Page 23 of Forced Matrimony With An Unhinged Menace 4

“What do you mean by figure out where we go?” I cried and yelled out behind him. He ignored me and kept moving.

Namier and Zaire came out the house a few seconds later, loading up quick, and the three of them pulled off fast, tires kicking up dust behind them, leaving me standing alone in that yard in the dark.

I stood there for a long time after them taillights disappeared down the street, my whole body shaking, feeling completely and utterly broken.

I’d spent this whole time protecting a secret to keep from losing him, and in trying to hold onto him that way, I’d ended up doing the exact thing I feared most anyway.

And there wasn’t nobody to blame for that but me. I knew the man Kaseem was, and I knew better than to lie to him.

This had been the longest day of my life, I couldn’t even front about that. So much shit had transpired in the last twenty four hours that a nigga ain’t even got the chance to take a nap, ain’t got the chance to sit still for more than ten minutes without something else blowing up.

My pops had let us know moms made it home safe, and the only thing running through my mind the whole ride back was getting to the bottom of what the fuck she had going on today. Why was she meeting up with Demon out there? Why she stood in front of him swearing she was his momma?

“Kaseem, you good nigga?” Namier leaned up from the back seat. “Slow down before you wreck us or get us pulled the fuck over. We got guns in this bitch that’ll have us doing football numbers in prison if the wrong cop stop us tonight.”

My mind was so clouded I ain’t even realize how fast Kaseem was pushing that truck until Namier said something. I looked over at the dash and it read 95 miles per hour.

“Damn, Seem,” I said. “What’s up? What happened back there with you and Tatti? I don’t wanna get all in the middle of you and yo wife’s business, but talk to us, man. That’s what we here for. You know we gone get her kid back. Don’t even sweat that part of it.” I said, trying to calm my brother down, cause I know how that nigga can get.

“I don’t know if I’ma even still be married after all this shit is said and done,” Kaseem said, his voice tight, hands gripping that wheel hard. “I’m gonna get her child back. That’s not even a question. But then I gotta figure out if this whole thing is what I signed up for. I said through sickness and health, not through a muthafucka lying to me constantly. I might be a lot of things, but I don’t deserve that shit that she comes with. Not when I been nothing but solid with her lying ass. My whole life revolves around protecting her ass, and she ain’t been real with me through none of this shit.”

Hearing my brother talk like that, that was a different side of him I had never seen much of. Kaseem ain’t never had love for nothing or nobody outside of us, outside of his own blood. He’d let himself get open with his wife, really open, and clearly she’d done something to hurt my boy bad. The shit was bad enough to make him forget all that control he usually kept locked down. See, that’s why I always said that love shit was for the birds. If a nigga like Kaseem was sitting here about to run us off the road behind a woman, keep that whole situation far away from me. I ain’t want it.

I just let him get it all out, and I didn’t try to rush him.

“It can’t be that deep, nigga,” Namier said, serious this time, no jokes in his voice at all. “That girl loves the fuck outta you, Seem. I seen that shit with my own eyes. Not to mention, she the reason Zaire even home right now. She ain’t just been good to you, she gives a fuck about this family too. She’s been an asset. Not a liability. And ain’t that what you always preaching about?”

“Man, shut the fuck up,” Kaseem barked, punching the steering wheel hard. “You think I wanna hear that shit right now? You don’t know what the fuck you talking about, and you only saying it cause you fuckin her best friend. Nigga, Tattiana’s daughter belongs to Demon. Demon is her baby daddy. She been knowing that since a couple days after our wedding. On top of that, she also knew Demon was our brother. Yeah, the shit is real. She found documents, then she let momma convince her to keep it a secret from everybody instead of coming clean to me. Her own muthafuckin husband.”

All the wind damn near left my body hearing that. This Demon nigga was linked to every part of our lives and this shit was crazy as hell. This had to be fake.

How? How was that even possible? Kaseem, me, and Namier, that’s all our family had ever been. When could momma have even have time to make a kid? Especially one like the nigga Demon, and why the fuck wasn’t he ever with us? This gotta be a lie, and I’m not gone believe that. They got this shit wrong. Got to. All of it had to be bullshit.

“Go home,” I said, my voice coming out harder than I meant it to. “I need to talk to momma right now. This shit can’t wait.”

“That’s where I’m already headed,” Kaseem said, pushing that truck even faster.

So much was running through my mind at once. All I could see was red. I needed blood tonight, real talk. Ain’t care who I had to hurt to get it. Somebody needed to feel a fraction of what I was feeling right now. If my whole muthafuckin life had been a lie, there was no telling what I would do. I knew one thing though, that nigga Demon would never be shit to me, and that nigga still had to die.

All my life I’d been close with my mother in a way different than Kaseem or Namier was with her. We ain’t never had secrets between us, or at least I always believed that. My pops leaned more toward Kaseem and Namier, always had, but my momma kept me close. That ain’t never made me soft though. My momma was actually harder than my father in a lot of ways, darker, more ruthless when it came down to it. She had zero tolerance for bullshit and she’d taught me young not to carry too many emotions out loud, not to let nothing crack that surface. Hearing all this now, it was too heavy for her lessons to hold up under. I was feeling this shit deep in my chest. I’d never done well with being lied to, or betrayed.

When we finally made it to the compound, we went straight to my parents’ house. Used our key, walked in through the front, and the whole house was dark and dead quiet.

We went upstairs looked around, and finally found them when we made it to the study.

My father was leaning against his desk, arms crossed in front of him, one hand gripping a gun tight.

Our mother sat in a chair directly across from him. Tears sliding silent down her face, not saying a word, the whole room thick with a tension so heavy it felt like it had weight to it.

“What the hell going on in here?” I said, stepping in closer. My father was clearly threatening my mother’s life.

“Yeah,” Kaseem said behind me. “Cause you might wanna put that gun away, Pops.”

“Nah,” my father said, his voice flat, dangerous. “I can’t do that. I can’t do that, cause I need my wife of thirty two years to tell me how it’s remotely possible for her to have a fuckin son, born during the exact time I was gone securing our future for this family. That shit’s impossible, right?” He let out a short, bitter laugh. “Wrong. Especially if a muthafucka cheated and stepped outside our marriage while I was gone busting my ass for all of us.”

“Put the gun up and let her explain,” Namier said, hands up slow, trying to be the voice of reason. “It gotta be a real explanation for this. This whole situation gotta be wrong. Gotta be some kind of misunderstanding.”

“Ma,” I said, stepping closer, trying to reach whatever part of her was still listening. “You need to say something right now. What’s really going on? Talk to us now, before this gets worse than it already is.”