Chapter 2
“Iskyiah Nathans.” Moolah stood slowly, not believing his eyes.
It had been a few years since he’d seen her, and even then, he only laid eyes on her. It had been twenty years since he actually heard her voice, unless he counted the videos he’d seen on her social media, which he didn’t.
They stood in a sort of stare off. Moolah looked her from her pretty brown eyes all the way down to the stilettos she wore on her feet. When his eyes found hers again, he felt a flutter in his heart. He frowned. Since they were kids, she always had the means to have him acting like a bitch.
“Is it that b-bad to see me?” she asked as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. Her eyes left his gaze and bounced around the private jet he bought a year ago.
Without meaning to, he chuckled. Another ability Iskyiah had. Nobody made him laugh these days, but two seconds in her presence, and it happened naturally.
His movements were sudden. He closed the space between them in three long strides before he pulled her into him by her waist. She gasped but immediately melted into him.
When her head hit his chest, everything in his world seemed to fall into place.
His large hands rubbed her small back, and he breathed her in for a few seconds before he said, “It ain’t ever bad seein’ you. ”
“It’s been a while,” she muttered.
He nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him. “And whose fault is that?”
Iskyiah pulled back. A frown etched across her face as she looked up at him.
It seemed like she searched his eyes for something before she shook her head, now stepping completely out of his embrace.
After clearing her throat, she looked at the floor where she’d dropped the glass with his whiskey in it. “I’ll get you another one.”
Moolah scoffed. His thumb flicked his nose, and his jaw clenched. “You playin’ wit’ me right now, Sky.”
Her frown deepened. “You know I ain’t ever played with you a day in my life, Moolah Brooks.
” The fire in her tone made him chuckle once again.
He grabbed her hand, but she snatched away from him before she took a step back.
“No. We aren’t doing this. I’m not doing this.
You . . . you don’t get to do this to me. ”
Confusion filled him. “Do what? Fuck you actin’ like I’m about to break you or somethin’?”
She looked at him incredulously. “Because that’s exactly what you do. You break me. You leave.”
Moolah couldn’t say anything to that. He clamped his mouth shut and stared down at her.
Emotions filtered through him. Iskyiah Nathans.
His first love. His only love. It felt impossible to wrap his head around the fact that she stood in front of him at the moment.
The pain in her eyes caused an ache in his heart.
Only fuckin’ Iskyiah Nathans could throw him off-kilter like this.
“Come sit down.” He turned and moved toward the seat he had previously occupied.
When he sat, he was glad to see Iskyiah had reluctantly followed him. Good, because that hadn’t been a question or an offer. It was a demand. It made his dick twitch to know that she still knew how to take orders.
Slowly, she lowered herself into the seat across from him. “I’m working, you know?”
He cracked a grin and then frowned at the unfamiliar action. “A flight attendant, huh? How long you been doin’ that?”
“Over a decade. Today is my first day with this company, though. I really don’t want to mess it up—”
“What are you doing?” The high-pitched male voice caused Moolah’s frown to deepen.
The flight attendant, Jake, judging by the name tag attached to his black button down, looked at the ground where the glass had fallen before his eyes landed back on Iskyiah.
“Mr. Brooks, I am so deeply sorry for the actions of our newest employee. I assure you I will have a stern talk with her right away—”
Iskyiah stood, which made Moolah stand, dwarfing them both with his height.
Before Iskyiah could open her mouth to apologize to dude, Moolah spoke.
“Aye, nigga. Why you worried about what the fuck we got goin’ on?
Go do yo’ job and leave us the fuck alone.
” Jake looked bewildered as he glanced at Iskyiah. “Fuck you lookin’ at her for?”
“Moolah!” Iskyiah hissed.
With his eyes on Jake, he said, “Iskyiah,” in a similar tone that she had used.
“I-I was j-just—”
“You still talkin’?” Moolah cut Jake off. “Scram, nigga.”
Jake’s eyes grew wide when Moolah took a step toward him, and he turned quickly and disappeared back behind the curtain.
Iskyiah made a move to follow him, which pissed Moolah off. He grabbed her wrist, and she turned and looked up at him. “Moolah, seriously. I need this job.”
The pleading in her tone softened him some. He wasn’t trying to come off as an asshole. Not toward her. He just wanted to talk to her and bask in her presence, and she acted like that was the last thing she wanted to do.
He dropped her wrist and grabbed at the back of his neck. Not allowing his frustration to get to him seemed like a task, but he could and would do anything for Iskyiah.
Once he was calm enough, he gazed at her and said, “How much you get paid?”
“Excuse me?”
He clenched his jaw before he spoke again. “Sky, for the love of Big Homie, tell me how much you get paid.”
She shifted her weight again. “I’m salaried—”
“Man, look. Whatever you make, I’ll triple it. Quit this fuck ass job and work directly for me. I do a lot of traveling. You would have plenty of work. Trust me.”
Iskyiah eyed him. “I . . . I can’t.”
“Why not? You wanna work with Jake? That why?” Jealously flared through him so suddenly that he had to take a seat. He looked up at her, doing his best to wait patiently for her response.
“What? No. I don’t even know him. I can’t because . . . because I have a daughter to think about, and I can’t risk you dippin’ out on me again and leaving me high and dry. I can’t just quit this brand-new job because you asked me to.”
“How old is she?” Moolah asked. Hearing that Iskyiah had a daughter had done something to him. What, he couldn’t be sure. The thought of a mini version of the only woman who held his heart running around was bound to turn him into putty.
Iskyiah frowned at his lack of response to everything she just said. “Ten.”
“She mine?”
“Huh? How the hell could she be yours, Moolah? We had sex one time, twenty years ago,” she hissed as she took a step toward him.
Even sitting down, he was at eye level with her.
Fire danced in her eyes. He could tell he offended her.
Iskyiah wasn’t the type to keep a child from a man, and he knew it.
He gazed into her beautiful face as he thought about why he asked her that question.
The math didn’t add up, and he knew that before he even opened his mouth to ask the question.
It had to be because he hoped the child was his.
He wouldn’t have even been mad at her. The thought of the world having a child that came from him made him happy as hell.
The thought of her having a child with someone else pissed him off.
“Who the daddy then?” His jaw ticked as he glared at her as if she had betrayed him.
She looked away from him. “Charles.”
Moolah chuckled, but nothing was funny to him. “You let that fuck ass nigga put a baby in you?”
Iskyiah didn’t respond. She continued to stare at the floor with her arms crossed over her chest. Finally, she shrugged and looked at him. “It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.”
That didn’t surprise Moolah at all. Charles was never very smart, and last he heard, he had been trying to make big moves in the streets. Lil nigga couldn’t fill big boy shoes like that, assuming he died because he was in the streets and not from natural causes. He really didn’t care to even ask.
“What’s baby girl’s name?”
Iskyiah looked away from him again, and he noticed a red tint creep up her cheeks. That piqued his interest. He sat back in his seat as he gazed up at her.
“Brooke,” she muttered.
Moolah’s brows rose. “Say that again. Wit’ ya chest, Sky. Quit playin’ wit’ me.”
This time, Iskyiah looked him in the eyes. “Her name is Brooke.”
Moolah grinned. He knew that wasn’t no coincidence. “You named Charles’s daughter after me? How you get away wit’ that? That nigga hated me.”
“He didn’t remember your last name.” She shrugged and looked away from him again.
“Look at me, Sky.” When she did, he continued. “You really named your daughter after me?”
“I missed you.” She said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
His heart constricted.
“But you don’t want to take the day off and talk to me,” he pointed out.
“Want to and can’t are two different things.”
Tired of the back-and-forth, Moolah took his phone out and asked for her number. She rattled it off, and he asked, “You got an iPhone?”
“Yeah . . .” She eyed him suspiciously, but he ignored her. When her phone buzzed in her pocket, he watched as she pulled it out and then nearly dropped it two seconds later, but she caught it and continued to stare at it. “Ten thousand dollars? Moolah, what the hell?”
“I’ll get you a credit card with your name on it later so we ain’t gotta do all this transferring.”
“A credit card? But . . .”
“I can only send ten thousand a week with Apple Pay,” he explained.
She shook her head. “Moolah, that’s more than I get paid in two months.”
He frowned. “Yeah, we gon’ fix that. Sit down so we can talk.”
This time at his request, she plopped back in the seat across from him just as Jake popped his head from behind the curtain. “Prepare for takeoff. Do you need anything?”
His voice sounded squeaky, and Moolah’s face twisted up before he looked at Iskyiah. “You need anything, love?” She shook her head. Moolah looked back at Jake. “Get her a water and some fruit.”
Jake scurried away.
“This is too much,” she uttered as she gazed at him in confusion. “How do you have all that money, anyway?”
Moolah shook his head with a grin. “You know money always came to me. Ain’t nothin’ changed.”
Truth be told, Moolah was at the top of the hood pyramid.
He had worked his way up past kingpin status.
Now, he simply collected money. He had plenty of legitimate businesses, but even those were delegated to others, so he didn’t need to do shit but sit back and collect funds.
He traveled so much for pleasure. That was the point of this trip.
What was meant to be a day and night in California so he could visit one of his favorite restaurants and relax on the beach was about to turn into a whole weekend so he could keep Iskyiah to himself.
Plans had changed, and she didn’t even know it yet.
She stared at him for so long, Jake had come and dropped off her water and fruit and disappeared before she finally spoke. “Why are you doing this, Lah?”
Her voice was so quiet, and hearing her call him by his old nickname cracked him wide open.
Leaning forward, he placed his elbows on his knees and grinned. “You know you fucked up, right?”
“Huh?”
He could tell him avoiding her questions threw her for a loop, but she would get used to being around him again. It was only a matter of time.
“You named my daughter Brooke. Now her name gonna be Brooke Brooks, and people gonna make fun of her. You know what I’ma do when that happens?”
“She isn’t yours—”
“I’ma have to fuck some lil kids up, Sky. Now, tell me.” He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Why would you put me in that position?”
Her mouth hung open, and damn if he didn’t want to put something in it.
For now, he would be good and play shit cool.
Iskyiah Nathans was the one thing he had been missing from his life.
The fact that she just landed in his lap was a sign to him.
It was game on now. If she thought he would let up on her, baby girl was sadly mistaken.
Her life was about to change drastically, and she had no idea.