His shoulders finally relaxed as he pulled both me and Amira into his arms. Nicholas kissed the top of my head before his lips dropped to mine. Kissing him felt better than ever, but before I had the chance to melt into him, he pulled away, taking Amira with him.
“Thank you, habibti. Get out of here. I got it from here.”
“I shot Darius to stop him from taking her from me.”
“My cousin Darius? What the fuck?” Nicholas quizzed, brows snapping together.
“I didn’t expect to see him. He was working with Hale. I saw him in the office one day. Today I heard them refer to him as an informant.”
“Are you OK?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Well, get out of here. I got it from here.”
“Nicholas, I’m not leaving you or Amira like this. I love you.”
“That wasn’t a request, Jameela. Go!”
The bass in his voice shattered my heart, but he didn’t have to tell me again. After kissing Amira’s cheek, I scurried down the steps and kept jogging until I made it back to my car. I had my own daughter that I needed to love on right now.
18
Nicholas
I kept my eyes on Jameela until she disappeared into the darkness. I knew she could handle her own, but I still felt responsible for her. My chest tightened as I accepted the fact that I probably would never see her again.
I knew it was for the best, but that didn’t make it any easier. The woman had just saved my little girl. She risked her life to save my baby. I sent her away because I wasn’t ready to process anything. I had too much ahead of me to focus on feelings and emotions and all the shit that almost sent me into this shit blind.
Thankfully, when Antonio Vargas called me in for a meeting, it wasn’t to try to go into business with me. He was warning me that my cousin Darius had been doing business in my name with the cartel. Since I pretty much let him be the face of Cashville, he brokered certain things under the guise that he had the right to make the decisions. Most of the time, it worked for me because I didn’t like dealing with too many people.
In this case, he was going against everything we established when we opened Cashville. He was laundering money for theBlacks and was working on getting in bed with the Vargas Cartel. Since we did business together before I went legit, Antonio wanted to meet with me in person. Darius thought he wanted to put in his bid personally. Instead, he wanted to know why I didn’t tell him I was back in business since he’d heard from the Blacks that they had been using me to balance their books for the past couple of years.
I didn’t know anything about that. Leave it to my cousin to make sure he had his hands in some dirt at all times. Thanks to him trying to get in with the Vargases, we ended up being dragged into an ongoing investigation. Vargas knew that he was being watched, so he had been keeping his nose clean until the heat died down. My greedy cousin threw himself right into their line of fire.
What I didn’t know was that Darius had been busted two years ago in a narcotics sting. Since then, he was working off his time by trying to give them a bigger fish. I guess he thought he would trade his fate for mine by sucking me back into the streets and getting me caught up.
I had to take care of this as soon as possible. I had my lawyers on the case as soon as I got the news. Little did I know, Jameela was investigating me from the inside. I was completely caught off guard by that.
After Antonio couriered over the files incriminating Darius and even documents where he’d forged my signature, I had all the information I needed. Before I could find him and confront him, Cindy called me screaming her head off about Amira being missing.
“Slow down, Cindy. What do you mean she’s missing?”
“He took her, Nicky. He was supposed to bring her home, and he’s not answering the phone.”
“Who took my baby, Cindy? You’re not making sense,” I said, grabbing my gun and keys off the desk before taking off out of the office.
“Darius. He picked her up, but he hasn’t brought her home yet.”
“What is Darius doing with Amira, Cindy? You’re supposed to have her for the weekend.”
“I know, Nicky. I’m trying to tell you that I sent him to get her, but he never came home. I’ve been calling him for hours, but he’s not answering the phone.”
“What do you mean he never came home, Cindy? He living with you?”
“Only for the past few months, Nicky, but he isn’t answering the phone. He’s been acting funny since I told him I was pregnant. We were supposed to be moving away, but now he wants to stay. I don’t care what he does. I just want my baby, Nicholas.”
I felt like the world was spinning as I hopped in my truck and took off out of my driveway. I didn’t give a damn about who lived where; I wanted to know where the fuck my daughter was.
