Page 14 of Consumed By Desire

“Yep,” she says, and we head to the exit.

“Legend Morehouse,” the voice says, and I pause in my walking to turn and look at Trent.

“Trent,” I say in a bored tone.

“I owe you retribution, you almost broke my jaw,”

“And you’re okay with publicly announcing you got your ass whooped?”

“It was a sucker punch, and we both know it. You were a pussy in high school, and you’re a pussy today,” I move towards him, but Shannon’s voice stops me.

“Charles, I am surprised to see you out today after our call,” she says, closely watching his reaction. His eyes ping pong around the restaurant unable to look her in the eye.

“I uh, told you earlier, Shannon, it uh, working with you is not a good fit,”

“Oh, I remember,”

“I can see why you were so angry at York. You were defending this community trim.”

“Please believe me when I tell you the only reason they are not calling an ambulance to rush you to the hospital is the fact that she is asking me not to beat your ass in this restaurant, but I’ll see you again. That’s a promise,”

“If you think I am afraid of what a retard can do to me, then you still need to be on the short yellow bus,”

“I got your short yellow bus, believe me, and I want you to have this same energy when we meet again,” I say quietly, holding onto my anger by the barest of threads. “Let’s go, Bella,” I say, taking her hand and walking out of the restaurant.

“Are we going to let that slide,” she asks once we are clear of the building.

“Fuck no, we’re going to bring his ass down,” I tell her as the car pulls up.

CHAPTER7

Shannon

Legend is so mad on the ride home I can literally feel him vibrating next to me. He gently holds my hand on the ride back to his house. As soon as we cross the threshold, he makes a drink and downs it in one gulp as I pull my shoes off and head to the sofa.

“Talk to me, Legend,”

“When I was in school, I struggled with learning,” he says, taking his tie off and unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt as he grabs two bottles of water from the fridge, handing me one as he takes a seat next to me. “I would lose words, words I knew I knew, but when I would be talking, I would struggle to recall it. It severely hindered me academically, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I would have trouble understanding words. Like a person would be speaking regular plain English words and it would sound like gibberish to my ears. Back then, they didn’t take much time trying to diagnose kids. If you weren’t quote-unquote normal, you were retarded. Even the verbiage back then is quite different from what it is now. I would also filter information differently, like I would see it all all at once I was a mess, and my parents didn’t know what to do with me, especially with Kruze being practically perfect with anything he touched. I mean, they did their best, but like I said things were different back then. While Kruze was in school with me, he protected me. No one wanted to go up against him but with him being so much older we only had a few years in the same school. Our school was one of the first schools to go from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Once he left, that left me open to bullies, namely Trent. Trent hated Kruze because Kruze was dating the girl that Trent had a crush on. It had never crossed his mind that he was too young for the girl, and he never had a chance with her. He felt like if it wasn’t for Kruze she would have been his. Like I said he wouldn’t dare try to fight Kruze, but his little brother? Why not?” he says finishing his water and placing the bottle on the coffee table. I fold my legs under me and turn to him, I can hear the hurt in his voice.

“I was a scrawny kid,” he says, laughing when I look shocked at his declaration. “I am serious, I stayed a smooth five feet all the way to senior year. Five feet and maybe one hundred pounds, I grew almost a foot and a half and gained almost eighty pounds over the summer and come back to school six feet four inches and one hundred and eighty-five pounds, but by that time Trent was gone and the damage had been done. I was beaten up, stolen from, humiliated, you name it; Trent and his cronies did it to me. I had the glow-up of the century that summer. When I came back to school, I was treated how Kruze used to be treated, but mentally I was still that scrawny kid, so despite my newfound popularity, I stayed to myself. My parents got me a tutor and I learned some coping skills to deal with my disabilities and did well for myself in my last year. I tested out of special education classes and overall had the kind of school year I should have always had. I never saw Trent again, he was a few years older than me, and the only reason he was even in school with me for so long was because he flunked several times. But senior year he was transferred to a private school, and after that, he went to a community college where his grandparents live. I hadn’t seen him again until a few months ago, at York.”

Who knew? Now I feel like shit because I treated Legend like shit from the first time I met him, for no reason outside of I didn’t like the way he made my body light up. I acted no better than Trent. “Legend,” I start.

“It’s okay, baby. I am not that little kid anymore. Besides, there was no way you could have known.”

“Maybe not, but I could have been a decent person to you instead of a hormonal bitch.”

“Now that I will not tolerate, nobody disrespects you, not even you. Don’t make me take you across my knee.” The smile creeps across my face, and my eyes go half-lidded at his words. “Behave,” he admonishes me.

“That night at York, you were there, and so was Trent, I overheard him talking about you, and next thing I knew I was beating his ass. I never really stopped to piece anything together. I didn’t know you were having issues with your company. The way he was talking about you, I thought maybe he asked you out, and you turned him down. It wasn’t until tonight when you told me about the issues you are having and seeing Trent there with the guy, that I started putting two and two together. I was going to talk to you about it once we got back home, but then he opened his mouth, and here we are.” He finishes, and we sit there looking at each other.

“So how we bout to fuck his life up?” I ask, making Legend bark out a laugh. “I’m serious. That’s your specialty, isn’t it? Looking at something and finding a solution? So find the solution here,” I tell him, and I swear I can literally see the connections being made in his brain in his eyes.

“Okay,” he says, looking pensive. “When did you first notice a problem, or who was the first client you lost?” he asks, cocking my head to the side, I think back to the very first client I lost. “I started having problems right after I poached Michael Taylor. I didn’t immediately start losing clients but I got a call from an old associate saying there was some chatter about me,” I say slowly putting it together in my head. “I didn’t really stress it cause I pissed people off all the time. I mean, I was taking people from their companies.”

“He’s the ticket. IfCriminal Mindsdidn’t teach me anything else, it taught me the first victim is the most important. Tell me about Michael.”

“He worked for a Coda Corp as an executive, but the JW Corp CEO wanted him on their team. Michael was a top executive, but he was killing himself for pennies. The company was making millions off of his work. JW almost tripled his pay, and the benefits were platinum level. From what I heard, the department head took a beating after Michael was gone. Apparently, Michael was doing a giant portion of his work without knowing he was doing it. Once he was gone, it all came crashing down on him.”

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