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“Yup!”
“That’s foul.” Worry and concern glimmered in Ren’s gaze. “Are you okay?”
Tazeem scoffed. “What do you think?”
Ren had nothing to say to that. Silence reigned for a long drawn out minute before he sighed. “Why did she do it?”
“Damned if I know.” Tazeem tried to force a smile but tilting his lips upwards took so much effort that he gave up. It hurt too much for him to even smile. “Besides, does it even matter why she did it? Would there ever be a good reason for what she did?”
With another sigh, Ren sat back in his seat.
His sigh echoed everything Tazeem felt. This was an incredibly rotten situation that hurt even worse because of Tazeem’s background. Tazeem, who’d been abandoned by his parents, had sworn never to do the same if he had his own kids. But Chess had made him an unintentional deadbeat and made their child fatherless.
Bile rose up Tazeem’s throat and his hatred for her spiked again.
Ren cut into his thoughts. “How did you find out?”
“The kid was at her office.” Tazeem went on to detail the sequence of events that had led to the heart breaking discovery.
“Damn, she even named the kid after your grandfather.” Ren asked, “Why go all through that and never even tell you about him?”
“Why don’t you ask her for me?” Tazeem retorted. “I don’t think I can talk to her without doing something crazy.”
“You’ll have to talk to her sometime if you want to get to know your kid,” Ren noted. “You want to get to know him, right?”
“Of course!” That was his son, so obviously he wanted form a relationship.
Tazeem and Ren spent the next few minutes or so discussing the situation further. Their discussion was cut short when Lucy called wanting to know where Ren had disappeared too. After urging Tazeem to go home and get some rest, Ren left. But even after he was gone, his words still echoed in Tazeem’s thoughts.
Ren was right. If Tazeem wanted to know his son, then he and Chess would need to talk. But they weren’t going to talk about her reasons for doing what she’d done. That was bullshit that Tazeem wasn’t interested in. All he was interested in talking about was their son, and how he’d get him.
Making a snap decision, Tazeem grabbed his phone and scrolled to his missed calls. There were four from her. He pressed the call icon.
“Tazeem.” Chess answered on the first ring. She sounded breathless as she said, “I’ve been trying to call-”
Tazeem cut her off. “Where do you live?”
14
I
T TOOK TAZEEM LESS THAN thirty minutes to drive to Chess’s home. He stopped at the large, black, ornate gate that marked her apartment complex and hooted. A security guard emerged through the pedestrian entrance.
“Yes, sir?”
“Chelsea Winters.” Tazeem impatiently rattled off her house number. “She’s expecting me.”
It took less than two minutes for the guard to confirm that Tazeem was indeed expected, and the gates smoothly and silently slid open to welcome him.
The complex was made of six three-story buildings divided into two parallel lines by a wide strip of concrete with small patches of well-tended gardens. At the far end of the complex, you could see blue waves of water reflected on steel marking the swimming pool. Cars and children’s bikes lay parked on the concrete as if just awaiting the families inside the well-lit houses to come and pick them. One of those families in there was his.
As he drove into the complex, he saw a curvy woman standing in front of one of the complexes.
It was Chess.
Instead of the business wear that he’d gotten used to seeing her in these days, she was dressed in a white tee and grey leggings. Usually, her curly braids were up in a high bun. But today, she’d let them down her curly braids, which made her look way, way softer and feminine.
If this were a normal day, her appearance would’ve caused instant lust. But today, rage came rushing in like a tsunami. Before he’d headed her way, he’d promised himself that he’d try to stay calm. But that promise evaporated the moment he saw her.
