Chapter 10
I was back in my office when I heard the knock.
Not security. Security didn't knock like that. It was just two taps, not too hard, not too soft. Like somebody who wasn't sure they were welcome but came anyway.
I already knew who it was before I said anything. I just didn’t know what she wanted. Our lil talk didn’t go too good and I knew that when I walked out.
“Come in."
Tatti pushed the door open and stood in the frame for a second like she was deciding whether walking all the way in was something she was ready to do.
She had changed into something comfortable, a silk robe that hugged all her curves.
She had her hair pulled back, face clean. No extra shit. Just her natural state
"I need to talk to you," she said.
“Okay, talk.”
She came in and closed the door behind her. Didn't sit down. Stood in the middle of my room with her arms at her sides and looked at me straight. "I'm not going to keep fighting this," she said. "If I have no choice in the matter, all I can do is make the best of it. That's why I'm here."
I leaned back in my chair and looked at her. "Okay. I’m lost. Why are you here?"
“Because I can help you."
I didn't say anything. Just watched her. I ain’t know what the hell she could have possibly thought she was gone help me with. Was she trying to give me the pussy already? All I did was gave her a forehead kiss. Now her tough ass was caving in?
"Outside today," she said. "When everything happened at the gate.
You have cameras everywhere on this property.
I saw them when we pulled in this morning, on the ride over to your parents house, coming back.
They're everywhere." She paused. "The man who walked away from that car — he had to have come in from somewhere and walked out somewhere.
If your cameras caught any part of his face, even a partial, I can work with that. "
I looked at her for a long moment. Trying to find the angle. There was always an angle.
“Why?" I asked.
“I was gone tell you a lie that sounded good but I don’t have the energy to lie.
I need you to trust me enough to give me privileges back," she said.
Straight. No dressing the shit up. "I'm not stupid.
I know how this works. I'm not getting out of this house on good behavior alone.
I need to show you something worth trusting.
" She held my gaze. "Let me show you something worth trusting. And I have enough sense to not try and run. You know too much about me and my family for that. I have no doubt that you’d kill me or someone I love.”
I studied her face. She wasn’t running a game she thought was slick. She was standing in my room at night after the day she'd had and offering me something benefits to us both because she was smart enough to know that was her best move.
I stood up. Not fully believing she could do what she said, but the shit was worth a shot.
"Come on," I said.
—
I walked her to the media room at the end of the east wing. Three walls of monitors, every feed from every camera on the property running in real time. I pulled up the north gate footage from earlier and rewound it to the window I needed. Tatti stood beside me and watched the screen.
"Stop it there," she said.
I stopped it.
She leaned forward toward the monitor. "Can you zoom in on the left side? Right there — when he turns to check behind him before he starts back walking."
I zoomed in.
The image was grainy at that distance but there was a frame — maybe two seconds — where the man turned his head just enough that the camera caught the left side of his face. Jaw, cheekbone, the edge of his eye. Partial. Most people would have said it wasn't enough.
“That's it. That’s enough," Tatti said.
I looked at her. "For what."
"For me to do what I need to do." She straightened up. "I need my computer. Can you and your men take me to my car and let me get it. I promise I won’t try nothing. Or you can even send them and have them get it out the back of my car."
I looked at her for a second. Then I walked out of the media room telling Sam to watch her.
I came back two minutes later with her laptop.
I'd had it pulled from her car the same time my men grabbed her bags.
She didn't know I had it. The look on her face when I set it on the table told me she couldn’t believe I had it in my possession.
“You had it the whole time," she said.
“Mm."
Her jaw tightened but she let it go. She sat down, opened it up and got to work.
I stood back and watched her move through it.
She wasn't hunting around or figuring things out as she went.
She knew exactly where she was going. Window to window, database to database, pulling things I didn't recognize and cross referencing them against the image she'd screenshotted from the camera feed with a precision that was completely automatic for her.
This was what she did. Not a hobby. Not a skill she'd picked up. This was her.
I watched her work and said nothing.
Eleven minutes. That's how long it took her.
She stopped. Leaned forward. Stared at the screen for a second like she was confirming what she was looking at.
Then she turned the laptop around and faced it toward me.
"Elijah Reeves," she said. "Big E to the streets. Thirty four. He has a Fort Worth address. Two prior federal charges, both dropped." She paused. "He did has known gang ties to the Brick Boyz." She held my gaze. "You know that name?"
I looked at the screen.
I knew that name.
Brick Boyz. I knew exactly what Brick Boyz was and exactly who ran it because eighteen months ago before I was fully in position my father had done a two month trial run of business with them moving product through a back channel into Dallas from the west side.
It didn't go anywhere. My father had shut it down quietly and I'd never gotten the full reason why. All I knew was that they couldn’t move enough weight for the business to be beneficial on our end. Sometimes, shit like that happened and we have to make an amicable split. I guess the shit wasn’t do amicable after all.
Now somebody connected to them had killed Darius and put him on my gate.
This wasn't a random cartel testing new territory.
This was personal.
I lived by a strict code when it came to this shit. When you took something from me, I had to pay you back triple time.
Something went completely still in me. Not the outside, the outside didn't move. But inside everything locked down the way it did when a situation clicked into focus and the only thing left was the response I was about to bring.
I stood there looking at that screen for five full seconds.
Then I closed the laptop.
"Aight," I said.
That was it. That was all I gave her because anything else would have been me showing too much emotion around her. But I was heated like a muthafucka and ready to drop some shit.
But I looked at her. Really looked at her.
Standing there in my media room at night after being kidnapped and dragged to my compound.
She had sat through my mother's interrogation and watched a dead body get delivered to my gate.
After all that, she had still walked to my office, asked for access to my cameras, sat down with her computer and pulled a positive ID in eleven minutes.
"You cold with that," I said.
Two words. That's all she got from me. But I meant them and she heard my sincerity. Something moved across her and I could tell that my words did something to her. She already thought I was an asshole earlier. This was telling her that I probably wasn’t all that bad.
I knew how to give a compliment when it was due.
"I told you," she said. Keeping her voice even.
"Yeah," I said. "You did."
I picked up my phone and walked to the door.
Dialed Namier before I was fully in the hallway.
I’d told him early to be on call because I was about to figure some shit out.
When he saw Darius body before I had it moved, Namier instantly went from the playful ass lil brother, to a nigga with Murda on his mind.
Darius was his boy and this shit was personal.
He picked up on the second ring.
“Aye," I said. "It's time to ride out. Make the call and round up. I'll send you everything in five minutes." I paused. "And Namier." My voice dropped. "This ain't a warning run. Come ready."
I hung up and kept walking without looking back.
But I heard her standing in that media room behind me.
And for the first time since I put her in that truck I wasn't thinking about what she cost me.
I was thinking about what she was worth.