Chapter 9
Namier pulled up to the house and I was out that backseat before the car even came to a full stop.
I rushed straight for the front door, my mind still spinning from everything that had gone down in that little ass house with Mallory tied to that busted ass chair.
Kaseem stayed back, and I didn’t know nor care what he was about to do with her.
I hated that I saw something flash across his eyes when she mentioned being pregnant.
In my heart, I could feel that this bitch was about to be a problem and for some reason, I didn’t think he would allow her to get killed now.
But still, I wanted this bitch dead. As ruthless as this man was, it was clear that he had a soft spot for kids.
I realized that once he overheard that I had a child, and his first instinct was to grab her and to bring her home with us.
Zuri jumped out the front seat right on my heels, moving fast for a woman her age.
Namier came rushing into my home behind both of us like he didn’t trust leaving us alone for even a second.
“Y’all gone be okay?” Namier asked, standing there in the doorway looking back and forth between me and his mother.
“I really don’t want to leave with the air this damn thick because both of y’all are hot headed.
At the same time, I need to get back and help my brother with this situation, and I need to know I can trust the two of you alone to be cool. ”
“You can really take your momma with you,” I said, not even bothering to hide how tired, and tired of her ass I was. “I’m exhausted and just wanna rest. I really don’t even feel like talking.”
Zuri ignored me completely. She told Namier he could leave, that he had nothing at all to worry about, that me and her were just about to talk like two grown women.
Namier looked between us both, shook his head slow like he already knew this wasn’t gonna be as simple as she was making it sound, but he left anyway.
As soon as that door closed behind him, Zuri turned around and walked up on me.
“What did you mean back there?” she asked, her voice sharp, cutting straight through whatever exhaustion I thought I was allowed to feel. “And who did you think you were talking to? Do you know who I am?”
I stepped up into her personal space. I wasn’t backing down from this woman tonight. Not after the day I’d had. Not after everything that had already been stripped from me and thrown back in my face by everybody.
“I know exactly who you are,” I said, my voice steady even though my whole body was still shaking off the adrenaline from beating Mallory’s ass.
“You the muthafucka who set out to make my life hell from the first day I stepped foot in this bitch against my will. You the woman who look down on me, hang shit over my head like you ain’t got a son that you gave up for adoption who’s actively out here looking for you right now.
” I let that sit for a second, watching her face.
“Let’s be for real. You ain’t better than me.
Let’s have a sit down with your husband and see what would make you give up a child you had a year after having Kaseem.
Why would a man who loves his family that much agree to letting you do some shit like that.
You gave one up, but kept the other two?
I’m thinking maybe you ain’t as pure as you pretend to be.
Cause I got dirt on your ass too and I’d love to hear what Mr. Kadeem has to say.
Something tells me that he doesn’t even know about this. ”
Zuri stepped back. She actually stumbled a little, catching herself on the wall before she found her footing again.
“You’re bluffing. You don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.” she said, but there was no real conviction behind it.
“I got the ancestry papers in a safe place,” I told her.
“And the wild animal shit needs to stop! You like to try and belittle me, or talk down on my behavior, when I’m never actually the problem.
What you saw tonight, was one of Kaseem’s old flings tried to break into this property.
Disrespected me to my face after we already had a run in before.
So I beat her ass. Simple as that. If anybody disrespects my home and my marriage, that’s always gone be the outcome.
You can put that on whoever you need to. ”
“I understand that to the fullest and now that you’ve helped me better understand the situation, I see it from your point of view,” Zuri said, and something in her voice had shifted, gone quieter, less like a woman in control and more like a woman who’d just been caught somewhere she never expected to get caught.
“But listen to me Tattiana. My life is complicated, more complicated than you know. You cannot tell Kaseem or anybody else about that paperwork you found. I’m gonna tell them myself, in my own time, but there’s more to the story than what’s sitting on that paper.
Right now ain’t the time for me to explain that.
My son just got home and I need all my energy and focus to be on that right now.
I can’t drop this on them at a time like this.
This would break Zaire, especially when he’s been dealing with so much, and he’s just getting past the worse experience of his life.
It’s just not the time. So I’m telling you, let it be for now. ”
She wasn’t begging exactly. Even in that moment, standing there with her secret hanging between us, she still carried herself like a boss, like a woman who was still deadly even with her back against the wall.
“What’s your beef with me?” I asked her straight out. “For real. Cause this shit has been going on since day one and I’m tired of guessing. One minute I think we’re cool, and then you back on BS.”
She led me into the day room, the one spot in that house I knew for a fact didn’t have no cameras running, and we sat down across from each other.
“I had my people pull documents when my husband chose you for Kaseem because that’s what a mother does.
Especially when she wants to protect her son, and protect her legacy,” Zuri said, her voice low now, careful.
“I made them search high and low, through sealed information. It took some real digging, but my investigators found it. Found that you’d given birth as a teen, but when I looked deeper, I saw you didn’t have any kids listed to your name nowhere official.
” She paused, looking at me like she was deciding how much of this information she wanted to put on the floor.
“I kept digging, and I found out you’d given your baby to a family member to raise.
And that triggered something in me I wasn’t ready for.
Made me think about my own mistake, giving up my own son all them years ago.
You made me have to look in a mirror at myself, Tattiana.
And I didn’t want that. I wanted to run you off so my own past wouldn’t keep staring me in my face every single day.
There was no way that I could expose your secret to my family, knowing that I have one of my own.
So my plan was to make you want out of this situation.
I still hadn’t forgiven myself, so how could I be okay with you?
This was never really about you, it was more about.
About my past and what I’d hid from my family. ”
I sat there with that confession sitting heavy between us, and for one second I almost told her.
Almost told her that the very son she gave away was the same man who fathered my daughter, that Demontae Sullivan was tied to both of us in a way that would break this family into pieces the second it got said out loud.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t know exactly why, didn’t have the words to explain it even to myself, but something in me knew I needed to keep that piece tucked away a little longer.
Zuri apologized. Asked me to give her time.
This woman was calculated and conniving, so I didn’t trust her at all.
But, I knew from this conversation that she didn’t know all of my secret because if she did, the conversation would have gone differently.
She didn’t know that the son she’d gave away manipulated me as a teenager, got me pregnant and dipped on my ass. How could she know?
“We’ll see each other at breakfast in the morning.
I’m also gonna speak to my son about taking you to the gun range.
A woman should always have a piece on her and be skilled in using it.
” She patted the pocket of her house coat where she had her gun concealed.
“If a bitch makes you feel threatened in your home like that hoe in the pool house, you put a bullet in the middle of that bitch head. You are Tattiana Carter, and Carter women don’t break nails and get their hands dirty.
We are not in the hood my love, and you are not a gang banger, street fighter.
” she said, standing up, straightening her house coat like she was putting her armor back on before she walked out that door.
Again, her ass found yet another way to insult me.
Then she left.
And I sat there in that day room by myself, stressed all the way down to my bones from everything that had happened in one single day.
My husband finding out about Nariyah. Me finding out about Demontae and Zuri.
Mallory and her possible baby. And now Zuri’s secret sitting on my chest right along with everybody else’s, one more thing I had to carry and keep quiet about while my own marriage was hanging on by a thread I wasn’t sure could hold much more weight.
But I was tired as hell of lying to my damn husband.
One thing that I knew for sure if I didn’t know anything else, it was that Zuri had clearly cheated on her husband and made another baby.
This shit with this family was beginning to be too much.
I know that have my own secrets, but damn.
I can’t hold a candle to this shit they got going on.