Fuck!
I hung up on Kaseem and I stood in front of that safe with my hands shaking.
I was running the same numbers over and over in my head, trying every combination I’d thought that I may have seen Kaseem punch in before.
Nothing worked. As good as I thought I was at codes, I guess that I wasn’t, or I was misremembering the whole thing.
Every single try just gave me that same red light and that same little beep telling me I was wrong.
I hit the door with the side of my fist and stepped back from it.
I started pacing that office floor, back and forth, my mind running faster than my feet could keep up with.
Kaseem finally found out about Nariyah and it wasn’t in the way that I had wanted it to happen.
And now this bitch Mallory wanted to pop up on our property like she had business here.
I didn’t have room in my chest for all of it at the same time, but it was sitting on me anyway, heavy and pressing down like it wasn’t going nowhere.
I was so mad and angry, but mostly at my damn self.
Why didn’t I just tell this man sooner? So many times he’d promised to carry my burdens for me and to solve any problem I had.
I was just too scared to spill it. When I did get the courage, so many things would stand in the way.
It wasn’t like I never tried, because I really did. Several times.
I picked my phone back up and pulled the camera feed up again, watching Mallory still moving around out there by that gate like a fool.
My phone rang in my hand.
It was River.
I almost didn’t answer, but I knew if I ignored her, she’d just keep calling until I picked up. Her ass was very persistent.
“Hey girl,” I answered, trying to sound normal.
“What are you doing, married woman?” River said, laughing already. “People get married and forget how to use the phone. What’s up? How was the mini honeymoon? You ain’t gave me no real tea, and I know you got some.”
River was joking, playing with me the same way she always did, but I was already too far gone for jokes tonight. Everything in me was stretched thin and about to snap. Starting with what I was about to do to Mallory.
“River, I’m sorry,” I said, and my voice came out heavier than I meant for it to.
“But since I left that damn hotel, it’s been drama after drama.
I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be a married woman either.
It’s my fault though. I should have never fell for a nigga who kidnapped me in the first place. ”
The line went quiet for a second.
“Wait, hold on,” River said, and all the playfulness dropped out her voice. “I was just calling to joke around with you. I’m sorry. Tell me what’s wrong best friend. For real. I’m listening and you know I’ll pull up if you need me.”
I stood there holding that phone, thinking about everything that had happened in the last few hours.
Kaseem knowing my secret. My daughter. The secret I’d been carrying so long that it had started to feel like she wasn’t ever really mine.
Not even my girls knew about Nariyah. I’d been forced into silence for years, and now that the silence was already broken with Kaseem, I still didn’t know how to say it out loud to the people who loved me the longest.
Before I could figure out what to tell her, I looked up at the screen and saw Sam walking up toward the gate.
He grabbed Mallory. Snatched her up rough and threw her straight into the back of one of the trucks.
“What the fuck?” I said out loud, standing straight up. “Where is he taking this bitch?”
“Tatti, what’s going on?” River was asking, her voice getting louder in my ear.
“It’s that bitch Kaseem used to fuck,” I said, my eyes locked on the screen. “The one I beat up my first night in his house. She on the property right now trying to jump the gate.”
“Huh? Why?” River asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But the way I’m feeling today, I’m gonna just send the hoe to heaven. Anybody that ever fucked Kaseem don’t need to be living anyway. If I get this safe open, it’s a done deal.”
“Tatti, listen to me,” River said, and I could hear her getting serious now.
“I’ll be honest with you. There is no one who doesn’t know about y’all wedding.
It’s been posted all over social media. Even people I work with have been talking about it.
So she already knows you and him are official.
She knows you’re in that house. If she’s there again, she’s definitely on some bullshit.
Please, please don’t do nothing crazy. It seems like that might be what she wants. ”
“I gotta go, River,” I said, and I hung up before she could get another word out.
My mind was already moving somewhere else, trying to figure out where Sam was taking that bitch. I knew my friend meant well, but I also knew that right now, I didn’t wanna hear her trying to talk me out of anything.
I rushed out that office and went straight to the back of the house.
First, I grabbed the DNA papers and that letter from Demontae off the desk.
I carried them up to my old room. The same room Kaseem had kept me in before we made everything official between us.
I put them on the top shelf of that closet, tucked all the way back where nobody would think to look.
I wasn’t ready for Zuri’s secret to come out.
Not until I was the one who decided how and when.
I went to Kaseem’s bar and poured myself a shot, threw it back fast, felt it burn all the way down. I sat there for a minute and let the whole day replay in my head. Hell, the whole last month if I’m being honest.
Then I laced up my tennis shoes because I was done waiting around trying to crack that safe.
I was about to go find this bitch on foot if I had to.
I wasn’t even thinking about the gun no more.
If I caught up to Mallory, I’d just beat her ass again the same way I did the first time, but worse.
She was proving to be a problem. I’ve witnessed this man throw her out before so she was just a weird ass, obsessed bitch at this point. And we can’t have that.
Everything was sitting on my chest at once.
My husband knowing my secret before I got the chance to tell him myself.
Wondering what he really thought of me now, whether he saw me as a liar or something worse.
My father’s betrayal still fresh, still ugly, still living in the back of my throat, heavy like something I couldn’t swallow all the way down.
And now this girl who didn’t know her place, showing up at the exact wrong time, like she wanted to be the reason I finally lost it completely.
I left the house and started walking the compound.
I walked for what felt like hours. I couldn’t find Sam. Couldn’t find Mallory. Couldn’t find nothing but black truck after black truck, all of them looking the same in the dark, no way to tell which one Sam had put her in. The Carters had too many trucks for me to tell the difference.
After a while I was ready to give up and head back to the house.
That’s when I saw headlights coming up the road, close to Zaire’s house.
I stepped off to the side, into the shadow near the property line, and I made the decision to wait.
I could hear it was them before I could see their faces clear.
Kaseem, Namier and their brother Zaire. Zaire was finally home for the first time in over a year.
This wasn’t the way that I wanted to meet him, so I had no intentions of making myself known right now in this moment.
I stood there and let them have their moment before all of them went inside the house. I’d made my decision to wait out here for Kaseem to come out.
He was about to help me find this bitch, rather he knew it or not. He had to know where Sam was, and Sam knew where this disrespectful ass hoe was.