Chapter 5 #3
“Frequency, what are you doing here?” she asked, nervously glancing across the table at the man that couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of me.
“Frequency. So you are him,” he spoke slowly, and it reminded me of someone.
Tensions were high in this moment, so I was unable to place it.
“And who the fuck are you?” I demanded, watching amusement dance across his smug face.
“I’m the nigga that will be helping raise your daughter.” The taunting in his tone provoked rage in me.
My hand fell on my hip where my burner rested. It was taking all the reserve a nigga had not to clap him right here. Biting angrily into my bottom lip, I had every urge to smack that callous smirk right off his face.
“Why don’t we step outside and have a conversation?” I suggested, keeping a calm reserve watching him stretch both arms across the top of the booth.
His arrogance had me ready to knock his fucking head off his shoulders.
We were also drawing attention from the other patrons, and I didn’t like that shit.
Ivana’s gloating eyes danced around from me to him, more than happy to be the center of attention.
I was too busy wondering what the hell had happened to the woman that I once loved.
She wasn’t the same, and now I questioned if I actually knew anything about her at all.
“Free—”
“Who the fuck is this nigga, and why is he speaking on my daughter?” I demanded, narrowing both eyes at her.
She cleared her throat, and he turned to her with a smile on his lips.
“Do tell him, lover,” the man urged, resting a hand on her shoulder as she grew rigid beside him.
“This is my husband, Mistro.” She introduced us, and I couldn’t peel my eyes from his.
The name didn’t ring any kind of familiarity, but it definitely set off warning alarms.
“Your husband?” I repeated, not expecting that response.
“Mistro. I believe you knew my father… Arrow,” he announced, making my ears ring in disbelief.
Did this mothafucka just say what I thought he did?
Arrow’s son? I didn’t even know he had a fucking son.
Nothing made sense, but it was starting to slowly weave into a twisted ass web.
I grilled the fuck out of Ivana while she remained taut beside him.
His hand gripped the back of her neck, not like a massage, more like he was trying to make a point.
Reaching for her other hand, he brought it up in the air so that I could see the blinding ass diamond sitting on her ring finger.
“Do we have your attention now?” Mistro lifted one of his thick brows.
“Is this what I wouldn’t understand?” I fired her way, and her eyes dropped guiltily to the table. “Eyes up, Ivana.”
“First of all, you don’t address my woman.” Mistro’s playful glare turned malicious as if someone had flicked a switch inside of him.
He leaned forward with his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together.
“How about I address you?” I gritted my teeth, placed one hand on the table and got in his face.
The temperature rose about ten more degrees from the heat passing between our stares.
This time, I did bring my gun to his leg, swift, barely even noticeable.
Mistro didn’t flinch. Instead, he eased himself back into the leather material of the booth.
That cold glare that he struck me with suddenly made all the sense in the fucking world.
This was Arrow’s son, one of his best kept secrets.
His shifty eyes resembled everything that his father stood for, corruption.
“If my father taught you anything, it was never pull a gun on a man unless you plan to use it.” He was careful with his words.
The patrons who were witnessing the scene started to cautiously clear out. Everyone’s cell buzzed, including my own, which meant that some kind of statewide alert was going off. Right now, it didn’t matter to me.
“Free, you need to leave.” Ivana sighed.
“I don’t have to explain my relationship to you.
We’ve moved past that, remember? You all but said so yourself.
Go home, to your woman, and our daughter.
She has a birthday coming up soon, and she told me Saint Harbor is putting together a party.
Did she even think to invite me, her mother?
Or is that too much like right for her?”
“You might want to go check on your girl instead of trying to regulate mine.” Mistro was having too much fun deriding me.
This was all a fucking game to him. Blood felt scorching hot, like it was going to sear right through my flesh, I shot daggers at him.
All this time, I’d been grieving this woman, and she was off married to my fucking enemy’s offspring.
How do you come back from that? She had me questioning and doubting everything I thought I fucking knew based strictly off her reappearance in my life.
Did she deserve any kind of empathy from me?
I brought my eyes up, scoping the restaurant, which was about empty now.
Even the staff had cleared out and onto the street.
I backed off, knowing I couldn’t take it where I wanted while all these people were around.
It wouldn’t take shit for them to ID me, and I had managed to keep my nose clean for a long time.
A nigga had to hold back the beast inside as I drew my shoulders back.
“You fucked up.” Mistro chuckled and swiped his beard.
Ivana had this apprehensive look on her face. Whatever the fuck this was, there was more to it. Tucking my gun, I thought it would be best to handle Mistro like I did everybody else. I had to do my homework on this mothafucka.
“Nah, you did. Ask your father how I deal with shit.” I hinted, backing off with a cold glint in my eyes.
“If you find the hole that he dug himself in.” This time, I did the taunting, wiping that smug grin that stretched across his face off.
His coal-colored eyes stabbed me, and I buttoned my blazer before giving them both a nod.
“Have a good evening. This shit is far from over,” I forewarned, cutting through the middle floor of the restaurant and out the front doors.
Deviance stood with Harbor while she puffed one of those Black cigarettes that she didn’t think I knew she smoked.
She had recently picked up the habit, only since Ivana had returned, which I figured wasn’t a coincidence.
I let her get it off because I figured stress was piling up on top of her with the kids and everything.
Approaching them both, I stopped right at Harbor’s side, and her eyes rolled back into her head.
She wasn’t feeling me right now. The crazy shit was, it felt like everyone around us was watching things unfold between us like we were on some reality show or something.
Flicking her cigarette into the wind, she brought herself off the wall and looked me over with her head angled to one side.
“All caught up with your baby mama?” Angry sarcasm dripped from her words.
“Harbor—”
“You just blew me off to go talk to her about her business.” She got in my face. “We don’t have shit else to talk about. I’m ready to get home to my babies.” She tried stepping around me, but I blocked her, stretching my arm in front of her.
“That’s not how this shit works.”
“Oh, you still giving ultimatums now?” She got in my face with an irritated glower.
“At this point, fuck you, Frequency! There ain’t shit else that you can do to me that you haven’t already done.
Does that shit make you feel good!” She belted, eyes bucking wildly as she kept her hands at her side.
“You really deserve an Oscar for this performance.”
“Harb—”
“No!” She shook her head adamantly and took a step back. “I don’t want to talk. I want to go home and see my kids. Deviance, take me home,” she instructed, but her eyes didn’t waver from mine.
She was broken. The pressure of her icy stare weighed down on me.
I couldn’t do anything but take what she had dished out to me.
Distress flashed across her fine ass face, and she went to step past me.
I couldn’t let her walk away like that. The sudden caving in my chest, right near my heart, was heavy, and I could feel my shit tightening at the thought of her slipping away from me.
“Baby, don’t—”
“Free—”
“You think this shit is easy for me!” I pressed my palm against my chest as it heaved outside of my control.
The weight of the world was on my shoulders. No man could fathom the storm that was brewing inside me.
“I don’t know what the fuck to think! You keep making these fucking declarations, but when you see her, I don’t feel none of that.
You need to take the time and figure out what it is you really want.
And I can’t be around you while you do that.
” She tried to sulk away, her shoulders slumped and eyes more somber than I had ever seen.
She snatched right away from me when I reached for her, and that shit felt personal.
“Excuse me, is your name Harbor?” Some random woman walked up on her as she neared the car waiting for her.
Flooded with tears that hadn’t fallen, she blinked and sniffled them back while squinting at the stranger before her.
“Why are you asking me that?” she queried, disturbed.
The woman gripped her phone and brought it up for her to see. Harbor’s expression of curiosity went to bewilderment.
“This girl in the picture looks just like you,” she declared.
I took a few strides over to them and snatched the device out of her hand.
Scrolling her screen, I could see the headline, and the article with Harbor’s face plastered over it.
My heart jumped into my fucking throat. What the fuck was going on?
I gave the woman her phone back and could barely focus on Harbor in front of me.
“The fuck is this, Harbor?” It was my turn to get buck around this mothafucka.