Chapter 71
Marcus had to employ the old fashion way—intimidation and violence technique. It worked for a while to instill fear among the other small gangs but once they started to team up with each other to take down his franchises and everything he had built over the years, Marcus decided to get extreme and use measures that he had been avoiding—he started getting in some technical weapons and tools to track out hideouts, sending some human tools to attack from within. Things got out of hands and these gang members got hold of his first wife and killed her with his unborn child.
He was married to his high school sweetheart from Austin. She was the love of his life and they had been planning on getting married since they were fourteen, that's how much they were in love with each other. They had been each other's first everything—first boyfriend/girlfriend, first kiss, first intercourse and first husband/wife. He was completely honest about the kind of things he was doing, she even knew about them and told him to take the deal that the Mayor had given him. She told him that she did not mind moving away from her family and being with him because she was in love with him and he was her only home. After they got married, a year and a half later, they moved and she got pregnant for their first baby, they had hoped the child would be a girl so that she would look exactly like her mother. He was so excited that he made sure she got anything she wanted and had the best type of comfort money could buy. On the day she had to go for her usual antenatal, one of the boys in the opposing gang timed her and it took a single snipper shot to kill her and the child. Her death was painful for her but he was so angry that when he caught the assassin and gave him a tortured death, it did not feel up the void in his soul.
He could not recover from the shock that he became a version of himself that his second wife hated. She could not bear to be with a man who was so violent. She told him severally to walk away but he did not. What she did not understand what, he could not walk away even if he wanted to walk away, he had a lot at stake. He had a lot of people depending on him and only him could end the fire that he started by what he brought into the town. Meredith was a woman that he met on one of his trips to New York, she was a botanist and also very passionate at what she did. He had fallen in love with her almost immediately. She had a strong opinion and would do anything for the one she loved. She tried to make him happy so that he could forget about Martha, his first wife and it worked till she told him she was pregnant. He immediately had PTSD from what happened to Martha that he got extremely protective and always wanted to know where she was and who she was with. He doubled the security team that were always with her and even installed cameras in every room in the house, including the bathroom, he did not want to take chances with his wife or his unborn child, but that ended up making Meredith very angry and she began to question his affection for her, she even decided to leave him but she knew that she had to be really smart to get out of the house. One day, after he travelled for one of his business trips, she managed to burn a particular tree and the effect of what she did made everyone in the premise sedated for more than five hours. They all dropped down sleeping after inhaling the smoke, it didn't matter what they were doing but her nose was well covered and then she called a taxi to come take her away from the house to a remote place. Of course, she did not make her move out of the town the same day because she knew that Marcus would be looking for her everywhere. She was smart enough to stay at a local inn where she tried to blend with the other people but she had to contact one of her relatives—Marcus did not know this relative—living in another town and that relative came to get her. She stayed with them till she gave birth to her babygirl and then she named the child, gave her the necklace that Marcus had given to her, with a tiny fold piece of paper containing the name of the place she was planning to go and hide at, then instructed the relative to take care of the child because of she stayed with her, they will be exposed to danger. Marcus did not know about the baby but he sent a search party to look for her and the child for what seemed like six months and nobody could tell where Meredith and the child were. Marcus even resorted to using lots and lots of violence on the gang that he thought were responsible for the disappearance of his wife and child, making him more of a maniac than Meredith had accused him of being. He eventually stopped looking for her after two years of futile searches and decided to get back into the dating pool again.
He met Carolyn on another of his trips and she had been completely stunning and exactly what he sort out for in a woman—beautiful, smart, classy, caring, down to earth, ambitious and fragile. He decided not to make the same mistake that he made with the first two marriages, he did not tell her anything about what he actually did, he felt that if the last woman that he was with did not understand why he did what he did, it could be a turn off to all the other ladies. He lied and told her of the high rise of crime rate in the town and that that was why he was always with a bodyguard or insist she goes with one everywhere she went. He also told her that the cameras in the house were just for formalities but there was a whole security team watching the entire house, and if she knew that people could see her bathing, she might have had a heart attack. He also told her that he was into just construction and as long as he got her pretty things, she never asked too much questions. Then she got pregnant and to protect her, Marcus made sure that he had up to three doctors who took care of her. She soon noticed that she was confined to the house, she did not have any friends in the town because her husband would not allow her to do anything, or go out. It was exhausting and she truly just wanted to be free and have friends so she was constantly nagging and it just made Marcus tired of her so he made her move to the underground home. It was directly under his building and had everything just as the place he was living in had. He had built the place just in case he wanted to hideout and just be somewhere that nobody could find, but he had to use this place for Carolyn and he wanted to release her after she said she wanted a divorce but he did not want any of his enemies to use her as bait for him because he knew that if they did, he would always choose to save her life over anything since she was technically his wife that he loved.
After subjecting her to a life of being underground—even if he still use to buy her diamonds and all the things she loved, it was worthless to her because there was nobody for her to show off to and it bothered her greatly. Whenever he'd go down to see her, she would remind him of all the things she had begun to hate about him. She killed their child too. Barely a month after the birth of the child, she was holding it and was getting frustrated by the fact that living in that underground place was now her new life and she did not want her daughter to see her all helpless. She did not want to start the life of her child in bondage so when the other guards were not looking—they looked away because she acted like she was about to brestfeed the baby—she snapped the neck of the three weeks old baby. After she killed the baby, she told the guards to call Marcus so that she would hand him back his child. He cried for a while after he saw the carcass of the child but he ordered for her to be killed in a painless way since she had already lost her sanity.
He mourned her and moved on to his fourth wife, Mary. Mary was dumb but she was not deaf, she loved Marcus and was ready to be with him even after finding out about all he did but Marcus still thought she was a risk to him immediately she got pregnant. He told her that she'd have to go into the underground place and she obediently accepted as long as it meant that her life would be spared and he would make sure that the baby was safe as well. Marcus did not kill his daughter, he named her Martha and loved her with all his heart. He used to go down there to see her everytime. He never missed reading her some bedtime stories because her mum could not do it for her. Martha was five years old when Marcus met Janet.
...
Michael told Marcus about the other things happening at the club and he looked interested till Janet sent him a text telling him how she just discovered the best way to cook meatballs and make it super tasty. He smiled as he read the message and said, "Michael, do you know meatballs are made?"
Michael was confused and wondered why that was a question when he was talking about business. Of course he would not disrespect Marcus so he said, "No boss, I have never had to make one of those in my life."
Marcus chuckled and said, "Well, my woman just discovered a brilliant way of making meatballs and now all I want are her meatballs, isn't it funny and crazy?"
Michael and Sergio exchanged glances and then he chuckled and said, "Yeah, you're right, it is funny."
Marcus was too involved in the exchange of text going on between him and Janet to notice that both Michael and Sergio did not understand why he was saying all of the things he said. They knew that a new woman was in his life and they hoped that this new person was not going to end up as one of the other women that existed in his life.
"Michael, I need you to clear my schedule for Friday evening and Saturday, I have a date night and massage date. Take all my calls and move every meeting to next week, I need to spend time with her."
"Okay..." Michael was going to ask him about this new woman and if she was going to be a long term thing. He had a feeling it was not, he had been with Marcus upon recommendation from his first wife, Martha. And since then, he had watched a lot of the other women leave or die, he knew that his boss desperately wanted to remove the loneliness that stuck with him in this huge house but he also knew that not alot of women would understand what he did or why he did them. Michael hoped that this was going to be the last "heartbreak" his boss would go through because he was tired of watching the humanity in his boss deteriorate each time he has to come to terms with the fact that he just lost any woman. He loved his boss and respected what he did but he knew that a life of crime also needs understanding from one's partner. After the loss of Martha, Michael watched his boss loss a human part of him. He saw his boss watch him torture people—this was the same boss that got irritated by the sight of blood or any gory scene. After he lost Meredith, he began a maniac and behaved like a gruesome beast—almost humanlike, just because he wanted to find Meredith and Michael knew that Meredith actually ran away but he hid that footage from his boss because he was supposed to be watching her that day and before the effect of the burning tree took full effect on him, he saw her running away into a taxi while he was drifting into a place of subconscious nothingness. Carolyn scarred him with what she did to his child and he couldn't believe that he had turned her into a heartless killer. When he ordered that she be killed, he watched as her life went out of her. Mary and their child made him happy but he felt like they should be hidden and Michael understood his concerns but now there was a new woman that he was interested in, Michael could not help but wonder what his boss liked in this one, but then, what did he really like in all the other women.
Marcus looked at Michael, he knew that he had something he wanted to tell him so he asked, "Michael, what is wrong?"
"Sir, I know it's out of my place to speak about this but since we have had this conversation over and over, I gotta ask, do you think this is a good idea?"
"Of course, why wouldn't it be?"
"Well, I just think that this feeling, thought absolutely valid will have a common result. I have watched you go through the same emotion over and over and it just hurts seeing you go through all that hurt."
Marcus laughed and calmly said, "To love is to hurt. My fate—because of what I decided to do with my life—is subjected to a life of finding and losing love but this one, this Janet, I think she's going to be my last. What I feel for her is not familiar. I have not had this type of emotion for any of my previous marriages."
"What about your wife under this room?"
Marcus took a sip of the drink and said, "Mary? Mary looks at me like she doesn't love me anymore. She cannot say it but her eyes tells me she just wants...