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Two nights prior to meeting Sam, Dominic had hurt me too. He revealed an ugly side of himself that I’d seen three times before. I liked to call it The Beast. He often kept The Beast at bay, but when it revealed its ugly head, it was cruel and relentless. I rub the top of my head, where my scalp still stings from when he grabbed a handful of my hair. We’d been arguing about his speech. He was mad that there was a typo, even after I said it was proofread—which it was. I told him I’d fix the damn typo and tried to leave the living room so I could go to my office and contact the proofreader, but he caught me by the hair and snatched me backward so hard I fell to the floor. That doesn’t even account for the time before that, when he gripped the back of my neck while I was cleaning the tub. He found out Samuel had come to my tea shop and was mad that I didn’t tell him about it. Or the time before that, when he managed to knock the wind right out of my lungs with a fist to my stomach because he caught me eating a slice of cake at a fundraising dinner.
Dominic may have seemed like a charismatic, endearing man, but he was a monster. And here these women were, presenting me with an opportunity to finally take his ass down. All these stories about wives setting their husbands up to gain freedom were always so farfetched to me, but now that I’m in it, it makes total sense. When your husband has power, you must be careful and you must always be one step ahead.
On this day, I agreed Dominic would never hurt anyone again once we were done with him, and we spent the rest of the day formulating a plan.
FIFTY-NINE
BRYNN
The plan was pretty clear.
Me and Jolene knew all about Dominic’s fear of “magic” and superstitions. To be honest, it wasn’t normal how terrified he was of something that wasn’t real. Though it was tragic on his mother’s behalf, we were grateful that he had a paranoid schizophrenic mother who filled him with such nonsense.
The man truly did worry himself to death about being cursed. In fact, Jolene mentioned several times in the hotel that if he spilled salt, he dumped some over his left shoulder so no bad luck would be brought down on him. He knew all of the common superstitions, like black cats and ladders, seeing the number 6 in a trio, and broken mirrors.
The plan was so stupid, it was brilliant. Dominic was a narcissistic jerk and believed nothing could stop him . . . so we had to make him stop himself. We wanted to torment him first, drive him crazy, because his biggest fear was winding up like his mother. Jolene said he went to a psychiatrist annually to make sure his mental health was stable. He thought she was unaware, but I get the sense that Jolene finds out many things on her own.
By tormenting him, we struck him where it hurt. We wanted him to feel helpless and backed into a corner. It was Shavonne’s idea to present the tea. She and Krystal spoke about what he’d done to me, and Krystal had tricks up her sleeve and ways to make people take a “journey” with her teas. It was illegal, of course, but no one had to know. Krystal provided a tea called Purple Sky to Shavonne. Purple Sky is laced with crushed LSD pills. Our thing was, if he’d drugged me, we’d drug him too. The thought of it almost made me laugh because it was so foolishly simple. The only problem was getting him to drink the tea. That’s where Jolene stepped in. She and Shavonne agreed that Shavonne would fake an identity and offer the tea to Jolene as a gift during one of his bigger rallies.
“You should pretend to be one of those psychics or voodoo ladies,” I said. “He got all hostile about that magician in New Orleans. If he feels like you’re into that kind of stuff, he’ll instantly become agitated. It’ll throw him off his game.”
“That’s good.” Jolene nodded eagerly. “You’ll have to make yourself seen. Let him know you’re watching—that you know something, even though he might think you know nothing. He has to be paranoid. That’s the only way we can make him feel weak. We can set up an Instagram or something, make it look like you’ve been watching him for a while now. Because he will look you up. He’ll want to figure you out and make you to go away to save his own ass.”
The next step was to kick the paranoia up a notch. That same weekend, Jolene offered us a key fob to the gates on the premises of her house, as well as a key fob for Dominic’s SUV. I had the idea of writing the notes and mentioning my name. Jolene told us to dial it up by bringing out the photos from that night too, so she bought a portable printer for us to use.
“We want him to feel like he’s being haunted by a dead woman,” Jolene said, and it was crazy to see how into this plan she was.
“Will he really believe that?” Samuel asked. He was shrugging out of his coat with a bag of Chinese food in hand.
“Trust me, Dominic will,” said Jolene.
The planned worked for a bit. We saw him spiral, and we did little things to trip him out. We planted the note in their mailbox, and Jolene took care of the note on the window after the attempted “break in”. We planted the dead crow, which literally broke my heart. Do you know there are people on the internet who will kill an animal for you and deliver it for a fee? It blows my mind the things you can find these days. Me and Shavonne hate hurting animals, but if we didn’t step it up, he’d lose his paranoia, so we unlocked his SUV after following him to Fox Trot and placed it back there along with a recently printed photo.
When he was in the apartment, that was Jolene’s bid. She knew he’d run there at some point. She had cameras installed and could see everything he was doing. Her plan was to use the cameras to prove she knew nothing of what Dominic had done, so that when she checked the apartment herself and found the evidence of Dominic’s secret, the police would believe her, and it would all be recorded. Or staged, I should say.
Jolene had followed Dominic to the apartment shortly after and while he showered, she went inside with her key and planted the photo of her and Dominic with our note on the back as well as the fake blood with my old purse. She left as quickly as she’d arrived and Shavonne and I sat near a gas station, laughing about it and even teasing Dominic a bit by waving at him when he stepped onto his balcony. He wouldn’t be able to make out who we were, but we were watching. We were always watching.
With the purse, Dominic would start pointing fingers and trying to figure things out. Who was tormenting him? Stalking him? Planting notes and dead birds? Why was he having so much bad luck recently? Was his past really coming back to haunt him? I wanted him to think a dead woman’s ghost was coming for him, so I watched him whenever he visited Executive Mansion. I saw him in the window looking right at me.
Shavonne had already spooked him as her persona of Eden. He was quick to point the finger at her and we wanted him to take the bait. We needed a reason to trap him, get him to be reckless again.
And he did. He took her.
The plan was for Jolene to meet me shortly after I sent her a text saying Dominic had either hurt Shavonne or had taken her. We’d both go after him and get her back, then call the police to report that he’d kidnapped her, but not before I could shoot him once or twice. Then the past would unravel about me, and he’d go to jail. That’s all I wanted—to hurt him the same way he’d hurt me, and to get justice for setting me up in New Orleans. I wanted all his dirty laundry aired so that people knew what kind of sick, twisted man he was.
But when I texted Jolene, she didn’t respond. I called. She didn’t answer. Then I got angry and drove to her house with my gun, parking on the street behind her house and using the fob she’d given me to get through the back fence. I had a feeling she would back out of this—that she’d panic when Dominic took Shavonne, or worse, take Dominic’s side.
In my gut, I didn’t fully trust her and figured she and Samuel Sanchez would ride off in the sunset, leaving us stranded and having Dominic kill us off, just so he’d ruin his own life.
As an unknown man walks into Dominic’s cabin with a ski mask on, I believe it to be true.
Jolene has changed her mind. She wants us gone. I don’t know what she gets out of it but what I do know is that this random man was not a part of the plan.
SIXTY
JOLENE
Let me make something clear. I am not a bad person. I strive to be a good woman who does good things. I wanted to be nothing like my name-calling mother, or even like my father who was money-hungry and obsessed with control. But genetics are powerful. We can’t deny the habits in our DNA and no matter how much we try not to be like our parents, some part of us becomes them anyway. When a person hits their last straw and becomes fed up, there is no going back. We all have a tipping point, and once we’ve reached the ledge, we’re left with no choice but to jump off and tread the waters.
