Chapter 15 Tariq “Reek” Horton
TARIQ “REEK” HORTON
Legend walked right around me like he hadn’t walked in on anything. He grabbed another plate off the stack and started fixing himself a second one.
I walked over to the table and sat down because my legs suddenly felt strange under me.
I didn’t even know what I was feeling at first. The second I felt the baby kick under my hands, I knew something in me had shifted in a way I couldn’t talk myself out of.
I had spent so much time meeting this situation with anger, fear, and resentment.
But when I felt the baby move, I didn’t feel any of that.
I felt protectiveness. Not fear. Not disgust. Not that trapped feeling.
The first thing that hit me was that child was mine, in the realest way.
I immediately felt the responsibility of protecting that little life from whatever the world had coming for it.
Then right behind that came regret for how scared I had been, for how long I had been fighting something that was already here, for how much of Ava’s joy I had nearly crushed because I couldn’t get my own fear under control.
And I was in awe. That baby had kicked against my palms like it knew I was his father, like it was already reaching out for me.
I sat at that kitchen table with all that roaring through me and let my eyes fall to my hands. Those same hands had touched too much death, money, guns, and bodies. Yet, just a second ago, they had touched my child.
That took me back to being little, back to standing outside my elementary school, watching other kids run straight into their parents’ arms. I would look for my parents even when I knew better.
I would watch my classmates showing off papers, drawings and bullshit from class while their mamas bent down to kiss them or their daddies lifted them up like seeing them was the best part of the day.
I remembered standing there one day, watching this little girl run screaming excitedly into her father’s arms because she got a sticker for reading good in class.
That man spun her around and kissed her face like she’d just won a million dollars.
And I had stood there with that same sticker in my hand, and no one to show it off to, because my grandparents made me walk the two miles home to school.
I told myself back then, I didn’t care. Over and over, I told myself that lie.
That lie had kept me company a long time.
It was the same lie I had been using with this baby.
Legend sat down across from me with his plate and a cognac glass of something dark. He ate for a minute before he said, “You want to know one thing I had to learn when I became a father?”
I responded by racing a brow, signaling for him to go on.
“The first time Aria got pregnant, I thought my kids needed the kind of parent I needed when I was young. My parents were good parents, but there were still things I needed from them, and when Aria got pregnant, I thought I had to be whatever my mother and father wasn’t.
I wanted to fix my own childhood through them.
” He took another sip of his drink before saying, “My therapist had to help me understand that my kids aren’t me.
My kids don’t need the exact kind of parents I needed.
They aren’t living what I lived. They don’t have the same needs I had.
So, if I approached fatherhood from the place of trying to rescue the younger version of me, I’d be parenting from trauma instead of reality. ”
I nodded slowly, getting it.
Legend pointed his fork at me. “Your child won’t be abandoned. So, before you even start spiraling, understand that you already won the first battle.”
I couldn’t even look him in the eyes because he was reading me too well, and that kind of vulnerability made me uneasy.
“You’re so focused on what happened to you that you keep acting like the only two options are becoming the people who failed you or running from the job completely.
” He shook his head. “That’s not your only options.
Stop approaching this baby from your own childhood trauma.
Stop looking at that child and seeing only what could go wrong because your shit went wrong.
That baby isn’t you. That baby won’t need what you needed.
That baby’s story has already started differently because its parents aren’t your parents or your grandparents.
Your past doesn’t need you anymore, bro. Your future does, though.”
I just sat with that, and when Legend saw that I was taking it in, he just let me. He picked his fork back up and started eating again like he had said what he came to say and let me absorb it.
He was right. My child wasn’t me. My child wouldn’t go hungry. Even if me and Ava disappeared off of this earth, I knew this family would take it in as their own. My child wouldn’t be dropped off on a porch with a trash bag and forgotten.
I had been so trapped inside what fatherhood looked like through the lens of my own hurt that I hadn’t fully let myself imagine a different version, the version where I stayed, where I learned, where fear didn’t make every decision for me.
I was still scared. But I didn’t want out anymore. I wanted different. I wanted a chance to be someone better than those who had failed me.
For the first time since Ava told me she was pregnant, the future didn’t feel like a trap closing on me. It felt like something I was going to have to learn how to walk into without fear, because there was no way I was ever going to walk away.
The next day, I sat in Jamir's office, with the rest of the crew as Jamir sat in front of a bank of monitors as his fingers flew over a keyboard. We'd called this meet to check how far we'd gotten in painting Sienna as a runner.
“The first stage is in motion,” Jamir told us. “We pushed word through the streets, using informants, that Sienna had been moving weird for weeks, making strange calls and acting like somebody trying to get out of town.”
Icon nodded once. “And the witness?”
Jamir clicked to a grainy photo of the homeless man we’d paid off.
“Handled. He’s a regular on her block. He told police he saw her leaving through the back entrance with two suitcases the morning she disappeared, trying to be inconspicuous, moving fast toward a waiting Uber.
He ID’d her to the uniforms asking questions and stuck to the story. ”
Big A leaned back in his chair. “Cops buying it?”
“Yeah. They’re treating it like she skipped town on her own, but we’re layering it to make it even more believable.”
Legend set his phone down. “What we got to confirm that she’s a runner?”
Jamir pulled up another still, from what looked like airport security.
“This does. I coordinated a leak through a contact at the international terminal. It popped up on a low-level forum last night. It looks like Sienna in an airport corridor with a boarding pass in her hand, headed for a flight to Mexico City.”
Icon narrowed his eyes at the screen. “That’s believable.”
I shifted in my chair, watching the lines move across the map on one of his screens. “And if somebody digs?”
Jamir barely looked up. “Then they find more of the same. Little signs that make it look like she kept moving after she disappeared. Enough to keep them chasing the wrong story instead of looking back at us.”
Icon cracked his knuckles. “Keep the leaks staggered. I don’t want everything hitting at once.”
“Already on it. By Friday, it should look like she left on her own and covered her tracks well enough that nothing points back here. That gives us breathing room.”
I stayed quiet, thankful the plan was tight, but I felt guilty for even putting this type of pressure on the crew.
We dealt with issues all the time that were stressful as fuck to fix, but those issues were supposed to come from outsiders, not us.
Still, I had no regrets. Sienna needed to be dealt with, and this made sure I never took the fall for it.
When we left Jamir’s office, the cold felt like it had teeth that was biting at our faces. All of us were outside with our collars up, hiding behind thick leather coats with fur hoods while the wind came cutting down the block. My breath smoked in front of me every time I exhaled.
We stood there for a few minutes shooting the shit, discussing business moves and how the site was supposed to progress through the end of the week.
Then Big A glanced at me and asked, “What you got after this?”
I pulled my hood back a little and rubbed my hands together. “I’m sliding to Ava’s place.”
Big A’s brows went up. Icon cut his eyes at me like he wanted to make sure he heard right. Legend didn’t look surprised at all. In fact, he was looking at me like he was proud of his work or some shit.
“I’m going over there to put the rest of the nursery furniture together.”
Big A let out a little laugh through his nose. “Well damn.”
Icon smiled a little. “It’s good to see you coming around.”
I shrugged. “I told y’all I was always gonna be a stand-up nigga. I just had to process it.”
Smirking, Legend gave me a knowing look. I held his gaze for half a second, then looked away first. He and I both knew it had been what he said at the kitchen table that helped me process all of this.
That little kick had done something to me I couldn’t undo as well. The second I felt my baby push back against my palms, all I could think about was how I never wanted that child to feel how I felt growing up. I never wanted my child learning too early that love was conditional or absent.
Then Legend spit that game to me and made everything sink in for me.
He made me see that I wasn’t starting from a losing position with this child.
My child wasn’t me, and I didn’t have to parent from that little boy still standing in old hurt.
I just had to make sure I never became the kind of parent who gave my child those same wounds.