Page 2 of Unlucky You

She slipped her hand in mine and brushed her thumb over my knuckles. “Then explain this.”

“My last one.” I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles.

“Promise me.”

“I promise. I’m about to go let him know I’m done.”

“You said that before?”

“I mean it this time. I’m done, baby. I’ll be right back, aight?”

She held my hand tighter and I gripped her chin and kissed her softly. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

Her eyes searched my face but she smiled and let me go. Aleah didn’t fuck with Moses and hated that I did. As lethal as my hands were, that didn’t prevent me from coming home after fights with busted and bloodied knuckles and bruised ribs. She had every right to have those ill feelings because what I was doing was reckless and dangerous. Moses didn’t care about anything other than the money he made off me from those fights. I kept as much distance from him as possible, but for now, he was a means to an end.

“Stay right here until I get back.” My eyes met hers and she smiled.

“Where else am I going to go?” She paused. “Well, I might get one more drink.”

I looked at the makeshift bar with the shorty behind it. She had been mixing drinks all night so I was cool with that. “Bet, stay by the bar until I get back.”

“Yes,father.”

“Nah, not your father, Lay, but you’ll be calling medaddylater.” I winked and slapped her ass before walking away.

If I had known then what I knew now, things would be so different.

Six months later…

“Mr. Sinclair, after you realized what was happening, that Mr. Daugherty had allegedly enlisted the bartender to drug your girlfriend, who suffered a fatal allergic reaction to the roofie slipped into her drink, what did you do?”

My eyes left my lawyer and slowly moved over to Aleah’s parents. They sat with stiff posture, fueled by their hatred for me. I didn’t blame them. My slip in judgment cost us all but what they didn’t understand was that they’d lost their daughter but there was a much greater loss they refused to acknowledge.

My son was going to be without his mother. He would never get to see her smile again, feel her love, or know how much she cherished him. I could suffer; this was on me, I didn’t deserve to acknowledge my own loss. But my son, that shit cut deep. Aleah’s parents had denied him from the day he was conceived. Even after he was born and Aleah tried to mend the relationship with her parents, they refused.

Bastard child.

That was what they called him. It enraged me. It destroyed her. Literally broke her heart that her parents couldn’t and wouldn’t love our son.

“Mr. Sinclair…” Lincoln Desmond, my attorney, called my name, bringing my attention back to him.

“I lost it.”

“Lost it how, Mr. Sinclair?”

I glanced at Moses’ mother before I focused on my lawyer again, trying desperately to contain the anger I felt crawling through my veins. “He looked at me and laughed like the shit was funny. Told me he was trying to help me out by getting her right. He was so damn nonchalant. She died and you know what he told me…” I paused and my body coiled so damn tightly my muscles ached. “Shit happens, like her life didn’t fucking matter. I hit him.”

“Your Honor, at this time I would like to submit defense Exhibit Three into evidence, the medical examiner’s report. All parties have stipulated its veracity. The cause of death was not the single blow by my client but the actual breaking of the deceased’s neck when his head unforeseeably landed on the kitchen island.”

“Admitted,” the judge said as he accepted the paperwork.

“Thank you, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Cross,” the judge rattled off robotically. I lifted my eyes to Colton Ryan, the prosecutor who stood and adjusted his suit jacket, then addressed me.

“Mr. Sinclair, was it your intention to kill Mr. Daugherty?”

I glanced at my lawyer who offered a tight nod for me to answer. “No.”

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