When Shawn got downstairs, Abrielle was in the exact same place and position she had been the night before. He shook his head. Her ass had to hurt.
He could tell she hadn't slept by her baggy eyes, red and puffy from all the crying. She needed to stop. It was doing her no good to keep crying.
"You can see your pops this week. But before that, we going to sign a marriage contract."
"Why do you want to marry me?" she asked in a hoarse voice.
"You'll serve a purpose, sugar. Don't worry about it."
She sat there numbly, not moving a muscle. Shawn went to the bathroom and got cleaned up, coming out of the room in jeans and a t-shirt.
"Go take a shower. Brush your teeth. That's an order," he told her, giving her a brand new panty and bra set with a pair of jeans and a v-neck.
She stared at him blankly, and he raised a brow. "Do you need help getting into the shower, or is you gon do what I told you?"
Frowning, Abrielle moved to the bathroom, dragging her feet. She entered the windowless room and flicked on the bright light, revealing a shower stall and his and hers sinks.
On the side obviously belonging to her, there was a toothbrush, a tube of Crest toothpaste, a bottle of Crest mouthwash, a comb, a brush, scrunchies, a bottle of lotion, and a bottle of body wash lying atop a neatly folded towel and wash rag.
She locked the door and began to slowly undress, nervous, afraid, and anxious. She listened out, and she couldn't hear a single sound.
Hoping Shawn had left the loft, she stepped into the shower, feeling its soothing effect on her aching muscles as it pulsed against her flesh.
More tears came down her face as she feared the unknown. Who knew what that man had planned for her?
She threw water on her face, trying to collect herself. She was going to get some answers today. She was determined that she would.
Abrielle took her precious time in the shower after washing her skin, just enjoying the feel of the water on her flesh. But of course, she did have to get out. She lotioned her body at a snail's pace, putting lotion on every inch of her body.
She spent two hours in the bathroom before she left it and saw Shawn watching television. He looked to have been there the entire time as he ate pizza.
"Eat," he ordered, not even sparing her a bored glance.
She looked at the slice of meat lover's pizza and the cup of Sprite as if they were foreign to her. Bri loved eating. But she didn't have an appetite.
Instead of taking the food, she went and sat down.
"Please don't make me force feed you, Abrielle. I'm trying to be nice to you. Do you think I'd be this nice if I wanted to harm you? Eat."
Afraid that he might really hold her down to feed her, she got up and ate slowly. He watched her nibbling at the food and took a deep breath. She was going to present a challenge to his patience.
When she had eaten half the slice of pizza— he noticed she hadn't touched the Sprite, probably worried he'd drug her— he gave her a chance to follow him of her own free will, untied. But then she tried to run away, and that forced him to hold her wrist with just enough pressure that if she pulled away, it would hurt her.
"Don't make me act ugly, baby. Please do not make me have to tie you up. You don't want me pissed off, Abrielle. Spare yourself the trauma and behave like a good girl."
She swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat would not abandon her as she held back tears, following him through aisles of packages stacked as high as the eye could see and rows of boxes. She couldn't tell exactly what the warehouse was supposed to house. She saw a little of everything— drugs, money, prostitutes. Then she saw things that put her in the mind of Sam's Club or Costco's with a lot of packaged food and some freezers with food.
Confusion didn't explain it. She had no idea what this building was supposed to be. And she wasn't about to ask either. She didn't want to talk to this man. She was praying for some great escape.
Shawn led her to a nearby building where there was a man waiting for them. "Abrielle, the Honorable Judge Wilkons. He's going to marry us," Shawn said, as if that was the most natural string of words to ever leave his mouth.
The judge looked at the two and asked Abrielle if she was there of her own free will. Shawn let her answer for herself so as not to incriminate himself. And she lied that she was, afraid blood would be shed if she admitted that no, she wasn't. She had been kidnapped and coerced into the union.
The marriage was nothing more than a legality and all Shawn required of her was to sign the license. No ceremony, no kiss. Now he didn't have to smuggle her into Colombia.
Shawn was not very interested in having a companion. He did not take Abrielle so that he could have someone to play pattycake with. He didn't take her to have her company. He took her because her father owed him 500k, and she would come in handy in gaining back what he had lost. Had she not been useful, her father would have been a dead man. When she had earned him back what was lost, he might return her little ass. Maybe.
It didn't hurt his case that Abrielle was pretty. He would take her wherever he went. So while men were busy watching her, he would talk them into and out of all types of shit. He wasn't stupid enough to kidnap and marry someone that would be of no use to him. And he wasn't going to marry a bitch because she was something to look at. He ain't have to single her out to look at of all the women he could choose.
She wasn't the only pretty girl in the world. If he simply wanted eye candy around, he had a plethora of bad bitches surrounding the immediate area. His marriage to Bri was a pure business move.
"Can I see my daddy today?" she asked as he closed the elevator.
He didn't understand why she kept asking him the same question over and over. That shit was getting tiresome.
"No," he said with a straight face.
"When can I see him?"
"When I say you can. Quit bugging me before I change my mind."
She felt her lip tremble as he let her off the lift and they entered the loft. Depression was an embedding state. It clawed its way through the body and mind, icing everything in her chest until she felt cold and breathless as if she were drowning in the ocean.
All Abrielle did was cry. And it was beginning to annoy Shawn. But instead of flipping, he sat there, lighting up to calm his bad nerves. She could cry all day. That was gon be her headache. He simply took what was his. Her job would be easy. All she had to do was fucking translate. He didn't put her on the track, make her deal drugs, nothing but translate.
He sat in an armchair and watched her sitting cross-legged in the bed with her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.
"You won't have a voice if you keep that up," he warned her. She ignored him and kept crying.
"I want to go home."
"Oh, you poor, sweet child," he taunted in a cooing voice. He put the blunt down, got up, sat on the bed, and exhaled. "You are home. And unless your pops find a way to repay me, you sticking with me. You actually got some use."
"What?" she whispered, afraid he would rape her after all.
"You speak Spanish. I need a translator," he said simply, almost relieving her of the fear of sexual assault. "And we going to Colombia. Maybe your li'l ass will chill the fuck out."
Her eyes widened at the mention of Colombia. She had never strayed too far from the city, never mind the US. She knew it. This man was completely and utterly fucking insane.
"You'll enjoy it, ma. A li'l vacation. I'll let you go to the beach."
"Why can't you hire a translator?"
"Because I got a Puerto Rican wife. And I'm not paying no one to do what I can use you for. You don't have to like what situation you in. But you can blame it on your father. I didn't marry you for my health. I had a reason for that. And you gon be my translator."
"What if I don't want to?"
Shawn smiled and went back to his blunt. "Don't you love your father? Because I'm being real gentle and sweet to you. But if I take him, you think he gon get this treatment?"
Abrielle was silent and wiped her eyes. But it was useless. She broke right back into sobs.
Shawn got annoyed with that crying shit, exhaled his blunt, and went to lay her down. Her eyes widened in fear as he pulled her pants down and slid her panties to the side.
"Chill out," he ordered as she began to struggle.
"No!"
She fought with him until he held her wrists together and laid her back. "Ain't nobody gotta rape you, Bri. It's too much pussy floating around to fight with you just to get a nut. Chill the fuck out."
She still tried to struggle with him until his warm tongue met her flesh. Then she relaxed and her body went numb as his mouth worked expertly against her virgin flesh.
"Oooh," she moaned.
Shawn released her hands, and she immediately had them on his head. He lifted her up and pulled the underwear off, lifting her legs over his shoulder, going in, making her call out.
She was forgetting that she was supposed to be mourning her captivity and the metaphorical death of her loved ones.
His tongue entered her wetness, and her juices began to coat his thick lips as he held her by the waist.
She received her very first orgasm, and he got up, licking his lips like he had just finished a delicious meal and picked up his blunt, relighting it, and leaving her alone with, "Cut that crying shit the fuck out," in her wake as he stepped on the elevator.
Abrielle laid there, confused asking herself, what the hell just happened?
She couldn't be sure that it had happened at all. But she put her hand there, and it was sticky from the explosion. It happened.
Getting up, letting out a growl of frustration, she went to the bathroom and got cleaned up.
She sat on the bed, wondering what that was about. As far as she could tell, he had only married her for business and legal purposes. She was still not excited to be going out of the country with this man. But she didn't want him to kill her father.
Shawn made his way out of the building, getting in his truck and driving around to clear his mind. He was usually not this nice to anyone. He didn't know what had made him so weak with her. It wasn't her looks. Sure, she was pretty. But she wasn't stacked, and she was young.
He saw something in her. An innocence so rare to the world these days. He knew she was a virgin before she had even said it. Her aura... Maybe that was why he was giving her so much leeway. Any other bitch would have been given a reason to cry like the world was ending. And he didn't even have it in him to do that.
She reminded him of what his sister was. Maybe that was why. Because he lived with her haunting memory, and this girl gave him a piece of that. What Shayla used to be.
When Shawn was young, his parents were abusive. His father used to beat him senseless. His mother— addicted to crack— sold him to countless people in her pursuit of a high. Shawn always refused to let any man stick his dick in his ass by the time he was old enough to fend for himself. But it didn't stop the times he'd been raped by his own mother and women when he was young so his mother could get that high or get an orgasm. His mom... He had hated her so much.
His older sister, though... She had nearly died trying to protect him from their parents. From their father's fists, offering herself in place of her little brother. She would be bruised and bloodied. She'd had a child by one of the men his mom gave Shawn to, but she took his place. That little boy was possibly the only other living person Shawn gave half a fuck for.
Shawn had been eleven when she tried to interfere with a man having his way with the little boy. And the man raped her brutally, strangling her to near death as he had his climax. Her son had been five at the time. His sister never fully recovered from the trauma and had checked herself in and out of the mental hospital. Shawn went to see her nearly everyday, sitting with her and holding her hand, telling her how great her son was doing. He wished the boy would visit his mother. But he understood how badly that hurt.
His nephew was sixteen now, and Shawn had taken responsibility for the young boy having a place to lay his head, clothes on his ass, and food in his stomach. But he and the teen were like best friends. Evan was the only living person to make Shawn crack a smile.
Shawn had been made hard by his young life. He never wanted to be taken advantage of ever again in his life when his mother sold him to a contract killer. The young boy had become his mentee, following wherever Boss went.
In a way, he felt the man had saved him. Thanks to him, Shawn knew a million and two ways to kill a way, weapons or not. And he had killed his parents both slowly and painfully. And each murder granted him some gratification. He'd tracked down every man that had ever touched his sister, and the police had a hard ass time trying to come up with all twenty-four of the bodies, including his parents and the man who'd fathered Evan.
When he was eighteen, Shawn learned that he was an heir. That was why his own father would beat him. His paternal grandfather had left him an estate worth over a billion dollars, including land, houses, cars, jewelry, and art. But by then, Shawn had already been deep into what he was doing, and he wasn't stopping. He just started his own ghetto little bank.
Hence Raphael coming to him. Shawn had no idea why a man living in a well-off suburb at the age of fifty-five with two grown and college-educated sons had come to him. The man was close to retirement, but he was a fiscally irresponsible old man. Honestly, Shawn didn't understand.
He had no sympathy for other people's pain. He killed without second thoughts. When bitches cried, he gave them reasons.
Shawn went to kick it with Evan. When his nephew opened the door, he raised a brow. "Nigga, you smell like pussy!"
"What would yo lul young ass know about that? Stay in school, li'l nigga. These bitches ain't going nowhere, and they like smart niggas. Be smart."
Evan rolled his eyes and sat on the sofa to roll up. "Whose pussy you been eating before I pass you this blunt, foo?" Evan asked his uncle.
"Don't worry about it. I got my own."
Shawn pulled out a fresh blunt and sat back in his seat, lighting up.
"So for real, Lokie. Who is she?" Evan wondered, using his uncle's nickname. He'd earned the nickname for keeping everything low key.
Shawn just chuckled and shook his head. "Mind ya biz, lul boy."
Evan smacked his lips. "Bitch must be ugly. Tha's why you'ont wonna talk about her."
Shawn had begun to assert his sexual dominance over women. He'd never fuck without consent, but he always wanted the dominance, and he never let a girl ride him in any way. He'd gotten enough of that. And if a woman was atop him, it would bring back the trauma.
"You ain't go know her if I tell you who she is. Aye, I gotta roll to Colombia in a few days. Go see my sister, Evan. I'm not asking you no more. I know you'ont wonna see her like that. I'ont like seeing her like that eiva. But she is yo moms."
Evan said nothing. He just reclined and exhaled smoke, not wanting to hear what his uncle was saying.
"What you trynna do for ya birthday?"
"I'm not trynna do shit. I'm just gon have dinner wit some friends."
Shawn nodded. He would miss his nephew's birthday. But he would be seventeen. He'd live.
While Shawn sat there blowing smoke, he called the landline in the loft that he was smart enough to make only accept incoming calls from him and not send outgoing calls.
He could tell Abrielle was surprised by her voice when she answered. He imagined she'd jumped out of her skin when she heard it ring.
"You better be eating while I'm gone. Gon fuck around and starve yoself to death."
"Fuck you. Maybe I want to starve to death," she spit. He chuckled.
"Look atchu trynna grow a pair na I'm not in front of you. Eat something. And sleep in that bed. I ain't buy that shit for decoration. You making ya situation worse than it need to be, darling."
"When can I see my daddy?"
"When I say you can. Bye."