“I’m about?—”
“What’s the code?” I ask, snatching it from her hand.
“Seriously, Chaos?”
“You can always change it later. What’s the code?”
“Zero, nine, fourteen.”
I look up after keying the numbers. “Is that his birthday?”
She nods. I go to her photos and scroll through, texting the ones of him to myself. Afterward, I go to her security screen and change her password to my father’s birthday and pocket her phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting this away for safekeeping.” I’ve changed my mind about her keeping her phone. I have no idea who she’ll text and give her location to if she keeps it. She can’t be trusted after that incident with the sheets. Li’l ass thought she was gonna escape by tying the sheets down the window. What kind of dumb shit was that? And how the hell did she think she was going to get my li’l man out of here?
“Give me my phone, Chaos,” she demands, jumping out of the bed.
I mug the shit out of her. “Take ya ass to bed. You’ve done more than enough for tonight.”
I leave her behind cursing me, and I go into the closet and search through the drawers. When I find what I’m looking for, I head back into the room.
“What are you doing?” she asks when I grab her arm.
“Making sure that you’re secure for the night,” I reply, cuffing her wrist to the bedpost.
She fights and struggles, but I grab her other hand. “You want this one cuffed too?”
“No,” she replies with a sniffle.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“What if I have to pee?” she cries out as I walk out of the door.
“You’d better hold it.”
“What about my baby?”
“You mean the son that you gave birth to without telling me about him? Oh, I’ma take real good care of my son. Matter of fact, I think it’s time for him and me to do a little father-son bonding without his mother in the way.”
I slam the door closed and jog down the stairs and into the guest room where my son is sleeping. He looks so peaceful and happy. His innocence is so purifying. He looks like me, but when he’s sleeping, I can see some of her in him too.
I lie down on the floor at the foot of the bed where CJ is sleeping. It’s not long before I fall into a deep sleep and get the best sleep that I’ve had in a while.
CJ sits in the middle of Chaos’s bed, playing on his tablet. He just finished eating breakfast, and I’m still eating. For CJ’s sake, Chaos removed the handcuffs from my wrist before he brought our son to the bedroom. It’s hard saying “our son.” All these years I wanted Chaos here with us, but now I don’t want to share, not when he’s behaving the way that he is.
My baby was so excited to see me when he came upstairs this morning. He said that he enjoyed spending the night, and he wants to do it again. When I translated what he said to Chaos, Chaos demanded that I show him how to sign “we’ll do it again tonight.”
Both Chaos and CJ were so happy about that.
CJ giggles happily at something on his tablet as I finish my breakfast. “What is your point in keeping me here?”
“To keep my son safe and figure out who did what they did to you.”
“What about Emmanuel?”
“What about him?” he asks, shrugging.
