Page 8 of Forced Matrimony With An Unhinged Menace 4

“Tatti, you busy?” Nyla asked, her voice careful, testing the water.

“No. What’s up?”

“I wanna talk to you about how I acted. I’ve been trying to get the words together but I didn’t want to let too much time pass, so I said fuck it. I’m just gonna let it flow.”

“Before you start, Nyla.” I sat back in my chair, feeling everything I’d been holding onto since that day rise up in my chest. “I really thought we were better than that. You didn’t hear me out. You didn’t let me finish before you made my whole situation about you. And I think that’s fucked up. For over fifteen years I been by your side, no questions asked, through everything. And when I finally get the strength and the guts to tell the two people I love most in this world what I been carrying alone all these years, you did that to me. This shit didn’t feel good. I already had too much on my plate as is. And if I’m being real with you right now, I wanted to cut you the fuck off after that. I’m the bitch that’s been living in hell, and you really made the shit about you instead of being the friend I needed in that moment. It took a lot for me to even tell you two all of that!”

There was silence on the line for a second.

“Tatti, you wanting to cut me off, that’s more than understandable,” Nyla said finally, her voice thick. “And like a woman, I’m calling you to apologize, cause I know I was wrong. I want you to understand something though. We been friends so long, I thought there was nothing that I didn’t know. We started our periods together. We talked about losing our virginity as teens. Every single thing in life, we been through that shit side by side. I’ve always protected you where I could, and you always did the same for me. Your aunt would’ve been a dead ass bitch if I’d known what she took from you, if I’d known about them taking your fucking child this whole time. But, I didn’t! I was hurt. Hurt that you ain’t tell me, and hurt at myself for not figuring it out sooner. I looked at that little girl a hundred times over the years and saw pieces of you in her face. How did I not know? I know this ain’t about me. But it does make me feel like I failed you somehow. This shit hurts, bad! Because I knew you came home different after that year of being there and I didn’t push the issue as much as I should have to figure out what the hell was going on with you. I’m hurting for you. I could never be angry at you, not for real, and I’m so sorry I stormed out on you like that. Even Namier told me I was dead ass wrong for how I handled it.”

I was crying real tears listening to her get all that out, feeling every bit of the weight lifting off my chest that had been sitting there since that lunch. But that last part made me stop cold.

“Bitch, I know you ain’t out here pillow talking my business to no damn Namier,” I said, sitting straight up. “Nyla. What the fuck?”

“Hell nah, Tatti, it wasn’t like that,” she said quick, backpedaling. “But I did tell him a little bit about why I was upset when I got back home that day.”

“So the nigga be staying at your house now?” I said, my voice going up a whole octave. “How you go from him dogging you out, ghosting you for weeks, to him just staying at your crib alone without you? That’s crazy as hell, Nyla.”

Silence again, this time on her end.

“See how that feels,” I said, “when a muthafucka judge you like that?”

She laughed a little, and apologized again, softer this time.

“I’ll forgive you, but I want you to understand that no matter what the situation is, you don’t ever do no shit like that again. We sit down like women and express ourselves because you know if it was you in that situation, I would have never did you like that.” I expressed to her.

Right then, a loud bang came from the front of the house.

I froze for a second, phone still pressed to my ear, listening as the door opened without anybody ringing first. I stood up from that desk fast and walked out my husband’s office toward the front, and there was Sam standing just inside the doorway, his whole demeanor different than I’d ever seen it, tense, serious, all business.

“Mrs. Carter,” he said. “There’s some things about to take place on the compound within the next hour and you can’t be here. For now, I gotta get you to safety.”

“Safety?” My chest instantly tightened up. “What are you talking about? Where is safer than my own home that’s always heavily guarded? Oh my God. Where’s my husband? Is my husband okay?”

“He’s fine, ma’am,” Sam said. “But right now, I need you to grab a few things. I gotta get you to the safe house.”

Nyla was screaming into the phone at that same time, still on the line, begging me to tell her what was going on, her voice cutting through everything else happening around me. Hell, I didn’t know myself what was happening now. I stood there for a second completely lost, caught between two different kinds of panic.

“Tell me something, Sam,” I said, my voice cracking. “Anything.”

He didn’t budge. Wouldn’t give me a single detail beyond what he’d already said.

“Just come over here,” Nyla said through the phone, her own voice shaking now too. “Come to my house, Tatti.”

I told him that I wouldn’t be going to a safe house, but I would go somewhere that I knew was safe. Sam asked for the address, asked how many people were currently at Nyla’s place. Once I told him it was just her, he nodded, told me he’d have the driver take me straight there, said a driver and security detail would sit on the house the whole time I was inside. He told me that my husband would reach out personally when it was time for me to come home.

I was shaking by that point, visibly upset, my hands trembling so bad I could barely hold onto my own phone, standing in the middle of my living room with no idea what was happening. I needed to talk to Kaseem and I couldn’t. That was the part that was nagging at me the most.

—

The driver pulled off the compound fast, and I sat in the back seat with my phone still in my hand, dialing Kaseem’s number over and over like if I just tried calling him enough times, he’d finally pick up.

Straight to voicemail. Every single time.

I tried Namier’s number next and got the same results. It went straight to voicemail. I cursed myself for not asking my husband for Zaire’s number when he left for the day, but honestly, I didn’t think that I would need it. For Kaseem and Namier’s phones to be switched off at the exact same moment. That wasn’t normal. Men like them didn’t just go dark all together unless something had already gone real wrong.

My mind started running through every possible thing it could be, and none of the options sitting in my head made me feel any better.