Chapter 14
This had been the longest day of my life, I couldn’t even front about that. So much shit had transpired in the last twenty four hours that a nigga ain’t even got the chance to take a nap, ain’t got the chance to sit still for more than ten minutes without something else blowing up.
My pops had let us know moms made it home safe, and the only thing running through my mind the whole ride back was getting to the bottom of what the fuck she had going on today. Why was she meeting up with Demon out there? Why she stood in front of him swearing she was his momma?
“Kaseem, you good nigga?” Namier leaned up from the back seat. “Slow down before you wreck us or get us pulled the fuck over. We got guns in this bitch that’ll have us doing football numbers in prison if the wrong cop stop us tonight.”
“Damn, Seem,” I said. “What’s up? What happened back there with you and Tatti?
I don’t wanna get all in the middle of you and yo wife’s business, but talk to us, man.
That’s what we here for. You know we gone get her kid back.
Don’t even sweat that part of it.” I said, trying to calm my brother down, cause I know how that nigga can get.
“I don’t know if I’ma even still be married after all this shit is said and done,” Kaseem said, his voice tight, hands gripping that wheel hard.
“I’m gonna get her child back. That’s not even a question.
But then I gotta figure out if this whole thing is what I signed up for.
I said through sickness and health, not through a muthafucka lying to me constantly.
I might be a lot of things, but I don’t deserve that shit that she comes with.
Not when I been nothing but solid with her lying ass.
My whole life revolves around protecting her ass, and she ain’t been real with me through none of this shit. ”
Hearing my brother talk like that, that was a different side of him I had never seen much of.
Kaseem ain’t never had love for nothing or nobody outside of us, outside of his own blood.
He’d let himself get open with his wife, really open, and clearly she’d done something to hurt my boy bad.
The shit was bad enough to make him forget all that control he usually kept locked down.
See, that’s why I always said that love shit was for the birds.
If a nigga like Kaseem was sitting here about to run us off the road behind a woman, keep that whole situation far away from me. I ain’t want it.
I just let him get it all out, and I didn’t try to rush him.
“It can’t be that deep, nigga,” Namier said, serious this time, no jokes in his voice at all.
“That girl loves the fuck outta you, Seem. I seen that shit with my own eyes. Not to mention, she the reason Zaire even home right now. She ain’t just been good to you, she gives a fuck about this family too.
She’s been an asset. Not a liability. And ain’t that what you always preaching about? ”
“Man, shut the fuck up,” Kaseem barked, punching the steering wheel hard.
“You think I wanna hear that shit right now? You don’t know what the fuck you talking about, and you only saying it cause you fuckin her best friend.
Nigga, Tattiana’s daughter belongs to Demon.
Demon is her baby daddy. She been knowing that since a couple days after our wedding.
On top of that, she also knew Demon was our brother.
Yeah, the shit is real. She found documents, then she let momma convince her to keep it a secret from everybody instead of coming clean to me. Her own muthafuckin husband.”
All the wind damn near left my body hearing that. This Demon nigga was linked to every part of our lives and this shit was crazy as hell. This had to be fake.
How? How was that even possible? Kaseem, me, and Namier, that’s all our family had ever been.
When could momma have even have time to make a kid?
Especially one like the nigga Demon, and why the fuck wasn’t he ever with us?
This gotta be a lie, and I’m not gone believe that.
They got this shit wrong. Got to. All of it had to be bullshit.
“Go home,” I said, my voice coming out harder than I meant it to. “I need to talk to momma right now. This shit can’t wait.”
“That’s where I’m already headed,” Kaseem said, pushing that truck even faster.
So much was running through my mind at once.
All I could see was red. I needed blood tonight, real talk.
Ain’t care who I had to hurt to get it. Somebody needed to feel a fraction of what I was feeling right now.
If my whole muthafuckin life had been a lie, there was no telling what I would do.
I knew one thing though, that nigga Demon would never be shit to me, and that nigga still had to die.
All my life I’d been close with my mother in a way different than Kaseem or Namier was with her.
We ain’t never had secrets between us, or at least I always believed that.
My pops leaned more toward Kaseem and Namier, always had, but my momma kept me close.
That ain’t never made me soft though. My momma was actually harder than my father in a lot of ways, darker, more ruthless when it came down to it.
She had zero tolerance for bullshit and she’d taught me young not to carry too many emotions out loud, not to let nothing crack that surface.
Hearing all this now, it was too heavy for her lessons to hold up under.
I was feeling this shit deep in my chest. I’d never done well with being lied to, or betrayed.
When we finally made it to the compound, we went straight to my parents’ house. Used our key, walked in through the front, and the whole house was dark and dead quiet.
We went upstairs looked around, and finally found them when we made it to the study.
My father was leaning against his desk, arms crossed in front of him, one hand gripping a gun tight.
Our mother sat in a chair directly across from him. Tears sliding silent down her face, not saying a word, the whole room thick with a tension so heavy it felt like it had weight to it.
“What the hell going on in here?” I said, stepping in closer. My father was clearly threatening my mother’s life.
“Yeah,” Kaseem said behind me. “Cause you might wanna put that gun away, Pops.”
“Nah,” my father said, his voice flat, dangerous.
“I can’t do that. I can’t do that, cause I need my wife of thirty two years to tell me how it’s remotely possible for her to have a fuckin son, born during the exact time I was gone securing our future for this family.
That shit’s impossible, right?” He let out a short, bitter laugh.
“Wrong. Especially if a muthafucka cheated and stepped outside our marriage while I was gone busting my ass for all of us.”
“Put the gun up and let her explain,” Namier said, hands up slow, trying to be the voice of reason. “It gotta be a real explanation for this. This whole situation gotta be wrong. Gotta be some kind of misunderstanding.”
“Ma,” I said, stepping closer, trying to reach whatever part of her was still listening. “You need to say something right now. What’s really going on? Talk to us now, before this gets worse than it already is.”
She looked up slow, her eyes moving from me to Kaseem to Namier, one at a time, her whole face soaked with tears now, and I knew right then, looking at her, that whatever she’d done, she regretted it down to her bones.
“All that any of you need to know,” she said, her voice shaking but holding steady enough to get the words out, “is that Demontae is my second born son. And I am demanding, right now, that all of you stop this war immediately. The same way I would never allow anybody to hurt one of you, that’s exactly how I feel about him too.
I failed him. I wasn’t there for him a single day of his entire life.
So now I’m trying to right that wrong, and I will not let harm come his way. Not from this family and vice versa.”
Before any of us could even process that, my father lunged forward and pressed that gun straight against her head.
“Right your wrongs?” he said, his voice cracking with rage.
“What the fuck you talking about, Zuri? That ain’t my son.
You cheated on me and made him behind my back.
And now he’s been coming after my whole family, doing everything in his power to harm us, and you standing here protecting him?
Who’s his father? Tell me right now so I can kill him too after I blow yo fuckin brains out. ”
My mother’s eyes went cold instantly. She jumped up out that chair fast, pushing her own head harder into that gun barrel instead of pulling away from it.
“Nigga!” she screamed. “You gone aim a fucking gun at me? Me? After everything I’ve done for you?
After everything I’ve been to you for well over thirty years?
Yes, I made one fucking mistake. One. But you need to take some accountability too, Kadeem, for leaving me the way you did.
For leaving your family, being gone almost a full year straight.
I needed you. I needed help. I was left with a newborn baby all alone, and that made me vulnerable in a way I ain’t never been before or since.
Was it right, what I did? No. It wasn’t right.
But I tried to fix it the best way I knew how at the time.
I chose you. I chose this marriage. I chose our family over my own son, and I’ve lived with that decision eating me alive every single day since.
But you are the fuckin cause for all of this!
You cared more about an inheritance than being with your wife and newborn fucking son. ”
My father’s face shifted, something clicking together behind his eyes.
“You needed help,” he said slow, working through it out loud.
“I sent you help. I made sure that…” His voice trailed off, and I watched the exact moment it hit him.
“I sent Ben and his wife to help you. Zuri, please. Tell me you ain’t fuck Ben.
Tell me you ain’t fuck the one nigga I sent to help you while I was gone.
The one nigga that I loved and trusted with my entire world. ”
My mother didn’t answer him.
She just hung her head, and that silence said everything none of us wanted to hear confirmed out loud.
My father cocked that gun back further, his whole arm shaking now, and out of pure instinct I dove at him, both hands grabbing for that weapon, wrestling it away from him while he fought back hard, stronger than I expected from a man his age.
He was about to kill her in front of us, and I knew that I had to stop it.
This man was broken beyond repair and I’d never seen him like this.
Without a word passing between us, Kaseem grabbed our mother and got her out that room fast, pulling her toward the door while me and my father wrestled over that gun.
I finally got it secured, snatched clean out his grip, and my father’s whole body just collapsed right there on that floor.
I dropped down and wrapped my arms around him tight, holding him the same way he’d held all of us plenty of times growing up.
I’d never once, not one single time in my whole life, witnessed my old man cry.
He was sobbing now, deep and broken, his whole body shaking against mine.
“I did everything right as a man,” he said, his voice muffled against my shoulder.
“I provided. I protected. I led by example every single day of my life. How could she do this to me? With my own best friend. My real friend, the one man I trusted with everything I had. I lost him behind this shit years ago and I ain’t never understood why, till right now.
” He pulled back some, looking me dead in my eyes, his face wrecked with grief and rage both at once.
“She gotta go, Zaire. She can’t stay here.
Cause I swear to you right now, I’ma kill her if she do. ”
And sitting there on that floor holding my father together, I believed every single word he said.
—
After sitting there with my father, allowing him to compose himself, he made a call to Tattiana. He gave her the first and last name to Ben. Then he told her that he needed all the information on him immediately. Addresses, phone numbers, the college his kids attended. All of it.
She must didn’t have the equipment she needed because he made calls to have her computer delivered to her from their house tonight. This made me realize how cold Tattiana had to be at her job for real. Shit, she did get me out of prison, so I already knew she was onto something.
My brothers stood around my father’s study, quiet. Just being present. Wrong is wrong, and our mother was dead ass wrong for the shit she’d done, but how could we turn our backs on her?
Kaseem motioned for me to step outside the room with him.
“I tried to get momma to leave, and she refused. She said she’ll stay with you til this blows over, so she’s at your house, nigga.” Kaseem blew out a slow breath.
“Man, here she go. Putting me in more bullshit! Bro, I don’t even know what to do with this shit they just dropped on us.
Demon? Our brother? Then momma done fucked the homie.
This shit is too much. I ain’t gone lie, anything else we handle, that’s gone have to be in the morning. I can’t take no more for the night”
“Shit, I’m wit cha when you right. We need to get some rest and wake up with fresh minds. We can’t do shit else until I get a hit on Demon.”
“We gone pay that bitch Mallory a visit in the morning, and I’m sure we gone find him by going through her. Are you about to send for your wife tonight?” I asked, genuinely wanting to see where his head at.
“Nigga, nah. I’m my daddy son! If Tattiana bring her ass back around me, I’m gone be on the same shit pops was just on, but you know I’ll take it to the extreme.
Her ass need to give me a break for now.
” Kaseem damn near made me laugh in his face.
Cause he was basically saying that he was ready to put a gun to his own wife head.
“On this one, I can’t tell you what to do.
I will say though, if the love is real, and you know her intentions weren’t bad, don’t lose your wife behind some shit she didn’t ask to be apart of in the first place.
You said her kid is 8 years old. You ain’t know her or Demon 8 years ago, fool. ” I told him straight up.
“Good thing I ain’t ask yo ass. Get some rest and we gone get on it early in the morning.” Kaseem said as he hit my back, before letting my brother and pops know he was leaving.