerability it creates inside
a man. A man like him is not designed for such weakness and he promised to
never allow himself to succumb to love. He feared love. But for Sierra he had
given up all that fear. He had given up his pride for her, opened up his heart
for her, and this is how she repays him, by leaving him for Sebastian. Chad is
thinking irrationally, and in that moment he curses the day he met her.

“Fuck you,
Sierra! You will pay. You must pay. I will show you that I am king and no one
fucks with me, especially my heart,” he shouts as he goes to his red Lamborghini.
But even when he envisions revenge he knows he can’t hate her no matter how
hard he tries. Even when he pictures her in the arms of the stranger, he still can’t
hate her. All he wants is for him to be the stranger that she’s hugging. He
longs for her to be with him in the car. He feels lost and empty without her
and he curses himself for pushing her and allowing her to walk away from him.

He calls her
phone but it rings out. He calls her a couple more times before he resorts to
texting her. He pours out his heart to her in the text like he has never done
before.

The well-educated
Chad begins to text like a little boy begging the girl in his high school
class.

Babe , plz hear
me out. U kno I luv u. I will never, ever do anything 2 hurt u. U kno I truly
love you. I kno I have been a jerk but I need u. I love u like no other and
believe it or not you are my heartbeat, the air I breathe and the love I feel.
I kno I sound corny right now, but I do not care, baby. For u I shall put my
pride aside because that is how much I luv u, my precious Sierra. Baby, do not
let that moron come between us. For fuck’s sake, I love you or do you not
realise my love for you? I’ve got a present for u but u have to come to the car
to collect it. Please come?

He repeats
himself within the text and ends it with:
PLEASE FORGIVE ME AND COME BACK. I
am waiting for you in the car park. If you love me, please come back.

One would have
thought it was a young teenage boy texting his girl crush rather than a Harvard
graduate with a doctorate.

****

Sierra sees his texts and his
missed calls but refuses to reply as he’s hurt her deep within her heart. The
fact that he couldn’t control himself around her makes her feel uneasy. However,
she still loves him like no other and had it not been for Sebastian sitting
with her and trying to make her think badly of Chad, she would have gone to the
car park and met him to try and reconcile with him. Her heart aches without
Chad, but she knows that she has to be strong and not give in to his charm and
good looks, even though her love for him is telling her otherwise.

Sebastian’s phone
beeps and it’s a text message. He quickly erases the text and consoles the
hysterical Sierra as she cries uncontrollably from the pain the fall caused,
but also, importantly, for Chad. She feels suffocated without him and knows
that her heart needs him. But Sebastian has a look of defiance in his eyes as
if he doesn’t want her with Chad, and she suddenly feels intrigued and scared
of him, as if he’s become a different person from the one she knew in London.

****

Chad waits and waits but Sierra
never comes to the car park. He knows the time’s come for him to leave and let
her be. Maybe one day, hopefully someday soon, she will change her mind, he
hopes.

“No. I do not
want you someday. I want you now!” he shouts in the confinement of his car. He
smashes the windows of his expensive vehicle. Glass breaks everywhere around
him but he doesn’t stop. There is a picture of Sierra and he burns it with his
cigar lighter. His mind is clouded and his thoughts are filled with anger.

“Fuck you,
Sierra,” he howls at the moon. But there is one person that he hates more than
Sierra right now, and that is Sebastian Benoit. “I will create a misery for him
that even his nightmares will not comprehend. Mark my words, Sebastian, you
will feel my wrath.”

 The car is
tarnished with tainted love. The vehicle resembles something from a horror
movie as the red paint and badly bruised exterior seems to reflect the pain and
passion of the driver. Finally, feeling satisfied with the damage to the
vehicle, he gets back into his car and drives away into the night. Far, far
away he drives until the night swallows him and his thoughts.

The police stop
him for speeding. But like the king that he is they let him go without even a
warning.

****

Chad wakes up in a daze trying to
decipher the pieces of the conundrum from the night before, but he cannot get
an answer as he juggles with his memory. His night was filled with twists and
turns as he tried to fight the demons in his dreams.

He imagines that
he was in a dream that felt real but wasn’t and that he had lost the woman of
his dreams to another guy. It suddenly hits him that he wasn’t in a dream and that
he had indeed lost Sierra to someone else.

Suddenly, all he
feels is an immense aching that wracks his body as if he has been hit by a ton
of bricks. His room is like a dark indescribable space. He rubs his eyes to try
and evade the darkness in his room.

He gets up feeling
groggy and opens the curtains. The darkness recoils back to the depths from
which it had come as if the sunlight has just waged war on it.

Chad almost
feels alive again as he opens the curtains to reveal the morning sunshine. The
sun gives the illusion that it’s warm and sunny outside, but inside Chad’s room
it feels cold and bitter. The pain of his heart is dark and unforgiving.

He smells himself
and he reeks of sweat. He doesn’t like this particular smell on him and he realises
that he needs to sort himself out and get back to normality. He needs to find a
means of destroying the dark thoughts that disturb his dreams. He needs to find
release in the best way he knows – sex and more sex.

But first he feels
the need to talk to someone about what he’s feeling. Since meeting Sierra he’d
hardly seen any of his old pals until today. Chad does not have friends as such,
just associates. But he considers James a friend. He calls James, who lives in
California but is in New York for a conference, and they arrange lunch.

Chad heads to
downtown Manhattan and waits in a bar for his friend. Every passing minute
leaves him feeling restive. A mix of conflicting emotions tears at his heart.
His wandering thoughts run to both his mother and Sierra. He thinks about how
his mother never loved him, and how it now seems that Sierra too, does not love
him anymore. He sees himself as that little boy who was unloved, and it reinforces
the reason why he was always scared of falling in love and vowed never to fall
in love because he was scared that being in love might fall out of love with
him, and in his head that’s exactly what’s happened.

Finally, James
arrives and immediately comments on how haggard-looking Chad seems.

“Chad, what’s
the matter with you?” enquires James.

“What makes you
think something’s the matter?”

“I’ve known you
since Harvard, buddy, so I think I know when something plagues you, my dear
friend.”

Chad laughs
half-heartedly, but before he can answer, James’s phone rings and he has to
leave in a hurry to attend to work matters.

“We will
definitely catch up buddy, but this is the call I have been waiting on since
the conference, and I need to show face to show how much I want this new job. I
hope you understand.”