My Addiction: Second Chances Series (14 page)

Brad’s eyebrows furrowed and, as he moved toward me, I instinctively moved back.

He roared, eyes blaring red, “You think I give a shit that you’re helping someone?! Ayana, that’s not the issue here. The issue is you keeping shit from me, lying to me.”

“I haven’t lied to you!” I quickly responded.

“Really? So you’re taking kickboxing classes?”

Oh shit!

I sighed inadvertently, admitting my guilt and he shook his head. “See? That’s the shit I’m talking about; you keeping things from me and for what? Why won’t you just be honest and tell me what you’re into?”

“I can’t, Brad.”

“Yeah, well, I can’t either.” He grabbed my arm and started to open the door. He was going to kick me out. I couldn’t let that happen.

“Brad, can you just trust me this one time?”

He stopped and dropped my arm. “Trust you? Are you kidding me?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Bradley, okay, I didn’t completely lie to you. I have taken self-defense classes. I did use that to help keep me clean when I was really struggling. I do fight on occasion, but it’s for a reason that, I’m sorry, right now I can’t tell you. I promise you though, I will. After I do what I need to do, I promise you on my mother’s grave I will tell you everything. I just want you to…” I stopped and moved closer to him trying my best to make him see and understand my desperation. “Baby, please, I just need you to not lose faith in me. That’s all I ask. I just… I can’t lose you again. I promise you there are no drugs. There never will be any. I give you my word. I’m doing what you mentioned, okay? I’m getting her the help she needs. You’re right, I can’t do this on my own. Noelle won’t let me anymore anyway…” I laced my fingers together and rested my hands on my chin.

I know I looked like I was begging, and, hell, maybe I sounded like I was too because, damn it, I was. I would do whatever I could to get him to trust me, to have faith in me and believe in me.

“All I need is forty-eight hours, okay? Don’t give up on me. Forty-eight hours; can you give me that?”

I brought my hands to his face and lightly rubbed them. I was hoping I could soften him up, but the look in his eyes didn’t relax. When he brought his hands to my wrists and pulled me off him, I knew I’d lost him.

I stepped back from him and blinked several times, trying my damnedest not to cry, but as my eyes started to water, I knew I needed to get out of this room quickly. I don’t cry in front of people. I rarely cried as it is, so you know I was more shocked that this has happened twice now in a twenty-four hour period.

I backed up from him, tried to smile at his now very blurry face. Tears were threatening to fall so I turned, and left his room, fighting the lock on the doorknob before I could exit. I wiped at my face a few times, then straightened up and headed right for the front door. I wouldn’t look to my right as I felt two pairs of eyes sitting heavily on me. I started to give them both the finger just because, but I was too numb to do anything. I was going to crumble if I didn’t get out of here soon.

“Ana!”

I stopped just as I got to the door and turned to my left, still shielding my face from the other two in the room.

Bradley moved into the living room eyes bearing down on me.

What does he want? Does he want to see me crumble? Is that it?

I started to ask him that very question when he sighed heavily. He shook his head.

“I must be an idiot for doing this but…” He took a deep breath. “You want forty-eight hours; you got it, but that’s all you get. Just don’t disappoint me or, I swear to God, this will be it. Do you understand me?”

I leaned back against the door and nodded, the weight that tied to my ankles, making me unable to move, suddenly lifted.

Brad looked at me without moving, without giving me any ounce of emotions. Then, as if something snapped in his brain, he moved quickly to me. He slowly brought his hands to my face and as I looked up in his eyes finally. At that moment, I saw the emotion in them, the resolve, the pain I had caused but, most importantly, I saw the love.

He caressed my cheek and just stood in front of me, close to me. I gripped his shirt along his hips and remained focus on him.

He said to me, voice low but strong, “Do you have any idea what you mean to me?”

I couldn’t reply. I had a huge boulder stuck in my throat. Brad didn’t take my silence to mean anything. He just shook his head from side to side slowly, moved closer to me, and gently brushed his lips against mine. He trapped my bottom lip between his, then my top lip, then he caressed my tongue with his own.

We didn’t kiss very long, but enough for me to understand what’s at stake if I mess up. I whispered to him, “I’m not going to lose this chance, I promise.”

He rested his forehead against mine and swayed us both slightly from side to side. “I love you, Ayana.”

I finally found my voice. “I love you too, Bradley,” I said, softly. “More than I know how to express.”

He pulled back from me. “Go do what you have to do, baby, but be careful and promise me the moment you can’t do this, you promise to call me.” I started to answer, but he instantly gave me this hard look in his eyes. “I’m serious, Ayana, don’t bullshit me.”

“Okay, Brad. I promise you the moment I can’t do this, I will call you.”

Seemingly satisfied with my answer, he kissed me again, then backed away slowly, just enough for me to open the door and walk out. I walked slowly to my car trying to get my bearings. I looked back at him standing in the doorway and just said a silent prayer that this second chance
He
was giving me wouldn’t be the last time I would ever get to see Brad. But deep down in the pits of my stomach, doubt started to rise, threatening to suffocate me. If I’d listened to my past, my actions would result in me never seeing Brad again.

God, I pray that I’m able to break that cycle. I deserve to be happy, and I deserve to be happy with him.

I got in the car and reached for my phone in my bag on the car floor. I dialed Noelle’s number. “Be ready. The seed has been sown.”

Lock watched his brother stand there long after she drove away. Finally, he closed the door and just said aloud, “Do you know what she’s into?”

“No,” Lock stated.

Brad turned to face him, void of emotions. “Don’t you think it’s time that you do?”

He then left Lock in the dining room, still sitting next to a fiancée that he hadn’t acknowledged the whole time he was there.

Lock waited until he heard the door close before he addressed Nora.

He shook his head. “What happened between you and my brother?”

At first, he felt sorry for Nora, but after seeing the way his brother treated her when he walked in, he started to rethink this whole meddling thing. He still didn’t like Ayana for his kid brother, but he was beginning to like the idea of Brad being by himself forever even more. Something was off with Ayana, he knew, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

He knew that if Nora meant anything of substance to Brad, he wouldn’t have treated her the way he had. He would have acknowledged her the moment he walked inside the house. Brad is not a mean hearted person; that was Lock’s job. Brad was considerate of people’s feelings. He didn’t go out his way to hurt people, unlike Lock. Therefore, what Lock had just witnessed had shaken him.

Nora stood from the table.
Still put together considering,
Lock thought to himself as she said to him, “So you heard him. You have forty-eight hours to figure how you’re going to break those two up so he can come to his senses.”

Lock frowned and stood. “Are you fucking delusional? Did you not see what I just saw?”

Nora smoothed out the front of her jeans and shirt as if something was there. “Yes, of course I did.”

“And you think he’s just going to come back to you that easy?”

She nodded. “Yes, of course. Once you prove to him that she isn’t worth the dirt under his shoe, he will come to his senses and come home.” She then laughed. “Do you really think that was love? That his declaration of love was real?”

Lock scoffed and folded his arms. “And you think it wasn’t?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Please. What that was was simply confusion and lust. But I have a plan on reminding Braddock the difference, so make sure you do your part, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Brad suddenly emerged with his bag in his hands.

Lock instantly frowned. “What’s this shit?”

“I’m going to go and find me a hotel to stay for a few days. I need to get some shit together in my head.”

“Yeah, what shit would that be?” Lock asked him.

Brad looked at Nora, then at his brother. “I need to figure out how the hell my brother and ex-fiancée found each other and how she managed to find where you lived. Because the last time I checked, I never gave you her phone number. Nora doesn’t have a clue that anything exists in the world but herself to know your number, much less your address. So some conniving underhanded shit has happened behind my back, and just as I won’t tolerate that shit from Ayana, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that you going behind my back and getting in my life is acceptable.”

“Braddock!” Nora called out to him, just as he reached the front door.

Brad looked at her. “Nora, as I said to you on the phone and in the back room a while ago, I am done.
We
are done. Go home.”

Brad walked out of the house, and Nora moved to follow him, but Lock stopped her. When she turned to face him, he said, “I’m going to take a page from Ayana and tell you that you should let this one go for now. Let him calm down and start to think rationally, then you can talk to him. Otherwise, you will push him further and further away.”

Nora didn’t want to listen, but she also didn’t want to push him “further away,” as Lock mentioned. What she won’t admit aloud is the fear she was beginning to feel. The fear of losing to that ghetto bitch was evident and rearing its ugly head.

She did see the way Braddock was with Ayana, and she had to admit to herself that he never treated her that way in all the years they have been together. She had to do something or she would lose him, and losing wasn’t an option.

Lock watched Nora regress deep into her thoughts. This gave him the chance to see this woman for what she was.

She wasn’t going to take this lying down. What he didn’t know was how far she was willing go to keep Brad.

His brother was right. He was going to have to get to the bottom of this Ayana shit and quickly. Time was ticking and he had less than forty-eight hours to prevent something, or someone from possibly destroying his brother.

Nora suddenly headed for his front door, and without turning to him she said, “Time is ticking, Detective.”

Once the door closed, he sat back down. This shit was going to get ugly. He could feel it, but how ugly he knew would depend on him.

As he sat there, the silence and loneliness from this house started to crawl all over his body. He looked around and the urge to go upstairs and grab that bottle, which is not under his pillow as Ayana mentioned, but in his nightstand, was starting to get stronger. He needed to get out of there.

He stood quickly, grabbed his keys and phone and left. He took a calming breath once he got outside. He needed to focus. He didn’t want to admit that Ayana was right about him. He did try and swallow his sorrow in a bottle every night. He was a miserable son of a bitch and he didn’t make excuses for his behavior. In fact, he didn’t give a shit who didn’t like it. He lost a piece of him that he couldn’t get back no matter how hard he tried.

But he was still a cop, and despite his disposition, he was a good one. Once he fired up his pickup truck, he dialed a number from his contacts and waited as the ringing sounded through the cab of his truck.

On the forth ring he heard, “Ivey.”

“It’s me. Do you have eyes on her?” he asked.

“Not literally, but she’s in her apartment,” Scott Ivey replied quickly. “She just got here about twenty minutes ago.”

Lock sighed. “Okay, do you have anything else for me?”

Even though Lock told his brother he didn’t know what Ayana was up to, it didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to find out. He’d been keeping a tail on her for weeks now. He’d seen her go to a strip club and had pictures to prove it, just in case she tried to deny it. What he couldn’t get was pictures of her actually taking off her clothes or dancing. He couldn’t get a picture of her waitressing or bartending either. She would simply walk in a side entrance and disappear for hours.

The moment she emerged, she looked haggard and spent. She would quickly get into her car and drive to some Laundromat, despite her having the same services in her apartment complex. She would put a load in the wash, then after a few minutes would walk out and that’s when his team would lose her. They told him it was as if she was watching for tails and trying to lose them. At first, he thought she knew she had been tailed, until he attempted to follow her. He found where she went easily enough, but couldn’t find out who lived in the warehouse. However, he was banking on finding out what he needed tonight. She didn’t come to the warehouse every night but again, he hoped he would get lucky.

“No, sir. Sol and Derek got nowhere with the strip club, so I had them watch Ms. Peters and I went instead. I paid one of the girls for an hour and confirmed that Ms. Peters doesn’t dance in the club. She works in the basement.”

“What’s in the basement?” he asked.

“My source said she didn’t know.”

“And you believed her?” he added.

“Yes, sir. I paid five big ones for the information. She just didn’t know. She claimed the business that goes on down there is on a need-to-know basis and she isn’t in the know. I asked who would be and she told me she would find out and get back to me when she has something. That was about two days ago, and I haven’t heard back from her yet.”

Lock nodded and drove around the corner of the warehouse and parked. “Okay, listen, let me know the moment Ms. Peters leaves her apartment and make sure you give her enough space so she doesn’t see you.”

“I always do sir.”

“Uh-huh, and do me a favor; get Derek to check out someone for me and let me know everything he can.” Lock gave him the name and added, “When I say everything, I mean everything you got me. I want to know who she’s been talking to, where she’s been,
everything
. Understand?”

“Gotcha. Do you want eyes and ears on her too?”

Lock thought about it and decided to error on the side of caution. “Yes.”

“Okay, will do. What do I tell the brass?”

“Don’t tell the brass shit. Tell them to talk to me if you get any push back. I’ll think of something.”

“You got it.”

Scott hung up, and Lock sat and waited.

His mind drifted slowly to his brother and his so-called best friend. He never trusted the girl from the moment he met her. He always thought there was something conniving and sneaky in her eyes, like she had some hidden agenda or something. But his brother was smitten since day one. All he talked about was Ana this and Ana that. He was completely surprised that they never dated while they were in school.

Lock thought they would just remain friend, but when Brad came home from his second year of med school and told him that he and Ayana were dating, he almost had a coronary.

Lock had been a cop for a while before Brad came home that year, and he had a few run-ins with Terrence, Ayana’s brother. Terrence was a very bright kid and had potential to make something of himself if he wanted to, but he decided the life of the streets was where he belonged.

Lock arrested him a few times and in other instances, his name came up as a suspect for a number of crimes, from drugs, to weapons possessions, assault to even murder. Anytime Lock picked up Terrence, the person who would bail him out would be his sister, Ayana.

Lock didn’t want that kind of life and drama for his brother, but telling that shit to Brad was useless. Brad was stubborn as fuck, so there was no stopping him. Fate ended up intervening, however, when Brad asked Ayana to go with him back to California. He told her he would take care of her and at first Lock really thought she would go. Seeing them two together turned his stomach, but they confessed this was the real deal, so it was inevitable.

What shocked the shit out of him was when Ayana actually said no. She told him she didn’t want to be a distraction and she didn’t want to rely on him to take care of her. Lock of course thought it was bullshit. She didn’t want to leave her brother. That woman was loyal to only one person, her brother, which is why Lock needed to do everything he could to allow his brother to find someone worthy of him.

Two hours later, he received a text message indicating that Ayana was on the move. Thirty minutes later, he saw her enter in the warehouse. Tonight was the night he’d get to the bottom of this shit.

He texted Scott, saying that he’d handle it and to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. He also told him to arrest Ayana on sight if she emerged out of the warehouse without him.

Lock pulled the necessary items he needed from his glove compartment, checked his gun and extra magazine in his holster, before he climbed out of his car. He strolled slowly to the back entrance of the warehouse, with his service weapon up and ready, checking his surroundings, making sure it was clear. He then circled the building, keeping in the shadows before he moved to the front. He studied the lock a few times, already knowing just what he could use to break in, and in a matter of seconds, he was inside.

The bottom floor looked simply, like an abandoned warehouse. He saw an old-fashioned elevator, one that you had to pull down the door before you could operate it, and a few doorways leading to other sections of the building. Lock walked quietly around the space, making sure at least the bottom floor was clear. He did come across a few pad locked doors, but he realized he didn’t have the tools with him to open them, and as long as they were locked, they posed no threat. Unfortunately, his search confirmed that there were no steps either, so he moved to the old elevator he saw close to the entrance. He knew the elevator would probably be loud, announcing his arrival, but it seemed he didn’t have a choice.

He brushed dust on the four numbers displayed, looking for prints and found smudged fingerprints on the number four. He took a few deep breaths. His gun was still in the ready position, and he situated himself on the sidewall of the elevator to give himself a small shield from anything waiting for him beyond the elevator door.

He prepared himself for anything, but didn’t expect what greeted him once the elevator stopped. When he peered around the elevator door, he didn’t see a soul. He noticed the elevator stopped at someone’s residence as he quickly noticed living room furniture and a kitchen. He listened quietly for any movement but silence greeted him.

He brought his gun forward and began to move slowly from the elevator, and that’s when he heard the pump action of a twelve gauge behind him. He froze where he was and waited for whomever had the gun to move into his vision.

The moment he saw her, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Put the gun down on the floor and move away,” the woman demanded.