Page 1 of The Heart Of A Real Woman
Chapter One.
Marilyn “Mary” Mikaelson
I sat on the vanity’s bench next to a bed that wasn’t mine, yet it felt oddly comforting as I gazed over at it. I knew that once I ended the life of the woman sleeping there, I might finally find a sliver of relief. As I watched her closely, my heart raced inside my chest, pounding an erratic rhythm. Not out of fear. No. I was burning with rage, anxious to unleash it.
Poking out my lips, I let out a chilling whistle that shattered the silence, causing Kelis to stir. Confusion washed over her face as she blinked into consciousness, lifting her head from the satin pillow where I intended to leave her brain matter splattered. Nervously, she jumped and stared at me for a while, trying to figure out who I was and why I was in her home.
“Ma… Marilyn?” She stammered, rubbing her eyes as if frantically trying to blink away a hallucination.
“Mrs. Mikaelson,” I corrected her without hesitation, the surname tasting bitter on my tongue. “But you knew that already and didn’t give a fuck, did you?”
Kelis stared at me, her eyes wide with fear and guilt, a look that made it clear she had a good idea of why I was here. And while we had never met face to face before this day, she knew very well that Moses was a married man…that he was married to me. Hell, the whole Melrose knew. Our love? It had been admired in the city for years. We’d graced plenty of cameras, I was all over his social media accounts, on his screensaver, even in photos hanging in the office built inside his recording studio.
Her hands began to tremble as I pulled the pink Glock from my mink coat. The gun my husband had gifted me long ago, when he was deep in the streets and needed me to know how to protect myself in case his enemies came lurking. Back when he was building his empire, before the fancy bulletproof cars and expensive bodyguards.
“Oh my god,” Kelis’s hands instinctively raised in a plea. “Please. Y…you don’t have to do whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“Are you fucking around with my husband, Kelis?” I demanded to know, ignoring her cries.
“N…no. I swear Casper and I don’t have anything serious going on. We’ve just talked. Got to know one another better while working on my album. That’s all.”
“Just talked?”
“Y…yes.”
“But you wanted more wit’ him, right?”
“No,” she replied, causing me to scoff. Considering the text messages I’d read on his phone from her, she was lying straight through those fake-ass veneers.
I wasn’t entirely sure what all my husband had done with her since he wasn’t stupid enough to put those details in themessages, and I didn’t trust a word she said to me. All I had were the consistent check-ins between them, her sending pictures, and gushing about how much she adored him and wanted to be his woman.
For a moment, I grew quiet, lost in deep thought, and I could tell Kelis had no idea whether to run or just sit there and accept her fate.
“Kelis,” I broke the silence as I tucked a loose curl behind my ear. My hair was a fucking mess, wild and untamed in its natural 4c state.
“Y…yes?”
I leaned closer, rage boiling inside me as I pulled one of Moses’s cell phones from my pocket. The burner I’d taken from his pants while he was asleep. The damn thing wouldn’t stop vibrating at the time, so I’d gone through it. That’s when I discovered Kelis’s message and her constant missed calls. It took me only thirty minutes to go through his records next and figure out her address.
“Nine times out of ten, if I ask a question,I already know the answer.”
I watched as she swallowed hard, clearly scrambling to think of a lie to get herself out of this. But I had no intention of waiting to hear her bullshit.
“You wanna know why my husband was so successful at building an empire, Kelis? How he manage to go from the streets to a legitimate businessman? How he earned the name Casper amongst his niggas?”
She stared at me, and I stared right the fuck back. My brows furrowed harder than hers.
“Because he had me at his side. The good girl who spent years in school, earning multiple degrees.” I tapped the barrel of my gun against my chest.
“Me. His fucking wife, who taught him how to start a business, clean his money, flip it, and last but not least, make a body properly disappear. I showed him how to cover his tracks and leave no trace for the authorities and my colleagues to find.”
Her eyes widened in realization as I winked. The world knew me as the perfect, well-educated wife and mother. One degree was in forensic accounting, which had helped Moses understand the details of money laundering. The other was in forensic science, my true passion and ultimate career goal…my end game.
Isn’t life ironic? A forensic analyst, a woman who went to crime scenes to help catch criminals, married to one of the biggest fucking criminals. Sometimes I sit back and laugh at how that turned out. But what they didn’t know was that beneath this façade lay a girl who fell for a bad boy and would do anything to keep him safe and free. I’m a real ass woman when it comes to mine, or at least I was. Because after today, I was done with him.And I was done with her, too.
In a swift motion, I aimed the gun at Kelis’s exposed leg and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed through the bedroom, and she let out a piercing scream. I felt neither remorse nor concern; the home she had purchased with her deal at my husband’s record label was nestled in a quiet, secluded neighborhood…perfect for what I had planned.
Her cries were painful, but all I could feel was the agony I had endured, and for a moment, I relished it. I was deaf to her suffering; only my pain mattered at that moment. I was so hurtthat I wore the same anguish she did. But we were hurting for different reasons, and yet my pain felt just as excruciating.
