Still Wifey Material Page 19

  “Didn’t I just say shut up?” Fatu screamed. His focus left me for a brief second and his grip loosened around my neck, so I put a lot of force behind my body weight and tried to make my escape.

  “Ugggghhhh!” I grunted with the effort as I tried to hop back out of the car, but Fatu and Nikki both grabbed me before I could get my first foot out the door. She punched me in the back of my head while he had me in a chokehold. I looked up at Nikki. “I’ma kill you, bitch!” I mumbled through my teeth.

  “You can’t do shit from where you are, so shut the fuck up and take this one like a woman,” Nikki gloated. She sounded like a vindictive bitch. “You’ve escaped death twice, and now it’s your time to go.”

  “Do you know how you sound?” I managed to say before Fatu put more pressure around my neck.

  “How I sound ain’t important. But the fact that Fatu knows about your past life that landed you in the Witness Protection Program is.” Nikki laughed wickedly at my incredulous look. “Yeah, he knows! The secret is out. And now I’m finally going to get my life back.” She reached into the car, grabbed a hold of the volume button for the radio and turned up the volume as loud as it would go. Then she went into her handbag and took out a rope, duct tape, and everything else you needed to commit a murder. All I could do was let out more tears as I pictured the breath leaving my body.

  “Put that stuff away. We can’t tie her up here,” Fatu told Nikki.

  “So what are we going to do?” she wanted to know.

  “We need to knock her out so we can get out of here before someone sees us,” he pointed out.

  “Well, here, take the Taser gun and knock her out,” she said and handed him the gun.

  My mind was spinning. I didn’t know what to expect from this little metal object. All I knew was that police officers used that damn thing on criminals, so it worked like magic for them. But to use it on me was a bit disturbing. Just when I was about to reason with them in hopes of finding another solution to get me from point A to point B, Fatu turned on the handheld device and stuck it right to my side.

  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! The loud, buzzing noise filled the car. It was a sound I would never forget. He moved his knee and ripped open my shirt. I kicked and wriggled my body fiercely. Fatu placed the metal tip of the machine on my chest and pressed a button that intensified the buzzing sound. Zip! Zip! Zip! Three hits of high-wattage electric volts hit me in the chest. My body convulsed and my eyes involuntarily rolled into the back of my head, and then everything went black.

  No Way Out

  (Kira Speaks)

  The sound of water dripping seemed very loud as I returned to consciousness. I opened my battered eyelids and squinted to see where I was. It was dark and the smell of mold hung in the air, so I knew I was no longer inside my car. I fell in and out of consciousness for what seemed like eternity. After a while, I heard Nikki’s voice. She was trying to whisper.

  “I went through her whole house and I couldn’t find it,” she said.

  “Why the fuck not? Her house isn’t but so big!” Fatu screamed.

  “What else do you want me to do?” Nikki asked, her voice wavering.

  “Just know that if I go down, so do you. Remember, you were the one who got Crissy and those women to trust me. You were the reason I got inside their houses. You were there when I murdered them. And you held the video camera,” he said through clenched teeth.

  I almost threw up when I heard his words. Nikki was an accessory to all those murders. Not only that, but it became clear to me that Nikki would do anything for a man, or for what she perceived to be a man.

  “We can’t kill her until we know that we have the information we need,” Fatu said, pacing.

  “Why can’t we just leave town?” Nikki proposed. “You got more than enough money, and I have access to Kira’s accounts. So after we get rid of her, we’re gonna have everything we need.”

  “No! You don’t understand. I can’t leave my family, so this whole thing has to go away. If we find the evidence, we can kill her and move on like nothing ever happened.”

  As I listened to him, I understood he was making it clear to Nikki that he was not going to be with her either. I doubted that Nikki understood that Fatu had just used the both of us, and she fell for his charm and his money. She had betrayed the only best friend she had left in the world—me!

  I knew they would never find the evidence. On my way to the hotel I had stopped by my bank and locked the T-shirt—stuffed into a manila envelope—in my safe deposit box that, thankfully, Nikki knew nothing about. In fact, I got the deposit box right after I put her ass out of my house, so I had no worries about her finding it. If anything, the police would probably find it first. Since I had a note attached to it, it wouldn’t be hard for them to link Fatu to the murder. The only thing I didn’t include in the note was that Nikki was an accessory to those women’s murders, because I didn’t know that then.

  What in the hell was she thinking? How could she have befriended those women and then let Fatu rape and kill them while she videotaped it? That shit was insane. I couldn’t fathom the thought of any woman doing that for a man. Fatu’s dick wasn’t that good, and I knew he wasn’t selling her the dream that he’d marry her instead of me, so what was her problem? Whatever it was, it was serious and she needed to see a psychiatrist quickly. I suddenly heard footsteps coming in my direction.

  “Kira, get up!” Fatu lifted my chin and shined a bright light into my eyes. The methods he used led me to believe that he had performed acts of torture before. Maybe he was a guerilla rebel in Africa, and that was why he had so much money. Fatu had some skills that only those types of people would have.

  I moaned. Fatu took my hand, forcefully placed it on the table, and used a pair of pliers to snatch off one of my fingernails.

  “Where is the T-shirt?” Fatu asked while Nikki dug her nails into my wrists. “Where is it, Kira?” Fatu screamed. I still did not answer.

  Nikki was beginning to grow angrier by the moment. “Kira, just tell him. You’re gonna die anyway,” she urged.

  I rolled my eyes. Nikki had betrayed me in the worst way. She knew that I had her as the beneficiary on all of my bank accounts, my house, and the shop. Not only did she stand to get the two million that Fatu had put in my account to make me think the deal had gone through, but she also stood to receive the insurance money from the shop explosion. Nikki was going to make a good three to four million if I died today. And with that alone, I vowed not to utter a word.

  Continuously they tortured me. I shrieked in horrible pain. Tears rolled down my face and the only thing that kept me alive was the fact that they didn’t know what I had done with that evidence.

  Nikki smiled like she was enjoying seeing me in pain. “Don’t cry now, Ms. Bad Ass! You supposed to be hard, remember?”

  All I could think about through the pain was that Nikki was in over her head, and sadly, she didn’t even realize it. Just as Fatu prepared to pull out another fingernail, I heard a BANG! I couldn’t tell where they sound had come from, because the light was still shining in my eyes.

  “What was that?” Nikki asked nervously. My heart jumped in my chest. That has to been the police! I grew excited. For the moment I felt like my life would be spared.

  “Turn off the light,” Fatu instructed frantically. We must have been in an abandoned building of some sort because of the acoustics. Every word echoed very loudly.

  BANG! I grew more and more excited, waiting to hear the words, “FREEZE! POLICE!” I never thought I’d be happy to see any police. I could hear Fatu and Nikki scrambling in the dark like the rats that they were. I was in too much pain to care what they did anymore. I tried to focus on the thought of some cop tossing me over his shoulder and running out the door, saving me.

  Suddenly I heard footsteps. Fatu heard them too because he pulled a gun from his waistband, but then the footsteps stopped. There was dead silence. I could hear Nikki breathing hard. I remained still. Fatu de
cided to turn on the light to see what was going on. Click. A snub-nosed Berretta was right in his face.

  “Drop the gun,” a man instructed. Fatu complied. His gun and his last hope hit the floor with a thud while Nikki immediately began to sob. Apparently she knew it was all over for her. I, on the other hand, became ecstatic because I knew that I was about to regain my freedom. God definitely had other plans for my life.

  Throughout all this, I kept my eyes closed tightly because I didn’t want to witness shit. I wanted to wait until everything was over so I wouldn’t carry the bad memories of this event with me for the rest of my life. My legs felt numb where they were duct-taped to the chair, and I could not have moved them even if I wanted to. All of the electricity that had been surging through my body made me weak. I felt like I was one-hundred-years-old.

  “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time,” the man said. Fatu remained silent. I frowned. The voice I’d just heard was the voice of an African. Whoever that man was hadn’t asked Fatu and Nikki to freeze or get down on the floor, so he wasn’t a cop. What the hell is really going on? I wondered.

  “You know it ends here now, right?”

  I finally recognized the voice. It was Bintu! Why was he there? What in the hell was about to end?

  “You don’t have the heart to kill me. You were weak then, and you are weak now,” Fatu said, his voice laced with pride.

  “Cousin, don’t let him speak to you like that! Kill them now!” another voice commanded. Bintu had one of his soldiers with him and they were all related to each other. Whatever was going on had to do with some disloyalty in the family.

  “Are you kidding me?” Fatu chuckled as he addressed the second man. “Kofi, he’s weak. He’s a fucking coward!”

  Bintu laughed. “Yes, I am a coward, but you are sick. We found the blackmail letter Kira sent you. And the part that disgusted me the most was how she laid out all the evidence she had on you to link you to that last murder. She really had you by the balls, and she could have taken you down with no problem. But if we would have allowed that to happen, it would have jeopardized our entire family and all our export businesses. Remember, the only reason you were sent to America was because you were doing the same thing to the women in our nearby villages. If Father hadn’t paid off the Nigerian authorities to keep them from throwing you into prison for the rest of your life, you would be living as a peasant right now.”

  “You don’t know shit about me!” Fatu roared.

  “I know enough to know that you repulse me. You were not even smart enough to change your pattern from the one you used back home. That is the sickest thing ever.” Bintu cocked his gun and prepared to fire.

  Fatu hocked spit onto the floor. “Father is going to have your head for this!”

  “Who do you think ordered this?” Bintu asked.

  Fatu fell silent. My heart dropped when I heard a third voice—Mr. Oduka. “Pray for your soul, son,” he said and pulled the trigger. Boom!

  It took everything within me not to scream. I wanted to run my ass out of there because these people were serious.

  “What do you want to do about her?” Bintu asked.

  “Now you know we can’t have any witnesses,” Mr. Oduka replied. His footsteps echoed in the distance as he walked away.

  “Please don’t kill me!” Nikki sobbed even louder as she pleaded for her life, but it was too late. Bintu fired, and I heard her hit the ground, screaming. Although she had watched me get tortured and was going to have me killed over jealousy and greed, I had a hard time dealing with her execution. I was literally hurting inside and wanted to scream, but I knew I couldn’t. If Bintu knew that I was still alive, I was going to be his next victim.

  I continued to play the part of a corpse. BOOM! I heard Nikki’s body jerk on the floor and then the screaming stopped. I knew she was dead.

  “Kofi, go get Matthew and Thomas so you guys can clean this up,” Bintu instructed.

  “All right.” Kofi left.

  I heard Bintu walk toward me and I was about to freak out. I had no idea what he was about to do, and since I wanted to stay alive, I continued to pretend like I was dead.

  He stopped and stood still. I figured he was trying to see if I was still breathing, so I held my breath and prayed to God that he’d give me the strength to last as long as I could. A few seconds passed before Bintu turned and walked away. I exhaled slowly, but I never opened my eyes until I heard a door close.

  Finally I let out a huge sigh of relief. I couldn’t believe that I’d survived another bloody massacre. I waited a few minutes more before I opened my eyes, but I was not prepared for what I saw. Fatu and Nikki lay in their own pools of blood with gunshot wounds to their heads.

  I leaned over and vomited right on the spot before I realized that wasn’t a very smart thing to do. But how in the hell could I have prevented it? I couldn’t dwell on it because I had to get the hell out of there before Kofi and those other two niggas came back and saw that I was alive.

  I managed to wiggle and squirm my way out of the rope and the duct tape. When I finally was able to stand up, my legs felt like achy logs. My insides hurt, plus my fingers were bleeding profusely where the nails had been ripped out. I felt like I was dying slowly, but I wasn’t about to let that slow me down.

  I almost shat on myself when a hand grabbed me around my ankle. I screamed and saw that Fatu was clinging to my ankle for dear life. I nearly lost it.

  “Please help me,” he gasped. Blood bubbled through his lips.

  I couldn’t respond to his plea. I was completely at a loss for words and all I wanted to do was get out of there. I shook him off frantically and sprinted away as quickly as I could. When I got to the door, I snatched it open and froze when I saw Bintu blocking the entrance. My first instinct was to turn around and run in the opposite direction, but that would have been a dummy move because there was nowhere for me to escape. I stood and awaited my fate.

  “Going somewhere?” Bintu asked. His face showed no sign that he was about to let me go. I couldn’t speak to save my life. Literally. “Where is the evidence you have?” he asked.

  “I put it away in a safe place,” I croaked.

  “Where is this safe place?”

  “Are you going to kill me if I take you to it?” My voice trembled.

  “Are you going to give me the evidence?” he asked.

  “I will, if you let me live.”

  “What guarantees will I have that you aren’t going to go to the police?”

  “The only thing you have is my word,” I said in a low, weak whisper.

  “I will accept that, but you’re going to also have to give me your word that you’re going to get out of town as well.”

  “I was already prepared to do that,” I assured him. “I have a two o’clock flight leaving from Houston tomorrow afternoon.”

  Bintu nodded. “Where is this safe place?” he asked again.

  “OK. I need to go to the Bank of Commerce.” What did I have to lose at this point? I was going to give them what they wanted in exchange for my freedom. I had had enough.

  Bintu frowned. “Well, it’s too late to do anything tonight. The bank is closed, so we will get up early in the morning to take care of that.”

  “What’s gonna happen to me until then?” I asked nervously.

  “You will come with me.”

  That gave me an uneasy feeling. What I really wanted to do was go my own way and meet up the next day, but I knew that wasn’t an option. Bintu wasn’t going to give me an opportunity not to show. A bleak expression crossed my face. The only thing I could say was, “Where are you taking me?”

  “To a safe place. You will be fine. No one is going to hurt you. You have my word on that.” Even though Bintu seemed like he could be trusted, I still wasn’t comfortable going with him. But what other choice did I have? He’d already made up his mind, and I couldn’t muster up any strength to fight him and try to escape, so I just gave in and al
lowed him to escort me to his vehicle.

  During the drive I asked, “What made you stick around? Did you know that I was still alive?”

  Bintu nodded. “Yes, I knew.”

  “Well, why did you leave me sitting there?”

  “I had my reasons.” He continued to look straight ahead.

  “Can I ask you another question?”

  Bintu sighed. “Sure.”

  “What are you going to do with Fatu’s and my cousin’s bodies?”

  “I can’t discuss what we’re going to do with Fatu’s body, but as far Nikki’s body, I can say that we’re going to put it somewhere visible for the police to find her. I’m sure your family would want to have a proper burial for her.”

  I nodded and began to think about how my aunt and uncle were going to take Nikki’s death. There was no question in my mind that they were going to blame it on me, so there was absolutely no need for me to call them with the news, or for that matter, attend her funeral. If all went well tomorrow, I was going to give Bintu the package from my safe deposit box and then I was going to leave this country, never to return again.

  When we arrived at Bintu’s new place, I was given some food and then he arranged for me to get some medical attention. The family’s doctor stitched up my cuts and wrapped my ribs before two women dressed in African garb bathed me and gently brushed my hair. I almost forgot where I was until they showed me where I was going to sleep. The room was warm and inviting, but I had let my guard down enough, so I knew I could not fall asleep. The hours passed like days. I had been captured and tortured for twenty-six hours, and I had not slept a wink. Although I was weak and dead tired, now wasn’t the time to lose focus.