Page 69 of Brown Sugar
The others in the dressing room erupt into shocked screams. Kiana and Amari rush forward to stop me.
Two punches in, Hal’s knocked on his ass, nose leaking like a faucet. I stand over him, tempted to go for a third helping of kicking his ass.
“Bison,” he chokes out amid the blood dripping from his nose. “Bison… what…”
“I know it was you!” I bark. “You’ve been behind the threats against Kiana!”
“No way that’s true!” Tommy says, his mouth agape. He rounds on a sprawled out Hal. “Tell me this ain’t true, Hal!”
“It’s all true,” I say. “You were the person on the phone earlier with Shawn. You were trying to pay him for the explicit content on Kiana. You hired someone to crash into her car in NYC. You sent the threatening letters. And it was you who paid Rashad at the Ice Lounge.”
The entire room goes still at the serious allegations I’ve made against Hal.
He blinks up at me, for once finding words difficult to put together.
Which is no surprise.
He knows he’s got no defense.
It had taken me a while to put the pieces together and figure out it was Hal all along, but the call with Shawn was the final piece of the puzzle.
Only one person calls me Tyson the Bison.
Only one person has had enough access to Kiana to know her schedule while maintaining enough distance for plausible deniability.
The same person who also had a motive to ensure Kiana’s destruction. Someone who had once been her manager but had been fired years ago before Tommy Tocha took over.
The same person who was going by an alias Henry Bass when his name’s Hal Fischmann, and who had the means to contact her ex-boyfriend, Shawn Lassiter through the celebrity connections he often bragged about, like the night at Ice Lounge.
He knew enough about explosives from his time in the military to rig the one on the stage and enough about dangerous toxins to send the suspicious package to Kiana. It clicked together the moment Shawn and I drove to the Beacon Theater and suddenly Henry Bass backed out, waging another threat about her performance.
“Tell them,” I growl after a moment of stunned silence. “Tell them what you’ve done.”
Hal wipes more blood from his mouth, then aims what’s a wincing smile up at us. “It was never supposed to be anything life threatening. I got you hired, Bison, because I thought you’d never get along with her and you’d quit and she’d be without security all over again. It was a distraction. But… but none of my schemes were supposed to seriously hurt her. More like a…a scare. More like getting her to breach contract and leave the label. Then she’d need new management.”
Kiana makes a sound of disgust. “And what? Seek you out for representation?”
“I could do so much more for your career than Tommy!”
“You’re disgusting! How could you try to sabotage me? You do realize I could’ve gotten seriously hurt?” Kiana asks, voice filled with outrage.
He pushes himself onto wobbly legs and staggers toward her. “It wasn’t… it was never supposed to… Kiana…”
“Don’t you ever get anywhere near her again!” I rumble, inserting myself in between them. Gripping him by the front of his shirt, I yank him closer like a rag doll. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to take you to the police outside the studio building. You’re going to confess everything and turn yourself in. If you don’t, you’re not going to like the alternative option. But here’s a hint: it involves more of your blood and a hell of a lot more pain.”
Hal goes from trying to sweet talk us to a face twisted in bitterness. “Fine, I’ll tell them! I’ll tell them all about how my client was an ungrateful little bitch who ditched me for millions! How about that? How about I tell them how she ruined my career!?”
My hand clenches shut around his throat to cut him off.
His tangentandhis air.
He sputters, writhing uselessly in my hold. I’m half a second from crushing his windpipe when Kiana stops me.
“Don’t,” she says. “You’ll only wind up in trouble, Tyson. Take him to the police and let them handle it. He’s done.”
Though she’s right, it doesn’t change the urge I have that remains.
The sweeping, overpowering urge to crush Hal like an insect for the shit he’s pulled.