Page 12 of Love on the Run

Me: I appreciate that and no it wasn’t another woman. I do love him and miss him every day. Asa does too.

DiDi: Can you just tell me one thing?

Me: Sure

DiDi: Did he hit you?

Me: NO — Never. I promise.

DiDi: Ok. Just making sure…

Me: He’s never put his hands on me. He’d never dishonor us that way.

DiDi: He’s on a rampage right now. Be careful.

Me: I will.

Sighing,I sit my phone down on the table and do my best to turn my concentration on Asa, as he plays.

“Mommy, yook!” He grins, with a little drool from him teething bubbling in the corner of his mouth as he looks over at me dangling an oversized Black Panther toy in the air before making it do all kinds of maneuvers.

“That’s so cute honey,” I clap cheerfully for him.

“Mommy? Daddy, see?” His eyes lift from his antics full of hope.

My nose stings. I get down on the floor remembering what the therapist told me about explaining to him why his daddy is not here or rather why we aren’t where we are supposed to be —home.

“Asa, daddy’s not here with us right now,” I explain to him giving him a smile. It almost works as he nods a little and goes back to playing for a moment.

“Daddy home?” He asks, and I know what’s coming. At first, he was fine as I played like we were on some big adventure but after three, no four and a half weeks he is over the adventure and misses his father, uncles and ooma—his grandmother.

“No honey daddy is not home with us. We are not home with daddy.” He looks at me for a moment before his face crumbles, he throws the toy, which tumbles head over bottom across the room before crashing into the glass doors opening to a garden. Asa falls back smacking his head on the thankfully plush Persian carpet, his face filling with crimson, his feet kicking the air, fist tight and flailing, him screaming, “I want daddy. I want daddy, I want daddy.”

I tryto gather him in my arms, he still squirms doing his best trying to get away from me, screaming, “Bad mommy, bad mommy, bad mommy.”

That’s justwhat I feel like. Tears form in my eyes, pain clogs my throat as I whisper to my little boy, “I’m so sorry, Asa. Mommy, so sorry. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I don’t know how long I hold him. But I can’t help thinking how much trauma I’ve visited upon my baby. I try not to listen to the lies of the depression that’s plagued me for the last several weeks since I left Akchiro in our bed. I’ve talked remotely to my therapist, but none of it matters when you’re holding a sobbing child.

“Miss?” A pretty teen girl comes in wrapped in traditional dress, a smile blossoming from her face with empathy in her eyes. I’m sure she’s seen this drama more than once.

“Yes?”Looking down at Asa, now calmly sleeping not really wanting her to see my tear streaked face.

“Miss Prosper’s arrived.I will take Asa for you now, okay?” I nod. She hurries over dipping low. I hand her Asa, and she smiles again, in that solemn way of hers and hugs his now sleeping form him to her chest walking quietly out the room.

“At least you’reout of bed.” Comes to acerbic, bored tone of one Prosperity Shipmoore heiress to the Shipmoore Dynasty, a family of Black British billionaires who made their money on shipping during the Victorian age. Their family holds shipping interests in every port on the globe. Prosper spends a lot of her time doing another more dangerous activity for the family — freeing women from unpleasant marriages to wealthy men of means. She runs a network started by one of her great-great grandmothers, helping women escape marriages some arranged many where their lives or their children’s live are in danger from not so loving husbands. She calls it a family tradition.

“Well,I had no choice after your threats last time.” I roll my eyes gathering myself moving from the floor, taking my seat beside the chaise she’s decided to actually lounge on. It’s rare to see her rest. She’s a high communicator and the last time she paced walking back and forth to strategize our next move in me freeing myself from Akchiro.

I’ve been in Dubai a month—much longer than is safe, normally she’d have moved the women on to a new location within the first week but I was too hot—too well known. I had to sit tight until Akchiro gave up. I feel bad for not telling her he’d never give up.

Normally months of planning goes onto the operations Prosper executes freeing women, but I called her in tears one day and she got me out the next day. Once here I literallycrashed from defeated exhaustion. I was in no condition to make decisions about the future anyway.

“Damn straight. Because we ain’t going to be around here crying over no, n— oh, how do you say motherfuckers in Japanese?” She quirks a perfectly arched brow my way.”

“kuso yaro,” I huff.

“Okayyyyy,” she leans towards me “We ain’t going to be around here, crying over, no kuso yaros.”

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