Chapter 37 – Mariah
“I don’t really want to talk about it, Scott. I just want to forget that everything happened. I want to stop thinking about Elie and the club.”
“You were just going to leave, Mariah. I think that we need to talk about it. I need to know why you were so ready to go.”
It was hard to explain. I still hadn’t talked about it much. It was hard to think about everything that had happened. Elie wasn’t going to give up the cash. It had been a week since the whole ordeal was over, and I was ready to move on. Scott was not. He said it was a matter of principle. But as long as I stayed away from Elie and never had to see him again, there wasn’t much else I cared about.
“He’s just a scary guy. I learned early on that Elie would go to great lengths to get what he wanted. If he thought that you were a threat, he would have taken care of you like…” I stopped. I was telling him too much, and my voice cracked just thinking about it.
“Like who?”
“My ex.”
“Who?”
“He came down here after I left. I told Elie that he was trying to persuade me to come back and I didn’t want to go. I said that he was bothering me. Something happened between the two of them at his house. They were both shot, but Greg died.”
“Do you know for sure that he did it?”
“He told me he did. And Sasha heard it all happen. She saw the body getting taken out of the back and dumped in the trunk of a car. I’m pretty sure she knows where his body is, or at least how to find it. They were together, so she knows a lot about what happened that night.”
Scott shook his head and said something under his breath that I didn’t quite hear. “What?”
“Nothing. I think I’ve found a way to get rid of him for good.”
“Why can’t you just let it go?”
“I can’t let it go. He killed your ex and sold you to a monster. Considering all that he’s done, I don’t think that I can let it go, or that I should. I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror, and both of them have to be put down.”
He made me nervous when he talked like that. I didn’t know what had happened in Dubai, just that he’d come back to the hotel room with blood on him. I knew that it wasn’t his blood, and it didn’t take much of a guess to realize that it was Travis’s. I didn’t have the courage to ask either way, though.
“I just want to forget about it all, Scott. There’s a lot that I’ve done that I’m not proud of. He has tapes of me, of us, and I know that he would use them if he felt like it would help his cause. I don’t want to give him a reason. He would do it just because, if we went after him. That’s just how he is. I thought you were worried about your reputation?”
“I’m more worried about the next girl that he abuses. I can’t let it go with a clean conscience. He’s just going to do it again and again unless someone stops him.”
“It doesn’t have to be you, Scott.”
“No, it needs to be us.”
There was no arguing with him. I told him all that I knew about what had happened with Greg. Scott wrote things down and said something about talking to his lawyer. He wanted everything done right, although he wouldn’t tell me what he was thinking about doing.
When we got to talking about Travis, I told him about all of the things I’d heard. I didn’t tell him everything that he’d done to me, or what Sasha had said. Those were things that didn’t ever have to be brought to the light of day. But I did tell him about Lisa and how Elie had said something about it before to me. It was almost common knowledge in the club.
“Do you think the girls would rat on him?”
“A lot of them are still loyal, the ones who haven’t seen the bad side of him, but I would think that if there was a good chance that he was going to be taken out of commission, more would talk. They’re afraid of him, it’s just that simple.”
“You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore, Mariah. I’m going to make sure that he never hurts another woman in his life.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Scott just shrugged and pulled me to him. “Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you with my life, daddy.”
He groaned and kissed me before I could get away from him. I’d been staying at his house since we got back. We hadn’t had the talk about what was going to happen next. He told me he loved me, and that was more than enough to keep me satisfied. Scott was everything that I could have possibly wanted and more. Sometimes he was hard to keep up with.
***
I watched the news with my mouth hanging open. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on the screen. Scott had been gone a lot this week. He said that it was because of work, and I think it partially was, but there was something else going on as well. Lawyers had been to the house several times, as well as a couple of men who introduced themselves as investigators. I didn’t know if they were hired by Scott or if they worked for the police department. All I knew was that something was going on and Scott wasn’t sharing it.
Now I knew what. Elie and Travis were doing a perp walk and the police were smiling as if they had caught somebody important. He wasn’t that important, neither one of them was, but the charges were shocking. Both men were being arrested for murder. Scott had promised not to bring up my and Sasha’s ordeals with Elie and Travis, but he hadn’t agreed not to tell about the rest.
The prosecutor made a statement in which he guaranteed a conviction. Apparently he had an iron-clad case, and I had a feeling that it was Scott who’d made sure he did. I wouldn’t have doubted that he’d done it all and handed it to the man. Now he was going to get the two of them out of the city where they couldn’t harm anyone again. He’d done what he said he was going to do.
I sat down on the couch and watched several reels of footage. There were a few reporters at the club and just seeing the place on the TV gave me a bit of a chill. It was actually happening. Scott had talked about it a little, but I hadn’t really thought he would do it.
I don’t know how long I sat there watching the same information over and over again. It was big news in New Orleans. Travis was one of the richest businessmen here, and Elie was just notorious in his own way. Between the two of them, it became clear that nothing else was going to run at the moment. This was the only story today, and I was transfixed where I sat.
Later there were reports that a mysterious fire had broken out at the club. I had to wonder who had started the fire. I saw several girls there in the background of the on-scene footage. I hoped that everyone had gotten out safely, and I tried to call Sasha to see if she knew what was going on. There was no answer on her phone and I started to worry.
I didn’t have long to worry, though. Scott was soon home, and he pulled me from the scenes on the screen.
“You don’t need to look at that anymore, Mariah. I’ve got something more important for you to do.”
I gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he pulled me closer for a proper kiss. It was our little tradition, and so was the way his hands were manipulating the bare cheeks of my ass.
“Anything for you, daddy.”
~The End for Now ~