Out of Control

CeCe sat down on the bed as Black went to the safe to get Monika’s money. “You’ll never guess who I saw while I was at the bazaar with Michelle yesterday.”

“Who’s that, Cee?”

“Your friend Jacara.”

Black’s head snapped around. “Here?”

CeCe smiled. She had known him long enough to know from the look on his face and the way his eyes narrowed that he had no idea she was in Nassau and she was pretty sure that he didn’t invite her.

“I forgot to tell you last night when you came in.” she hadn’t actually forgotten to tell him about Jacara. She was tired from being out all day and had gone to bed before Black got home. She started to tell him then, but CeCe wanted to see how he reacted to the news.

“You talk to her?”

“For a minute,” CeCe said.

“She say what she was doin’ here?”

“She got fired and she’s here looking for work.”

“They fired Jacara?”

“Hired someone younger, she said,” CeCe told Black as he came and sat down on the bed next to her.

“Before you ask, no, I didn’t know she was here. No, you don’t have anything to worry about, and no, I’m not gonna give her a job.”

“I know,” CeCe said and kissed him on the cheek. “But thank you for telling me. I know you don’t want her. I know if you wanted to be with her, you’d be with her, but you’re not,” CeCe said, more because she needed to remind herself. “You’re here with me, in our house.” CeCe put her hands on her stomach. “And this is our baby and you have made me so happy.” Black kissed CeCe softly on the lips and put his hand on top of hers. CeCe smiled. “But I did tell her to stay away from my man.”

“You did?” Black laughed.

“I sure did. And you should have seen the look on her face when she saw me and saw I was pregnant. I thought her eyes were gonna pop out her head.” CeCe laughed. “Now go on. Monika’s waiting for you.”

Black kissed her on the cheek this time and stood up. He walked away thinking that even though things were as good as they could possibly get, there was something that felt wrong about it. Deep inside he felt like his entire life was a betrayal of Cassandra’s memory. Black went down the steps and forced those thoughts to the back of his mind.

Monika looked up and smiled as Black came in the room carrying a fat envelope for her. “Evening, Monika. How was your flight?”

“Long.”

“Let’s talk outside.”

“Don’t we always?” Monika said and followed Black out to the pool. As a rule, he never discussed business in the house.

“Any problems?”

“I told you, the flight was long.”

“You gonna stay here tonight?” Black asked.

“Is Bernadette cooking?” Monika asked referring to the woman CeCe had hired to keep the house clean when it got to be too much for her. Then they discovered she could cook.

“Everyday,” Black replied and sat down at the table by the pool.

“Then I’m staying,” Monika said. She took out her laptop and called Travis and told him to transmit the documents to her.

Black handed her the envelope and she put it away. Her objective was Otto Steinhof. He had approached Black’s business partner, Congressman Martin Marshall about making some discreet transactions in Eastern Europe. Martin convinced Black and he brought in Wei Jiang, a Chinese business with Yakuza ties, to invest a million dollars a piece in the venture. Things went very well for a while, then Steinhof disappeared just before the FBI indicted him.

“Steinhof was a fraud. That’s why he was struggling to meet the seven million in redemptions he promised us. It was all a giant Ponzi scheme,” Martin told Black. “He was paying those big returns with money he took from separate investors. He kept it going with money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned.”

“I know what a Ponzi scheme is Martin,” Black said.