An Eye for an Eye

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Prologue

Amado Mio.

Playing from my iPod in the living room.

Amado Mio by Pink Martini.

I leaned my head back. Listened to the melody. Felt my skin tingle. The breakdown was coming. My skin always tingled when it did.

Amado Mio.

Like sex, the song was that good. That sexy. That intense. That powerful. If there were a movie about me, this would be my theme song.

I closed my eyes.

Breathed slowly.

Ran my hands up my thighs, past my stomach, over my erect nipples, to my neck, then back down again.

I was wet from the hot water covering me. I was dripping from the melodic orgasm Pink Martini and their groove had caused. Every woman needs to own a copy of this song.

It was the perfect size. The prefect width. The perfect stroke.

To hell with a dick. Just put this song on repeat.

Ringing.

There was no ringing in the song.

I opened my eyes and looked over to my right. My BlackBerry was on the rim of my tub, ringing softly, the volume set at level two. I sighed. I was in mid-stroke, nearing self-fulfilled ecstasy. I should have turned the damn thing off.

I reached over and grabbed it with my fingers wet from the water and my pussy. A Friday night, nearing nine-thirty. Aida followed the rules. Only one other person who didn’t.

I connected the call and placed the BlackBerry against my ear. Marlene.

We have a potential client.

I exhaled. It’s Friday night, Marlene.

I know I’m not supposed to call.

Yet you did.

I’m sorry, but–

Friday nights are off limits.

Marlene sighed apologetically. I could see her running her hands through her hair. She said, I know. I tried not to call, but she sounds desperate. She wants to know if you’ll help her tonight.

In the background, Amado Mio had finished and was restarting. I’d heard the song thousands of times, but each time was like hearing it for the first time. I hated missing any of the song. Give it to Aida.

You’ve given the last three clients to her.

And she’s done well with them.

It’s been four months since you’ve taken a client on.

And?

Lisette . . . Marlene paused momentarily. I could tell she was trying to choose her words carefully. I know I’ve asked you this before, but are you sure you’re all right? Believe me, you are the strongest person I know, but after everything you went through with Kyra . . . I would understand if you were a bit scarred.

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

That name.

Kyra.

Almost a year ago, she’d taken me to the edge. She thought she’d been on my level. Thought she’d been better than me.

She’d been wrong.

But she had taken me to the edge.

She’d caused things to happen. Things that kept me from getting a full night’s sleep. Things that had me on edge. Things that had indeed scarred me. Of course, I would never admit it to anyone. Marlene had seen me at my weakest point and that would be all she would ever see.

I said, I’m fine.

Lisette . . . I know you don’t like to admit it, but you are human.

I’m fine, I said again.

Marlene wouldn’t let up. She had you beaten and raped. I don’t know anyone who can go through that and remain unscathed.

I said I’m fine, Marlene.

Then why haven’t you taken on any clients, Lisette?

I clenched my jaw.

Two years ago, I became a home wrecker: a woman hired by wives to ruin their marriages. They sought my services for various reasons. Some were women who’d become fed up with their husbands’ infidelity. They wanted evidence to use against them to help garner the best payoff possible. Some women were victims of emotional, physical, or verbal abuse who felt trapped and saw my expertise as a means of escape. Other women weren’t seeking an escape or a big payday. They just wanted leverage. Something to hold over their husbands’ heads so that they could do whatever the hell they wanted to do. Pictures, videos, sometimes the satisfaction of walking in and seeing their cheating bastards in compromising situations–whatever they wanted, I provided.

Marlene had been my first client. A fear of scrutiny from her friends and family kept her hostage in a marriage to a pathetic asshole. I gave Marlene the same thing I gave my clients after her–the very thing that I got off on.

Control.

Marlene and all of the other clients had none. That meant they had no power. I’d learned a long time ago that life without control wasn’t life at all. Life without control was death. Life without control just didn’t make any sense to me. Before I helped her, Marlene was weak. She changed when she got control back.

Kyra had managed to take my control away from me. She’d managed to render me powerless. Although I’d never told her directly, Marlene’s newfound strength had been what pulled me away from the edge of the insanity I’d been teetering on. Before my services, Marlene had been an acquaintance. Now . . . she was a friend–my only real friend–and despite the fact that I never called her that, she knew it, and I appreciated her for that.

For the last time . . . I’m fine, I said. I haven’t been in the mood to take on any clients.

Lisette–

Give the client to Aida.

Marlene was silent for a moment before sighing and saying, OK.

I’m going to go back and enjoy my Friday night now.

Are you listening to your song again?

Of course.

Can I ask you something?

I pressed down on my eyeballs with the middle finger and thumb of my free hand. I exhaled. What?

That song . . . it’s about love. Why do you like it so much?

I opened my eyes and looked toward the living room. The breakdown in the song was coming again.

It was a valid question.

I didn’t believe in any of the song’s lyrics, yet the song resonated and stoked a fire inside of me more than anything else had. It didn’t make sense.

I don’t know, Marlene, I said. I just do.

Love is possible, Lisette. I know you’re jaded and don’t believe in it, but it is possible. Trust me, after all of the bullshit with Steve, I was prepared to swear off of it forever too, but just when I was ready to do that, Michael came into my life.

I groaned. I really didn’t want to hear any of her sappy shit.

Marlene . . .

I’m just saying, Lisette, what you do . . . the men you trap . . . not all of them are assholes. There are some decent ones out there. As much as you think there not, if you try to leave your door cracked open just a little bit, you’ll see the right guy can come along and it could be a beautiful thing.

I clenched my jaw. Friend or not, I’d had enough. I said, I don’t do love, Marlene, and then I ended the call and turned my BlackBerry off. Shit.

The bath water had grown tepid. I’d missed another replay of Amado Mio.

I was irritated.

I turned the hot water faucet on, leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and put my focus back on the song that had no real relevance in my life. At least not in my current one.

Amado Mio.

A song about being in love forever.

I breathed.

Listened to the song.

And as hard as I tried not to, I went back to a time I’d let go of a long time ago.

Past

1

Love.

It was tried a long time ago. Like Star Wars, in a galaxy far, far away. A world very different from the one that existed now. One in which I didn’t exist. Only Lisette Jones.

She thought she’d known what it was to be sexy. She thought she’d known about the power of manipulation. She thought she’d had a true understanding of what control was.

But she hadn’t known shit. Not the way she needed to. That’s why love snuck in through a back door she hadn’t closed and tried to fuck up her life.

Lisette Jones was naïve. A young girl living her life the way she wanted to, until one thing eventually destroyed her.

Love.

She’d never really had it.

Her mother had none for her. Her jealousy never allowed it. For as long as Lisette Jones could remember, the only things her mother ever gazed at her with were eyes filled with envy and disgust.

Although she was attractive in a plain, everyday-looking kind of way, Lisette Jones knew that her mother lived with a heart filled with daily contempt because her daughter had the beauty she wanted.

Natural. Exotic. At the age of eleven, Lisette Jones was unknowingly making the boys take notice. By fourteen, she made the teenage boys cum, and unlike her eleventh year of adolescence, she knew full well that she’d been doing that because at age thirteen, manipulation had become the most important word in her vocabulary.

Manipulation.

She learned all about it. Its meaning. Its purpose. Its strength. She learned how to break the word down. Learned to understand that the first three letters of the word were all that mattered.

Man.

At thirteen, Lisette Jones had been shown by her father that she could do and get whatever she wanted. All she had to do was use what she’d been born with. Her eyes. Her lips. Her tongue. Her hips. Her ass. Her legs.

This was the arsenal with which she’d been blessed and at thirteen years old, her father demonstrated to her that this arsenal was more effective than any gun or knife could be.

Her natural assets could render a man powerless and make him do whatever it was she wanted him to do, and it was all because that from the time she began to fill out, her father desired her in the way that he used to desire his wife.

Lisette Jones learned this valuable life lesson every day she spent in her father’s presence. And this is why her mother abandoned her. She couldn’t compete, and she couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t deal with the fact that her own daughter was more attractive and more in tune with her own body. She couldn’t take the men on the street paying more attention to the child she carried for nine months and labored to deliver for almost forty-eight hours. Most importantly, she couldn’t take the cold, hard reality that her husband fucked their daughter visually with his eyes and mentally in his mind, more than he physically fucked the woman he’d exchanged vows with.

Envy became jealousy.

Jealousy became contempt.

Contempt became disgust.

Disgust led to her mother walking out of the house one morning and never coming back.

That was the love Lisette Jones received from her mother.

Left alone with her perverted father, she learned nothing about love, but everything about manipulation and control. She became the master of the home, coming and going as she pleased. Sexy stances, seductive looks, prancing around the house with a towel wrapped around her and nothing on underneath, or in shorts giving visibility to the bottom of her ass, or in low-cut or tight shirts, calling attention to her firm and full breasts–these were her tactics.

Her father had never touched her, but there’d been no doubt in her mind that he’d masturbated daily to the thought of ravaging her young pussy.

Her father. The first man she learned to control. The first man to show her that, despite the thumping of their chests and the dicks they swung as they walked with a pimp’s limp, men would never be as powerful as a woman could be.

From thirteen to eighteen, Lisette Jones lived her life according to her own rules. Things and people that had no meaning or importance were used up and then cast off to the side to be ignored completely. People were tools. Men in particular.

She had her father to thank for that knowledge.

Love, which hadn’t existed in her world, was never sought, and then Jamil Parker materialized out of thin air to steal her breath, and nearly her life, away.

2

Jamil Parker.

Dead now, but back then, he was the man.

The only man.

Lisette Jones had never known what it was to be weak. Never known what it meant to not be in control. The experience of being powerless had been one she couldn’t fathom going through. She’d always had things go her way. Nothing happened unless she allowed it to happen. No one existed unless she wanted them to exist.

Jamil Parker.

He’d gone against the grain. He’d broken the rules.

Freshman year. Art Institute of New York. Second semester. Lisette Jones was having coffee at Chock Express. It was the reintroduction/reinvention of the Chock full o’Nuts coffee chain, which was the original Starbucks before Starbucks came along and moved in on every corner across the free world. That was where Lisette Jones went to study when her roommate was around. She’d wanted a room to herself, but the Institute didn’t give freshman those privileges.

Fashion and style had been her passion. Knowing the right colors, the right combinations–Lisette Jones considered herself to be extremely knowledgeable about the dos and don’ts. She’d chosen the Art Institute of New York because she wanted to leave her mark in the fashion world. She always had. The Institute was the best place to be in order to make that happen, and the best was the only thing she would accept. Like it or not, she had to take the good with the bad.

Despite the constant activity, Chock Express became the best place for her to study. The commotion around her became background noise that she would hear, yet not hear at the same time, and that helped her focus.

The Art Institute, right?

Lisette Jones looked up from the book she’d been reading, and for the first time ever, her heart skipped a beat.

Denzel Washington had been the Rock, or Dwayne Johnson as he prefers now, at that time. His smile could make women wet. His charm made them shiver. His confidence made them scream and lose their minds. Sean Combs, AKA Puffy, A.K.A. P. Diddy, A.K.A. Diddy, A.K.A. the Shiny Suit Man–he was style ahead of style. Before the shiny suits and the all-white linen parties, before the clothing line and the cologne, he was baggy jeans, sports jerseys, or tank tops, with a black Chicago White Sox hat to the back. His style, along with the ultimate swagger he possessed, made women drop their panties. 50 Cent, or Fiddy, as some call him, wasn’t around back then, but a body like his was what women dreamt of touching. The chest, the arms, the abs–they made it easy to bypass the face. That and the money.

Standing in front of her table was a combination of those three men.

More handsome than Denzel with a close-cut fade, as stylish as Diddy in Cross Colours clothing, with wide shoulders and a broad chest, Jamil Parker caused ripples between her legs. The sensation was unexpected and unsettling.

Lisette Jones squirmed in her seat a bit and said, Yes, and nothing more.

The Denzel-Diddy-Fiddy combo smiled.

Lisette felt a gush.

He said, I’ve seen you around. Studying design, right?

She nodded. Do you go there?

Yeah. I’m in the film and video program. I’m getting ready to be the next Spikeberg.

Spikeberg?

Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg . . . my favorite directors. I’ll be making movies like them soon.

You’re pretty confident.

He shook his head. Nah . . . not confident. Just stating a fact.

Isn’t that being confident?

He shook his head again. Being confident means there’s room for something to not go your way, but you’re just sure that it will. Reality is reality. It just is. I’m going to be Spikeberg. Shit . . . bigger than both of them. There’s no room for any other reality.

Lisette Jones nodded and felt a shiver creep up from the base of her spine. She’d encountered guys before who’d stepped to her with lines and the I’m-the-man bravado before. Pretty Rickys and sexy thugs who thought that a little smile and a little swag could gain them open-door access to slide into her pussy. But unless she had something to gain by giving them her time and attention, or she had simply been horny, they got about as far as the word hello could stretch, and very rarely would they make it that far.

They may have had the looks, but the looks weren’t enough to compensate for what they had been severely lacking. Style. Charisma. True swagger. They were perpetrators.

Most females fell for the bullshit, but that was because most females were either stupid, naïve, or pathetically desperate for a man’s attention. Lisette Jones wasn’t stupid or naïve and she’d yet to find a man who could do for her what she couldn’t already do for herself. But what had never happened before happened with Jamil Parker standing in front of her. Lisette Jones became intrigued and aroused, and that made her like most females.

She smiled.

So did Jamil, as he extended his hand. Jamil.

She took it. Lisette.

Nice name.

Thanks.

Exotic. Like your looks.

My mother was Puerto Rican and black. My father’s from Barbados.

Jamil’s thumb lightly moved from side to side against her skin. Your parents put together one hell of a mix.

Lisette Jones felt hot and cold at the same time. It was an electric feeling.

So how long are you planning to stay here? Jamil asked.

Lisette Jones took a slow, full breath, released it slowly, and shrugged. Not long.

Want to get something to eat?

Before that moment, the only answer that existed was, No.

Before that moment, there would have never been a moment, because the opportunity for the question to have been asked would have never been given.

Before that moment, Lisette Jones had been herself.

Before that moment.

She opened her mouth. Studied his full bottom lip. Imagined herself sucking on it. Then imagined sucking on him. Electric heat radiated between her thighs as she said, I’m ready to leave now . . . if you are.

Jamil gave a smile that made her heartbeat stutter. He didn’t let go of her hand as she rose from her seat.

Lisette Jones was powerless and, for reasons she could never fully understand or explain, it was an intoxicating feeling.

3

Two years.

That’s how long Lisette Jones dated Jamil Parker.

For six months, the relationship was heaven. Better than anything she’d ever experienced before. All of the men she’d encountered in the short life she’d lived had all done whatever she’d wanted them to do. They were mindless tools to her that she discarded without a thought or care after their uses were served.

Satisfaction was never something she’d known before, at least not in the truest sense of the word. She thought she’d been satisfied whenever she’d gotten the things she wanted. She thought she’d been pleased when her needs were met. It was only when Jamil came along that she realized that hadn’t been the case. Her satisfaction had never been real. It had never been Tom Cruise and Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire. It had never been complete.

Jamil Parker.

For six months, he ’d the hell out of her emotionally and physically.

For six months, he did things only the men in movies did.

For six months, he was the man who existed only in novels.

For six months, Lisette Jones could spell the word she never believed in, forward, backward, sideways, and in circles.

Love hadn’t been real until Jamil introduced it into her world. He did so without being asked. His equal and opposite