The Mistress ✓

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Onika
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"What?" I ask, terror running rife at her whispered curse.

"I'm thinking." Megan holds up a hand.

"Has she done this before? Is there a playbook for this?"

She shakes her head. "No. I mean, the woman has plenty of mistresses. She usually orders them from out of the country."

"And?"

"After a few months they disappear. Like they never existed to begin with."

I think of Beyoncé Knowles, the girl we knew from church that no one has seen or heard from her again and was rumored to have been one of her mistresses. As far as I know, the police consider her disappearance a cold case.

My breathing speeds up again. No matter which way I look at the situation, the only ending that seems to be consistent is me dying.

Megan eyes me carefully, as if studying my every feature for the very first time. "After that mess with Beyoncé, she hasn't been with any local girls."

"Why deviate from her pattern now? Why me?" My words come out sounding just as frenzied as my brain.

Megan shakes her head. "God only knows." Her reply doesn't make me feel any better about the situation. She steps away, crossing to the counter to grab her cell. "I need to make a phone call."

She leaves me on the couch as she walks out of the room, and I draw my knees up to my chest and contemplate my options. Magically come up with five hundred thousand dollars. Prostitute myself out to a woman who has either killed or ordered people killed, and everyone she sleeps with disappears afterwards. Or, prepare to die a horrendous death, knowing my friends and family are going to die too.

All because of Meek.

How could I have been so stupid? We'd met online, my first foray into the world of internet dating. We'd been ridiculously compatible. Our first date had been a dream. It was effortless, the way I thought real love should be. And our chemistry? Off the charts. At least, at the very beginning. I was the one who brought up eloping, and he said it was the most romantic idea he'd ever heard. So, we did it.

And he was a con artist.

I thought he'd been so interested in the distillery because it was my passion, and after we got married, he wanted to be part of running it. We were going to be an unstoppable team, and that thrilled me. Until I spotted him and the other woman. All of a sudden, his reduced interest in sex with me became utterly apparent. He was too busy fucking someone else to want to go another round with me.

It was time to truly face the facts. Meek Mills conned me. He never wanted to be part of a team. He wanted to use the distillery as collateral for a half-million-dollar debt to a woman scarier than any villain Hollywood has yet to create.

I can't stop picturing a woman dancing on shattered glass until the pain was so horrendous she slit her wrists.

She's a monster.