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I handled my hygiene, got dressed in all black — jeans, fitted shirt, black boots. The kind of outfit that said I had business to handle. Because I did. Today we had our own shipment being deliver and I needed to be at my desk, and by my phone to make sure everything went smoothly. The shipment intercept was happening tomorrow.
I headed to my office and closed the door behind me.
My desk was organized the way I kept it. Phone. Computer. Papers stacked neatly. Everything had its place. Everything was controlled.
Except now there was her phone sitting on the corner of my desk.
I stared at it for a long time.
She'd left it here yesterday when her friends showed up. I'd had forgotten to lock it back up. It had been sitting there ever since, just... there. Accessible. A few taps away from knowing exactly who she was for real, who she was communicating with, what was really going on in her head before all of this.
I sat down at my desk and tried to focus on work. Pulled up my laptop. Started going through the shipment details, the warehouse locations, the men we had positioned. Once my job was handled today, I was calling a meeting with our guys for what all was expected tomorrow. Namier had given them niggasthe run down, but they needed to look in my face, hear my voice and see how serious this shit really was. I had expectations and I was about to make that shit clear. This shit had to go smooth, and I had to send a clear message to them Brick niggas.
But my eyes kept moving back to that phone.
I told myself it was business. I needed to know if she was communicating with anybody outside the compound when she had phone privileges. Anybody other than who she needed to be. I needed to know if she was planning anything. I needed to know if there were any threats I wasn't aware of.
That was all bullshit.
I wanted to be nosey and get inside her head. I had never been a nigga to go through phones, but here I was trying to convince myself that this was different.
I picked up the phone.
Set it back down.
Picked it up again.
This wasn't me. I didn't second-guess myself. I didn't hesitate. I made a decision and I moved on it. But this... this felt different. This felt like if I opened that phone, if I saw something I didn't want to see, something would shift and I wouldn't be able to control it anymore. I didn’t know what this feeling was, but having this girl in my bed at night, this shit was damn near clouding my better judgement.
Fuck it.
I unlocked the phone. Her passcode was easy and she’d given it to me with no fight when we got to the compound. She musthave thought what I was trying to convince myself damn self of. And that’s that I wouldn’t go through her phone.
I went straight to her messages.
Recent conversations. Her aunt. Her friends Nyla and River. Her father. And then... this Savion nigga.
I clicked on his thread.
The last message from her was from yesterday. While she'd been in my office, right after she’d been on the phone with her aunt.
Tatti: I've been thinking about it and I need to be honest with you. We're not compatible and I don't want to waste any more time leading you on. It's not fair to either of us. I'm sorry. Don’t reach out to me again. Just let it be over.
After that, it was wall-to-wall messages from him.
"What? Tatti come on"
"You can't be serious right now"
"Call me please"
"I love you"
"I love you and you know I do"
"Where are you?"
