Chapter 11
I put Zuri out that car and pulled off, watching her get smaller in my rearview mirror, standing there on the side of that road in her heels. I really didn’t give a fuck. Everything she’d just said to me had further pissed a nigga off.
As soon as I was far enough away that I couldn’t see her no more, I let out a long ass breath that I didn’t even know I’d been holding the whole time she was sitting next to me.
My chest had been locked up tight this whole ride, every muscle in my body tightened so hard it felt like something was about to snap inside of me, and now that I was by myself, I let all of it go at once.
I looked back down at them papers sitting on my passenger seat, that letter, the DNA confirmation, everything she’d handed me like it was supposed to just make sense in one sitting.
I was so fucking angry right now, I started hitting my steering wheel hard as fuck, over and over, frustration boiling up out of me with nowhere else to go.
How the fuck was this real life?
I’d spent my whole life hating the people who’d birthed me and left me, not knowing why they did what they did.
Not knowing who they were or what kind of life they lived. Or if they had any regrets from the shit.
Whole time, the real villain in my whole story was some nigga named Ben who ran off decades ago.
He left her to carry the weight of that secret by herself, left her to hand me over to strangers and go build a whole empire with the man he’d betrayed.
I couldn’t just put all my hate towards Zuri.
She said she was scared, and the nigga who had the power to stand beside her, he was the same nigga who told her to get rid of me.
Hell yeah, she was still wrong and still to blame.
But she wasn’t alone in the shit either. My beef was with both of them. After hearing that story, and knowing what Zuri did behind her husband’s back, she was one cold ass bitch.
Now, sitting here, working through all of it, my rage didn’t get smaller. If anything, it got bigger and it was growing for them Carter boys even harder now than before.
Them niggas had to think they were better than me cause their bitch ass momma kept them and got rid of me. She told them in the warehouse who I was, and she never changed her story. Before they died, I know that those brothers were hurt, and in their feelings to find out who I really was to them.
Zuri saying Kadeem didn’t know, maybe that was even a lie too.
Maybe that nigga knew the whole time but pretended not to, and that’s the reason why he cut business with me without giving up no explanation.
Maybe the whole family had been playing me from the jump, and they wanted to bury Zuri secret this whole time.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore, but it was hard for me to believe that a husband didn’t know his wife had cheated and made an outside child.
I know all of my women bodies, and any changes that I see in them.
I couldn’t sit here and believe that Kadeem didn’t know Zuri that well.
I picked up my phone and called my men, the three I’d left behind at that warehouse to finish off them Carter brothers.
No answer.
I called again. Then again. Straight to voicemail every single time, three separate numbers that nobody was picking up, and that told me everything I needed to know without it having to be said out loud. Something had gone wrong. Kaseem’s words kept replaying in my head now.
My men were dead. They had to be. All three of them. Which meant them Carter niggas had walked out that warehouse alive, exactly like Kaseem and Zuri swore they would.
I drove without no real destination in mind, my head still spinning, still trying to process everything that had just been dumped on me in the span of one car ride.
Part of me wanted to go straight to Nisha’s crib, wanted to hold my woman and feel something normal for just a minute after a day like today.
But I couldn’t risk it. Not with them niggas possibly already on my trail.
I didn’t want to lead them to my place of peace, not with Nisha carrying my first daughter.
She was seven months along now, and she was the one person that I hid and protected from the world.
Not even Brit knew about her. And the last thing in this world I could afford, was to put her in danger.
I’d been with Nisha for the past two years.
She started out as just the girl I had on the side when Brit would piss me off, but over the past year, she’d became my woman.
Her and Brit literally switched roles and Brit had no idea.
I called Brit instead.
I figured that Sonny was still with his godmother since earlier, so I needed Brit to sit tight at that Airbnb until I figured out my next move.
I needed one piece of stability tonight since my day had already been completely fucked up.
I needed to stay with her for tonight and figure my next move out in the morning.
I called her ass. No answer. I knew she was mad from how I’d talked to her earlier, but since we broke up, she had no respect for my time when we had to exchange our son.
I drove another hour back into the city, my mind running through every possible scenario, every next step, and once I got closer to her place, I tried her again.
This time, somebody picked up.
But it wasn’t Brit’s voice that came through that phone.
“Where’s my momma, bitch ass nigga?” a voice I recognized instantly said, cold and hard. “While you keep calling yo baby momma phone, you know you fucked up, right?” Kaseem’s voice came through clear as hell on Brit’s phone.
I pulled that phone away from my ear for a second, staring at the screen, making sure I’d actually dialed the right number, making sure this wasn’t some kind of mistake. But there it was, Brit’s contact, Brit’s number, and Kaseem Carter’s voice on that other end.
How the fuck was these niggas still alive and now sitting on my baby momma’s phone?
That only meant one thing. They’d killed my men themselves, took control of the whole situation, and now they had Brit, or even worse.
I hung my head for a second, shaking it slow, feeling something cold settle into my chest that ain’t have nothing to do with fear.
“Man, say,” I said into that phone, keeping my voice level calm though everything in me was screaming.
“I spared yo momma. Or should I say our momma. She showed me all the proof, but let me tell you something right now. We may share the same blood, but we ain’t never gonna be cut from the same cloth.
You touch my baby momma, I swear on everything I love, y’all niggas gone regret the shit before her body gets cold, for real. ”
“Nigga, please,” Kaseem said, and I could hear the smirk in his voice even through that phone. “You ain’t in the position to make threats right now. We already touched Brit. She is already out the way. Now we sitting outside the pregnant bitch crib. Check yo phone.”
I pulled that phone away from my ear, looked down, and there it was.
A pin drop. His location. Sitting right outside Nisha’s house, then he sent a picture of her front door. Clear as day.
My heart dropped straight down to my stomach.
They’d already got to Brit, and now they were standing outside where my unborn daughter’s mother laid her head every single night. These niggas ain’t even know what they’d just started. This whole city was about to turn into a bloodbath behind this.
I hung up that phone fast and called Nisha. She didn’t answer. These muthafuckas were really playing a dirty ass game. If they harmed my unborn, I didn’t even want to think of what I’d do.
Next, I called Brit’s best friend, the one who kept Sonny whenever we needed her to. She called herself his godmother, and she had him right now.
She picked up on the second ring.
“You still got my son?” I asked, no greeting, straight to it.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice already picking up on the panic in mine. “You ready for him back? What’s going on, Demon?”
“I can’t get him right now,” I said, forcing myself to stay calm, to think straight even with everything crashing down around me.
“Shit is sticky over here, and you the only person I can trust with him right now. Get up. Pack you and him a bag. I’m about to send you some bread, get him whatever he needs and what you need to get you the fuck up out of there.
Get in your car and drive far as you can.
I don’t care if you end up in Mexico. I’m sending you ten thousand right now, send me your Zelle, and I’ll keep sending more whenever you run low.
Please. I need my son safe. That’s all I’m asking you. ”
“Oh my God, Demon,” she said, her voice cracking. “Is Brit okay? What’s going on? You scaring me right now.”
“All I know is what I just told you,” I said. “I need you to focus on keeping yourself safe and looking out for my son. I owe you for this, real talk. Send me that info and I got you right now. Let me talk to my son real quick before you go.”
She put Sonny on the phone, and I made sure my boy heard his daddy’s voice, made sure he knew I loved him, made sure I promised him I’d be back to him soon. I ain’t never lied to my son a single day in his life, and I wasn’t about to start tonight, no matter what it took to make that promise true.
I ended that call and pulled over into an old abandoned apartment complex parking lot, my hands shaking on that wheel.
“Fuckkkkkk!” I screamed into that empty car, hitting the wheel again, harder this time.
These niggas wanted to play a foul game. I’d never done this much back and forth in my life. Now, everybody had to die! Straight up. That was cool. I could play dirty too.
I plugged that compound’s address into my GPS, an address I’d gotten a while back, before I ever had Darius killed, before any of this war really started. I was Thirty minutes away. I hit the gas.
Kaseem was married now, I remembered somebody telling me a while back.
I decided right then, driving hard through them streets, that I was gonna find his wife and put a bullet in her head right in front of him.
Make him watch what it felt like to lose everything he loved in one second, same way he was trying to make me feel losing Brit.
I prayed that Brit was still alive, but I knew what came with this street shit. Although we weren’t together, I never planned to stop fuckin with my baby momma. She was solid as they came over the years and her family took me in like their own. All I could do was hope she made it out this shit.
—
I’d never actually been to that compound before, only had the location secondhand.
I made it there faster than the GPS even predicted, running lights, weaving through traffic like a man with nothing left to lose.
But when I got close, that GPS took me down some dirt road that dead-ended into nothing.
I circled back around, drove another ten minutes trying different angles, before I finally found the first entrance.
It was guarded heavy. Multiple niggas standing post with rifles, alert, watching every direction, clearly already braced for exactly the kind of visit I was planning on paying them.
I backed that car up fast and pulled off before anybody could clock me sitting there.
Once I got back on the highway, my mind still racing, I decided to try a different angle.
I pulled up their family’s social media instead. I prayed for some info that I could really use right now. I was scrolling through every profile I could find, looking for something, anything, I could use against them. Some weakness. Some crack in their fake ass lives.
Kaseem’s page ain’t have nothing worth taking note of. Neither did the younger one, Namier, or the nigga Zaire. Actually, his shit had been dead since 2020, he didn’t have recent post at all. But when I got to Zuri’s page, I found something.
A long post, dated a month back, congratulating her son on his union. A photo attached. It was professional looking, clearly taken the day of Kaseem’s wedding. The hoe ass nigga had some garden style wedding, but it looked like he’d spent a bag on it. Lame ass shit.
I couldn’t lie tho, the nigga was dressed up looking like old money.
What caught my eye was the woman standing next to him.
Her dress was beautiful, her hair and makeup was on point for the occasion, but her face is what stopped me dead.
I zoomed in on that picture, my fuckin chest got tight, and I had to pull that car over on the side of the highway right then. This shit couldn’t be real. I put my hazards on, hands shaking on the wheel all over again.
There was no way.
It couldn’t be.
I stared at that photo for a full minute, making sure my eyes weren’t tricking me, making sure this wasn’t some kind of sick ass joke.
But it was her.
Tatti.
My own brother, the same nigga I was now at war with, had married the one girl who ever made me feel something real in my fucked up life. The girl I had to leave behind all them years ago cause I knew, even back then, young as I was, that she would’ve been my downfall if I let myself stick around.
The girl I forced myself to forget. I buried memories of her ass so deep I ain’t let myself think about her name in years.
It was to the point that I eventually forgot all about her, and now here she was, staring back at me from my enemy’s wedding picture.
She married into the exact family that was trying to end my ass.
And the same family that I didn’t know I belonged to until today.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Everything in this whole situation had just gotten even more fucked up, and I didn’t even know yet if that photo was about to be the thing that finally made a nigga snap.