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Wow.
Ray nodded. “Me, too. Initially, I thought Marlon was the one, but I’ve researched that nigga ad nauseam. I can’t leave Lilith, but the twins have been on his ass. Nothing. I can’t find nothing to connect him to this. Plus, dude is a puppy dog for her. He wants her back. I can’t see him wanting her done.”
Done?
Damn.
“That’s what I was thinking, too. Lil, could he have taken out a life insurance policy on you? I’ve checked the policy locator sites, but I could’ve missed something,” Memphis probed. “I don’t usually dig into stuff like this.”
“Right, this ain’t something we’d need to know to delete a muhfucker,” Ray cut in.
Delete?
My god.
I shook my head. “No. I mean, there’s the—never mind,” I rambled.
“No, what is it? Nothing is unimportant,” Ray stressed.
“I don’t think it matters, though. Marlon is a lot of things, but he’s not a murderer. I’ve only seen him raise his voice like twice,” I said.
“Maybe he’s not a killer. Maybe he’s the type who’d hire one instead,” Ray stressed.
I stared at Ray for a moment before divulging, “I have investment accounts. He’s the beneficiary of them…of all of them. I haven’t gotten around to updating them.”
“Fuck. How much are they worth?” Ray asked.
Memphis just sat there shaking her head.
“Uh, around seven hundred thousand dollars,” I disclosed.
“Bingo! Bing-motherfucking-o!” Ray shouted. “It’s him!”
“Wait, why are you looking like that, Lil?” Memphis asked.
“I’m on his stuff, too. I’m not trying to kill him, and he makes a great living. It…it couldn’t be him,” I said, feeling totally confused and just…heartbroken.
“How much do you really know about his financials, Lil? Did y’all share that information with each other?”
“No. I just…we were together for twelve years and I couldn’t even discern that the man wanted me dead?” I said, fighting tears.
“Don’t do that. This ain’t on you. Don’t beat yourself up about this,” Ray said.
“Yeah,” Memphis agreed.
My mind was so full, full of disbelief, belief, and regret.
Twelve years.
So many bad decisions and concessions for the sake of what? Love? Was that it? I wasn’t even sure anymore because if what I had with Horacio Nation was love, then what I had with Marlon Archer had to be something much lower on the emotion scale. I would die, literally die without Ray. Being without Marlon wasn’t nearly as fatal. It had hurt to leave him, but that was largely because I wasn’t only leaving him behind, I was leaving twelve years of life and memories behind. Breaking up with him was akin to leaving the comfort of an old job for the uncertainty of a new one. It was distressing but not earth shattering. By the time I made the decision, I’d spent more than a year contemplating it, but all that didn’t make the betrayal any less biting.
Twelve years.
Twelve fucking years of sharing a bed, confessing my deepest fears and hopes, and giving him my body. Here I was pregnant past the optimal time to carry a child because I’d spent that era with a man who wasn’t free to be a father.
As I sat on the toilet, watching Ray stare at his phone from his post in the doorway, I felt a mixture of pain and anger, the words bubbling up and escaping my mouth through no effort of my own. “He convinced me to terminate.”
His head snapped up, the angles of his handsome face shifting to create a confused expression. “What? Who? Terminate what?”
