Page 34 of Forced Matrimony With An Unhinged Menace 4

“Yeah,” I said. “Alright.”

My father took one step back, giving us the room.

Me and both my brothers lit that nigga up together, all three of us at once, no hesitation between any of us, no words needed. All that could be heard was gunshots.

My mother screamed from somewhere deep in her soul, a sound I ain’t never heard come out a human being before, and she collapsed straight down onto that floor, sobbing, screaming, her whole body shaking with grief.

It was done.

That whole problem, gone, permanent, for good this time.

I looked over at my pops. He looked a little relieved, some of that tension finally leaving his shoulders for the first time since all of this, but still broken underneath it, still carrying something that wasn’t ever gonna fully leave him after today, no matter how much of that tension unwound out his body.

He stepped clean over my mother’s body without even looking down at her. He walked straight past her sobbing on that floor and out that door into the morning light without a single word.

And I knew right then, standing in that room full of smoke and blood and two bodies that used to be men, that this marriage, thirty two years deep, was over. He’d given the green light to kill her son. She’d watched her other three sons pull the trigger on him. She was never gonna be the same woman again after this morning.

After everything went down, I took some days to myself. I needed to think without anything else being required of me. Being a husband, big brother, and the head of this organization, it was cool, but the last few days showed me that I needed a mental break.

I’d been responding to Tattiana texts whenever she’d hit me up, keeping it short but steady. I knew that she liked to check my temperature to see if I was still mad with her, but I didn’t give her ass a clue of what was going on in my mind.

She had been keeping me updated on everything with her and baby girl. She told me Nariyah took the news really well, and that she’d been happy to finally get the truth. I knew that was a relief for Tatti because she was worried about how everything would play out and what Nariyah would think of her for leaving her.

That right there made me feel a way, knowing my wife was handling all that on her own while I was off somewhere trying to sort through my own head. I wanted to hold her hand through this, but I just couldn’t because of the timing.

—

I called around the other day and found out Ron was in a medically induced coma still, hanging on. He was still on my list of niggas that needed handling. Him and the aunt both, matter of fact, they were both sitting right at the top.

But right now, I had to just breathe. The last week had worn a nigga down in a way I ain’t never experienced before, and right now, I didn’t know if I was coming or going most days.

Taking them days alone made me reevaluate my whole life. It gave me real time to think, and to put things in perspective for once instead of just reacting. I had to decide if Tattiana and Nariyah would be staying with me for good, or if they’d be going back to her old house, starting over separate from all this. And separate from a life with me.

I was big on loyalty and I wanted my woman to always keep shit real with me, no matter what. I had to figure out if Tatti and this marriage was worth fighting for. Especially when I was the muthafucka in the situation who did the right thing.

Then, I had to sit down with myself and see shit for what it really was.

Yeah, my wife lied. But she ain’t do that shit with malicious intent behind it. I had to think of it from her side, understand why she did what she did. She didn’t want to lose me, and I understood that on a level deeper than I wanted to admit out loud. The love we shared was some different shit, some shit that happened so fast it was almost scary looking back on it.

Still, I knew, sitting with myself them few days, that I’d never find another woman like her in this world. And honestly, I ain’t want to.

That time alone also made me realize something harder to swallow. I’d taken away the opportunity for Tattiana to get real closure on her own terms. Taken away whatever small chance Nariyah might’ve had at knowing her real father, even if that nigga turned out to be somebody who ain’t deserve the title. I felt like I’d made the best decision for both of them in the moment, protecting them the only way I knew how. But at the same time, I knew, sitting with it, that decision wasn’t ever fully mine to make alone.

I couldn’t take it back now though. What’s done was done. That nigga was in the dirt and he’d soon be pushing up daisies.

The morning of day three, I woke up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and called my head of staff first thing.

I ran down everything I needed. Pink paint. A canopy bed, full size. Every single thing a little girl could possibly need to make a room feel like it was made just for her. I was bringing my wife and our daughter home. When I signed up for this life, when I put that ring on Tattiana’s finger, I signed up for everything that came with her, everything, and all I could do now was hope I was the best husband and father I was capable of being.

I got down on my knees right there in my room and asked God to guide me through this. Asked him to not let me fail that little girl, whose life had already been hard enough before I ever entered the picture. I needed the big man above to help me on this. I wanted to do right by my family and be someone these girls could be proud of.

I wasn’t finna let my pride get so big that I lost the one woman who made me feel something real, maybe for the first time in my whole life.

Yeah, I was getting my family back today. Was it gonna be strange, knowing my stepdaughter was actually my niece by blood? Probably so, for a while at least. But all that felt irrelevant now. That man was gone. Nariyah would never get the chance to know who he really was, and after everything I’d learned about him, that felt like a mercy more than a loss. I was gonna be the best male figure she could have and that was a promise I made myself the moment I decided to step up.

As I got dressed, I called my mom again, third day in a row with no answer. Nobody had seen or heard from her at all. This wasn’t like her. I knew she was mentally torn all the way up, watching her own son get gunned down like that right in front of her, by her other three sons no less.

The fact that she couldn’t choose between us and him when it came down to it, that made me, Namier, and Zaire feel a certain kind of way we ain’t fully talked through yet. But she was still my mother. So I had to find it somewhere in my heart to at least try and forgive her for what she’d done to this family, even knowing it would never be the same between none of us again.