(NOTE: Contains explicit language and adult themes suitable for ages 16+)
© K.L. Hall and www.authorklhall.com, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to K.L. Hall and www.authorklhall.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
CHAPTER ONE—Lucky Number Six
Hermès Capone
I listened to my Christian Louboutin heels click left, right, left, right as I made my way across the marble flooring in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton in the heart of Philadelphia.
“Good afternoon, I’d like to check into my room. Reservations should be under my husband’s name, Mr. Julius Capone,” I told the hotel attendant as I sat my five-thousand-dollar handbag on the counter.
“Ah, yes, Mrs. Capone. Here is your key. You are in suite 2548,” he told me.
“Thank you.” I smiled.
I took the elevator up to the twenty-fifth floor, entered the room and looked around. My eyes immediately locked on the box of chocolates laying on top of the crimson rose petals that were perfectly scattered across the California king sized bed and the bouquet of flowers in a vase beside the TV. He’s really stepping it up this year, I thought.
Six years ago, Julius Alexander Capone and I had chosen to consummate our love and became husband and wife at the age of twenty-five. He’d just passed the bar exam and landed a job as a junior attorney at one of Philadelphia’s largest law firms. I couldn’t have been prouder of my man. Just one month after we said, ‘I Do,’ I said, ‘I’m pregnant,’ and nine months later we welcomed our first daughter, Symphony into the world. Two years later Symphony was joined by her younger sister, Melody.
I couldn’t have been more excited for the two of us to spend some much needed quality time together to work on baby number three, our son. It’d been so long since we’d gotten to spend time between just the two of us due to the demands of his high paying and high stress job. Cap was one of the top criminal defense attorneys at his firm and played a huge role in getting all the big-time criminals out of doing some long sentences. Although I admired my husband for his dedication to his job, my body had been longing to make love to him all over the room that cost well over six-hundred dollars a night.
I put my purse down as I walked over to the bed and picked up the box of chocolates. There was a note attached that read, “Meet me for dinner downstairs at seven. Love, Cap.” I smiled and kicked off my heels, then headed to the bathroom. The heated floors felt like heaven against the soles of my feet as I made my way over to the soaking tub to run myself a nice long bath. I was going to enjoy the serenity of the remainder of the day and rest up, so I could be an animal for my husband all night long.
While the bathtub filled with warm, soapy water, I cracked open the box of chocolates and popped one into my mouth. I chewed slowly as my eyes rolled back in my head. He’d gotten my favorite, Godiva. I turned on some smooth jams as I stepped out of the bathroom to pour myself a glass of wine from the small bottle inside the minibar. Then, I got undressed and spent the next hour and a half soaking in the tub until my skin was pruned and the water was cold, all because I’d gotten caught up fantasizing about Cap.
I pulled myself out of the tub and slid one of the luxurious bathrobes over my body while stuffing my toes into the matching slippers. My head rested against the cottony soft pillows as my hand fell in between my thighs. It took everything in me not to play with my flower. I’d been so horny over the past few weeks, it was almost as if every time I saw something that even resembled a penis, I wanted to fuck it.
“Yeah, Cap is about to get this work tonight,” I mumbled to myself.
BY THE TIME I opened my eyes and looked over at the clock, it was already five minutes past six. I quickly shot up out of the bed and started doing my hair and makeup. When I was done, I slid on a skin-tight black dress that stopped right above my knee, some strappy black heels and sprayed a few squirts of Cap’s favorite perfume on my wrists, behind my ears and on my neck so I was sure he’d smell it from across the room. Before walking out of the suite, I gave myself another once over. As good as I looked, we probably weren’t even going to make it through the first course.
While walking towards the restaurant downstairs, I passed by elite couples arm in arm or holding hands and showing all types of public affection towards one another, which made me smile. The smell of gourmet dining wafted past my nose as I stepped into the restaurant in the lobby. There were people everywhere. I glanced down at my phone and clicked the side. It was seven minutes past seven. Perfect. I smiled to myself.
“Good evening, ma’am. Do you have reservations?” the hostess asked me.
“Um, yes. My husband and I have reservations for seven p.m. under Julius Capone,” I responded.
“Capone…Capone…” she scrolled with her finger.
“Is there something wrong?”
“Um, I’m not quite sure. It seems that we had a reservation for a Julius Capone here earlier at six-o’clock, but I don’t see anything for seven.”
“There must be some mistake. He told me we had dinner reservations here at seven o’clock sharp. Can you please just check again?” I asked, feeling flustered.
I quickly glanced behind me and saw that a line had formed, which made me even more antsy. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other while I watched her scroll her manicured fingernail down the tablet again.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“No ma’am, I’m sorry. I could try to get you in if another couple drops out, but we’re booked solid through the end of the night right now.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and shook my head.
“No thank you. That um…that won’t be necessary. I’m going to step aside and call my husband to figure all of this out. Excuse me.”
I could feel my face turning red as I turned and faced all of the couples behind me. I quickly jetted out of the restaurant and stepped off to a secluded corner to call Cap. His phone rang six times and then went to voicemail. “You’ve reached Julius Capone, attorney at law. I can’t get to my phone right now. Please leave a message at…”
‘CLICK’
As flustered as I was, I was more hurt than anything. Cap was a strategic man. He would never mix up reservations, unless his paralegal Tia did it. She was a young paralegal who worked under his supervision and sometimes doubled as his executive assistant. I could tell she had eyes for him. Anytime I went to his office and saw her interactions with him, it was almost like she was undressing him with her little beady ass eyes. Steam puffed out of my nose as I dialed his number again. The same thing happened, so I texted him.
Hermès: 7:22 p.m.: Baby, I’m at the restaurant and there’s been some sort of mistake with our reservations. Where are you? Call me back!
…
I saw the three ellipses that told me he was responding back, but then they disappeared. What the fuck, I growled to myself. I called him back one more time and he didn’t answer, in fact, it didn’t even ring. His phone had gone straight to voicemail. Maybe he’s in a bad reception area or lost service or is trying to call me back, I thought to myself all at once.
I paced the marble floor back and forth, calling and calling until my feet began to hurt. I walked towards the other side of the lobby and headed to the bar to sit down. Although there were still quite a few people in there, there weren’t as many as inside the restaurant. I plopped down in the high bar seat and put my phone down on the counter.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asked.
“Um, a glass of champagne,” I told him.
“Coming right up.”
Two glasses of champagne and twenty phone calls later, I was still sitting alone. At a bar. On my fucking anniversary. Cap had done some fucked up things in the past, but nothing like that. I let out the loudest sigh my body could muster up as I looked around the room. There were fresh white tablecloths on all of the tables with red rose petals and lit candles as the centerpieces. My eyes rolled just as my stomach growled.
“Can I please see a menu?” I asked.
The bartender handed me a menu and nothing on it made my mouth water. I sighed and put the menu down beside me.
“Another glass of champagne while you wait?”
“Yeah, sure. Why the hell not,” I huffed.
AN HOUR AND A HALF LATER, my battery was on ten percent and my patience was on zero. I swiped my key and went back into my room and looked around, getting mad all over again. It was the first time in hours that I realized I still hadn’t heard back from Cap. I stormed over to the bed and swatted all of the rose petals onto the floor.
“Stupid mothafucka!” I growled as I threw my heels across the room.
I huffed in anger as they clanked against the wall, then flung my body across the bed.
CHAPTER TWO—Hiroshima
Hermès
Cap and I hadn’t spoken outside of an ‘I’m sorry’ and a ‘fuck you,’ since my letdown on our anniversary. It had been a week and I was still livid. The wound was still fresh in my book and would continue to be for a while. There was no excuse good enough for my ears.
“Have a good day, girls. Mommy loves you,” I said, snapping out of my daze as I pulled up to the girls’ school and dropped them off.
“Love you, too,” my five-year old daughter, Symphony told me.
The school attendant closed my door for me as I rolled down the window to watch them get inside the school safely before pulling off.
“Have a good day, Mrs. Capone,” the man told me.
I nodded. “Thanks. You, too.”
Before pulling back up at home, I swung by Starbucks to get my usual; a Grande, iced, sugar-free, vanilla latte with soymilk. I was a complicated Starbucks regular, so they didn’t even question my obnoxious order anymore. I wrapped my lips around the green straw and pulled off to head back home.
As soon as I pulled into my driveway, I saw a white Mercedes parked in front of the house that I didn’t recognize. Instead of pulling up behind it and getting out, I pulled up beside it and rolled down the window to see Tia, Cap’s paralegal sitting inside.
“Can I help you?” I asked after blowing my horn, so she’d notice me.
“Hermès…”
“Tia? What are you doing here? Cap isn’t—”
“I know he’s not here. That’s why I came, to talk to you woman to woman.”
My brows snapped together. “About what?”
“Can we talk?”
My forehead creased and I slowly nodded before putting the truck in park and getting out. The first thing I noticed when she closed the car door and looked at me were her tear-stained eyes, the next was her protruding pregnant belly.
“Tia, what could we possibly need to talk about?” I asked, scrunching up my forehead as if I smelled something foul.
She looked down at her stomach and then back up at me. “It’s his, Hermès.”
I raised my arched eyebrow at her. “His who?”
“I’m carrying Cap’s baby.”
My eyes widened as I slowly licked my lips. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief. There were a million commands that my brain was yelling out to the rest of my body. Punch the bitch. Cuss her ass out. Yet, my body was frozen as if someone had pressed pause on my entire life. Cap wouldn’t do me like that. Not me. Not his wife.
“There must be some mistake.” I managed to mumble out.
“Look, I know this is a lot for you to swallow, and by the look on your face, I can tell this is your first time hearing about this baby or me, isn’t it?”
My lips parted to respond as I crossed my arms over my chest. “Yeah, and that’s exactly why I’m calling bullshit on all of this. Cap and I talk every single night and he’s never mentioned you being pregnant. Not even once.”
“Obviously he doesn’t tell you everything. He’s been telling me for months that he was going to tell you and I—"
I gave a dismissive wave of my hand and she quickly closed her flapping lips. “What is it that you want, Tia? Huh? Is it money? Are you tired of actually working for a check and now you just wanna lay up somewhere and get paid? Is that it?”
She sucked her teeth. “Look, all I want is for Cap to do right by me and our son.”
Her words crushed my spirit. I was supposed to have been the only woman with Cap’s children. The four of us were a unit and now there was a bitch standing in my face telling me that she was carrying another sibling for my children that came from my husband’s sperm. I was on fire. My eyes cut through her with disgust. She looked to be in her very early twenties. Even with the pregnant belly I could tell she didn’t weigh much. Her skin was sandalwood brown and she had decent facial features. Her face may have looked grown, but her eyes said she was a scared ass little girl.
“Get the fuck off my property, bitch.”
“Look, he fired me yesterday and I just want to know if it was you behind it! This is discrimination! I will go to the board and he will lose his license over this!”
“You think I give a fuck about you losin’ your job? Why would you even come to me on this shit and then threaten my husband in the same breath?”
She huffed. “Look, I—"
“How long?” I asked, throwing up my hand and waving her words away.
“How long what?”
I shot her a venomous look. “How long have you been fucking my husband, you dim-witted bitch?”
She tucked her lips and then slowly opened her mouth to speak. “The affair started a few months after I started working there, and now I guess it’s over because he fired me yesterday. I came here because he told me that you were behind it.”
“Me? Why the fuck would I be behind it? I thought your job was to file fucking papers, not fuck other people’s husbands!”
“He told me that when he told you about me and the baby that you wanted me gone.”
I scoffed, followed by a quick chuckle. “And you believed that? Sounds like to me he got tired of your fast ass.”
“I love him…” her voice shook.
“You love him? Guess what? I love him, too! You know who else loves him? OUR KIDS! MY KIDS! You can’t have my life!”
“He loves me too, Hermès. I’m sorry, but we’re going to be together. The quicker you can accept that, the better it’ll be for all of us. I want Jr. to have a good relationship with his older sisters.”
My eyes damn near bugged out of my head. If I wasn’t too pretty for jail, I would’ve wrapped my hands around her lanky ass throat and never let go.
Instead, I scoffed. “I can’t believe you had the audacity to stand here in my face and say that shit to me. You should be on your knees begging that I don’t call the police on your ass for trespassing on my property! You don’t even have the common sense to apologize to me! His wife! Let me give you a word of mothafuckin’ advice, Tia. Cap don’t love you. He loves what you do for him. And now, he probably don’t even want that. So, I suggest you get back in that raggedy ass Benz you got in my driveway and drive the fuck off and never, ever bring your ass back to my house again!”
She turned to get back inside her car and I stood on the side and watched her pull off. A part of me didn’t know why I had even wasted that much of my breath on her, but somebody needed to let her ass know that life didn’t hand out too many fairytales and there was no way I was going to let her have even a piece of mine. Instead of going inside the house and calming down like a woman in her right mind would’ve done, I hoped back inside my Rolls Royce truck and headed straight to Cap’s office. That bitch Tia clearly wanted the smoke over my husband, and I was going to bring hell right to his front door.
I ILLEGIALLY PARKED my truck right in front of the high rise building Cap worked in downtown and shut off the engine. My feet thudded against the cold, paved steps as I marched right into the building and headed for the elevator. When the elevator dinged, I stepped out with a mug on my face that made people look the other way.
“I need to speak to Julius Capone,” I said, interrupting the receptionist’s phone call.
She sliced her eyes up at me and frowned for a split second. “One moment, ma’am.”
“I don’t have a moment; I need to speak with him now!” I said, raising my voice an octave higher.
She quickly looked at the calendar pulled up on one of her computer screens and looked back at me. “He’s with a client right now,” she whispered with her hand over the phone receiver.
I could hear other phone lines ringing in the distance as I tapped my foot against the polished hardwood floor. I rubbed my temples trying to calm down to no avail. My nerves tinged like a timer on an oven and I lost it. “I don’t give a fuck if he’s with the good Lord himself! I need to speak to my husband right now!”
I brushed past her desk and walked straight into his office. The door flung open so fast, it ricocheted against the wall, slamming against the Penn State alumni plaque on his wall next to his law degrees. His entire office smelled of his favorite cologne. It was my favorite, too. I’d bought it for him as a surprise when we went to Paris the summer past.
“Hermès?”
As soon as my eyes landed on him, my knees buckled, and my heart began to beat faster and faster.
“Baby, what are you doing here?” he asked, pushing himself out of his rolling desk chair while straightening out his tie.
I took a deep, silent breath before speaking. “Cap, I need to speak with you, now.”
His dark brown eyes widened then went back to normal size. “I’m with a client right now. Can it wait until later when I get home?”
“No, Cap. It can’t. It’s…very important.”
“Are the girls okay?” he asked.
I shook my head as my eyes landed on the framed photos of us on our wedding day and the latest family photo we’d taken on his desk. What a fuckin’ joke, I thought to myself. He didn’t give a fuck about those pictures when he probably had that stupid bitch bent over his desk while I was at home raising our children. It was clear to me that he didn’t give a fuck about us, only himself.
“Are they?” he asked with urgency in his voice.
“They’re fine, Cap.”
He massaged the back of his neck as if he was more stressed out than I was. “Okay, so can we please talk about whatever you want to talk about at home?”
I squeezed my eyes shut as my nostrils flared. Instead of responding with words I walked over to his desk and pushed the stack of files onto the floor along with his gold-plated name plate.
“Now!” I yelled.
As soon as the words fell off my lips, his client turned around and locked eyes with me. The first thing I noticed were his dark chocolate eyes. And for a second, I was stupefied by his presence. He had beautiful, white teeth and a set of beautiful cherry-colored lips. Even though he was sitting down, I could easily tell he had a broad chest and strong muscles. Perhaps the sexiest thing of all was the beard that wrapped around the lower half of his chocolate colored face.
“I can step out for a second,” he spoke up, looking dead at me.
Cap and I both spoke up in unison. “Yeah, that would be best,” I bellowed.
“No, you don’t have to do that,” Cap objected.
I went poker-faced as heat stained my cheeks. He was not ready for the storm I was about to rain down over him. “Fine, you wanna do this shit right here and now? You got it.”
I went dead silent for about fifteen painfully long seconds. I knew I was taking a risk by asking him the questions at his job and during a meeting with another one of his hoodlum ass clients, but I didn’t care. Every atom in my body needed to know the truth.
“Your paralegal whore stopped by the house to see me this morning.”
The color instantly drained from his face. I could see the frustration on his face without me having even mentioned her name. He knew exactly what the can of worms I’d opened were about to taste like. I’d just lit the fuse that was going to blow up his entire life.
“She says it’s your baby. Is it true?”
His jaws clenched together like three-ton walls closing in on each other. I could tell he
was madder that his bitch had ratted him out than he was over being caught up in the first place.
“Can we please talk about this later?” he asked through his white, clenched teeth.
My lower lip trembled. “Do you love her, Julius?”
His mouth set in a hard line. “What? Hermès, stop.”
My lips drew back in a snarl. “Answer the fuckin’ question. Do you love her?” I asked again.
The sadness in my eyes tore into his. He’d hurt me and he needed to know what hurting his wife looked like. My heart was bleeding right in front of him and a stranger that I didn’t even know.
“I—”
“Whatever comes out of your mouth next better be the truth,” I warned him.
His face went blank before he let out a long breath. “I—I don’t know.”
My eyes widened. I expected him to curse, to defend his manhood and not embarrass himself or me. But he’d done the exact opposite. He’d crushed the last beating piece of my heart.
Without saying another word, I spun around on my heels. Tears shimmered in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. He wasn’t going to have the luxury of seeing me wash away into a puddle of tears. Him, nor his client.
“Baby, wait,” Cap called out before my hand hit the door.
I jerked my neck back in his direction with fire in my eyes. “Get back to work, Cap. You’re going to need as much money as you can when I’m through with your ass.”