Corrupted Chapter 2

  “All right, Jackson, let me introduce you to Darlene.”

  He planned to get out of dodge before Natalie cornered him. He just didn’t feel like dealing with her professional and personal issues.

  “Vincent . . .” she called out.

  “One more minute,” he told her, heading off with Jackson.

  “I’m not gonna keep waiting for you, Vincent,” she finally snapped at him.

  Everyone froze, feeling the tension in the air. But Vincent thought nothing of it.

  “All right, I’ll be right back,” he told her.

  Natalie huffed and stood there.

  Slipping out of dodge himself, Antonio moved past Chelsea to meet Darlene with Jackson and Vincent.

  “Nice meeting you,” he told Chelsea again.

  Chelsea looked disturbed that he was leaving them so soon.

  “You’re leaving?”

  Antonio was already gone.

  “Don’t you fiend in here for that man,” D teased her.

  “Would you shut up for once. I didn’t say anything when you were fiending for the white girl.”

  D looked at Natalie who was still there to overhear it. She shook his head, embarrassed.

  This big-mouth bitch! I bet she would wake the whole neighborhood up if I fucked her, he imagined.

  Natalie left them both alone and returned to her husband, while still determined to have her say with Vincent.

  “He ain’t even paying attention to you,” her husband commented.

  “Oh, he will,” she said confidently. “And we’re not leaving here tonight until he does.”

  Vincent led Jackson over to Darlene, who continued to socialize nervously and politely in the room. He then pulled her out of conversation to introduce her to his number one writer.

  “Darlene Krause, this is Jackson Smith.”

  Jackson took her soft hand and kissed the back.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Darlene.”

  Antonio moved in right behind them. “Oh, now she’s pretty,” he commented. “I’m Antonio Martinez, but you can just call me Tony.”

  Vincent looked at him and frowned. “Stay in line with the pecking order, Tony. I’ll introduce you to people when I get to it.”

  Antonio nodded as if it was no big deal. “Yes, sir.”

  Darlene grinned her ass off, from ear to ear at their inside joke. She knew that Antonio recognized her now, and he wasn’t planning on playing the background while Jackson attempted to romance his date.

  “So, you’re next up-and-coming writer, huh?” Jackson asked her. With Antonio that close by, looking as good as he looked, she couldn’t even focus on Jackson. She was now anxious to leave to hang out with Tony, who always seemed to make her laugh and feel good. His presence alone was overwhelming her with warmth and joy.

  “Umm, we’ll see. But I don’t know if I could have the kind of success that you’ve had,” she responded to Jackson.

  “You gotta just try it and see where it goes,” he told her.

  Vincent peeled back from the conversation and took Antonio with him, leaving Darlene alone with Jackson.

  “Where are they going?” Darlene asked.

  Jackson looked back and shrugged. “To talk, I guess.”

  Darlene felt lonely without Antonio there already. Jackson just wasn’t doing it for her. His book sales and popularity meant nothing to her comfort. But she was forced to deal with him anyway.

  “So, where are you from?”

  “Denver . . .”

  With a comfortable arm around his shoulder, Vincent got Antonio alone and asked him, “How badly do you want to be a published author?”

  Antonio looked at him and answered, “Real bad.”

  Vincent nodded and grinned. “Is that right? Well, make sure you see me again before you leave tonight.”

  Antonio nodded back, excitedly. “Okay. I’ll do that.”

  “And leave Darlene and Jackson alone,” Vincent added. He could read Tony’s eyes cutting back in their direction. “Go socialize with Chelsea and D for a minute while I handle this other business. Half of the publishing world is constantly putting out fires. And this one here is a forest fire,” he commented as he headed back toward Natalie and her husband.

  “Yeah, I see,” Tony agreed, looking toward the aggravated black woman.

  Vincent walked over to Natalie and stopped dodging her. “Okay, let’s talk.”

  She followed him into a less crowed area of the room as her husband watched.

  “I didn’t understand your last editing notes, that’s why I haven’t responded with a rewrite yet,” she started.

  Vincent eyed her calmly. “No, you do understand my notes and you’re being plain stubborn about it. But then you want to hound me about your mortgage, and your next contract, and a bigger advance, and –”

  “I get the point,” she interjected.

  “Do you?” he questioned her. “I mean, I have to be honest with you, the readers just aren’t responding anymore.”

  “So, you want me to start writing craziness, like everyone else is doing?”

  Natalie was appalled by the idea. In her opinion, good writing was wholesome writing with plenty of life lessons involved. Why else would people want to read?

  Vincent told her, “I’ve explained this to you before, commercial publishing is an entertainment business, not a preaching business.”

  “Well, why bother to even sign me then?” she huffed at him. “You knew what I wanted to write. And I’ve been writing it this long. So what’s the problem now?”

  He inadvertently eyed her drinking husband before he responded. Michael was eying them sternly with glassy eyes and a shaky stance.

  “How many is he gonna have tonight?” Vincent asked rhetorically.

  Natalie looked, and was endlessly embarrassed. But she continued to try and salvage her marriage to the man. It had been twenty-two, hard-earned years.

  “You need to write something about him,” Vincent joked.

  “Don’t go there,” Natalie warned him with a raised finger.

  “I have to. I mean, that’s real,” the bold editor countered. “That’s what the people want, the raw reality. And you’re now trying to deny them that. You didn’t used to write that way.”

  “That’s because I know better now.”

  “Yeah, but who wants to read about a person who knows better? What’s the point in that? That’s your whole issue right now. Because you don’t know better. If you did, you wouldn’t have spent up all your money, trying to appease yourself with every new hot thing while your husband acts out. How ’bout you write about that?”

  “Don’t you go there, Vincent!” she snapped at him with a raised voice.

  Bystanders began to eye them, including Thomas Richberg and Susan Randolph, who watched from the distance. They were both very aware of Natalie Cumberland’s recent career and money woes, and they both felt sorry for her. But it was the nature of the business. When you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not you’re quickly forgotten.

  Natalie’s husband overheard her raised voice and found himself drifting in their direction, drunkenly.

  “Uht, oh. Here we go, gang,” Double D commented to Chelsea and Antonio. The man had an innate radar for drama. His alert system had come in handy while spending nearly four years in the New York state penal institutions.

  “What you just say to my wife?” Michael stepped up and slurred at Vincent. He stood at nearly a half a foot shorter. And he didn’t know what he heard, but he knew he heard something.

  Natalie held her husband back, standing in between them. “Stop it. I can handle myself.”

  “Stop what? I ain’t even did nothin’ yet.”

  Vincent began to shake his head, embarrassed, as more people tuned in to the commotion.

  “I’ll see you at the office next week,” he told his author.

  “Yeah, well, you can see me right now. Faggot. Anything you got to say to my wife, you can say to me.
”

  Michael never liked the man. He considered Vincent pompous, short-fused, and full of himself. He never liked the way he treated his wife compared to the kissing up he seemed to do with his other authors. And it had been a long time coming for Natalie’s husband to finally scream on him.

  Vincent blew off the angry slight and walked away, while still hearing the husband and wife arguing behind him.

  “Stop it, Michael!” Natalie told her fired-up husband.

  “No, baby, I’m tired of that damn man. He been ignoring you all night in here.”

  “Well, I’ll handle it,” she insisted.

  Brittney Enis watched the action from across the room with her Impact publishing co-worker.

  “Looks like your guy is up to his old tricks,” Jill Miller commented with a smirk.

  Brittney had no more words for the man. She had already said what she planned to say to or about him for one evening. She had to remember to pace herself.

  In a blink, Vincent was halfway across the room already. He wasted no time when he moved. He had always been that way. Stick and move was how he had survived the Bronx. The volatile nature of his tough neighborhood didn’t give a kid much time to hesitate, especially when you were viewed as different. So Vincent got to stepping.

  “Jackson, could you make sure Darlene gets home safely tonight? She has a room up near Columbia University. So take a cab with her. I’m ready to cut out of here,” he announced.

  Darlene was shocked by the suddenness of it, but Jackson wasn’t. Vincent was obviously giving him the keys to a new Corvette, and that was what Jackson wanted.

  He nodded and said, “Okay. She’s in good hands with me.”

  Or more in good dick, Vincent thought to himself of the couple. He knew Jackson intimately, and everything that turned him on, including young, busty women. Darlene fit the bill, and he would handle any fallout between them later.

  But Darlene panicked with wide eyes. She said, “You’re leaving me here?”

  Vincent froze and faced her for a second. “Something just came up,” he told her. “But Jackson’ll go in the taxi ride with you.”

  Jackson loved the sound of that. “Yeah, that’s not a problem at all.”

  Darlene couldn’t believe the speed of things, but when she looked over in the direction of Antonio and the rest of the author group, she calmed herself for her timely response.

  “Well, that’s all right, I’ll get home. I still have to meet up with my friend later anyway.”

  “Is she as cute as you are?” Jackson asked her, flirting.

  Vincent grinned, knowing better.

  “Actually, my friend is a he. And yeah, he is cute,” she boasted. In her peripheral vision, she could still see Antonio in the background.

  Her boast made Vincent remember the handsome Puerto Rican himself. In his sudden scramble to leave the party, he had nearly forgotten about him.

  I bet your friend isn’t gorgeous like Antonio, he mused.

  “Whatever you decide, just make sure you make it back safely. We’ll have a lot to talk about next week. But let me say my good byes to everyone.”

  Instead of walking over to speak to them all in person, Vincent waved to his group of authors, while staying away from Natalie’s drunken and enraged husband.

  Antonio caught his wave and snapped into action, just as Vincent figured he would. The aspiring author rushed over into the established editor’s direction in a flash.

  “You’re leaving already?”

  Vincent led him through the room and toward the door, pulling him away from Jackson and Darlene.

  “I have another party I need to run to before it gets too late. You can tag along again if you want. I can introduce you to a few more people in the industry.”

  It was his pitch to keep the pretty young man in his sight for a longer spell that evening. And maybe even get lucky with him.

  Antonio thought of Darlene and shook it off. “Nah, that sounds tempting, man, but I have to hook up with my lady tonight. And you know how they get when you don’t give it to ’em.”

  Vincent rubbed shoulders with him and said, “You’re holding out the wood on her? What kind of writer are you? An artist must always give it up. That’s golden rule number one. Great sex keeps your juices flowing.”

  Antonio laughed and said, “Well, I’m gonna have to let flow tonight then. But hey, man, I’ll call or email you from your card.”

  Vincent eyed him down and said, “You do that,” before he left.

  All the while, Darlene cut her eyes to them, ignoring everything that Jackson had to say.

  “So, how long are you in New York for, just over this weekend?”

  “Excuse me?” she asked him.

  “How long are you staying in New York?” he repeated.

  “Oh, umm, yeah, I leave Sunday afternoon.”

  Antonio grinned at her as he approached them again.

  He teased, “I’m just gonna stay away from you guys because Vincent told me to.”

  Darlene gathered his inside information and warning and tossed it away.

  “Oh, stop it, you can stay,” she told him, grabbing his right arm. “We’re all writers here, right?”

  Jackson didn’t like that at all. He said, “Yeah, but three’s a crowd sometimes. That’s what Vincent meant.”

  “It’s not a crowd to me. That’s what I came to New York to do, to meet a bunch of people in the industry, not just one,” Darlene countered.

  Jackson said, “Yeah, well, you guys are just getting in the industry, I’m already there.”

  Seeing the poor girl surrounded by two alpha males, who were obviously battling for her attention, Brittney Enis made another instinctive move to cover Darlene’s ass, especially since Vincent had left her there.

  “Hey, Darlene, what are you doing later? You wanna hit the New York club scene to party for real?”

  She made it appear like typical girlfriend talk, while stepping up to cockblock, times two.

  Darlene looked at Jackson first, and then at Antonio before she shrugged. It was a great idea. A real New York party would give her plenty of distractions. So she was all in.

  “I don’t care. What do you guys think? You wanna go?”

  She knew Antonio was in. It would make for a perfect getaway. As for Jackson, he may have been a big-time author and all that, but she was already focused on Tony. So Jackson would need to swallow a big slice of humble pie. And if he decided not to go, then great!

  Sure enough, Jackson declined. “Nah, I don’t feel like partying tonight. At least not that kind of a party,” he hinted with a chuckle. He immediately began to think of the other women in the room who were wide open for him; young and flirty white women.