Vengeance

“That’s just what a guy aims for. Telling a woman that he’s feeling her and discovering that her mind was someplace else while he was saying it.”

“I heard every word you said, and my thoughts pertained to it.”

“In that case, a penny for your thoughts.”

I sighed and closed my eyes for a brief moment. Then I looked him in the eyes. “This entire thing is out of my element. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve been on a date. Pathetic but true. You’re a nice man, and I enjoy being in your company as well. But I need to take this slow.”

“I understand and I’ve got nothing but time.”

“It was asking a lot of you to come with me and leave your father.”

“I have a home aide there with him. He has to be watched around the clock, whether I’m in town or not, and I still have to work. I can’t always be there with him.”

“I still appreciate you coming.”

“I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”

* * *

Jonovan and I had a blast on Daddy’s island. It could accommodate up to fifty guests spanned out over the nine buildings. Being that it was only the two of us and the staff, we were able to go from structure to structure and continued to have deep conversations with each other. I felt so bad about not admitting that I was Caprice, but that was not an option . . . never could be.

We had a nice dinner for my birthday in the dining room by candlelight. The chef on the island prepared an excellent meal of meatballs with brown gravy, herbed potatoes, creamed cabbage, and cucumber salad. He made an apple cake and rhubarb pudding for dessert and we switched from wine to Christiania Vodka, native to Norway.

We listened to jazz music throughout our meal and then slow-danced for about an hour to a mixture of old-school love ballads and recent freakier and mostly sexually explicit music. Our bodies meshed well together, and Jonovan had no idea that it was the first time that I had been so close to a man, dancing like that, in decades.

We most certainly did not have sex that night, but we did fall asleep together in a hammock by the ocean . . . with the sun out.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

11:19 a.m.

Atlanta, Georgia

Are you sure you want to go?” Antonio asked. “They’re going to mob you in a clothing boutique.”

We were on our way to Cherie’s couture joint. It amused me when I heard a lot of chicks on YouTube—another pastime of mine because I was alone a lot—bragging about how they were sporting couture this or couture that and then posting links to where they could be purchased. That was true “hood rat” mentality, because a real couture experience is when fashions are designed to meet the specific requirements and measurements of clients. The word “couture” means sewing, not fashion, like they believe on the street. A video and a link where you can choose a size between 2 and 24 or XS and XXXL was couture? Get the fuck out of here!

Cherie was the real deal, though. Her store was called Ascending Trends, and I actually liked a lot of her designs. I had strung her along for months, like Bianca, and made it seem like I was ready to actually let her be my stylist. Nikki had called her the day before to set up an appointment, which meant that I should’ve had an exclusive window with her. But I was no dummy. I had been around the block a time or two. Once when I was on tour, I asked one of my backup dancers to set up a hair appointment in this small hick town we were staying on the outskirts of on our way to a major venue. When I got there, a lot of people “just happened to drop by” after work to see him, or make an appointment for the following week in person. I’d never seen so many chicks whose hair was recently done and already on fleek show up in a salon. He finally admitted that he had “mentioned it to a few people” and they ended up asking me to take photos and I even had Diederik go out to the limo and scrounge up some headshots for me to autograph for them.

I loved the fact that my fans loved me, so on the rare occasions when I was bombarded by them off the cuff, I didn’t mind. I wasn’t actually stuck-up like so much of the media portrayed me to be since I rarely did interviews. I was motherfucking cautious because, as I stated before, opportunists will come out the woodwork and guzzle down that glass of water while others are still debating about what to do about it.

So Cherie was guaranteed to have mentioned my impending visit to at least some of her clients, especially the reality show broads who would jump at the chance to take photos that they could tweet or update their statuses with. They were all over the place, so it was not a big deal for someone to take a photo with them, but it was a big damn deal for them to take one with me. I was prepared and looking cute and sexy for the onslaught of nonsense. My hair and nails were real, though. No need to fuck with perfection with weaves and gel tips. I took good care of myself, outside of the occasional cutting back in the day, in spots not visible to anyone, and it showed. Some women are naturally beautiful and others look tore up from the floor up without all of their “gear” in place. I wasn’t tripping on them; whatever worked to land men. I wasn’t checking to land a man—just make my millions.

A lot of the men who complained about being gold diggers truly had a lot of nerve. They would go around flashing their fancy cars, expensive watches, earrings, and chains, and brag about their mansions and hefty income and then turn around and get mad when women only wanted them for their money instead of their average dicks. An even swap wasn’t a swindle, so the men got their trophies and the women got their bank to pay for their weaves, nails, clothes, and whips. It all panned out.

I was glad that Jonovan was not like the other men who I’d run across in my life. We had been spending a lot of quality time together, when time permitted, and I was really starting to fall for him. I could tell that he had already fallen for me but was afraid to admit it since he knew that I had such a low opinion of the majority of men. I’m sure that it was also tripping him out that a woman like me would seemingly be sweating a man like him. I would call him day and night, ask him to come over, and I had even been over to his place a few times to help him take care of his father. One time I even did household chores, including cleaning the toilets. I hadn’t cleaned toilets since 1987, when Caprice ran away from Grandma’s house. I was beginning to understand what the term “nose wide-open” meant. I was beginning to focus a lot of my attention on Jonovan, sometimes opting to be in his presence over being in the studio completing my album. But being around him was also helping me with my songwriting. I was able to relate some of my lyrics to real-life experiences for a change.

I was also still having my sessions with Marcella. I had managed to open up to her more and more. I didn’t tell her what I had done to Herman. There is a huge difference between values, morals, and ethics. Values are rules that people attempt to adhere to. Morals are the basis on which people judge or evaluate other people. Ethics are professional standards. If I had told Marcella about how I had set up Herman, she would have followed her professional ethics and revealed it. No damn doubt about it.

But I did tell her about what I had done to Michael. Speaking of which, that was another reason why I knew Ascending Trends would be crowded that Tuesday morning. I had put Plan A out into the universe a few days earlier. I decided to pace myself and let that shit with Herman have a couple of months to marinate before I fucked up the world according to Cherie and Michael. I had edited the footage myself, cropping out heads and other identifying aspects of Glaze and Mrs. Teasedale, but leaving no doubt that it was Michael Vinson in every single frame. Then I had used a remote, untraceable router—the shit you could order offli

ne was ridiculous—to post it on Porn4U.com. MediaTakeOut and WorldstarHipHop had a field day with it. Worldstar had about ten million views the first day. It was off the motherfucking chain.

Michael had always wanted to be famous. Well, now he was. He was famous for stockpiling pussy on a sofa and eating and banging them both out, not to mention the other shit that went down that day. Cherie had to be embarrassed. One could only imagine the tags she received on social media, linking her to the video, or the phone calls and texts she received. I am sure people were talking mad shit about his cheating being the reason why he had never proposed.

In fact, Cherie hadn’t even opened up her store since the leak, but when Nikki called to make an appointment, all that changed. She stood to make hundreds of thousands of dollars off me—both with my direct purchases and from the women who would want to look like me and would ask her to make them similar outfits. Cherie was hurt, she was disappointed, but she wasn’t foolish enough to miss out on landing me as a client. And the fact that I was actually coming to her so she could show off was an added bonus.