Chapter 15 #2
I sat there looking at her, nodding slow, jaw tight, not saying a word for a long moment. How was she more scared of him than she should have been of me. I was processing all this shit. This nigga been out to get me, and just recently decided to make a move on it.
“He brought that little girl here last night,” she said, voice shaking harder now.
“Told me she was someone we needed. He ain’t tell me much more than that, just that he needed me to come with them, watch out for her, said we’d probably be on the run for a while after.
He also told me…” She stopped, swallowing hard.
“He told me you killed my sister. Is that true?”
“Nah,” I said, dry, flat. “Not yet.”
“It was that easy for you to cross me?” I asked her. “You was more scared of that nigga than you was of me?”
“Kaseem, you treated me like I wasn’t shit,” she said, her voice cracking open now.
Her tone was desperate and honest breaking through all that fear.
“You fucked me, then you’d always dispose of me every single chance you got.
Then you let that fat ass bitch jump on me, twice, and did nothing about it.
After all that, I wanted you to suffer the same way I had to suffer.
I loved you. And you gave me your ass to kiss while you handed that weak ass bitch a ring instead.
So yeah. For once in my life, I looked out for myself. ”
I sat with that for a second.
“That’s the realest shit you’ve ever said to me,” I said, leaning down close to her.
I kissed her forehead, soft, and she flinched under it, confused for a second by the gesture.
“But what did I tell you,” I said, pulling back, looking straight into her eyes now, “What did I tell you about disrespecting my wife?”
I reached into my pocket, pulled out that silencer, attached it smooth and quick while she started crying harder, begging me not to do it, words tumbling out fast and desperate. I ain’t hear a single one of her words clearly.
I didn’t waste another second.
All that sounded through that kitchen was one muffled pop, and Mallory slumped over in that chair. Instantly, she was gone.
I tucked my gun back, walked out that kitchen and down the hall, checking each room till I found the one Nariyah was in.
She looked just like my wife. A smaller version, and exactly what I’d imagine Tatti to look like as a kid.
They had the same eyes, same face shape.
She had Headphones sitting over her ears, some cartoon still playing on a tablet in her lap.
Her eyes went wide with fear seeing a stranger step into her space, and she pulled one side of them headphones off slow.
“Hey, Nariyah,” I said, keeping my voice easy, and gentle. “You know who I am?”
She shook her head no.
“I’m Tatti’s husband,” I said. “My name’s Kaseem. I know this last day or so has been real crazy for you. But I need you to trust me right now, okay?”
“Why does everybody keep saying that,” she said, eyeing me careful.
“I mean it for real. Look.” I pulled my phone out and FaceTimed Tatti right there in front of her.
Tatti picked up fast, looking like she hadn’t slept for even a single hour all night.
“Hey, Tatti,” I said. “Look who I got with me.”
I turned that phone toward Nariyah and watched her whole face transform instantly, lighting up bright.
“Tatti!” she said. “I been waiting to come with you. Can I come now? Demontae said we’d come last night but we never did.”
“Yesss, Riyah, baby,” Tatti said, her voice breaking with relief. “I’ll tell Kaseem to bring you right now. Oh my God, I’m so happy to see your pretty face.”
“You just saw me last week, Tatti,” Nariyah laughed, oblivious to everything happening around her, she had no idea what I had just walked out of.
Tatti asked me to switch her over to a regular call.
I called her regularly, keeping the phone to my ear while I walked Nariyah out the front of that house.
I was careful to steer her away from that kitchen so that she wouldn’t see the mess I had just made.
Her headphones still sitting snug over her ears the whole time so she ain’t hear a thing that had transpired.
“Bring me my child right now,” Tatti said the second the call connected, her voice sharp, urgent. “I don’t know what you’ve done, or what she might’ve seen, but please, get her to me.”
“I haven’t let her witness nothing,” I said, honest.
“Then DON’T,” she snapped, “and get her here now. Whatever else you got going on gotta pause.”
She ended that call in my face without another word, like I was the one who was in the dog house. She still had me fucked up from last night.
As much as I wanted to wait around and kill Demon. I knew that I needed to get Tatti’s daughter to her right now.
A part of me wanted to call the Feds and tip them off on the body and give them Demons name so he could take the fall for Mallory’s murder.
The same way he tried to do Tattiana. But I was a real nigga.
I was gone keep this shit in the streets.
Him going to jail would be too easy. That’s a body I was gone catch on my own.