"You better not say a word," my aunt said sharply from the table. "If you expose that secret, I have to expose the other one and we both know you don’t want that.”
Footsteps thundered behind Kaseem. Namier came through the door next, taking in the scene in a split second before pulling his gun out too.
"What's going on?" Namier asked.
Ron started yelling. "Everybody get the fuck out of my house!"
Namier looked at Ron with pure disgust.
"Shut the fuck up," he said coldly.
Ron kept talking shit, kept running his mouth about his house, about his money, about all the shit he'd done for us.
Namier walked over to him without saying another word and started pistol whipping him. Hard. Brutal. Each hit was calculated and vicious.
"Stop!" I screamed, running toward them. "Stop! There is a child in the back room! Please, please stop!"
Namier finally stopped, breathing hard, Ron's face bleeding and broken.
Kaseem's gun was still trained on the room, but his eyes were locked on me.
"What the fuck is going on, Tattiana?" he asked, and his voice was colder than I'd ever heard it. "Talk to me. Right now."
I was shaking. Everything was falling apart. Everything was spiraling. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. I was supposed to tell him calmly. I was supposed to explain. I was supposed to have time to tell him how the summer I spent with my auntie had changed my life forever all those years back. How I was forced to live with her for a full year to hide my pregnancy and give birth. How something tragic had happened, and sheheld it over my head to keep my daughter and claim her as her own, and to blackmail me into paying her for all of these years.
"Kaseem, please," I said, tears streaming down my face. "Please just leave with me. Right now. We need to get out of here. I promise you, I will tell you everything. Everything. Just... not here. Not like this. Not with her watching. Not with Nariyah in the back."
"Who is Nariyah?" he asked, but he already knew. I could see it in his face.
The room went silent except for Ron's pained breathing.
Kaseem looked at me like I was a stranger.
"Kaseem," I begged, walking toward him. "Please. We can't do this here. We need to leave. Right now. Please. I'm begging you.”
“Didn’t I hear you say that you was gone just take your own daughter? If you got a daughter and these muthafuckas been blackmailing you, then get her and come on!”
“It’s not that simple Kaseem. Please! We can’t do it like this. If I take her, my life and freedom is at risk. It’s more than just blackmail because I have a child. Please! I will explain everything. I will tell you who her father is. I will tell you about the money. I will tell you about my aunt. I will tell you all of it. But please, baby, please can we just go?"
Kaseem's jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth might break.
He looked at Namier. Namier nodded and moved toward the back room to get Nariyah.
“No! Namier! I’m telling you, we can’t take her! If you go in that room, she’s gonna be confused. She don’t know about any of this. She has no idea that I’m her mother. My father doesn’t even know about her. If you all take her while I’m begging you not to, I will leave and never come back. I mean this!”
Hearing me say that I would leave for good made Kaseem’s eyes turn cold on me. He nodded in my direction, and that made my stomach drop. He was beyond angry with me.
"Let's go," Kaseem said finally, his voice dead. "We're leaving."
But the way he said it, the way he wouldn't look at me, told me that everything had just changed.
Everything.
And I had no idea if our marriage was going to survive what came next.
I looked at my aunt and did something that I hated to do. I told her that I apologized and that I did not know I was being followed. I told her that I will pay for her husband‘s medical bill, and I will have a lump sum put into her account by morning. I just had to buy more time. I had to tell Kaseem what was really going on and hope that he would help me come up with a solution rather than leave me.
When Tatti stormed out like her life was on the line, Namier joked about following her ass. He was playing and shit, but I wasn’t. I grabbed my keys and told him to come on. I was on a mission before she got too far away.
