A Test of Love: Interracial Erotic Romance (Chasing Love) (31 page)

“Am I?” All of his laughter stopped. He cleared his throat and adjusted his collar. “I’m just a bit unsteady after I’ve solved a situation.”

“What situation did you solve?” she asked.

He pierced her with his gaze. “Yours. Dawn will no longer be a problem for you.”

That was the moment, Jasmine took a step back. “Dawn? Um. . .did we know for sure that she was the one behind all of it?”

“We think so,” Troy said. “I figure Wendy and Dawn got together—”

“But do we know for sure?” Jasmine asked.

“Sis, we think, but—”

“It doesn’t matter.” Benny shut down Troy’s talking and captured all of our attention. “They’ll all die today.”

Jasmine raised her eyebrows. “So. . .okay. No, Benny. That. . .is just wrong. I can’t let you do that.”

“What did you think would happen?” Benny reached his hand out and touched her chin. Everything inside of me longed to knock his hand away. I didn’t like him so close to her. I could care less if he loved her or that he was her father. All I saw was an insane murderer next to my woman.

“I didn’t think you would kill them all,” she mumbled.

“I do my best to not hide things from you, but let’s make this clear today. I want you safe,” Benny said.

“I’m safe,” she countered.

“Not until they’re all gone.”

“You can’t just kill them if ’they didn’t have anything to do with the murders.”

Benny’s voice carried a sharpened edge. “I can when my daughter is shot.”

“I just became your daughter weeks ago, so let’s not go all crazy with seeking revenge for me. This stops now, Benny.”

“Correction, little one.” Benny wagged his finger. “You’ve been my daughter since the day you were born. I may not have publicly been there, but I was always there when it mattered the most. Right now you need me because you’ve managed to get yourself in this situation with this. . .man.”

“We’re getting off track. We have to focus.” Jasmine stared at her feet as if she couldn’t even look at him. “You already killed Dawn?”

“Yes.”

Jasmine sighed. “Okay. Did you do this in a humane way?”

“Of course, Jasmine. I’m no monster.”

Troy coughed and then cleared his throat. It had to be a signal that these twins knew because as soon as Jasmine noticed Troy cough, she started to shake and placed her shivering fingers behind her back. “Benny, I don’t want you to kill anymore. Please let Chase and Troy handle this.”

“I’m not a pit bull.” Benny smiled when he looked at Jasmine.

Troy didn’t even try to pretend civility. He put his sister behind him and got between both Benny and her.

“Stop, Troy. I’m fine.” Jasmine sucked her teeth and walked around him. “Benny, this can’t go on. No more solving this situation. We’ve got it.”

“I’m not a bulldog or cocker spaniel or even a greyhound,” Benny declared.

“Okay. Why is that relevant to now?” Jasmine asked.

“Because you’re talking to me as if I’m a dog. I don’t eat puppy chow or slop out of a bowl placed in the kitchen. I am a man. I eat like one and walk like one. I provide for what’s mine and I protect them. So when you say to me, Benny, this can’t go on, I’m forced to correct you, for I am no dog. I do not listen to orders, nor do I fetch and run or fucking be pulled by a leash, little girl.”

“That’s not the point,” Jasmine countered. “You don’t get to kill—”

“Do you think I’m here because you or Chase allowed it?” Benny chuckled. “Do you think I stand in this hallway at the mercy of your spoiled, insignificant little boyfriend? I. Am. No. Dog!”

Quiet replaced my breathing. Horrid fear-filled silence traveled all around us.

Benny cleared his throat. “Wendy is next, then Lucy. That’s my plan. We don’t deviate. We don’t bother me. In fact, we stay out of my way.”

“I don’t think Lucy did anything,” Troy said. “But I’m sure Wendy actively killed the three women and shot Jazz. You’re no dog, man, but you got some ethics to your kills, right?”

“Doesn’t matter to me if Lucy didn’t do it. She’s dead by association.” Benny shrugged. “Anything to keep my little girl safe.”

“Really? I doubt that.” Jasmine still shook, but a scowl showed on her face. “I’m starting to think you’re just happy to have a reason to kill one of Chase’s ex-girlfriends on his property.”

“You’re starting to have a mouth like your sister,” Benny said.

“Well, I am no dog either.”

Benny frowned. “No. You’re daddy’s girl.”

Coming from any other father, it would’ve been a hopeful moment. No one said anything in the hallway. Everyone seemed jittery and on edge.

“Killing Lucy is not about my safety,” Jasmine said. “I think you just want to do it.”

“Maybe.”

She opened her mouth in shock. “Please. . .let Chase and me handle this.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jasmine. This time I do it my way.” He lifted his wrist and checked his watch. “I have a few things to check on in the basement. I’ll be back up for my next meeting with Chase’s little women. I’d suggest that you all go downstairs or maybe outside. Troy, make sure your sister is out of the house. Both of them, in fact.”

Troy grimaced. “Okay. I already asked Viv to leave.”

“Good. I don’t want her to hear this.” He went down the stairs. “She already hates me, but. . .”

He never finished. Instead, he returned to whistling and rounded the corner when he reached the bottom steps.

Jasmine gasped. “He fucking killed Dawn?” Her chest lifted and fell like she’d been working out. “He killed her? Up here? When? How? Oh, my God. And he’s fucking whistling like a maniac.”

“Jazz, she looked like hamburger—”

I held my hand up. “Enough, Troy. Your sister doesn’t need the details.”

“Naw, man. Benny is killing in the name of Jazz’s safety. So she needs to know. Jazz can’t close her eyes to this shit,” Troy said. “When Benny comes back up here, Wendy will probably look even worse than Dawn because he won’t have the time to knock her out before he begins crushing and slicing her up like he did Dawn.”

Jasmine covered her mouth. “He. . .sliced?”

“He did a lot of nasty shit to Dawn, and that’s just from what I saw. I don’t even want to think about what his process is,” Troy said.

“We can’t. . .” Jasmine shook her head. “Look. We can’t let him do anything else.”

“What are you saying, Jazz?” Troy rubbed his face. He’d been doing it a lot in the hallway as if he couldn’t stop sweating or something.

“I don’t know.”

“Naw, man. Fuck that ‘I don’t know’ shit.” He lowered his voice. “That motherfucker played with Dawn’s body until she looked like hamburger meat.”

“Enough with the details, Troy.” My voice might have been a bit higher than intended, but I couldn’t take it anymore. “We don’t want Benny to kill Lucy. We agree?”

“Yes,” Jasmine said. “If Lucy didn’t have anything to do with me getting shot, then I’m fine.”

“Cool. I think she’s innocent. Lucy is already off with Viv so you know I’m cool with it,” Troy said.

Unease crept up my spine. “Now what about Wendy?”

“I don’t know, man. Wendy wasn’t an angel.”

“But does that mean Benny should make her into hamburger meat?” Jasmine asked. “I don’t think so. I just couldn’t live with myself. What do you want to do, Chase?”

I dug my hands into my pockets and tapped my leg over and over. “I can’t let Wendy be mutilated in tortured like that, if only because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Jasmine, what do you think?”

“We can call the cops,” she offered.

“No way.” Troy waved her comment away. “We’re all in this shit too deep. Too many questions, answers, and bloody coincidences. Plus, it’s foreign cops.”

I nodded. “Troy is right, and there’s too much at stake to deliver her over. Who knows what else she may have plotted? Plus, the cops might get wind of Dawn’s murder. She still has family here, maybe even distant relatives on the police force. Not a good idea.”

“I don’t know about this.” Jasmine bit her lip. “We can’t just deliver justice because we think it’s the way.”

“We’ve done it before,” Troy argued. That pedophile Troy killed for Jasmine came to my mind.

“Yes,” Jasmine said. “But that was different.”

“How?” Troy asked.

“He was right there ready to rape me.”

“And she’s right there in the room, probably wondering how she’ll kill you.”

“We don’t know that, Troy.”

They went back and forth a little bit more. The whole time I kept watch of the time. Benny would be back soon. He’d rush up and start his torture on Wendy. Did she deserve death? Probably. I was pretty sure she had had a hand in three people’s murders. But had she earned Benny’s sort of death?

No. And this is my problem to solve, anyway.

“Troy, do you have that gun I gave you?” I asked.

Troy bent down, lifted up his jeans, and pulled the gun out of a holster wrapped around his ankle. “Yeah. What about it?”

“Give it to me, please.” I held my hand out. He placed it on my palm. The cold metal weighed heavy. I gripped it, and the steel seemed to melt into my hold.

“What are you doing?” Jasmine reached for it.

I moved my hand away. “Do you remember what I told you in Rome?”

“Yes.” The word was more a sad whisper than the usual confidence Jasmine oozed.

“I really would kill for you.”

“But you don’t—”

“I do.” I looked up at Troy. “Make sure your sister gets out of here. I don’t care if you have to drag her down kicking and screaming.”

“What the—” Jasmine’s words got interrupted when Troy yanked her up by both hands and slung her over his shoulder.

“No.” she whispered. “Wait. . .stop. . .I’m trying. . .”

She probably attempted to keep her voice down enough to not alarm Wendy in her room or Benny downstairs. Over and over she beat his back, not hard enough for the sound to be heard, but enough for him to grunt as he rushed them downstairs.

I ran my thumb along the gun’s barrel, remembering the first day I spotted Jasmine long ago. Those eyes had captivated me. Her whole body had trapped me, but everything else enslaved me until the point that this gun in my hand was only a small step to truly having Jasmine all to myself.

Goodbye, Wendy.

Chapter 26

WENDY

What do you wear to your death? Nothing if you’re killed by the one you love. There’s no need.

I sat in front of my window, naked. No clothes were necessary. Chase had seen it all before, and Chase would be the one to do it. He loved me too much.

I heard them, you know? I heard them in the hallway, talking and whispering. That bitch, Jasmine, came out too. She was poison. Don’t you think? All poison. Nasty. Vile. Putrid fucking poison. She killed the root of the tree. We were a foundation. We grew and thrived, and she damaged the roots with her nastiness.

I stared at my reflection in the window’s glass. “Have I ever told you that story? We talk less and less these days.”

Dawn was dead.

You and I knew it right when it was happening. Didn’t we?

The reason I went out into the hallway was because I caught a muffled scream and maybe even something breaking or slamming from Dawn’s room.
I miss you already, but we’ll see each other again.
Our rooms were right next to each other’s. I rushed out of bed to check on her. We had to be on our feet, never let anyone catch on to what we’d been planning.

Just get close enough to kill Jasmine. That was it. Nothing else mattered. They would figure it was Lucy. I would play drunk. Dawn would come up with the next steps.

It had been so hard to convince Lucy to come.
Clueless Lucy.
She’d enjoyed staying to herself in that stupid, run-down cabin. Dawn made her feel guilty, declared that we were all united, and then threw the past in her face. I’d seen Dawn do it a lot. She always brought up the fact that Chase and she had saved Lucy from being raped by her dad. Lucy never could forget it.

And neither could I. Chase had saved the day. My beautiful man had killed to preserve Lucy’s soul, just like I’d done many times before. . .many moments long before I knew them all. We were the same, he and I.

Dawn knew about my bloody past. I never understood why she overlooked it all, but she did, and I loved her for it. My heart broke now as I imagined her face when we’d made love this morning. The little bit of my heart that was left, cracked as I stared out of the window.

Have I ever told you about Dawn? She was so beautiful, but I think her screams from next door. . .those were the most beautiful of all.

I had to get in the closet and press my ear to the wall to really hear those muffled wails.

What? Why didn’t I rush into Dawn’s room to save her? No. This was bigger than us. We needed Chase back, you see?

Footsteps sounded outside of my door.
Chase.
My nipples tingled. Desire unfolded within my core.

Today, we’re reunited. If not through love, then by blood. What a powerful liquid, blood was. Jesus’s blood could wash all filth from the world with just one drop. When I was a kid and I did something bad, my father would cut me. Small ones, so no one could see, but he would slice nonetheless. Why? To show me the power of blood, I think. Stop. I don’t want to talk about him.

The doorknob turned. All this time, I’d been sitting in my room, waiting for the doorknob to turn. There was nowhere else to run. The windows had been locked and nailed in from the outside. I couldn’t even open them a little. Troy always remained in the hallway as if the moment I ran out, he would chase me.

No. I die, maybe. Unless you will help me? Will you? I’ve always been there for you, right?

My Chase walked in. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, and he somehow loved me. I could never forget that. He loved me. A gun rested in his hand. He closed the door behind him. His hair appeared disheveled. His shirt haphazardly buttoned. He’d been fucking that whore while Dawn died in the other room. Had he heard Dawn’s muffled screams too? Was that why he turned on the music? No doubt his dick might have gotten harder because of Dawn’s death.