10,000 Hours With A Rich Menace (Caselli Family Book 1)

A bunch of bags sat at our feet as we sat at an ice cream shop in the resort. Priscilla said she wanted to do damage when it came to shopping, and she did exactly that. We had went to every designer store and boutique that was on the resort, and she swiped my card and purchased everything.

I got a pair of shoes and some things for both Skyler and Estella. As much as I loved to shop, I didn’t want to spend the day in and out of stores. I wanted to explore the Bahamas. Do a few excursions, lay out by the pool, and actually enjoy the trip. Aside from shopping, Priscilla continued to stop because her boyfriend kept asking her where she was.

When she put that baby voice on, I knew it was him on the phone and rolled my eyes. I realized today that the rest of this trip would be filled with me being alone, doing what I wanted to do. She wanted to stick up her boyfriend’s ass, and I wasn’t about to beg her to hang out with me.

“Are you sure you don’t wanna come tonight? His friend says he wants to meet you and you’ve been hiding.” She sipped her milkshake while I enjoyed my cone.

It made me real uneasy how she kept trying to push her boyfriend’s friend on me. Every time he called, she would ask me if I was sure, as if I didn’t make it clear multiple times that I didn’t want to hang with them.

Priscilla vouching for them meant nothing to me. She switched men like wigs, so did she really know any of those men well?

Exactly.

“I have my own plans, remember?” I reminded her like I had been doing each time she asked me.

She giggled. “Girl, nothing is off the table with them… big money. I’ve never fucked with a nigga that has money like this. Girl, it’s damn near spilling out his pockets.”

“I love this for you.”

She was so tickled as she swung her crossed legs while looking at her phone. “I could love it for you, too, but you want to play hard to get. How about we come back to our suite later on?”

“How about you don’t.” I smiled.

“Fine, Ms. Boring. How do you expect to ever find a boyfriend if you never open yourself up to being loved?”

“You think a man that’s not even your boyfriend, and his friends is where I’m going to find love?”

Her phone chimed and she jumped up. “Oh, we need to be getting back to the suite… he told me what time he’s coming to get me. My baby is taking me to an exclusive restaurant on the resort.”

“Fancy,” I muttered as I helped her collect all the bags so we could make the trek back to our suite.

The suite was nice and quiet now that Priscilla was gone. Between the music, the chatter with her other friends on facetime, and trying on a dozen outfits before settling on one that looked like it needed more material, she was finally gone.

Of course, she couldn’t leave until she asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to go. This time, I closed the door in her face and locked it while heading to my room to take a relaxing bath.

She wouldn’t be back tonight, and I knew it from the way she popped her birth control and washed it down with rum. I’ve always suspected that Priscilla was a wild card.

Other than drinks and a few dinners, we’ve never been on vacation together. It was like being in a relationship with a man, and you didn’t really know him until you moved in with him.

Even though she hadn’t been in our suite that much, I could see her differently than the friend I was always excited to see when she made time for me.

I used to stare at her in admiration because she played these men like they played us. That admiration was slowly fading away, and I was seeing her as thirsty, and money hungry. All that man had to do was call, and she was breaking her leg to go run to be with him.

That was pretty far from being cool, calm and collective. Skyler, if anyone, showed me how it was to be cool when it came to a man. She had Corleon head over heels for her, and the man would give her the world if she asked. Not that she acted unbothered, she also didn’t jump at his every move.

I drizzled the hotel bubble bath into the water, and lit a few candles I got from the gift shop on the way up to our suite as I listened to “Fire and Desire” by Rick James. I moved my hips as I listened to Rick talk his shit.

This was my favorite song in the entire world. I remember singing into a brush with my mother in our living room. We would sing this song at the top of our lungs, then bust out in a fit of giggles.

“Looooovveeeeeee!” I belted out as I did a fake strip tease, as if I was doing it for my man.

Wishful thinking.

I flung the shirt across the room while rocking my hips from side to side, then I dipped my toe into the water. The water was the perfect temperature as the rest of my body followed and I did a happy shiver, allowing the warm water to engulf my body.

With my eyes closed and the music blaring, I inhaled the sweet salty mix of the candle and felt more relaxed than I had in a long time. My body was literally loosening up by the seconds as I settled into this tub.

I wanted to feel this warm, this safe, and this relaxed for the rest of my life. The thought of returning home back to the hustle and bustle of my life made me cringe and my jaw clench. My life wasn’t all bad, I just didn’t know what was next for me.

Since I lost my mother, I had been trying to figure out what was next. What was Stevie Raye supposed to do? I had no sign from her, and at this point not even God could tell me what was next for me.

Nails paid the bills (barely) but that wasn’t my passion. It fell into my lap and aligned with the fact that I loved to create art. Painting had always been my first love, and I have loved it since I was a child. Except, being an artist didn’t pay the bills.

It was a nice hobby to have, however, I couldn’t feed myself on it. Especially since I could never finish a piece. There were so many unfinished pieces in the living room at home that drove Skyler crazy.

She hated that I clouded our living space with my unfinished canvases, and even tried to hold a intervention to get me to stop buying them. No matter how many times I put one to the side – unfinished, I found myself at the art store scanning my rewards card to get discounted canvases.

I held my breath and went under the water and remained under there for a few seconds before I came back up, opening my eyes and nearly stopping my heart at the same exact time.

“Ahhhh!” I screamed as I tried to gather the bubbles to cover my chest up. Between the music, my heart thumping in my ears, and the sound of my screams I was overstimulated, scared and on the verge of passing out.

The man standing in front of me was large. He had to weight over 350 pounds of muscle, and he was tall. Even though I was sitting in the tub, I’m sure if I stood next to him, he would tower over me.

His caramel complexion, thick beard, and freshly twisted locs were in rope twists, pushed back out of his face. His thick eyebrows, dark menacing eyes, and pink lips were just staring at me. His arms were covered in tattoos as he stood there looking at me like he wasn’t invading my privacy by not only being in my hotel suite, but my bathroom too.

It was then that I noticed he was holding something in his hand, and it was clothes.

My clothes.

“I’m gonna step out the bathroom so you can change into these… try something and I’ll make this TV fall in the water with you… got it?”

I swallowed a huge lump that was in my throat and slowly nodded my head. My hands were shaking, and my chest was tight. “Sir?”

He paused his stride and looked at me. “I really think I’m going to pass out.”

Why did I admit this to a strange man in the bathroom of my suite? I was scared and you often did things that you wouldn’t have done if you weren’t. Me and Skyler always used to play hypothetical games where we would predict how we would act if something happened.

A strange man in my suite on vacation wasn’t a scenario we ever practiced for. “He don’t pay me enough for this shit.”

“W…who doesn’t pay you?”

He snatched the towel from the heated towel rack, opened it up and walked toward the tub. “Step out slowly… hurry the fuck up,” he barked, as he held up the towel and looked the opposite direction.

My legs felt like rubber when I stepped out the tub, my breathing labored because I was calculating if I could bolt across this bathroom and get some help for myself. This was one of those moments I wished that I would have gone out with Priscilla and her boyfriend.

I quickly slipped on the clothes he had for me, and he snatched the towel down and went into his pocket. “Hold this,” his deep voice said, as he grabbed me up and put a cloth over my mouth and my eyes became blurry until everything eventually faded to black.