Page 1 of The Heart Of A Real Woman: Marilyn & Moses

Marilyn “Mary” Mikaelson

I sat on the vanity’s bench next to a bed that wasn’t mine, yet it felt oddly comforting as I gazed over at it.

I knew that once I ended the life of the woman sleeping there, I might finally find a sliver of relief.

As I watched her closely, my heart raced inside my chest, pounding an erratic rhythm.

Not out of fear. No. I was burning with rage, anxious to unleash it.

Poking out my lips, I let out a chilling whistle that shattered the silence, causing Kelis to stir.

Confusion washed over her face as she blinked into consciousness, lifting her head from the satin pillow where I intended to leave her brain matter splattered.

Nervously, she jumped and stared at me for a while, trying to figure out who I was and why I was in her home.

“Ma… Marilyn?” She stammered, rubbing her eyes as if frantically trying to blink away a hallucination.

“ Mrs. Mikaelson ,” I corrected her without hesitation, the surname tasting bitter on my tongue. “But you knew that already and didn’t give a fuck, did you?”

Kelis stared at me, her eyes wide with fear and guilt, a look that made it clear she had a good idea of why I was here.

And while we had never met face to face before this day, she knew very well that Moses was a married man…

that he was married to me. Hell, the whole Melrose knew.

Our love? It had been admired in the city for years.

We’d graced plenty of cameras, I was all over his social media accounts, on his screensaver, even in photos hanging in the office built inside his recording studio.

Her hands began to tremble as I pulled the pink Glock from my mink coat.

The gun my husband had gifted me long ago, when he was deep in the streets and needed me to know how to protect myself in case his enemies came lurking.

Back when he was building his empire, before the fancy bulletproof cars and expensive bodyguards.

“Oh my god,” Kelis’s hands instinctively raised in a plea. “Please. Y…you don’t have to do whatever it is you’re thinking.”

“Are you fucking around with my husband, Kelis?” I demanded to know, ignoring her cries.

“N…no. I swear Casper and I don’t have anything serious going on. We’ve just talked. Got to know one another better while working on my album. That’s all.”

“Just talked?”

“Y…yes.”

“But you wanted more wit’ him, right?”

“No,” she replied, causing me to scoff. Considering the text messages I’d read on his phone from her, she was lying straight through those fake-ass veneers.

I wasn’t entirely sure what all my husband had done with her since he wasn’t stupid enough to put those details in the messages, and I didn’t trust a word she said to me.

All I had were the consistent check-ins between them, her sending pictures, and gushing about how much she adored him and wanted to be his woman.

For a moment, I grew quiet, lost in deep thought, and I could tell Kelis had no idea whether to run or just sit there and accept her fate.

“Kelis,” I broke the silence as I tucked a loose curl behind my ear. My hair was a fucking mess, wild and untamed in its natural 4c state.

“Y…yes?”

I leaned closer, rage boiling inside me as I pulled one of Moses’s cell phones from my pocket.

The burner I’d taken from his pants while he was asleep.

The damn thing wouldn’t stop vibrating at the time, so I’d gone through it.

That’s when I discovered Kelis’s message and her constant missed calls.

It took me only thirty minutes to go through his records next and figure out her address.

“Nine times out of ten, if I ask a question, I already know the answer .”

I watched as she swallowed hard, clearly scrambling to think of a lie to get herself out of this. But I had no intention of waiting to hear her bullshit.

“You wanna know why my husband was so successful at building an empire, Kelis? How he manage to go from the streets to a legitimate businessman? How he earned the name Casper amongst his niggas?”

She stared at me, and I stared right the fuck back. My brows furrowed harder than hers.

“Because he had me at his side. The good girl who spent years in school, earning multiple degrees.” I tapped the barrel of my gun against my chest.

“ Me . His fucking wife, who taught him how to start a business, clean his money, flip it, and last but not least, make a body properly disappear. I showed him how to cover his tracks and leave no trace for the authorities and my colleagues to find.”

Her eyes widened in realization as I winked.

The world knew me as the perfect, well-educated wife and mother.

One degree was in forensic accounting, which had helped Moses understand the details of money laundering.

The other was in forensic science, my true passion and ultimate career goal… my end game.

Isn’t life ironic? A forensic analyst, a woman who went to crime scenes to help catch criminals, married to one of the biggest fucking criminals.

Sometimes I sit back and laugh at how that turned out.

But what they didn’t know was that beneath this facade lay a girl who fell for a bad boy and would do anything to keep him safe and free.

I’m a real ass woman when it comes to mine, or at least I was.

Because after today, I was done with him. And I was done with her, too.

In a swift motion, I aimed the gun at Kelis’s exposed leg and pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed through the bedroom, and she let out a piercing scream.

I felt neither remorse nor concern; the home she had purchased with her deal at my husband’s record label was nestled in a quiet, secluded neighborhood… perfect for what I had planned.

Her cries were painful, but all I could feel was the agony I had endured, and for a moment, I relished it.

I was deaf to her suffering; only my pain mattered at that moment.

I was so hurt that I wore the same anguish she did.

But we were hurting for different reasons, and yet my pain felt just as excruciating.

“Pleas—”

Two more shots rang out, cutting her off and sealing her fate.

My time with Moses, plus the firearm and defense training I picked up working active crime scenes, kicked in like muscle memory.

One to the chest. One dead center in her forehead.

And just like that, the pain was over for both of us.

Hers permanent. Mine… just on pause. I couldn’t care less to see her lifeless eyes staring up at me.

I’d seen more bodies than I could count. This one didn’t hit any differently.

After a deep breath, I used my husband’s burner to call my brother-in-law, the only nigga I felt I could trust at the moment.

“Yo, sup bro?” Pokey picked up on the second ring under the impression I was Casper.

“Not bro.” I sobbed into the phone, and I could hear him shuffling around to turn down the loud ass music playing in the background.

“Sis, you good? Fuck you crying for? What happened?!” He quickly yelled, sensing trouble. “I’m on the way.”

“Good, but don’t go to our home. I need you to be on your way to where I’m at. I’m sending the address.”

“Wait, what? Where's bro at? Is he there wit’ you?”

“Pokey, I can’t speak anything else over the phone. It’s an emergency, okay, bro? Please just come and call the cleaners.”

“Aight, say less.”

∞∞∞

Moses “Casper” Mikaelson

“Bro, we need to talk.”

“Nigga, it's four o’clock in the fucking morning. This talk can’t wait? I have a meeting with an artist that I’m trying to sign in just a few hours. I’ll hit you after.”

“Nah, this important. Get yo’ ass up.”

Pissed, I shot up in bed as I snatched the phone from my ear. I had to double-check that Pokey had hit me on my personal line. Sure enough, he had, and I was confused as to why. If this was some street shit, he knew damn well not to call me on here.

“Shit can’t be too bad. Fuck you hittin’ me on here for?”

“I’ll fill you in when you get here. Come now. Shit is real bad.”

Pokey hung up, and I shook my head. All I could think about was how bad the problem really was.

I had a lot of shit going on. Some legal, some illegal enough to get me locked up for life.

But thanks to my smart-ass wife, I’d managed to stay untouched.

Damn, I hoped my dirt wasn’t finally catching up to me.

Besides the authorities, I had war on my mind too. Living how I lived, that was always part of the game. But this wasn’t the time to be beefin’ with niggas. I’d just launched my record label, and it was blowing up, putting me dead in the public eye.

As my mind started to wander, so did my eyes, drifting over to my wife’s side of the bed.

She was gone. That shit didn’t alarm me, though.

I figured she was in her office. We weren’t the happiest at the moment, and I’d gotten used to her sleeping in there, avoiding me.

Shit, if a nigga breathed too hard, it irritated Mary’s soul.

Blowing out a breath, I stood from the bed and threw on some clothes before heading Mary’s way.

I already had a headache thinking about the tension this was going to add to us.

My schedule mostly kept me out of the house during the day, and she hated when I had to rush off even earlier.

Why? Hell if I know, ‘cause she hated when I was here too, all up in her face and breathing down her neck. She was irritated if I was gone all day and frustrated when I was home. A nigga couldn’t win.

Once I made it into her office, I glanced over at the lounge area. I noticed it was empty, so I backpedaled and checked every other room in the house. When I still couldn’t find her, I finally headed downstairs, and that’s when I noticed the couch was vacant too.

Biting down on my inner cheek, I started toward the guest house outside, confused as fuck. But as I passed through the kitchen, I spotted something shiny sitting on the island. The diamonds were dancing violently under the dim light, and my heart pounded in my chest at the sight.

I knew Mary’s ring like the back of my hand.

I’d spent months with my jeweler, designing it perfectly for her.

It was special to me. It was the second ring I’d bought her, the one that showed her true worth.

She was my everything. And once I confirmed she’d taken it off, my heart dropped into my ass. It was clear she had left.

“Fuck,” I muttered as I pulled out my phone to contact my son’s nanny. I needed her to get here ASAP.

An hour later, I reluctantly pulled up to the abandoned warehouse I used for meetings with my crew.

But instead of hopping out right away, I sat there for a minute, thinking.

My mind was all over the place. I was still trying to figure out why Pokey had called me here and where the fuck Mary was.

I’d been blowing up her phone my whole drive, but every call went unanswered.

I even tried tracking her phone, but it was clear she had turned the tracking off.

That was okay because as soon as I was done with this meeting, I planned to track her whip.

Defeated, I hopped out and met Pokey, who was already waiting for me. As soon as I stepped inside, I peeped his gloved hands as he smoked a blunt.

“Say, I ain’t got a lot of time to spare. What the fuck going on?” I demanded, in a rush. I had to get this shit over with so I could go find Mary, fix whatever the issue was, and bring her back home.

Pokey exhaled smoke through his nose, scanning the area like a hawk. The nigga was more paranoid than me, convinced someone was always lurking, waiting to take us down.

“You make sure no one followed you here? Paparazzi been on yo’ ass lately.”

“You know I checked. I’m good. What’s the deal?”

“Mary reached out to me about two hours ago.” He finally informed me, and my blood instantly boiled.

“What the fuck my wife doing reaching out to you in the middle of the fucking night?”

Pokey had been my nigga since we were freshmen in high school, but hearing my wife was contacting him at wild hours had me ready to turn his ass from friend to foe.

Pokey shook his head. “I hear you were doing more than business with Kelis, and that’s yo’ business, bro. But Mary found out. How, I’m not sure. That’s on you to figure out. But she knows, and she crashed the fuck out and went to that bitch’s crib.”

“She did what?” A nigga damn near caught whiplash from the news.

He nodded, confirming my worst nightmare.

“She called me from your burner to come to Kelis’s crib to clean up the mess, and I did.”

“Fuck,” I spat, pacing back and forth as I checked my pockets and realized my burner was missing.

Now I was even more worried. I was concerned about her catching her first body.

I knew what she did for a living, but there’s a big difference between seeing a dead body and being the cause of one.

That wasn’t Mary. She was a good woman… heart pure gold.

I couldn’t shake the worry about how something like that would fuck with her mental health.

Then there was the nagging fear. Did she let anger cloud her judgment and not handle that shit properly? If she lost her freedom because of my actions, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

Pulling out my phone, I tried her again. Pokey gave me a minute to process everything, aware that the situation was fucked up. After the third time getting her voicemail, I swung at the wall, putting a hole clean through that bitch.

“I know her missing is fucking with you. I been there, done that wit’ Trina, so I feel you. But I’m sure sis is straight. You got bigger shit to be worried about right now.”

“Ain’t nothin’ more important than my wife, Pokey.” I corrected, cutting my eyes at him. “I fucked up, but it’s not as bad as it seems.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I hear you. But you still need to prepare for questioning ‘cause ole girl people eventually gonna report her missing. Not only is she under your label, but it ain’t no tellin’ where she was last seen.

It could be leaving your studio. Not to mention, we have that shipment coming in. ”

“Fuck the shipment. Did you make sho you handled the shit with Kelis? If something comes back on my wif—”

“When the fuck have I ever not handled some shit, bro? And this lil sis we talkin’ about. You know I got her and you ‘til my last breath.” He took a pull of the blunt and shrugged.

“Besides, Mary wasn’t even fazed. If anything, she coached and reminded me what the fuck to do. She practically ya lil mini me, nigga.”

He shot me a knowing look, but still, I worried about her…about us… about my marriage.