Chapter 18
Tatti’s father had just left, and I walked over to check on her.
“You good?” I asked, watching her face for any sign that conversation had left her worse off than when it started.
“Yes,” she said, and I could see it in her eyes, something had genuinely shifted for her. “Things went a lot better than I expected them to. I told him I’d try.”she said, and I was really proud of her. No, I didn’t agree with everything that he did, but I knew that he truly loved her.
I kissed her face, soft, right on her cheek.
“I’m taking you out for dinner tonight,” I told her. “We gonna talk about all of it on our date. Find something nice to wear for me.”
She thanked me, smiling for the first time all morning.
We hugged and I ain’t want to let her go.
I told her that today, I had this first drop since Zaire got home, so I was riding out with him and Namier to oversee it today.
I told her I’d be back later. She told me to be safe.
I kissed her again on my way out the door and told her that I loved her.
Walking out that house, I sat with how easy it had gotten to say that to her now. A year ago that word wasn’t even in my vocabulary when it came to a woman. She had my mind gone, and I laughed to myself thinking about it on the way to my car.
I picked Zaire up first. He climbed in looking fresh, smelling like money, adjusting back into his old ways faster than I expected. He’d always been a fly nigga, and it did something to my chest seeing him back out here living instead of locked behind bars where the system tried to keep him.
We swung by Namier’s next, but he wasn’t home. I called him, and he picked up telling me he’d stayed at Nyla’s overnight, was getting dressed now, on his way to the spot.
When I hung up, Zaire looked over at me from the passenger seat.
“You niggas heads ain’t even in the game right now, and I feel like y’all are getting soft,” he said. “That’s why I gotta do everything.”
“What the fuck you talking about, nigga?” I said. “You just got home. What you done did already? I been letting you adjust, but clearly you ready to jump back in this shit, head first. Let me see what you got in you.”
Zaire just laughed, shook his head. “You don’t even know the half of it.”
We got to the warehouse an hour later, and Namier pulled up right as we did. Zaire clowned him the second he stepped out his car, telling him he was pussy whipped, and Namier didn’t even try to deny it.
Namier and Zaire walked the floor with the team, clipboards in hand, marking off product while everybody else loaded trucks for the customers.
I hung back, watching my brothers move, taking note of how neither one of them played when it came to this business, no matter what personal mess either of them had going on outside these walls.
Mars caught my eye from across the floor, nodded once, then looked away fast. I shrugged it off, ain’t think nothing of it in the moment. Usually we’d chop it up, but I guess he was preoccupied today.
Once everything wrapped up and we were leaving the location to get into our cars, Zaire told Namier to ride with us, said he had something to show us both.
Namier agreed to leave his car there for now, telling our brother that whatever he was about to show us, better be good.
I kept asking him the whole way what it was, but he wouldn’t give it up, just handed me an address.
When I put the address in, I instantly realize that it was our old trap house.
We pulled up, walked inside, and what I saw stopped me cold my tracks.
“Man, who the fuck is this,” I said, “and why the fuck you got her here? You just got home and this what you doing already? You know this ain’t how we move. You must want to go back.”
Namier shook his head slow, standing behind me.
“It ain’t what y’all think,” Zaire said, calm, and he reached down and snatched the tape off her mouth, made her repeat everything to us straight from her own lips.
“Mallory did what?” I said, my chest going tight.
“Where yo bitch ass baby daddy at?” I barked, stepping closer to her.
“I don’t know,” she said, crying, “but I’m supposed to get my son from him today.
He’s probably been calling me. Please, let me do this.
Let me call my best friend, have her go get my son.
He’ll be safe with her, please don’t hurt him.
I can have Demon meet her someplace public.
Then y’all can follow him and do whatever you need to do.
Just please, let my baby be out of this whole thing. ”
I looked at my brothers. We all nodded at each other without saying a word. I’d handle Mallory later, and the grimy bitch was definitely getting handled. Today, I needed Demon dead for everything he’d already taken from this family.
We powered her phone on, and I called her friend on speaker first, Brit acted normal, and asked if she could keep Sonny for her today and pick him up from his dad.
The friend agreed easy, no questions. Then I dialed Demon’s number myself, made sure Mallory understood not to try nothing funny while I held that phone up to her face.
He picked up on the second ring, already going off before she said a word.
“Bitch, where the fuck are you? I been calling you all day. I got shit to handle and I can’t do it while I’m stuck with my son. What’s up? I need to drop him off now.”
“I got tied up with clients, nigga,” Mallory said, her voice shaking but holding steady enough to sell it. “Miracle said she can meet you in an hour, Trader Joe’s, North Dallas.”
“You done made me late for a whole meeting,” he snapped. “Don’t ask me for shit else for a minute with yo deadbeat ass.” He hung up before she could say anything back.
Me and my brothers were out that house within minutes, headed toward the spot he was about to make the handoff.
We pulled up and waited a while before it went down. Demon handed his son over to the friend, then pulled off out that parking lot like a bat out of hell. We followed him, staying back far enough that he ain’t have no idea we were behind him.
After close to an hour of trailing him through the city, he ended up pulling into one of our own warehouses.
My whole body went still.
What was this nigga doing? Had he found this location trying to figure out a way to jack us, not even knowing he was about to walk himself straight into his own death?
I made sure we were all strapped before we got out the car. Ain’t nobody had to say a word between us. Me and my brothers already knew exactly what we were about to do. Today was the day this nigga finally would met his maker. All that chasing, all this time of him hiding, it was finally ending.
He parked and walked inside. We parked further down the street and moved in on foot, quiet, careful, checking every angle before we got close.
As we neared the entrance, I heard voices coming from inside.
One of them sounded like my mother’s.
My whole chest tightened up hearing that, confusion hitting me so fast I almost stopped walking altogether.
She knew it was smoke with this nigga, so I knew damn well she wasn’t going behind us on some peacemaker shit trying to make amends.
We ain’t roll like that, and she knew it.
We eased through the first set of doors quiet as we could manage, and the voices got clearer the closer we crept.
“Lower your gun, son. I promise you on my life this isn’t a setup.”
“Bitch, you must think I’m crazy.” That was Demon, his voice cracking with rage. “You the wife and the mother of the muthafuckas I’m at war with right now. This a trap, and I’m finna blow your whole shit back.”
“No. I mean, yes, but that’s not what this is.
I’m your mother. Look.” Her voice broke clean in half right there.
“Here’s the letter you sent through that ancestry website.
I have it right here in my hand. ZC, that’s my initials.
I’m Zuri Carter. I didn’t get to name you myself, but I did the research.
Your name, the one your first adoptive parents gave you, was Demontae Sullivan.
Your adoptive mother passed from cancer when you were only three years old.
That birthmark under your eye, that’s how I always told myself I’d find you again one day.
You were born September 3rd, 1998. 2:03 in the afternoon. It was a Friday.”
Namier and Zaire both froze beside me, and I felt my own feet stop moving underneath me.
What the fuck was going on.
We didn’t wait to see nothing else, didn’t wait to check the room or think another second on it.
We burst through that second set of doors, guns already raised, every instinct in our bodies screaming at once.
I don’t know what kind of sick game my mom’s was playing with him, but we were about to lay his ass down.
My mother was standing directly in front of Demontae, her hands thrown up between us and him, putting her whole body between our guns and his.
“Wait, please, don’t do this,” she said, turning back toward us, eyes wide and wet and pleading. “You cannot shoot him. This is your—”
To be continued…..