I felt bad for the shit that I did to Jazmyn. Deep down, I knew that she wasn’t a bad person and that if she’d really done the shit that I was thinking she’d did, she had to have an explanation. How else could a woman as sweet as her be responsible for murdering a pregnant woman in cold blood? And then turn around and raise her fucking child? This shit sounded like something from a Lifetime movie.
I wasn’t an expert on personality types or anything, but my thinking was that you had to be some really sick son of a bitch to actually kill a woman and rip the baby out of her stomach. I couldn’t understand how I could have been dealing with Jazmyn for as long as I had and have no idea that she was crazy. There was no way. I was an attorney and a damn good one because of the fact that I could read people. She had to have a good reason for what she did.
“Maybe someone was blackmailing her?” I thought aloud as I laid back on my brown mahogany sleigh bed. I lifted my head and placed my arm underneath to support my neck as I thought about the probability of that.
“Nah…she would have told me if she was being blackmailed, wouldn’t she? But there was that issue with the car…”
I thought back to the day that Jasmine’s business partner, some chick with red hair, came by and dropped off her new car. Something didn’t sit right with me on that day and I still didn’t believe anything about what that woman told me about herself. She claimed to be Jasmine’s business partner but no law firm I’d ever heard of would hire someone like the woman I’d seen. She had an evil aura about her and it oozed out of her pores. I should have known then that Jasmine was in trouble.
I jumped out of my bed and grabbed my jacket out of the closet. I whipped it around behind me and hurriedly put it on. I ran all the way into the kitchen and snatched my keys off the table before rushing out of the front door. I knew Jazmyn had to be in trouble and I hadn’t even given her a chance to talk to me about it. I needed to save her. There was no telling who was after her or what had occurred since she’d been at her apartment without me there to protect her.
When I got to Jazmyn’s apartment, the first thing I noticed was that the door was still unlocked. Instantly, I became alarmed. Jazmyn had always been the type of person to be overly cautious. She was raised in the hood so she was used to people doing hood shit. She locked doors behind her and she closed binds. She always was getting at me for being a country kid. I was raised in the south in a nice upper-class Suburban community. Everyone kept his or her doors unlocked and everyone else knew it. No one thought anything of it.
I twisted the door open and walked cautiously inside. Off first glance, I knew something was wrong. There was a putrid, stale aroma in the air that felt so familiar although I couldn’t quite place it. The hairs rose on the back of my neck as I tottered slowly through her apartment. Something was wrong. I glanced in the kitchen, but there was nothing. Other than being abnormally messy, the apartment seemed fine. Jazmyn was a bit of a neat freak so it did seem odd, but I tried not to panic.
After checking the kitchen, I decided to walk into Jazmyn’s bedroom. It was the only room, other than her office and bathrooms, which I hadn’t checked. I prayed that she was sleeping or something and had forgotten to lock the door. I knew I would never forgive myself if someone had come in and taken her somewhere.
They could be doing God knows what to her and I can’t do a damn thing to help her. All because I wouldn’t listen.
I pushed open the door and walked slowly inside the room. The first thing that hit me was the pungent odor of smoldering, burning flesh.
“Ugh…” I groaned, covering my nose with my hand to block out the harsh smell.
The room was pitch black. The curtains were pulled so I couldn’t see anything. I reached to my left and flicked on the light switch, pausing a few seconds after to allow my eyes to adjust to the light. When my eyes focused on the sight in front of me, a chilling feeling crept up my spine and my stomach felt as though someone had reached in and twisted it into a tight ball.
“JAZMYN! Oh, my God!” I ran over to the middle of the room and knelt down at the foot of the bed. Jazmyn was lying on the bed in a pool of blood. There was a bloody hole in the middle of her chest. Blood was still flowing from it profusely. Her arms were outstretched and in one of her hands was a black gun. Crimson red droplets of blood were all over the barrel.
“What did you do?! Noooo, Jaz!” I grabbed her and pulled her limp body into my arms and held her close.
My heartbeat increased as I held her. It was damn near beating out of my chest. Nothing hurt worse than seeing the woman that I loved lying dead in the middle of her bed because I had abandoned her when she needed me. If she had been with me, this never would have happened.
As I clutched her to me, I thought about our last moments. How I had gotten angry with her and drug her through my home. How she had lain outside on my porch begging me to open the door and, instead of helping her, I sat there and listened…praying that she would leave and never return. I would never be able to forgive myself for her death.
Her body was still warm. It was as if she had just shot herself.
My God. If I had just been a few minutes earlier, she might still be alive, I thought to myself with my eyes closed tight.
I felt my chest get damp as her blood flowed from her through my clothing. Her head fell against my shoulder and I nestled in against her neck. I didn’t want to let her go. I couldn’t believe that I had allowed her to die in the worst way possible. Alone and feeling as if everyone had abandoned her.
And that’s when I felt it. I froze in place, thinking that maybe I had imagined it but then I felt it again. I pulled Jazmyn closer to me and put my face even further into the side of her neck. I felt it again. It was the melodic thumping of her heart fighting to pull her through. She still had a pulse.
“My God…she’s still alive!”
I reached down into my jeans, still cradling her in my right arm, and pulled out my cellphone. I tried to juggle her in one hand and dial 911 with the other. It was difficult, but I didn’t want to let her go. The lawyer in me told me that I should put her back down carefully. I didn’t want to cause any more damage but I didn’t want to release her either. I would never let her go ever again.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“My girl…my fiancé has been shot…I think she shot herself. I need someone to help me now…” I continued to hold on to Jazmyn, pressing my face against her neck so that I could continue feeling the faint beating of her heart. Her pulse was so light that I could barely feel it but it was still there. I hurriedly gave the operator the address and dropped the phone on the bed.
“Stay with me, Jaz. Don’t leave me,” I pleaded into her ears as I ran my hand through her matted hair. It was my fault that she was like this. Everything was my fault.
“She’s in surgery...I don’t know what happened. I found her in her room with a fucking bullet hole in her chest,” I explained to Jazmyn’s mother, Denise. “Excuse my language, mama. I just can’t believe this shit.”
“Oh my God, Kingston. What would make her do this?” Denise asked me. She looked like she was about to fall apart so I grabbed her in my arms to help her. She started crying immediately and I felt her grow weak in my arms. I held her and shook my head.
“I don’t know,” I lied.
I hated lying to Denise. During the time that Jazmyn and I started living together, I’d grown close to her. I looked at her as a mother figure for myself since my own mother had passed away so long ago.
“Lord…look over my child,” Denise cried into my shoulder. I held her as she continued to sob. She shook as her crying became heavier and heavier and I struggled to keep it together.
I said my own prayer to God but it wasn’t as innocent as Denise’s. I wanted Jazmyn to make it through and give me the name of every motherfucker that had anything to do with the reason why she was lying in that bed. I was determined to make it my business to fuck up their world.