“Why you need me there? You want me to take care of you and S3?” she asked, fake sympathy heavy in her voice.
“You couldn’t take care of us if I gave you instructions straight from Stormi.” I didn’t bother to hide it. “Stay where you are. I’ll keep S3 with me.”
“What about me being protected from all of this?” she asked. She always created in her mind that I cared more about her than being S3’s mother.
Text from Mike lit my phone:
Got location.
Every lie she told cracked open with that little notification. She’d been on the phone too long. She’d said the wrong thing.
“Fuck you and your safety. I’m talking about my son,” I said, dead calm. “You can rot in the hood for all I care.” I hung up and stepped back into the night, Denali waiting, headlights lighting up the empty lot.
Stormi had almost died. That changed everything. Location in hand, rage in my veins, I headed back to the hospital. I didn’t know if I was bringing justice or worse, but I did know one thing:
Nobody gets to touch my family and keep breathing easily.
Chapter
Five
STORMI
Ilay in the hospital bed, the white sheets tucked around me, but my mind drifted far from the four walls around me. My body ached, my heart still carried bruises, but I was here alive. My son was here healthy. And despite all that Dre tried to take from me, he didn’t take that. He didn’t take me becoming a mother.
No, my labor and delivery hadn’t gone the way I dreamed. Hell, it was traumatic, chaotic even, but Shiloh made it. We made it. And even though I didn’t get to watch him come into this world, I made a silent promise to him while I held his tiny fingers in mine that that would be the last moment in his life I ever missed.
The room was silent. Jo had left for a quick meeting, and Seth went to grab food. I told him I was hungry, but that was a lie. He hadn’t left my side in weeks, and I needed him to breathe. He was wearing the weight of the world like it was stitched into his skin, torn between being here with me and tearing the city apart looking for Dre.
I held Shiloh in my arms. My baby boy was perfect. My eyes and lips and Seth everything else. He was the perfect mixture of bothof us. I could get lost just staring at him. I never thought I would be here, but I was so thankful I was. A wife, mother, and I had finally found real love.
Knock. Knock.
My heart jumped slightly at the sound.
“Come in,” I called, expecting it to be another nurse doing rounds.
But it wasn’t.
“Stormi, you have a visitor. Nigga name Leon,” Josh said as he opened the room door.
Seth had him playing security while he was gone. I know he blamed himself for what Dre did, but you never really know where evil lies. Hearing Leon’s name made my stomach turn. I now knew exactly who he was but why was he here? And how did he know I was here?
“You can let him in,” I replied back with a smile that I knew would fade the moment the father I never knew entered the room. The door creaked open slow, and then I saw him.
My breath caught in my throat not from fear, but from confusion. What the hell was he doing here? Of all places, here?
He stepped fully into the room, the door shutting behind him like it knew we needed privacy.
“Stormi,” he said.
His voice rolled through the room heavy, unfamiliar, soaked in something I couldn’t name. Was it regret? Guilt? Or was it just manipulation wearing new cologne?
I tried to sit up straighter in the bed, clutching my side as pain wrapped around my ribs. My eyes never left him. Every cell in my body was on high alert, but my mouth didn’t move. I just stared at him, stunned into silence.
He looked older than when I first saw him. Or maybe the evil in him just finally showed on his face. His eyes weren’t wild, but they weren’t calm either. The longer he stood there, the more the air in the room became thick and hard to breathe.
“You probably know who I am by now. I’m your father. We shouldn’t be meeting like this but that’s how life works sometimes right?” He said with a laugh like anything about this was funny or something to joke about.
