Chapter 14
After breakfast, Namier went to see Nyla and I stayed outside chopping it up with Zaire for a bit. I told Zaire I had a meeting with Pops and I’d catch him later. He stopped me before I could get too far, standing there in the driveway with his hands in his pockets.
“What the meeting about?” he asked, looking like he was feeling left out or some shit.
“Just need some advice on some shit,” I said, keeping it vague, not trying to load him down with all my mess this early into him being home.
Zaire tilted his head, studying me for a second. “Damn. I ain’t good enough for you to talk to and get advice from no more?”
“Nah, it ain’t like that,” I said. “It’s just real drama, Zaire.
You just got home, man. I ain’t trying to put all that on your plate right now when you supposed to be adjusting back to normal life.
I promise I’m not gonna leave you out of nothing important.
This shit is really more so about my personal life and some shit I’ve gotten myself into with these women bruh. ” I told my brother honestly.
“Kaseem.” He stepped closer, and his voice dropped, he got more serious than I’d heard it since he stepped out them prison gates.
“I’m your brother. No matter what situation I just got out of, don’t ever feel like you can’t talk to me.
I’m still the same nigga I was before all that.
Prison ain’t change who I am to you. We don’t keep heavy shit from each other. Never have.”
His tone made me understand how he was felling. Zaire was wise beyond his years, so I always had gotten advice from him in the past. I didn’t want to make him feel like I couldn’t talk to him. So I told him.
I ran down the whole situation with Tatti and Mallory from the night before, the bitch trying to jump the gate, the positive pregnancy test that I still didn’t know what to do with.
Then I told him about the baby possibly being mine.
His face was full of confusion. I knew that he thought I was out here fucking off and being reckless.
He asked for the truth, then got lost in the shit when I was explaining it.
After that, I told him I’d found out my wife had a child of her own, that the situation was complicated as hell, that the child didn’t even know Tatti was her real mother.
I laid it out without dragging too much of Tatti’s personal business into it, kept the details close, just enough for him to understand the weight of it without me betraying her trust by telling her whole story to somebody else.
Zaire sat with that for a second.
“Damn,” he said finally. He looked at me straight on.
“If I’m being real with you, I don’t think that baby with the Mallory bitch is a good idea.
You’re already married. You already building a life with your wife.
Ain’t no woman on this earth wanna raise another hoe baby, Kaseem.
Let’s be for real. From all the shit I’ve heard about your wife, I think this baby will be the end of your marriage if you don’t handle it now.
You need to just make your own with Tatti and let that Mallory situation go.
Tell her that she can’t keep it. It’s still early.
” He shrugged. “And as far as the kid situation with your wife, that’s above my pay grade.
That’s for you and her to sort out. But everybody got a past. Don’t nobody walk into a marriage perfect.
You know her heart, you know if she’s not in her child’s life by force or not.
Good people be in fucked up situations sometimes but that don’t make them fucked up. ”
That landed different than he probably meant it to, cause that was the same exact thing I’d been telling myself since last night, trying to talk my own heart down off the ledge it had been standing on since Tatti told me everything.
“The doctor should be pulling up in a few to check them wounds out and clean you up,” I said, shifting the conversation off me. “You in pain, huh?”
Zaire raised an eyebrow. “How you know that, and I haven’t complained once?”
“Cause I’m your big brother,” I said. “I know everything about you. That’s my job. I watched you my whole life. I know.”
He let out a short laugh, shook his head, and we dapped up before I headed to my car.
I drove over to my father’s office with my mind still running in six different directions at once, preparing myself for a hard conversation, but knowing I needed his take on all this before I made a move I couldn’t take back.
—
When I made it to my father’s office, I knocked once and let myself in without waiting for him to answer. He looked up from whatever he’d been reading and motioned toward the chair across from his desk.
“Sit down, son.”
I sat while he reached behind him and pulled two glasses off the shelf, set them both down on the desk between us, and poured brandy into each one without asking if I wanted any. He knew I needed this shit.
He slid my glass across the desk toward me.
“I knew sooner or later you’d be coming through here,” he said, leaning back in his chair, studying me the way he had my whole life, like he already knew what was weighing on me before I ever opened my mouth to say it.
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown. See, ain’t nobody tell you it’s more to this than just having a title, son.
You really gotta work for it. Gotta sacrifice.
Gotta make calls that nobody else wants the weight of making.
” He took a slow sip from his own glass.
“What you’ve done for your brother. What you’ve done with this business since I stepped back.
How you’ve stepped into being a real husband.
That shit ain’t easy, Kaseem. But you make it look easy.
And I know exactly how heavy it really is under all that. ”
That got to me more than I wanted it to. This shit was heavy as hell, and this was literally just the beginning. I knew not to complain because this is what I asked for. This is what I worked for since I was a kid and understood what I was set to gain from all of this.
“I wouldn’t leave this business to nobody else,” he continued. “Not Namier, not Zaire. Yes, I love both of them, but you’re the one I always knew was destined for this. Since you was a little boy following me around this office like my shadow. I knew that I was just holding it for you.”
I sat with that for a second, letting it land, before I got into the reason I’d actually come.
“I need to talk to you about something and get your honest opinion on what my next move needs to be,” I said. “It’s Mallory.”
I laid it all out for him, the same way I’d laid it out for Zaire not even twenty minutes earlier. The way my wife had beat her ass twice, the way she’d just popped up here unannounced like she belonged, the possibility that the baby she was pregnant with could be mine.
My father didn’t flinch, he didn’t act surprised, he just listened the way he always did when either of us spoke, letting me get every word out before he gave me any advice back.
“This ain’t good for the family,” he said finally, his voice flat and certain.
“It’s bad for business too, whether you wanna hear that part or not.
A man in your position can’t have loose ends walking around trying to breach his property whenever they feel like she has the right to.
As a man, you need to make it clear, and I mean crystal clear, that woman don’t ever step foot near your home again.
Tattiana’s peace and her safety, that’s what matters most right now.
Anybody who threatens that, whether it’s Mallory or anybody else, that’s a threat to this whole family.
And every threat gotta be eliminated. One way or another.
Can you imagine what your mom would do if another woman thought to do the bullshit that Mallory is doing right now?
With all little respect son, fuck that baby.
And if the timeline you gave me is correct, it probably doesn’t even have a heartbeat yet. Just get rid of it.”
I sat there nodding slow, already knowing he was right, already feeling the weight of how soft I’d handled things the night before.
I should’ve shut that shit down for good instead of leaving room for a conversation at all.
Mallory was gonna be hard to convince, but as I sat on it, she didn’t have a choice.
When she dropped all of this on me, I was in shock, and naturally, yes, I thought about not wanting to kill my seed.
“I hear you,” I said.
He nodded once, satisfied, and took another sip of his brandy.
“Now,” he said, setting his glass down, “let’s talk about your mother.”
My whole body straightened up a little at that. We definitely needed to speak on her behavior lately. Even he knew that his wife was on some bullshit.
“What’s up with her?” I asked. “The way she’s been acting about them Brick Boyz, trying to stand in front of everything, telling me to stand down. That ain’t like her. Be real with me, do she think I can’t handle the heat of going toe to toe with them niggas?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what the deal is with her,” my father said, and for the first time in that whole conversation, something crossed his face that looked almost like real concern.
“But I’m gonna get to the bottom of it. I think Zuri knows something, or got something she ain’t telling me about them people.
Something more than what she’s letting on.
And I’m gonna find out what that is, one way or another.
She’s the one who told me to shut down business with them, and since then, shit been left. ”
He continued talking and without saying it, I knew that he was gonna investigate his own wife. He said it plain, no hesitation, like he was already halfway to deciding to do whatever it took to get answers.