Poison Candy - Book 2: Behind Closed Doors Series Read online

  “How so?”

  “I only sleep with women.”

  Ms. V tossed her head back and laughed – an eerie type of laugh that made Anwar’s skin crawl. “Newcomers don’t get to pick and choose,” she said with an air of finality. “You joined this organization for what you could get out of it, did you not?”

  “Well, sort of,” Anwar answered. “But I –”

  “There are no ‘buts’ in here,” Ms. V interrupted. “Until you have earned a few stripes on your badge, you do as you are instructed. All aberrant behavior will be promptly dealt with.”

  Anwar sat up straight in his seat, his cornrows suddenly feeling a bit tight against his scalp. He was from a poor parish in Bliss Haven, but he wasn’t used to having his ego so violently affronted by a woman. His first reaction was to give in to his anger, but he remembered that he’d signed a deadly oath. The first tenet of the organization required all neophytes to submit and obey to all dictates given. However, Anwar never expected the rule to be so rigid where he couldn’t express his concerns.

  “Do you understand what I am saying to you?” Ms. V was asking.

  Anwar simply nodded. If he’d said anything at that moment it would have certainly gotten him into problems. Since there was nothing else to say, he stood in preparation to leave.

  “Please, sit,” Ms. V ordered. “I am not through with you.”

  Anwar tried to keep his glare unreadable, but he could feel the fire in his eyes. It had always been difficult for him to hide his emotions. Nevertheless, he obeyed Ms. V by easing his butt back into the seat.

  “Take off your clothes,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  Anwar’s confused expression made Ms. V chuckle. “I didn’t stammer, did I?”

  “You want me to take off everything?”

  Ms. V just relaxed in her chair and smiled, but the seduction in her eyes gave Anwar a clue of what was about to transpire. He began to warm up to the expectation and without another word, he obeyed. Ms. V subconsciously brushed her tongue over her bottom lip at the masculine form standing before her. Anwar was only nineteen years old, but came off as a man who’d had a long string of sexual experiences.

  “Move back a few feet,” she said. “Let me have a good look at you.”

  Anwar gladly did as he was told. He believed this session with Ms. V would be the highlight of his dreams.

  “Keep going back,” she prompted.

  And so Anwar did. Suddenly, he collided into something. It was mushy, hairy and gross. Anwar recoiled. He looked back and almost fainted. That fat beast – who had tried to rape him of his manhood a few days ago – was posed with a lewd grin on his face. The amount of fat that dropped from his belly almost made the beast look as if he were wearing a huge housecoat.

  “Hello, my friend,” came the deep Saudi Arabian accent. “We meet again.”

  Anwar swung his terrified gaze to Ms. V. She had deceived him.

  “Mr. Mustafa is one of the organization’s most treasured clients,” Ms. V said to Anwar, a level of seriousness now returning to her gaze. “It broke my heart when I discovered that his ‘needs’ weren’t being met. For the amount of money that you have received, Anwar, I was under the impression that you had followed through with my orders. Mr. Mustafa has brought a complaint against you. He made an attempt to touch you, but you insulted him and ran out of the room.”

  “This is what I wanted to talk to you about –”

  “Shut up!” Ms. V roared. She sprang to her feet and began moving in his direction. “What you fail to understand is that I don’t give two pence about your concerns. When you joined this organization you immediately became our property!”

  Anwar thought he was having a nightmare. There was no way in hell that he was performing this gig with that fat disgusting beast. Bishop Gregory Beaufort – the man who’d introduced him to the organization, did not inform Anwar of the corruption that he was getting into. Anwar assumed that this was his ticket to financial freedom, but his hopes were quickly being dashed to the floor. Anwar would have done anything to get out of the slums of St. Elmo’s Valley, but even with a determined mind there were boundaries he was not willing to cross. He stood between Ms. V and the Saudi Arabian, appearing as if he didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  “There’s a spare room to your left,” Ms. V said, keeping her strict gaze on Anwar. “Take Mr. Mustafa and give him what he paid for.”

  Anwar reached for his clothes instead.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Ms. V warned. “I won’t hesitate to make an example of you.”

  There has to be a way out of this, Anwar thought, as he looked at Mustafa with undiluted disgust. Unwillingly, he dragged his steps toward the room. When Mustafa saw that his desire was about to be fulfilled, he rubbed his hands together – like he was about to devour a scrumptious plate of food. Two minutes later, however, a terrified scream erupted from the room. Ms. V jumped to her feet to settle her curiosity. Anwar was on the floor, lying unconscious with a trail of blood across his forehead.

  Ms. V shot Mustafa a suspicious look. “What the hell did you do to him?”

  Mustafa raised his hands in fear. “I did not touch him; he ran into the wall and knocked himself out.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m telling you the truth…I did not put a finger on him.”

  “Leave my suite, Mr. Mustafa and let me handle this.”

  Mustafa ran his eyes over Anwar’s body in a lewd manner. “What about my services?”

  “Are you that sick that you don’t care that this fool could be dead? I have at least a dozen other men who could give you what you need. Please, leave and I will call you with a different arrangement.”

  Mustafa scratched his big belly in contemplation. Ever since he’d laid eyes on Anwar, he’d been smitten. He’d never seen a boy made so flawlessly.

  “I’m leaving for Arabia in the morning,” he told Ms. V. “But I will be back in a few weeks to resume my sessions with Anwar.”

  “That’s if the boy is still alive,” Ms. V spat. “I’m barely getting a pulse.”

  “Well,” Mustafa said in his thick accent. “You better make sure he stays alive, because you know exactly how influential I can be.”

  Mustafa rolled his obese figure out of the room in a huff. It was the first time Ms. V remembered ever hating a client as much as she did that evening.

  Chapter Four

  Bliss Haven Hospital

  It was the fourth day since Dana Beaufort had been brought into the hospital with a near fatal gunshot wound. The surgery had gone well, but parts of her prognosis still appeared precarious. When Chazz Brunswick threw himself on top of Dana to save her life from the onslaught of firing bullets, she fell backwards against the floor and suffered a head injury. She had awakened out of her temporary coma, but had trouble remembering the last several weeks of her life.

  Dana’s husband and daughters were in the room, standing around Dana’s bed, trying to get Dana to respond to their questions. She would acknowledge them briefly, only to quietly slip back into a catnap. The doctor entered the room, returning with the test results of Dana’s head injury. Asia, being the most proactive of Dana’s three daughters had already pulled the doctor aside the previous day and had gotten the gist of her mother’s condition. Even now, she was stepping ahead of her father, trying to take the lead.

  “How are we all doing this morning?” the doctor greeted.

  “My mother still can’t remember what happened to her,” Asia said. “I thought you said that this was temporary.”

  The doctor gave Asia a patient smile, but he shared his gaze with everyone in the room. “It seems as if Mrs. Beaufort is experiencing a bit of retrograde amnesia, which means that she won’t remember certain events before her injury. She has suffered a severe hit to the head.”

  Dallis stared at her mother and observed how her head had been bandaged all around. “Will she ever get her memory back?�
�� she asked the doctor. “It appears as if the last thing she remembers occurred about two months ago.”

  Gregory stiffened at Dallis’ words. He should be relieved to hear such news. Four days ago Chazz Brunswick had told Dana that her husband paid him to seduce her and set it up in a way to catch them in the act of infidelity. A deadly piece of information that was sure to put a permanent separation between Gregory and Dana. His hands shook nervously as Ms. V’s contemptuous words burst into his thoughts.

  “The question you should be focusing on, Gregory is what Chazz was doing with your wife? There are audio recordings of him reaching out to her. I’m sorry to break it to you, but your precious little Dana knows that you had set her up. You should be thankful that she is in no condition to confront you about it.”

  “You didn’t have to kill him! He was just a kid.”

  “Chazz was about to expose the identity of the organization. We couldn’t let him live.”

  “I could have talked to him…I was the one who introduced him to this organization, remember?”

  “And say what, Gregory? That boy was never a true member. Accept that Chazz turned out to be a renegade. We all have an obligation to protect the secrets of this organization. Don’t go attaching your emotions to your targets. Look at what you’ve done. You’ve paid a young boy to seduce your wife. How would you explain that?”

  Gregory suddenly snapped out of his thoughts and asked, “Is it possible that my wife will never regain the last two months of her memory?”

  “It is possible, but rarely occurs,” the doctor answered. “Most forms of memory loss resulting from head injuries are short-term. As the patient recovers, old memories are remembered first and then more recent memories, until full memory is restored.” The doctor turned his attention to Dallis. “So to answer your concern…there’s a good chance that all of your mother’s memory will be returned, which could take anywhere from a few days to a few months.”

  “What can we do at this point?” Asia asked. “I mean, is it okay to answer my mother’s questions if she asks about something she doesn’t remember?”

  The doctor smiled and said, “At this stage, I don’t see any harm in that. Certain words just might give your mother’s brain the jog it needs. More importantly, however, Mrs. Beaufort’s body has been severely traumatized by a gunshot wound. It could take quite a few weeks before she can resume her normal life, so allow her to rest when she needs to.”

  Gregory stiffened again. He was not ready to be confronted by Dana about what Chazz had told her, because it could unearth a book of secrets he had vowed not to tell. That meant he had better do all he could to keep Chazz’s name out of their conversation. Dana’s brain didn’t need to be jogged. Why would he willingly thrust himself into such a stupid position? He allowed his gaze to fall on Dana, who had now fallen back to sleep. She looked so fragile, so unlike what he was used to seeing. Surely if she remembers now it will immediately send her to her grave.

  He watched as his daughters leaned over the bed and kissed Dana on her cheek. Dallis hugged him goodbye, but Asia marched around him and acted as if he had a contagious disease. It was an obvious sign that she still believed that he had something to do with her boyfriend’s murder, despite him repeatedly telling her that he didn’t. She had gone pale with anger expressing her suspicions to him. Up to yesterday, she had vowed to never speak to him again until he admitted to the crime.

  Right now, Gregory couldn’t concern himself with Asia’s little tiffs. There were tougher problems for him to handle. With Chazz Brunswick being shot to death – who was found lying on top of his wife in her art gallery, Gregory expected Richard to show up at his front door at any time. It was an opening into his private life that Gregory did not welcome. The public would want to know what a young, handsome man like Chazz was doing at his wife’s place of business. The same thing the investigators would want to know. And should he reveal that Chazz and his wife had been having an affair and that he was the one who’d set them up? God forbid.

  Gregory sat in a chair that was in front of Dana’s bed. He did not feel like a bishop over one of the most prestigious churches in the Caribbean. Instead, he felt his burgeoning sins reaching up to his throat, choking what was left of his life. He was in too deep to even try to get out of this mess. When he’d scribbled his signature in Ms. V’s ‘book of records’, he unknowingly signed his soul over to the devil. Now there was no way to make amends without him or his family being killed by the organization. He knew too much. A member who’d made it to one of the top dimensions and who had been trusted with one of the world’s biggest secrets, was not going to walk away unscathed.

  Feeling overwhelmed, Gregory dropped his head toward his knees. But soon felt his cell phone vibrating against his waist. He ignored it, as he’d been doing since he’d walked into Dana’s room. It was Detective Richard Shelby trying to reach him, but Gregory wasn’t ready to talk to him. They played dominoes together, but that didn’t mean that Richard would show him any leniency. Richard had a reputation of being unpredictable. Depending on how he answered Richard’s questions, Gregory knew he could end up becoming one of Richard’s top persons of interest.

  Gregory sighed. Of course, he could depend on the organization’s unscrupulous methods to get him out of this dilemma, but that would mean he would have to give up more of his control. The more favors the organization did for him the deeper they sank their claws into him. He would have to find a way to deal with this on his own. He would have continued going along with the organization’s agenda without rebelling, but the minute they killed Chazz and had almost taken out the mother of his children, his loyalty was split right down the center.

  He reached up and took Dana’s limp hand into his, caressing it with gentle strokes. From now on, it would be a fight against anything the organization wanted him to do. He was so relieved that he hadn’t introduced Izaiah to Ms. V. Maybe he never would, because it was quite clear to Gregory that the organization destroyed lives rather than made them better.

  “Gregory, you are holding my hand.”

  Gregory looked up and caught Dana staring at him with pure shock. He knew at that instant he’d done something he shouldn’t have done. For three years he hadn’t made love to Dana, much less held her hand. They argued so much until the house shook with their words. He could understand why Dana would be in shock. His only other concern was had she suddenly remembered what Chazz Brunswick told her? But by the way she was continuing to stare at him, he got a sick feeling in his stomach that she probably had.

  Chapter Five

  Izaiah pulled the Jeep Wrangler under the portico of the hospital. Asia quickly climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. She appeared hot and bothered. Being the sensitive man that he was, Izaiah decided to let Asia calm down a bit before attempting to pull her into a conversation. He simply could not ignore the pain she was going through. Her boyfriend had recently been murdered in front of her and her mother had scarcely survived a gunshot wound – two blows – that was enough to leave anyone comatose.

  Every waking moment Izaiah found himself wanting to be there for Asia. Up ‘til four o’clock this morning, he’d been thinking nonstop about her and about how he could put a smile back on her face. She’d been walking about the estate with a bewildered expression, completely tuned out to the rest of the world. Izaiah realized he could not depend solely on his cleric training to fix this. Sometimes, hurting people just needed a listening ear and not a mini sermon on how to be courageous.

  However, Asia had shut him out and refused to talk to him about her pain. She would stroll past him without making eye contact. Since her boyfriend, Jorge had been murdered she had not sat at the dining table for breakfast or even ventured on the veranda to rescue him from the Alsatians. Izaiah understood that Asia needed her space and that her behavior could be defined as normal, but he could not help feeling as if his hands were tied.

  “It was not enough for my father to take my
car away from me,” Asia suddenly blurted out as they sat at a traffic light. “But he had to ruin my morning by showing up at the hospital. I don’t understand why he isn’t in prison for Jorge’s murder.” She paused and let out a deep sigh. “By the way, you don’t have to worry about me bothering you for too much longer. With the money that I have saved, I’ll just buy me a used car.”

  “Asia, it is not a bother –”

  “Of course it is; you are just too nice to say so.” She cut her eyes away from Izaiah and switched back to the angry thoughts of her father. “The nerve of him to walk around as if he hadn’t anything to do with Jorge’s death…I ought to call Detective Shelby and find out why he hasn’t taken action against the one suspect who could solve this case. I’ve had it up to here with the things my father does and what he is allowed to get away with.”

  “I don’t like seeing you this upset,” Izaiah told her. “Why don’t we go and get something to eat so that you can take your mind off of what’s going on around you?”

  “Are you serious? I can’t sit down and eat with you! How could you even suggest something like that when Jorge has just been murdered?”

  Those words sliced through Izaiah’s heart like a scalpel. It was not just Asia’s tone and what she’d said. It was what she didn’t say. Was he frustrating her to the point that she couldn’t have a simple lunch with him? He was only looking out for her best interest. He should have taken note when she hinted a few minutes ago that she didn’t want to spend any more time with him. Instead, he was wasting his time trying to get Asia to trust him. Not wanting to add any more bruising to his ego, Izaiah decided to keep his mouth shut.

  About fifteen minutes later, Izaiah rolled the jeep into the Beaufort’s driveway. He was always mesmerized by the lush, tropical beauty of the property. However, this afternoon he barely noticed it. He was too overcome with thoughts of the pain caused by Asia’s treatment of him. Six weeks ago, Gregory had picked him up from the Bliss Haven airport to fill the youth minister’s position at St. Donovan’s Chapel – a position he’d applied for from an online database in the United States.