Page 27 of Forced Matrimony With An Unhinged Menace 4

I tucked my gun back, walked out that kitchen and down the hall, checking each room till I found the one Nariyah was in.

She looked just like my wife. A smaller version, and exactly what I’d imagine Tatti to look like as a kid. They had the same eyes, same face shape. She had Headphones sitting over her ears, some cartoon still playing on a tablet in her lap. Her eyes went wide with fear seeing a stranger step into her space, and she pulled one side of them headphones off slow.

“Hey, Nariyah,” I said, keeping my voice easy, and gentle. “You know who I am?”

She shook her head no.

“I’m Tatti’s husband,” I said. “My name’s Kaseem. I know this last day or so has been real crazy for you. But I need you to trust me right now, okay?”

“Why does everybody keep saying that,” she said, eyeing me careful.

“I mean it for real. Look.” I pulled my phone out and FaceTimed Tatti right there in front of her.

Tatti picked up fast, looking like she hadn’t slept for even a single hour all night.

“Hey, Tatti,” I said. “Look who I got with me.”

I turned that phone toward Nariyah and watched her whole face transform instantly, lighting up bright.

“Tatti!” she said. “I been waiting to come with you. Can I come now? Demontae said we’d come last night but we never did.”

“Yesss, Riyah, baby,” Tatti said, her voice breaking with relief. “I’ll tell Kaseem to bring you right now. Oh my God, I’m so happy to see your pretty face.”

“You just saw me last week, Tatti,” Nariyah laughed, oblivious to everything happening around her, she had no idea what I had just walked out of.

Tatti asked me to switch her over to a regular call. I called her regularly, keeping the phone to my ear while I walked Nariyah out the front of that house. I was careful to steer her away from that kitchen so that she wouldn’t see the mess I had just made. Her headphones still sitting snug over her ears the whole time so she ain’t hear a thing that had transpired.

“Bring me my child right now,” Tatti said the second the call connected, her voice sharp, urgent. “I don’t know what you’ve done, or what she might’ve seen, but please, get her to me.”

“I haven’t let her witness nothing,” I said, honest.

“Then DON’T,” she snapped, “and get her here now. Whatever else you got going on gotta pause.”

She ended that call in my face without another word, like I was the one who was in the dog house. She still had me fucked up from last night.

As much as I wanted to wait around and kill Demon. I knew that I needed to get Tatti’s daughter to her right now.

A part of me wanted to call the Feds and tip them off on the body and give them Demons name so he could take the fall for Mallory’s murder. The same way he tried to do Tattiana. But I was a real nigga. I was gone keep this shit in the streets. Him going to jail would be too easy. That’s a body I was gone catch on my own.

I looked into the backseat as I drove, still not fully believing it. I’d walked into that house with one mission, get to Mallory, snatch information out her about where to find Demon, and I’d walked out with my wife’s daughter safe in my backseat too. Sometimes shit just fell in your lap that way, and you had to be ready to move when it did. Although I wanted to wait for that nigga to show back up, I knew that I couldn’t.

The old trap house sat about fifteen minutes from where I was driving, so I pulled out my burner phone and called Mars on his line.

“You still with the girl?” I asked soon as he picked up.

“Yeah, nigga.” He sounded groggy, half asleep still. “And I need to go home. I’m tired as hell. Send y’all boy back over here so I can go home and crash.”

“You gone be even more tired,” I said. “The girl is gone be good. Leave her ass there. I’m about to send you an address. Sit on that house. Stay hidden, stay low. When you see Demon come back, you follow him, but you stay far enough back he don’t spot you. You get me?” I kept my voice low so Nariyah couldn’t hear my call. She was still buckled in the back with her headphones back on but I made sure she wouldn’t catch none of it.

“Cool. I’m on it now. Send the location.”

Mars didn’t ask no questions, he knew that he ain’t need to. He got straight to the task, which told me maybe I’d read that whole situation with him wrong to begin with. Yeah, I was mad that he didn’t fill me in on what Zaire had him doing, but at least he was working overtime now to make it right.

“What are the odds of us walking straight into where Tatti’s daughter was?” Zaire said from the passenger seat, keeping his voice down. “Man, that shit was too clean and easy. You know what that mean, right?”

“Nah,” I said. “What it mean? That we got lucky today?”

“It mean the next angle that nigga Demon try,” Zaire said, “it’s gonna be harder. And we need to already be ready for it before it come.”