Covet (Andre/Anika, Lucious/Cookie/Malcolm)

Chapter Five: All In

"How long have you had feelings for your stepmother, Andre?"

"Don't answer that, Andre."

"Okay, let me rephrase that." Tariq glared at Thirsty. "How long have you had feelings for your father's wife?"

"Don't answer that, Andre," Thirsty repeated.

"If he doesn't have anything to hide, why won't he answer such a simple question?" Tariq pressed. "His stepmother just had his baby, so it's obvious that Andre feels some kind of way about her.

"Can I please go home?" Andre mumbled, fighting to stay awake. The powerful psychotropic medication that were presented to him out of nowhere by a random officer was finally beginning to take its course. Thirsty was back in full force now. He was furious with having been denied access to his client, and enraged that his medication had been denied to him. Obviously, the feds were trying to get to Andre in an unsound state of mind. But why?

"My client won't answer any question that refers to Mrs. Lyon as his stepmother," Thirsty declared.

"But that's who she is," Tariq observed politely. "The wife of Andre's father. My sister-in-law. Andre's stepmother."

"It's misleading and you know it!" Thirsty snapped.

"Okay, fine." Tariq scratched a few words off his notebook. "Let's try this again. How long have you had feelings for Mrs. Lyon, Andre?"

"Don't answer that, Andre."

Andre ignored Thirsty. "I dunno...maybe two or three months," he answered.

Thirsty groaned. He knew where Tariq was about to go with this. "Two or three months?" Tariq pressed. "Your stepmother's baby was born today. That's a whole lot longer than two or three months."

"She wasn't my stepmother!" Andre exploded. "She didn't become my stepmother until this morning!"

"So you're saying this marriage was just thrown together?"

"Watch it, Andre," Thirsty said under his breath as Tariq sat up, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

"Check the marriage license, Unc," Andre spat. "They got that license three weeks ago. Before your fat head brought Anika in for questioning. What's it to you, anyway?"

Tariq shrugged. "It just seems to me that you're more concerned about your stepmother than your wife. Your dead wife that your stepmother just murdered. You haven't said her name not one time, you know that?"

Rhonda. God forgive him, but Andre hadn't even given a second thought to Rhonda. How could he explain that he and his wife had emotionally parted ways long before now? "My wife and I were on the verge of getting a divorce," Andre said slowly. "She came here to harm my son's mother. Anika defended herself, and she delivered our son six weeks early because my wife attacked her."

"You still haven't said her name."

"Rhonda," Andre said. The name caught in his throat. "Her name was Rhonda. She could sing like a bird. Was terrible at mini-golf. Loved 'Game of Thrones' and extra pickles on her burgers and laughed at my corny jokes." Only now did the heavy loss begin to take its toll. Rhonda, Rhonda, the woman who turned Andre from a boy into a man. The woman who had been his right-hand girl for over a decade was gone now, though in his heart, she'd been gone for well over a year. Pressing his lips together, Andre fought to keep it together. "Rhonda was my first love. She was my heart. The love of my life."

"And you cheated on her with your father's fiancée."

"They weren't engaged at the time," Andre reminded Tariq, and Thirsty groaned again. Anika might not have been engaged to Lucious, but Andre was still very much married to Rhonda. Tariq had lured Andre into a perfectly spun web. "Rhonda liked Anika, too. Didn't she?" Tariq asked slyly.