“Huh? How the hell could she be yours, Moolah? We had sex one time, twenty years ago,” she hissed as she took a step toward him. Even sitting down, he was at eye level with her. Fire danced in her eyes. He could tell he offended her. Iskyiah wasn’t the type to keep a child from a man, and he knew it.
He gazed into her beautiful face as he thought about why he asked her that question. The math didn’t add up, and he knew that before he even opened his mouth to ask the question. It had to be because he hoped the child was his. He wouldn’t have even been mad at her. The thought of the world having a child that came from him made him happy as hell. The thought of her having a child with someone else pissed him off.
“Who the daddy then?” His jaw ticked as he glared at her as if she had betrayed him.
She looked away from him. “Charles.”
Moolah chuckled, but nothing was funny to him. “You let that fuck ass nigga put a baby in you?”
Iskyiah didn’t respond. She continued to stare at the floor with her arms crossed over her chest. Finally, she shrugged and looked at him. “It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.”
That didn’t surprise Moolah at all. Charles was never very smart, and last he heard, he had been trying to make big moves in the streets. Lil nigga couldn’t fill big boy shoes like that, assuming he died because he was in the streets and not from natural causes. He really didn’t care to even ask.
“What’s baby girl’s name?”
Iskyiah looked away from him again, and he noticed a red tint creep up her cheeks. That piqued his interest. He sat back in his seat as he gazed up at her.
“Brooke,” she muttered.
Moolah’s brows rose. “Say that again. Wit’ ya chest, Sky. Quit playin’ wit’ me.”
This time, Iskyiah looked him in the eyes. “Her name is Brooke.”
Moolah grinned. He knew that wasn’t no coincidence. “You named Charles’s daughter after me? How you get away wit’ that? That nigga hated me.”
“He didn’t remember your last name.” She shrugged and looked away from him again.
“Look at me, Sky.” When she did, he continued. “You really named your daughter after me?”
“I missed you.” She said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
His heart constricted.
“But you don’t want to take the day off and talk to me,” he pointed out.
“Want to and can’t are two different things.”
Tired of the back-and-forth, Moolah took his phone out and asked for her number. She rattled it off, and he asked, “You got an iPhone?”
“Yeah . . .” She eyed him suspiciously, but he ignored her. When her phone buzzed in her pocket, he watched as she pulled it out and then nearly dropped it two seconds later, but she caught it and continued to stare at it. “Ten thousand dollars? Moolah, what the hell?”
“I’ll get you a credit card with your name on it later so we ain’t gotta do all this transferring.”
“A credit card? But . . .”
“I can only send ten thousand a week with Apple Pay,” he explained.
She shook her head. “Moolah, that’s more than I get paid in two months.”
He frowned. “Yeah, we gon’ fix that. Sit down so we can talk.”
This time at his request, she plopped back in the seat across from him just as Jake popped his head from behind the curtain. “Prepare for takeoff. Do you need anything?”
His voice sounded squeaky, and Moolah’s face twisted up before he looked at Iskyiah. “You need anything, love?” She shook her head. Moolah looked back at Jake. “Get her a water and some fruit.”
Jake scurried away.
“This is too much,” she uttered as she gazed at him in confusion. “How do you have all that money, anyway?”
