and police officers began to spill into the room, guns drawn
and aimed at the both of us. Tony threw his hands up immediately, his stiff cock pointing
towards the ceiling in apparent surrender as well. They had let us get our clothes
on, at least, before handcuffing us and placing us on our knees in the living room.
Two officers stood watch over us, their guns trained on us the entire time, while
the rest of the police tore the place apart.
“Hey! Be careful with that!” I yelled out in protest as one of the police officers
was digging rather haphazardly through a cabinet where I kept old photo albums. He
pretended as though he didn’t hear me. They tore through just about everything. They
ended up dragging out all of the stacks of hundred dollar bills that Tony had stashed
away all over the apartment, and were taking lots of other things that he had given
me over the last few weeks as gifts, saying that they were stolen. The pearl necklace,
a fur coat, some designer handbags, the big screen television. I was incredulous.
“Those aren’t stolen!” I protested. “They were gifts!”
“Didn’t say you stole ‘em, sweetheart,” the apparent leader of the sting said dismissively
without so much as glancing at me. I looked at Tony, who just kind of shrugged his
shoulders as best he could with his hands being handcuffed behind his back. Unbelievable,
I thought. Lacie was going to love this.
By the time the police were finished, my apartment was thoroughly ransacked. They
had collected all of the money hidden away in every nook and cranny, and had taken
away pretty much every single gift that Tony had given me since I had met him. All
of it. I started to cry at one point when I realized that there was no way I was going
to survive in jail. I don’t know what happened. The panic just overwhelmed me, I suppose,
and when that happened the tears began to flow. I didn’t go to jail, though. I just
had to endure the mild pain of handcuffs jutting into my wrists for an hour, but afterwards,
after they had loaded up all the stolen contraband and hauled Tony away, I was left
alone to try and clean up the complete mess that the police had turned my apartment
into.
*
Early that evening I received a phone call from Tony. I wasn’t expecting to hear from
him that soon.
“Hello?” I said as I swiped my finger over the green Answer button on the phone and
held it up to my face.
“Hey, babe, it’s me.”
“How are you calling me right now? Are you still in jail?”
“No, no. I wasn’t there for long. Don’t worry about that. My lawyer is already working
on it.”
“I don’t know if I want to be talking to you right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you’ve been lying to me this whole time.”
I was pretty upset, truth be told, and not nearly as much with him as I was with myself.
I could clearly see the naivety that was driving me along in my decision making these
last few weeks. It was totally obvious that there was something fishy going on, but
I let myself get swept up in everything. His looks and his charms, the money and gifts
and the fabulous dinners and people treating me like I was important. I let myself
get sucked into all of that nonsense and when the red flags were presented right in
front of me in plain daylight, I chose to ignore them. I didn’t want to believe them, so I didn’t. It was hard to be mad at Tony. He was dishonest with
me, I could see that, but at least I knew why he had to be. Besides, just thinking
about his face began to cloud up any negative feelings I could direct towards him.
No, it was hard to be angry with him, but very easy to be angry with myself. “Are
you even a vice president?” I followed up.
“In a manner of speaking… yes. Look, I can’t talk to you about this over the phone.
But we do need to talk. I owe that much to you.”
I stood there, holding the phone to my
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