Page 167 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

“I know.” She wrapped both hands around that tea glass like she needed something to hold onto. “I thought the same thing. And now—now Kaisen’s got a claim, Mama. A real one. Not just some man who was in the room when it happened. His actual son.”

“Lord have mercy.” I rubbed my temple, feeling a headache building right behind my eyes. My girls always had some shit going on. Honor was over there beating Terrance’s ass, Truth always had something going on with a man, and Raven couldn’t keep at man with that mouth of hers.

“And it’s not even just that.” The words started spilling out of her faster now, like the dam had really broken, and there wasn’t any stopping the flood. “You remember when I first started telling you about Kaisen? How sweet he was, how consistent, how he’d show up and just sit with me and not ask for nothing?”

“I remember.”

“That man is gone, Mama. The second Amai got chosen—the second it was clear I wasn’t going with him—Kaisen turned into somebody I don’t even recognize. Disrespectful. Controlling. Showing up places uninvited. Saying ugly things to me on my own porch.” She swallowed hard. “Amai had to shoot him to get him to back off.”

“He what?”

“He’s fine,” she said quickly, waving her hand like that would settle my nerves. “Grazed him, some rooftop sniper thing. It’s a whole other story, but the point is—Amai handled it. Handled him. But now I got proof that boy’s blood is tied to one of my babies forever, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel safe about that.”

I sat back in my chair for a moment, quiet, studying her the way I used to when she was a teenager trying to convince me a curfew violation wasn’t really a big deal. This wasn’t no curfew, though. This was blood and war and grandbabies caught in the middle of it.

“Baby,” I said finally, “I’m not gon’ sit here and pretend this ain’t a mess. It is. It’s a whole ’nother level of mess than what I signed up to worry about when you told me you were carrying a surrogate baby for some rich man. But I need you to hear me on this.” I leaned forward and took her hand across that table. “You keep standing your ground. You hear me? However this shakes out—whoever’s blood is tied to which baby—don’t you dare let either of them men make you small. Don’t lose your voice in the middle of this. That’s the only thing that scares me more than Kaisen or Winston or any of the rest of them Landrys.”

“I won’t,” she whispered.

“Good.” I patted her hand, then looked her up and down. “Now. How’s the morning sickness? You still throwing up every five minutes like you did them first few weeks?”

She actually laughed a little, wet and hoarse, and it was good to hear, even broken up like that. “It’s gone, Mama. Been gone a couple weeks now.”

“Thank you, Jesus.” I threw both hands up like I was in church, because I was. “‘Cause watching you hunched over that toilet was taking years off my life too.”

We sat at that table a long while after that. I kept getting up to check on the pot of red beans I’d started before she even got here—I’d had a feeling she was coming, I always do—and I let her just sit in the smell of it, the bubble and thump of the pot, the hum of my little TV on the counter playing some judge show that neither of us was really watching.

“You need anything?” she asked at one point, watching me move around my own kitchen in my house shoes, that linoleum still peeling up in the corner near the fridge, same as it’s been for years.

“I’m fine, baby.”

“Mama.”

“I said I’m fine.”

She got her purse anyway, pulled out five hundred dollars cash, and set it right on the counter next to my stove.

“Truth, I don’t need⁠—”

“I know you don’t need it.” She put her hand over mine before I could push it back at her. “I want you to have it. Get your hair done, fix that back porch step you keep saying is about to break somebody’s ankle, whatever you want. Let me do this for you.”

I looked at that money, then at her, and I swear my heart went soft in a way that made my whole chest ache.

“You’re a good daughter,” I said quietly, folding them bills and tucking them into my bra strap the way I always do with cash I mean to keep safe. “Better than I deserve some days.”

“Stop that.”

“I’m just saying.”

By the time them red beans were done, a shaft of sunlight split down the middle of the plate, and we ate together at that same scarred table. I told her about Ms. Odalys next door and her mess with her grown son. She half-listened and half just sat in the sound of my voice, the way she’d done since she was small.

After dinner, I pulled her into the front room, sat down on that old plaid couch I done had reupholstered twice since she was a child, and patted the spot next to me. She curled up against my side like she hadn’t done since she was maybe twelve years old, her head on my shoulder, my arm wrapped around her, and the TV playing low in the background—some rerun neither of us was really watching.

“You can’t hide out here forever,” I said after a while, my fingers smoothing her hair the way I used to before school. “I know you want to. I know this is the one place in the world where nobody’s shooting at nobody and nobody’s got a Landry last name. But, baby, you gotta go back out there and tell both them men what these results say. You can’t let it fester. Secrets don’t get smaller. They get bigger and meaner.”

“I know.”

“And Kaisen—” I sucked my teeth, because I knew something was off. “I never did trust that one. Too sweet. Too perfect. A man that nice all the time is hiding something, baby, I don’t care what nobody says. You know I always said that. Amai, at least, I could see coming a mile away. Kaisen’s the one that’s really crazy, mark my words.”