Chapter 11 Steel
“Come on, Fat Man. Daddy’s trying.”
My son just looked at me and screamed at the top of his lungs.
He’d been fussy for the last three days, and I’d taken him to the hospital.
They told me he had an upper respiratory infection, and I felt like shit because he was miserable.
I was trying my best to manage his symptoms, but he wasn’t even fucking with me right now.
Picking up my phone, I called the one person I knew was up at this hour that KJ would go to no matter what.
“What’s up, Son?” my pops answered.
“You busy?”
“Nah. Just watching a game? You need something?”
“KJ’s still not feeling too hot. I can’t get him down for the night.”
“Pop Pop is on the way.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Don’t mention it.”
We disconnected the call, and about five minutes later, he was walking through my front door. He came straight to KJ, and my son fell out like his granddaddy was his saving grace. The moment Pops picked him up, he rested his head on his chest and calmed down.
“Ain’t that about a bitch,” I mumbled.
Pops chuckled. “I’ve raised a lot of kids—”
“You ain’t got to tell me. I was there.”
“Shut your ass up, boy.” He slowly paced the living room, rubbing KJ’s back and talking to him. “You just needed your Pop Pop, huh? I know, Fat Man. Daddy ain’t got that special touch yet.”
He grinned and winked at me. I flipped him off as I started cleaning the living room. My thoughts began to drift and landed on Donna. Times like this I wished she were here. I was thankful I had my family, but I was sure she would have offered a level of comfort that only a mother could give.
It was about time I took KJ to visit her.
I tried to take him every week. I’d pack us a lunch, and we’d sit with her while we ate.
After the funeral, I’d purchased a headstone with her picture on it.
Since his birth, I showed KJ his mother every morning and every night.
When we went to visit her, he always smiled when he saw her picture.
I promised her I’d never let him forget her, and I’d kept that promise.
“Whatchu thinking about?” Pops asked, breaking my thoughts.
“Donna.”
“Aahhh. You missing her?”
“Every day.”
“I just knew you two were going to be a couple after KJ was born.” He chuckled. “I bet your brothers it would only be a couple of months before you were ready to pop the question. Shit, you already had the family.”
“Donna never wanted to get married.”
“I know, but people change. Look at your old man.”
I paused in my cleaning and looked up at him.
“Nigga, who you gon’ marry? Maddie? ’Cause Mama Steph ain’t having your ass.”
“First of all, fuck you. If Steph would have waited a little longer, I was gonna ask.”
“You had a lifetime to ask, Pop. Grams always said you won’t miss your water ’til your well runs dry. I guess your ass is parched, huh?”
He chuckled. “I’m happy for her. I like Aaron, but if he ever fucks up or dies, I’m in there.”
I shook my head. “You hell.”
“Seriously, though. Of all my boys, I know you were the one that wanted marriage and a family the most. I still want that to happen for you.”
I sighed. “Yeah, well, I think that ship has sailed.”
“Why? You’re as young and handsome as your old man. Any woman would be lucky to have you and Fat Man.”
“There’s only ever been one woman I wanted to marry, Pop. She ain’t an option.”
“Stranger things have happened. I’m surprised you never asked Jaeda to look for her.”
“Why should I have done that? She told me she couldn’t love me. I couldn’t chase her after that.”
He sighed. “That was a tough time for you. I thought we were gonna have to sit you down for a minute there.”
I remembered the months after my and Neha’s breakup.
I was dealing with heartbreak and crashing out on missions.
During that time, a gun was of no use to me.
I needed to hit something, and the perps we caught also caught my rage.
There’d been a few times where I’d beaten predators to death with my bare hands, much like the other night.
Pops told me I was either gonna have to chill out or fight him. I chose my battles wisely. If he made me fight him, there was no way I could ever hit that man back or hit harder than he could. So I took up boxing and martial arts. I was already good with hand-to-hand combat, but this was different.
Both helped me learn to calm my racing thoughts. Training for my father’s organization was all about survival. We were told and taught we had to protect and make it out by any means necessary. It was embedded in me. Sometimes I forgot that other people weren’t raised like us.
“I got it together,” I reminded him. “Channeled that energy into something good, and my defense academy was one of the best things to come out of that.”
“It was.”
I fell back on the couch with a deep sigh. “Pop?”
“What?”
I knew I needed to tell him about Nayelli.
He was the only person I knew that would understand how I was feeling.
It had been too long since I found out about her, and my headspace was horrible.
After beating that man to death during our mission, I hadn’t been feeling right.
My anger about this whole situation was festering.
“I saw her.”
“Who?”
“Neha.”
“Oh, shit. Here?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Apparently, she lives here now. I was dropping Jaiden off at school, and she almost backed into me.”
“Wait, she was at the school? She working there or something?”
“Nah. She has a kid that goes there.”
“She has a kid?”
“Ten years old. She’s one of my students.”
My father looked at me with furrowed brows. I didn’t have to say it for him to know where this was going.
“Nigga, did she have your baby?”
“Yep.”
“What the hell, Steel. Why the hell are you so calm about this?”
“I’m anything but calm, Pops. I’m livid, and ain’t shit I can do about it. Not the way I want to.”
“How long have you known?”
“A few weeks now.”
“A few weeks? And you ain’t say shit? When were you gonna let me meet my grandbaby?”
“Soon. I just wanted to keep her to myself for a lil’ bit, man.”
“You told anybody else?”
“Jaeda knows because she found the evidence. Destiny knows because she’s my lawyer. I’m sure Quaid does too.”
“How the fuck your sister knows before me?”
I sighed and gave him the full story of how everything went down. I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but I knew he had something to say.
“So why did she keep her a secret?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“She tried to explain herself, but ain’t no excuse for that shit, Pop.”
He shook his head. “Son. I’m not saying she wasn’t wrong, but I’ve always told y’all get full details before you react to anything. You need to hear her out.”
I kissed my teeth as I sat on the couch. “I don’t wanna hear shit she has to say.”
“That’s too bad ’cause you’re gonna listen to that girl.”
“Man, come on. Did you wanna listen to Maddie when she popped up on us with Mia? I still don’t understand how you let that slide and carried on a whole relationship with her.”
He sighed. “Honestly? Maddie didn’t think she could have kids, and I didn’t want any more after having five.
We discussed that. She was honoring my wishes.
I didn’t know she was pregnant; otherwise, I would have stepped up from jump.
Mia was the one that found me. She went behind her mama’s back and had genetic testing done, then told Maddie if she didn’t bring her to meet me, she’d come by herself.
“Mia was a surprise, but the minute I saw her face, I knew she was mine, and I loved her. I wasn’t upset. I told that woman I didn’t want any more kids and couldn’t be mad that she stood on business about that.”
“It wasn’t right, Pop.”
“Be that as it may, I looked at the bigger picture. You have to do the same. She didn’t just hide a baby. She just up and decided to transfer schools. She ran from you, Steel. That tells me she was afraid.”
I frowned. “Afraid of what? I wouldn’t hurt her.”
“That’s why you need to talk to her. You have the right to be angry, but what’s done is done.
I’m not telling you to move on, but move forward and be civil with her.
You share a child, and that child needs to see a healthy relationship between her parents.
If you take nothing else from me, take that. ”
I was quiet for a moment, pondering his words.
I knew, eventually, I had to have a conversation with this woman. I couldn’t stay mad forever. Holding on to that anger was only making me angry, and the angrier I got, the more I wanted to fuck some shit up.
“Now,” my father said, resting a sleeping KJ over his lap. “Tell me about my granddaughter. I know you have pictures. Let me see her.”
As I told him about my baby, I pulled up my phone and went to my photo album.
In the weeks that I’d known Nayelli, my camera roll was filled with pictures of us, of her, and of her and KJ.
I’d quickly fallen in love. When those paternity test results came back, solidifying she was mine, that love only grew stronger.
I’d met Neha and my cousin Destiny, the family lawyer, at a private DNA testing site. Twenty-four hours later, I had an email stating that she was 99.99% my child. Soon, she would legally be recognized as mine.
“She still being bullied at that school?” Pops asked.
“She said they whisper about her, but nobody has said or done anything to her since she beat that lil’ girl’s ass.
I already showed my ass at the school. I can’t touch them kids, but I can beat their daddy ass.
If they don’t have a father, I’ll sic one of the girls on the mama.
Come to think of it, I’ma have Jaiden and the little Dillingers look out for her.
If anybody touches her, they whupping ass. ”
Pops smirked. “You’re about to have their parents on your ass.”
I shrugged. “They protect each other. They can protect her, too, because she’s one of them, . . . even if I want to wring her mama’s neck.”