Page 9 of Forced Matrimony With An Unhinged Menace 4

Was this Mallory? Was he with her or was she coming to the compound again? Had Demontae finally made his move on the family after all this back and forth? Was it my aunt, somehow, some way, coming after me the same way she’d been threatening for years? Especially now after how my uncle had got beat down. Or was it something completely different, something I hadn’t even thought to be scared of yet?

I sat there gripping that phone so tight my knuckles hurt, staring out the window at Dallas passing by, feeling like the whole world had shifted under me in the span of five minutes. One second I was crying happy tears on the phone with my best friend, finally getting back something I thought I’d lost for good, and the next I was being rushed out my own house by a man who wouldn’t tell me a single thing beyond “he’s fine.”

I didn’t believe that. Not for one second.

Was this the life I had signed up for? My heart couldn’t take it. This was too much worry and stress to be dealing with constantly.

From what I’d gathered since knowing him, Sam wasn’t the type of man to show up like that, banging on doors, rushing me out my own home, unless it was bad. Real bad. I’d seen that man handle situations calm as ever, cool under pressure every single time I’d ever watched him work. The fact that his whole demeanor had shifted that hard told me everything his mouth wouldn’t.

I tried calling Kaseem one more time, and this time I left a voicemail, my voice cracking the whole way through it.

“Baby, it’s me. Please call me back the second you get this. I don’t know what’s going on, and I’m scared, your people wouldn’t tell me nothing, and I just… I need to hear your voice. Please. I love you. Call me back.”

I hung up and sat there in silence for a minute, watching the city blur past outside that window, my chest tight with a fear I hadn’t felt since the night I found out about Mallory’s pregnancy test, except this one felt different. Heavier. Like whatever was happening right now had a dark pull that none of the other drama had.

My phone buzzed.

I looked down fast, hoping, praying it was Kaseem.

It was my father.

I almost didn’t answer, my mind so locked on getting through to my husband that everything else felt like static. But something made me pick up anyway.

“Dad?” I said, my voice still shaky.

“Tattiana,” he said, and something in his voice stopped me cold. “I need you to listen to me carefully. I just got word through some old connections that I have in place on the property that something’s happening out at the Carter compound. Are you safe? Are you away from the area all of this is taking place? Where are you right now?” he asked, his voice in full panic mode although I could tell that he was trying to keep it together.

My whole body went numb hearing that confirmed out loud by somebody else. Even hearing the fact that my father had a connect on the property, that let me know that he didn’t just throw me to the wolves. Yes, he gave my hand in marriage without my permission, but he was also still keeping eyes on me, making sure I was okay.

But who the fuck was shooting? And where was my husband?

“I’m in the car,” I said. “They’re taking me to Nyla’s house. Dad, I can’t get in touch with Kaseem. I can’t get in touch with none of them. What do you know? Please, if you know something, tell me.”

“I don’t know everything,” he said, “but I’m gonna make some calls, see what else I can find out. You get to Nyla’s safe and you stay there, you hear me? I’ll call you back the second I know something more or when I can make contact with your husband. And baby girl. Calm down. Everything will be okay.”

The call ended, and I sat there in that back seat, completely alone with everything I now knew and everything I still didn’t, my hands shaking so bad I could barely hold my own phone steady, watching the streets roll by toward Nyla’s house while my whole world sat somewhere out there in the middle of gunfire. What was really going on? And what had I unwillingly signed up for?

My father stood there in the middle of that driveway, three bodies laid out behind me, smoke still hanging thick in the air, and his eyes were locked on mine waiting for an answer that he really wasn’t ready to hear.

“Hello! Neither of y’all can hear me talking? What the fuck is going on around here?” he said again, louder this time. “And where is your mother? I been calling that woman for the last hour and getting nothing but voicemail. Hearing all this gunfire and not being able to reach her had me thinking the worst, so I got in my car and came straight here. Where is she, Kaseem?”

I stood there for a second, my mouth dry, trying to figure out how to even start telling him something I ain’t even had the time to fully process it myself yet.

“Pops,” I said, “I really don’t even know how to tell you this.” I rubbed my hand over my head. “We might need to go inside so you can sit down.”

“I ain’t sitting down for shit,” he said, stepping closer, his voice sharp now, cutting through whatever calm he’d been holding onto since he pulled up. “You gonna tell me right now what happened to my wife, or I’m gonna start losing my shit, right here, right fuckin now.”

Zaire and Namier both stayed quiet, neither one of them stepping in to help me carry this, and I understood why. It really wasn’t their place to speak up and deliver this news. It was mine, cause I was the one my father built this whole empire around trusting.

“We went after Demon today,” I said, forcing the words out steady even though everything in me wanted to soften it, wanted to find some gentler way to hand my father the truth. “We had him cornered in one of our old warehouses. We got the drop on the nigga, followed him, and ended up at our own spot. You told me not to take the shot unless I was ready and could make it clean. That’s what this was supposed to have been. We had all our guns on him, ready to end this whole war right there.”

“And?” my father said, his jaw tight.

“And yo wife showed up before we did,” I said. “She was already in the warehouse having a damn meeting with the nigga before we even walked in. When she saw us, she flipped the script pops. She stepped in before we could pull the trigger. She stood right in front of him and told us not to shoot.”

I watched something shift in my father’s face, confusion mixing in with the fear that was already sitting there.

“Why the fuck would your mother be standing in front of that boy protecting him? And where the fuck is she now? You taking too damn long to get to the point, son!” he asked, his voice dropping low, dangerous.