I tried to shake my head no, but as angry as Nico was, he had to have known what went down. He flung me halfway across the living room floor.
I was in such pain. I reached for my throat, gasping and coughing, desperately trying to get some air into my lungs.
Nico ran up to me and started kicking and stomping me, and all I could do was scream, since there was no way I was going to physically force him to stop beating me.
Just then the building’s concierge came running into the apartment to see what was going on. He let himself in with the master key.
Nico looked up and saw our concierge, Harry, towering over him. “Everything is a’ight!” Nico yelled to him.
“Help me,” I said. I was certain that Nico was about to kill me.
Harry pushed him away from me, telling Nico to calm down and to just try to relax, and that nothing was worth getting locked up over.
Nico’s chest was visibly rising and falling. Then he spat in my face, and it landed straight in my eye.
“Nico, come outside with me for a moment,” Harry said to Nico, trying to get him to leave the apartment. “The neighbors will call the police if this continues. I told them I could handle it. My job is on the line if you don’t stop this insanity.”
Harry was a reasonable man. He’d worked as a concierge for nearly twenty years and sent his only son to an Ivy League school on tips alone. He knew how to turn a blind eye for the rich. And although he knew he should have called the cops on Nico for hitting his woman, the tip for not calling the cops is what his bottom line was.
“So you’re siding with that whore?” I wiped Nico’s spit from my face. “You won’t even look at what I printed out, because you’re in denial!” I said, grimacing in pain.
“Give me one minute. Just step outside for one minute,” Nico said to Harry. “You got my word, I ain’t gonna touch her again.”
Harry seemed torn but he gave in to Nico’s request and stepped out of the apartment, he left the front door open.
Nico retrieved his cell phone from the living room floor. It must have fallen to the ground when he was kicking me. After scrolling through the phone, he pressed a button and showed the phone to me. Instantly I recognized myself in the hotel room getting fucked by Kelvin.
“You see this shit?” Nico asked me.
“Nico, give me the phone!” I tried to grab it out of his hands, but he pushed me off and held me at bay while I tried to take it from him.
As we tussled, I could no longer see the images of Kelvin fucking me, but I could hear everything I had said totally out of character for me, and my words made me cringe from embarrassment.
“Fuck me harder, you black muthafucka! . . . Pull my hair and fuck me deeper! . . . You like this wet pussy? . . . Smack my ass!”
“Now you gonna tell me that ain’t you?” Nico asked me.
“Nico! Baby, you don’t understand!” I said, tears streaming down my eyes.
“What is there to fuckin’ understand? Tell me right now why I shouldn’t murder you behind this stunt?” Nico hollered at me.
I went up to Nico and tried to hug him, but he shoved me across the room, sending me crashing into a picture that was hanging on the wall. The picture fell to the floor and the glass frame shattered.
Harry came back in the apartment to see what was up.
Nico told him, “Yo, she’s leaving! Get her the fuck up outta here right now! Otherwise, I’m getting locked up for murder tonight.”
“Nico, I’m not leaving until you talk to me,” I said through tears and immense anger.
“Take her ass out right now.”
Harry gently grabbed me by the arm.
“Get off me!” I shouted and flung my arm free. “Nico, everything we had, you just tossing it aside over this?”
“You should’ve asked yourself that question before you flew to Miami to fuck that nigga!”
“God please help me!” I screamed. “This is sooooo frustrating, because that’s not what happened!”