Chapter 6
I sat in the office going through emails, a little smile creeping up on my face every time I thought about tonight.
Kaseem had promised me a real date, just the two of us, no business, no drama hanging over our heads for once, and I was actually looking forward to getting dressed up and sitting across from my husband like a normal couple for a change.
He’d left for that drop a couple of hours ago, and before he walked out the door, I made myself a promise.
Tonight, I was gonna tell him the last piece of everything.
Not just the parts about Nariyah. He knew all of that..
all except the biggest part. I wanted him to know everything that I’d been keeping in the dark, even from myself half the time.
I loved that man too much to keep holding things back from him now that the biggest secret was already out in the open.
If we were gonna build something real, I needed him to have every single piece of me, good, bad, and everything in between.
Was I scared? Hell yeah!
My husband had been nothing but raw and transparent with me.
I wanted to start showing that same love and transparency back.
He was everything in a man that I wanted.
Not to mention, he was ready to step all the way up and take on the responsibilities that came with me having a daughter.
I was definitely ready to get my child into my care.
I just needed to know that my aunt would be handled and that she wouldn’t try and pin that murder on me, knowing damn well that I didn’t do that.
I also hope that my baby girl would understand this entire situation, and adjust to it.
I have been close to her, her entire life, I never missed milestones or big events.
She really looked at me as her big best friend. I prayed that this wouldn’t change.
I clicked over to check my email while that thought was still sitting warm in my chest, and two messages caught my eye right off top.
Job offers. Two different people reaching back out after I’d put feelers out over a month ago, before all this chaos with my new life, and all these secrets had swallowed up my whole existence.
I sat there for a second, scrolling through the details, thinking it over.
I ain’t have to work a day in my life again.
Not while married to Kaseem Carter, not with everything sitting in them accounts, and everything he stood to inherit.
But something in me still wanted to hold onto a piece of who I was before all this.
My own money. My own purpose outside of being somebody’s wife.
I wanted that independence for myself, hell, I needed it even.
I’d already learned the hard way what happened to a woman who let everything about her identity become nothing other than who her husband is.
I couldn’t become my mother. Especially looking at the situation that she was in now.
And the saddest part was, she didn’t even know it.
And if she didn’t know it, she clearly didn’t care.
I was just about to click accept on one of them offers when my phone rang.
Nyla was calling. This made me pause.
My stomach twisted up immediately, remembering how that lunch ended, remembering her walking out that restaurant shaking while I sat there feeling like I’d broken something between us that couldn’t be fixed.
But I knew, whatever came out her mouth today, I needed to tell her exactly how she’d made me feel.
I wasn’t finna just sweep that under the rug cause we’d been friends too long.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Tatti, you busy?” Nyla asked, her voice careful, testing the water.
“No. What’s up?”
“I wanna talk to you about how I acted. I’ve been trying to get the words together but I didn’t want to let too much time pass, so I said fuck it. I’m just gonna let it flow.”
“Before you start, Nyla.” I sat back in my chair, feeling everything I’d been holding onto since that day rise up in my chest. “I really thought we were better than that. You didn’t hear me out.
You didn’t let me finish before you made my whole situation about you.
And I think that’s fucked up. For over fifteen years I been by your side, no questions asked, through everything.
And when I finally get the strength and the guts to tell the two people I love most in this world what I been carrying alone all these years, you did that to me.
This shit didn’t feel good. I already had too much on my plate as is.
And if I’m being real with you right now, I wanted to cut you the fuck off after that.
I’m the bitch that’s been living in hell, and you really made the shit about you instead of being the friend I needed in that moment.
It took a lot for me to even tell you two all of that! ”
There was silence on the line for a second.
“Tatti, you wanting to cut me off, that’s more than understandable,” Nyla said finally, her voice thick.
“And like a woman, I’m calling you to apologize, cause I know I was wrong.
I want you to understand something though.
We been friends so long, I thought there was nothing that I didn’t know.
We started our periods together. We talked about losing our virginity as teens.
Every single thing in life, we been through that shit side by side.
I’ve always protected you where I could, and you always did the same for me.
Your aunt would’ve been a dead ass bitch if I’d known what she took from you, if I’d known about them taking your fucking child this whole time.
But, I didn’t! I was hurt. Hurt that you ain’t tell me, and hurt at myself for not figuring it out sooner.
I looked at that little girl a hundred times over the years and saw pieces of you in her face.
How did I not know? I know this ain’t about me.
But it does make me feel like I failed you somehow.
This shit hurts, bad! Because I knew you came home different after that year of being there and I didn’t push the issue as much as I should have to figure out what the hell was going on with you.
I’m hurting for you. I could never be angry at you, not for real, and I’m so sorry I stormed out on you like that.
Even Namier told me I was dead ass wrong for how I handled it. ”
I was crying real tears listening to her get all that out, feeling every bit of the weight lifting off my chest that had been sitting there since that lunch. But that last part made me stop cold.
“Bitch, I know you ain’t out here pillow talking my business to no damn Namier,” I said, sitting straight up. “Nyla. What the fuck?”
“Hell nah, Tatti, it wasn’t like that,” she said quick, backpedaling. “But I did tell him a little bit about why I was upset when I got back home that day.”
“So the nigga be staying at your house now?” I said, my voice going up a whole octave. “How you go from him dogging you out, ghosting you for weeks, to him just staying at your crib alone without you? That’s crazy as hell, Nyla.”
Silence again, this time on her end.
“See how that feels,” I said, “when a muthafucka judge you like that?”
She laughed a little, and apologized again, softer this time.
“I’ll forgive you, but I want you to understand that no matter what the situation is, you don’t ever do no shit like that again. We sit down like women and express ourselves because you know if it was you in that situation, I would have never did you like that.” I expressed to her.
Right then, a loud bang came from the front of the house.
I froze for a second, phone still pressed to my ear, listening as the door opened without anybody ringing first. I stood up from that desk fast and walked out my husband’s office toward the front, and there was Sam standing just inside the doorway, his whole demeanor different than I’d ever seen it, tense, serious, all business.
“Mrs. Carter,” he said. “There’s some things about to take place on the compound within the next hour and you can’t be here. For now, I gotta get you to safety.”
“Safety?” My chest instantly tightened up. “What are you talking about? Where is safer than my own home that’s always heavily guarded? Oh my God. Where’s my husband? Is my husband okay?”
“He’s fine, ma’am,” Sam said. “But right now, I need you to grab a few things. I gotta get you to the safe house.”
Nyla was screaming into the phone at that same time, still on the line, begging me to tell her what was going on, her voice cutting through everything else happening around me.
Hell, I didn’t know myself what was happening now.
I stood there for a second completely lost, caught between two different kinds of panic.
“Tell me something, Sam,” I said, my voice cracking. “Anything.”
He didn’t budge. Wouldn’t give me a single detail beyond what he’d already said.
“Just come over here,” Nyla said through the phone, her own voice shaking now too. “Come to my house, Tatti.”
I told him that I wouldn’t be going to a safe house, but I would go somewhere that I knew was safe.
Sam asked for the address, asked how many people were currently at Nyla’s place.
Once I told him it was just her, he nodded, told me he’d have the driver take me straight there, said a driver and security detail would sit on the house the whole time I was inside.
He told me that my husband would reach out personally when it was time for me to come home.
I was shaking by that point, visibly upset, my hands trembling so bad I could barely hold onto my own phone, standing in the middle of my living room with no idea what was happening. I needed to talk to Kaseem and I couldn’t. That was the part that was nagging at me the most.
—
The driver pulled off the compound fast, and I sat in the back seat with my phone still in my hand, dialing Kaseem’s number over and over like if I just tried calling him enough times, he’d finally pick up.
Straight to voicemail. Every single time.
I tried Namier’s number next and got the same results.
It went straight to voicemail. I cursed myself for not asking my husband for Zaire’s number when he left for the day, but honestly, I didn’t think that I would need it.
For Kaseem and Namier’s phones to be switched off at the exact same moment.
That wasn’t normal. Men like them didn’t just go dark all together unless something had already gone real wrong.
My mind started running through every possible thing it could be, and none of the options sitting in my head made me feel any better.
Was this Mallory? Was he with her or was she coming to the compound again?
Had Demontae finally made his move on the family after all this back and forth?
Was it my aunt, somehow, some way, coming after me the same way she’d been threatening for years?
Especially now after how my uncle had got beat down.
Or was it something completely different, something I hadn’t even thought to be scared of yet?
I sat there gripping that phone so tight my knuckles hurt, staring out the window at Dallas passing by, feeling like the whole world had shifted under me in the span of five minutes.
One second I was crying happy tears on the phone with my best friend, finally getting back something I thought I’d lost for good, and the next I was being rushed out my own house by a man who wouldn’t tell me a single thing beyond “he’s fine. ”
I didn’t believe that. Not for one second.
Was this the life I had signed up for? My heart couldn’t take it. This was too much worry and stress to be dealing with constantly.
From what I’d gathered since knowing him, Sam wasn’t the type of man to show up like that, banging on doors, rushing me out my own home, unless it was bad.
Real bad. I’d seen that man handle situations calm as ever, cool under pressure every single time I’d ever watched him work.
The fact that his whole demeanor had shifted that hard told me everything his mouth wouldn’t.
I tried calling Kaseem one more time, and this time I left a voicemail, my voice cracking the whole way through it.
“Baby, it’s me. Please call me back the second you get this. I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m scared, your people wouldn’t tell me nothing, and I just… I need to hear your voice. Please. I love you. Call me back.”
I hung up and sat there in silence for a minute, watching the city blur past outside that window, my chest tight with a fear I hadn’t felt since the night I found out about Mallory’s pregnancy test, except this one felt different.
Heavier. Like whatever was happening right now had a dark pull that none of the other drama had.
My phone buzzed.
I looked down fast, hoping, praying it was Kaseem.
It was my father.
I almost didn’t answer, my mind so locked on getting through to my husband that everything else felt like static. But something made me pick up anyway.
“Dad?” I said, my voice still shaky.
“Tattiana,” he said, and something in his voice stopped me cold.
“I need you to listen to me carefully. I just got word through some old connections that I have in place on the property that something’s happening out at the Carter compound.
Are you safe? Are you away from the area all of this is taking place?
Where are you right now?” he asked, his voice in full panic mode although I could tell that he was trying to keep it together.
My whole body went numb hearing that confirmed out loud by somebody else.
Even hearing the fact that my father had a connect on the property, that let me know that he didn’t just throw me to the wolves.
Yes, he gave my hand in marriage without my permission, but he was also still keeping eyes on me, making sure I was okay.
But who the fuck was shooting? And where was my husband?
“I’m in the car,” I said. “They’re taking me to Nyla’s house. Dad, I can’t get in touch with Kaseem. I can’t get in touch with none of them. What do you know? Please, if you know something, tell me.”
“I don’t know everything,” he said, “but I’m gonna make some calls, see what else I can find out.
You get to Nyla’s safe and you stay there, you hear me?
I’ll call you back the second I know something more or when I can make contact with your husband.
And baby girl. Calm down. Everything will be okay. ”
The call ended, and I sat there in that back seat, completely alone with everything I now knew and everything I still didn’t, my hands shaking so bad I could barely hold my own phone steady, watching the streets roll by toward Nyla’s house while my whole world sat somewhere out there in the middle of gunfire.
What was really going on? And what had I unwillingly signed up for?