Page 24 of Rich Forever: Zo & Remy

Over this week, I hadn’t thought of any of this and how it directly affected Zo and our children. But that made perfect sense. The Mafia was big on family. Even if they had to glue it together themselves, they stood by it. I don’t know how that thought slipped through the cracks, but now what’s at stake has made me even more nervous. I would die a fiery death before my children were ever affiliated with the last name Weston. And I definitely couldn’t let my husband be exiled from a position that he worked so hard for. Especially not at the hands of sneaky ass Karlos.

“You got me?” He doubled down and asked, making sure I understood that I was on a running countdown.

"Yeah, I heard you. One week." I mumbled, swiping a hot tear from my cheek as I wondered how I'd find a way out of this.

“And you’re sure this nigga is dead, Remy?” He double checked.

“I’m positive,” I assured him.

“Then you gotta step into your wifey bag and get the nigga declared dead. If you do that, then you’re a widow, and this shit goes away.” He shrugged as he took one final sip from his cup and sat back in the chair again.

When he said it, the biggest smile crept on my face through tears. I literally went to law school and graduated top of my class, yet that hadn’t crossed my mind once in a week. Not that I wasn’t competent; it was just that I was so upset about what it meant for my marriage that I wasn’t thinking. I was so caught up in the fact that no one had filed, but I didn’t stop to think that, as his legal wife, I could be the one to have it done. But this is why they named Jax the negotiator. He was able to stay calm and find a solution. Of course, when it didn’t involve Kennedy, I saw firsthand how he lost his common sense when it came to her.

“That’s going to be a long-drawn-out process, definitely not one week. But thank you for giving me that angle. My head has been so messed up, I didn’t even think about going the legal route.” I admitted.

He laughed. “Nah, not the legal route, Rem. You might not want to be, but you’re in the Mafia, Shorty. We pull up, and it’s done. What the hell are you sitting in court for? Don’t you know judges in Louisiana? Who do we need to pull up on?” He corrected me.

I smiled despite the weight of the moment. Even though he threatened to out me, I knew I had come to the right person.

“Yes, I know a couple.”

He nodded as he took another sip from his drink. “Then it’s done. But tell him, Rem. You’re used to having to figure out shit in your organization. This ain’t that, you gotta trust your husband. You know the same nigga I know.” He insisted again.

He had a point. I barely had to think around Zo; when I was around him, I was just a girl. Because he always had shit figured out. But for some reason, this hit differently; it felt like betrayal that I was trying to cover up. How was I supposed to walk into my house and tell my husband that we might not even be legally married? That I was potentially the wife of another man?

I washed the tears from my face and just stared out at the kids who had begun to play some version of hide and seek. The girls were giggling loud as hell while they barely hid. The sight of them doubling over with laughter made us both laugh. Eventually, Kennedy wound up coming back out with the baby, and I didn’t even wait for her to sit down before I was taking him from her arms.

For the next couple of hours, I smelled and kissed little baby toes while he giggled like a toddler, played patty cake, went on the hammock, and swung back and forth with him, singing him a song and rocking him back to sleep.

“I told you, Remy, if you come over here and spoil him, you have to take him with you. What the hell am I supposed to do when you leave? Heifer, I can’t sing!” Kennedy said, looking at me with playful frustration, and it took everything I had not to holler out and scare him as he slept peacefully.

After I loaded up on sweet treats to-go, the kids said goodbye to their godparents, and we got into the awaiting security vehicle that would take us home, I checked my phone. I didn’t have a message from Zo. Aside from the message that I sent him letting him know that I had made it, I hadn’t spoken to him all day. It was unlike him not to check in, and my guilty conscience was starting to believe he sensed something was wrong. But I pushed it out of my mind, thinking that maybe I was just in my head about it and overthinking. I figured he was probably busy with work or had been called somewhere.

I went back to his message thread and let him know that we were on the way home. Then I checked his location and saw that he was already there. I checked the logs, and he hadn’t left home all day. That gave me another uneasy feeling. Up until this point, I knew that marrying Zo was the best decision I had ever made.

He made love feel easy, and life feel less complicated. Everyone around us had faced tests in their marriage, but until now, our marriage had been a breeze. It was something deep in my soul, telling me that this was about to test the hell out of our union. And I don’t know if I was ready for the outcome. All I could hope was that we came out on the other side of this, as strong as we had walked into it.

Zo

Ihad been in Bolivia for almost a month, and I’ve been back for eight days. Since I returned, Remy had been acting different as fuck. She barely talked, didn’t want me to touch her, and she looked sad all the damn time. Rem damn near lived in my skin. If I were gone for a week and came back home, she’d damn near meet me in the driveway to fuck me. But I had been gone for the longest time I’d ever been away, and I came back to nothing. The sex wasn’t really what bothered me. It was always the look in her eyes every time I asked her ass if everything was okay. She’d always say yeah, but she was bad at lying. I had looked niggas in the face almost daily and saw that same look of deceit in their eyes, but it fucked me up when I saw it in my wife’s eyes. I can’t even lie. It was something she didn’t want to tell me or something she was hiding.

Remy and I were locked in. I knew her too well for her to think that she could get over on me.

I didn’t even want to let my brain go down the route that Remy had cheated on me. Because it wasn’t a nigga in New York stupid enough to slide inside my wife. I’d be on a nigga’s front porchlike a doormat about her, and that wasn’t even a question. My phone lit up with a message from her. She had been out all day at Jax’s house. I was trying to give her some space and not crowd her, so I didn’t go with her when she asked me.

Mrs. Rich: We’re on the way home. Stopping to grab some food, I don’t feel like cooking tonight.

Me: Aight

I put the phone down without much to say. Part of me tried to be understanding about whatever was going on. I didn’t want to trip on her just because her vibe changed. I was trying to be a patient husband and wait for her to come around and tell me what was wrong. But every day that she lied to me, I got closer and closer to jumping to a conclusion. And if I ever fucked around and jumped to the wrong conclusion, every nigga on my team would be gone. Permanently.

The longer it took for her to come home, the more my mind wandered. I started to feel like I had to end this shit today. An hour passed between her text and the sound of the truck's engine in the driveway. That just gave me more time to sit with the fact that I needed answers. Then I heard the front door open, shoes running across the floor. I knew it was Ziggy even before I saw him.

He came around the corner at full speed and ran right into me as I was going into the foyer to see if Rem needed help carrying anything.

“Slow down, man.” I chuckled as I helped him up, grabbed the takeout from Remy’s hands, and turned back toward the kitchen.

“Zaire, you good?” I asked his twin as my daughter extended her arms for me to pick her up.