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FOUR YEARS LATER, JOHN Sheldon returns to St. Isidore to seek righteous vengeance on the two women who he believes are responsible for his brother’s death.
Bree and Beth are still together, in love, and on their own, in the second book in the St. Isidore Collection.
Barely old enough to be street legal, they scramble to hide the truth behind St. Isidore’s crime of the century, dodging the bodies that are snapping at the neck in the Suicide Forest, and running from John Sheldon, who has vowed to kill them.
Anne would love to help Bree and Beth, if only they don’t kill her first.
Here’s a taste of what life is like for Bree and Beth, and the challenge John faces, in Chapter 4 of Wicked Revenge, Book 2 From the St. Isidore Collection.
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“A SIXTEEN-YEAR OLD girl is being charged as an adult in the strangulation death of a forty-three year old man. St. Isidore Police Chief Lumpy Doolan says the two were engaged in what the chief described as ‘very kinky sex,’” the WSIR news announcer said.
“The girl, whose name we are not releasing yet, told us the man, that she said is or was her boyfriend, forgot to use the ‘safety word,’” said Chief Doolan told a reporter.
Bree could relate to that.
Sixteen-years old with a forty-three-year old boyfriend, that was Tim and me a couple of years ago.
Strangulation sex. Erotic asphyxiation. That is very, very hot. But you can’t choke them so much they can’t get the safe word out, and yes, Chief Lumpy, it is a ‘safe’ word, not a ‘safety word.’
I would love to get old Lumpy tied up on my bed some night just for the fun of it.
Bree walked into her financial manager and attorney’s office building with a smile on her face that she would also love to explain to the young secretary and the middle-age man behind the front desk.
But, she didn’t. Bree had something more important on her mind — the survival of Bree Incorporated — which was directly tied to the survival of Bree herself.
“You are in serious trouble,” Melinda Black told her young client. “To begin with, you haven’t paid any income tax in three years.”
“I ran my tax numbers online and that’s what it showed me. No tax owed.”
“Take it easy, Bree. I said that was just the beginning. You are being sued by every news organization that covered the kidnapping for using their video and audio reports without their permission.”
“I pulled them off the Internet. Once it’s there, it’s public property, right?”
“Wrong. Or at least that’s a matter of dispute to say the least.”
“This is so not fair.”
“Fair? Who are you kidding?”
Melinda didn’t want to hear Bree ever say the word ‘fair,’ not after what she had done to Tim Sheldon.
Melinda hadn’t been born yesterday. She was reminded of that every time she looked in her mirror and saw the road map of forty-four years that had been etched into her face by slamming her head on a corporate glass ceiling, a breakup with her husband, a romance with a lesbian lover who cheated on Melinda with her ex-husband, and now life as not-much more than an ambulance chasing, keep the wolf away from the door paralegal with a degree from a night school who did taxes on the side.
“I told you Bree, I am not an attorney, I am a paralegal. You need help that I can’t deliver. You need to talk to a lawyer.”
“Oh, come on Melinda. Please. For me?”
Bree and Melinda went back at least eight months after meeting in the Sensations nightclub. Bree was dancing, Melinda was enjoying.
Roy Benvenito had agreed to Bree’s price without an argument, which made Bree realize she was underpricing herself, as she saw for the first time just what a hot property she had become.
Bree signed books, danced and stripped onstage. The audience was huge, all male, all drinking, all spending money and tipping big for thirty-seconds of this famous woman’s time.
Bree never got naked. It’s not that she didn’t want to go nude. She would have loved that. But St. Isidore’s City Council forced topless dancers to wear bikinis on stage.
That took the “less” out of “topless” and thousands of dollars out of Roy Benvenito’s cash registers.
“Who will I sell beer to? Boy Scouts? You can just go down to the lake to see girls in bikinis,” he told the St. Isidore City Council during the Great Bikini Debate.
“And you can bring your own beer,” yelled a voice from the peanut gallery in the back.
Benvenito didn’t go bust without bare breasts. But he came close. It wasn’t until Bree came through his door offering herself for his stage that Sensations started bringing in the kind of crowds Roy was used to, pre-bikini.
“Heavy drinkers, big spenders and all the fans of Bree are going to put my kids through college,” Roy said.
There were always a few women in the crowd. One night Melinda was there and spotted Bree just before seeing her soon-to-be ex-lover kissing her ex-husband.
Melinda decided Bree would be a lever to pry apart their lust. At least that was the first option. The second was to fall in lust herself.
Plan A failed.
Melinda was glad she had a Plan B.
She got totally hooked on Bree in the middle of their first night together. Bree opened the door to a world that Melinda hadn’t even dreamed of dreaming of.
“This is like being in one of the movies that my husband would spend all night watching on his laptop after I went to bed,” Melinda said between deep breaths.
Bree smiled and crawled naked across the bed to her newest lover.
She had another one.
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“YOU NEED TO WAKE UP Bree. I can’t do what a lawyer can do,” Melinda said.
“Yes, you can, Melinda,” Bree said. “For me?”
Bree never liked to take “no” for an answer, and very few people who were halfway to the finish lines of their lives ever wanted to say, ‘no’ to Bree. Melinda didn’t.
“Okay,” Melinda said. “I will do what I can,” which meant doing what it took — sexually or otherwise — to get a few free favors from the men in her office.
“Thanks, baby,” Bree said. “See you tonight?”
“Of course, come by around eight?”
***
WATCH OUT FOR B&M. #CheatingOnYou #KillTheBitches
This was one text that did not shine a new light into Beth’s world. It didn’t scare her, didn’t anger her; it just put her stew on a low simmer.
Beth knew Bree was cheating on her. The only question was with whom and why. Well, maybe the latter was obvious, or would have been with anyone but Bree. She always had an ulterior motive.
Beth, who usually loved mysteries, hated this one. Who was M?
She had figured out Bree’s password. It wasn’t tough. Just her birth date and the street she grew up on were enough.
And Beth had found the thread of a Yahoo Messenger conversation between Bree and her new lover.
They are hot, I will have to give you that, Beth thought as she used her right hand to scroll through the messages and her left to tap through some elicit pleasure.
I want to spank you in your office. I want to take you over your desk, Bree had written.
You liar! The other person wrote back. You were supposed to meet me last night and you stood me up. WTF!
I am sorry. Business, baby, what can I tell you? I so want to spank you today, right now, this minute.
So Bree was cheating. The messages were all the proof Beth needed. She didn’t know who Bree was sleeping with. Could be a man, could be a woman, could be one of each knowing Bree, but there was someone. She was cheating.
Beth would figure it out. She had only broken into one file. There were two more that had different passwords. Beth would hack them.
If there was one thing Beth knew, it was computers. And if there was one person she knew, it was Bree. They had a long history, Bree and Beth, all the way back to St. Isidore High and Tim Sheldon.
“There is no way that Bree is going to keep fooling around on me, and she is going to be punished for being a bad girl.”
“And M. has to be Melinda” Beth said to her MacBook which had become her partner in revenge. “She thinks she’s going to steal Bree away from me? In another life maybe she could, but not now, no fucking way. Let’s see how she likes this message.”
I know who you are playing with. #Cunt.
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EVEN THOUGH SHE REALLY didn’t want to believe Bree would be messing around with that middle-aged, muffin-topped paralegal, Melinda, Beth was still parked outside the bitch’s office building when Bree came bouncing out.
It had not been hard to keep track of Bree without being seen.
Bree is so into herself, she never sees anyone else. Beth thought, slouching behind the wheel of her Ford Prius sipping on an energy drink.
I don’t even think she believes there is anyone else worth looking at.
Beth was wrong. Bree had actually been watching Beth, watching her, in the rear view mirror ever since she pulled off of East Belt Line Avenue on to Riverview Drive.
Bree smiled to herself as Beth turned left into a parking garage on the other side of Riverview, while she turned right into her attorney’s — pardon me, paralegal’s — office building parking lot.
Bree knew where Beth would be when she came out of her meeting with Melinda.
She will be parked on the third floor sipping on an energy drink, watching me leave the building through those stupid binoculars.
She is so Tim.
And I am still so Bree.
There was nothing like have an orgasm in the middle of the day as far as Bree was concerned and it was even better to have a life support system for a wonderfully soft tongue to give it to you.
The spanking helped too, and Bree loved the idea that other people could hear it.
Melinda liked that too, even if it could mean her job.
“You’re protected by me, baby,” said Bree. “Nobody in this little pop stand of a town is going to take a chance on pissing me off.”
“Bree, a lot of people hate you, or even worse, they just don’t care. Nobody loves a bully.”
If only she could read my email and texts she would know how true that is.
The thought was almost enough to wipe the smile off Bree’s face as she walked to her car, knowing Beth’s binoculars were focused on her cleavage.
Almost.
Wicked Revenge: Book 2 From the St. Isidore Collection is available wherever books are sold.