I was shocked to say the least when I got a call from Ava saying that she needed me to pick her up and not to tell her dad. At first, I was thinking it was a set up, but the urgency and fear in her voice let me know that something was really wrong. I left the library in a hurry and thanked God that today I was driving one of Game’s cars. She shot me her location and I was there within ten minutes.

It looked like some type of party was going on and there were kids posted up outside and on the porch of a townhouse. I didn’t even have to go in because Ava came running out, and she looked distraught as hell. She ran straight into my arms and my mind automatically went to a dark place.

“Ava! Are you okay? What happened? Did someone hurt you?” I asked, while she held on to my waist so tight that it was becoming difficult for me to breathe.

“Nothing happened. Can we just go home?”

Without saying anything, I walked her to the car and as I drove, we were both silent.

“Sweetie, you’re going to have to tell me something. Your father will know that something is wrong with you and I won’t be able to back you up if I don’t know what’s going on.”

“It’s really stupid,” she said while wiping her falling tears. “So, there was this boy that I liked, and I was supposed to meet him here tonight. My dad actually thinks that I’m at a friend’s sleepover right now, but we snuck to this party. So, when I got there, I went in the bedroom to put my coat up, when I saw the boy that I liked and my other friend kissing. I don’t know what else happened, but her pants were down, and I just ran out.”

I held my chest, so happy that what I thought happened, didn’t. I for sure thought some little boy had tried something with her, and though Ava was butt hurt, she would be fine. This teen drama would be over before she knew it. I couldn’t imagine her going through anything remotely close to the things that I had been through being so young.

“Aww Ava, I’m so sorry. I know it hurts, but everything will be okay. This just showed you who your real friends are.” I patted her back.

“Right. I can’t believe I let her borrow my Gucci bag and everything.”

I laughed because why in the hell does her thirteen-year-old ass even have a Gucci bag when I was still rocking Guess?

“Now, I’m not going to tell your dad, but you have to promise me that you won’t sneak out like this again. Anything could’ve happened to you.”

“I promise I won’t. And thank you for coming to get me.” She grabbed my hand and held it for the entire ride home.

Good thing Game was still out when we got home so we slid into our pjs and rented movies. If he was to ask why she was home, we would say that she started feeling sick and wanted to come home. That night Ava and I kicked it like we were old friends. This was the first time that I had gotten more than five words out of her. I didn’t know if I was tripping , but something about her was so familiar to me. All in all, I was just happy that she was finally giving me a chance. Too bad the harmony wouldn’t last.

1 week later

I was low-key panicking inside. I had a special night planned for Game and I, and I wanted everything to go off without a hitch. To me, it was more than a dinner to show my appreciation to him, but more so, a dinner where we could be our very best, true selves.

I was running a little behind because I had been held up at the beauty salon for hours. I never understood why you would schedule an appointment for one time but wouldn’t make it to the stylist’s chair until hours later. Finally done up, I had to meet the caterers at Game’s house so they could place the food. Kayla was doing me a favor by keeping Game busy all day, so as far as I knew he didn’t suspect a thing.

I made it home to let the caterers in and showered and put on a form-fitting slip dress. My soft curls bounced with every step that I took, and I knew that Game would be eating his heart out tonight. I checked the food and everything looked great, but I strongly doubted that he would do very much eating tonight. The whole little set up looked perfect and now I was just waiting for the guest of honor to arrive.

The door opening made me a little nervous, but it was now or never. I grabbed the champagne flute from the table and filled it with Rozay. I met Game at the door with his glass and he looked surprised out of his mind.

“Bae, what is all of this?” he asked, smiling like a kid when he saw the entire spread.

“It’s all for you babe. I don’t think we’ve had much us time lately, so I wanted to do something for us. Now sit.” I led him to the table, piled his plate with food and gave it to him.

“Damn right! Serve your man!” he said, smacking my booty, causing it to jiggle. I planted a delicate yet intense kiss on his lips which I thought of as the kiss of death. Some bullshit ass music played in the back and the lights were dimmed giving the night an enchanted kind of look.

Game went in on his food like I knew his big ass would.

“Babe, we were supposed to do this before we started eating, but let’s make a toast.” I raised my glass to his.

“What are we toasting to?”

“Umm, let’s toast to coming out.” I smiled.

“Coming out? What you mean? Everyone already knows we’re together.”

“No silly. Coming out, like all of our truths and lies coming out.”

He looked at me with a weird look on his face. I could tell the shit that I put in his drink was starting to take effect. His eyes became a little glossy and his words slurred while I just smiled.

“Fuuhhh, fuuuckk you do to me?” he finally got out.

“Ohhh, I spiked your drink. You will be knocked out in a few seconds, so don’t even try anything stupid.”

No sooner than those words left my mouth, his head dropped on the table. So far, everything was going just perfectly. I looked perfect, and my plan was perfect so tonight would be perfect.

I raced up the stairs, not wasting any time because Game’s spiked drink would wear off in about an hour. My first stop was to his safe. I watched him put his code in so many times that I had the shit memorized. There sat several stacks of money to go with the money that I had already cleaned from his bank account. Game trusted me so much that he wasn’t even careful when leaving his bank statements and shit lying around. This man had close to ten million in the bank. Well, now I had close to ten million.

Next, I grabbed my suitcase that I hid under the bed along with my plane tickets and loaded everything in the car. I changed out of my fancy ass dress and put on a sweat suit. Still, everything was going perfectly and now I just had to finish the deed. About forty-five minutes had passed and I was sitting coolly waiting for sleeping beauty to awake.

A few minutes later, he slowly started to lift his head and the first thing he did was try to make a run for it, but that wasn’t happening due to the fact that he was handcuffed to the radiator.

“Fuck is going on Misty? Get me out of these fucking handcuffs now!” he shouted assertively when he realized that he wasn’t dreaming but was about to experience his worst nightmare.

“Fuck is going on Misty?” I mocked him. “You don’t know?” I said, waving the loaded gun that I had in my hands to show him that there were no games being played tonight. I looked the devil straight in his eyes never expecting for him to show an ounce of fear because he was never scared and even if he was, he would never show it.

“No, I don’t know! And I really don’t give a fuck,” he said, trying to snatch the cuffs from the radiator, but he only ended up hurting himself.

“Ha-ha, that’s what your ass gets. But enough stalling,” I said, looking at my watch. “I have a flight to catch in two hours and I can’t be late. What haunts you at night? I see you tossing and turning.”

His eyes became cold and I knew he knew exactly what I was getting to.

“Your whole life you’ve tried to be the good guy, righting your wrongs. So again, what haunts you nigga?” I yelled, letting off a shot, hitting his leg. He was taking too long and frankly, I was getting bored.

“Ahhh shit!” he yelled out in agony. “Misty, put the fucking gun down!”

“Don’t tell me what to do! You thought I didn’t know BITCH? Those masks shielded your faces, but not your souls. It took me a few years to figure out that it was you and your buffoon ass cousin who did that to me that night! All the good shit that you’ve decided to do in your life doesn’t matter now because that shit won’t bring my parents back. NONE OF IT!”

His head dropped and I walked over to him and butted him with the gun. The blood easing from his head reminded me of the red hots that we used to get on Valentine’s Day.

“Nigga, look up when I’m talking to you.” I rushed over and yanked him by his face. “Don’t try to feel sorry for yourself now. My father let you and your sleezy cousin into our house and that’s how you repay him?? Huh?? You rape his daughter and kill his wife? Did you know that after you beat her, you made her have a heart attack. She couldn’t take what you were doing to her and her heart exploded, you pig!” I yelled, kicking him in his side.

“Misty, I promise I didn’t do any of that. I could’ve, no, I should’ve done more to help y’all, but I didn’t touch either of you, and I cut Rod off after that!” he roared with so much empathy in his voice that I almost believed him. Too bad I wasn’t that little naïve girl anymore.

“Nope. You won’t do this to me again. Stop trying to make me believe your lying ass. It’s that type of shit that almost made me forget my mission in the first place. From the moment I saw you at your sister’s spot, I knew it was you. I searched for you for years, but you went under the radar and when I finally found you, I debated what I wanted to do with your ass or if you were even worth my time. So, when you started being all nice to me, the opportunity presented itself, and I went for it.

“THEN!!!” I shouted, startling him. “You made me fall in love with you. I went into the situation having one motive, and that was to avenge my mother’s death, but you made me love you so much that I had even forgiven you. I fucking forgave you! I actually fell in love with the man who took my family away from me. STUPID ME!” I used the gun to scratch my head while the tears poured from my eyes.

“You want to know when all that changed?” I asked, looking him dead in his face. “ANSWER ME DAMMIT!” I let a shot go off in the air.

Game only looked at me with stone-cold eyes.

“The night your weak ass brother challenged you. At first, I didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but I figured out that you were paying him to keep quiet. He knew what you and your jailbird cousin did, and he was blackmailing you. But instead of you being a man about it and owning what you did, you continued paying him year after year. You thought you were so slick hitting me with all that shit about how y’all didn’t get along because he was jealous of you, when in all reality, he had a one up on your dirty ass. You paid him like what you did to my mother could be erased with your hush money! That night, I knew you hadn’t changed at all.”

“Misty, you NEED to believe me. I never meant to hurt you or your family. A piece of me died that night too. Shit wasn’t supposed to go down like that!”

“Then how was it supposed to go down? Y’all would just rob us and ride off to the fucking sunset? Y’all took more than money from us that night and because of you, I went through hell growing up. I feared everything, so I isolated myself from the world. And the only man that ever loved me left me. My daddy couldn’t take looking in my face every day knowing that I reminded him so much of my mom, so he left,” I said sadly.

“If I could take it all back, I would. He isn’t the only person who loves you. I love you,” he started, but I was tired of hearing his bullshit lies.

POP went the sound of the bullet that I sent crashing through his other leg.

“Ahhhh fuck!” he screamed, but he refused to give me more than that. He was sweating bullets and I knew that he was in pain, no matter how he tried to hide it.

“Misty, you can do what the fuck you want to me now, but if there is any way that I can get out of this shit, I will hurt you. You’re not about to take me away from my girls.”

The irony of his statement made me chuckle.

“Fuck those little bitches.” I quickly wiped the sweat from my forehead.

“I should kill them too, but I want them to feel the same hurt and pain that I felt. You better be lucky that I will leave their mom to raise them. You took both of my parents from me.”

“Misty, no matter how hard you try to fight those feelings in your heart, you know you love me.”

“Shut up!” I said emotionlessly. “Love doesn’t live here anymore.” I raised the gun to his head and he looked at me fearlessly.

“Waiiittt! No, please don’t, MOM!” I heard a voice say from behind me. I turned around to see Ava standing there shaking like a leaf. I turned back to Game and he just shook his head.

“I’m your daughter, Misty,” she said lowly. “I never said anything, but when I did the ancestry and genogram thing in school a few weeks back, I learned that my DNA didn’t match my mom’s or my dad’s. One day while I was snooping through my dad’s things, I saw a birth certificate that listed you as my birth mother,” she said all in one voice.

I was really losing it at this point and from the look in Game’s eyes, I could tell he had more to say.

“She’s not lying Misty. After the shit went down with your family, I never saw you again up until about eight months later. I was in the hospital with Danni after she had a false alarm with her first baby when I saw some people bringing you in. I didn’t even know that you were pregnant, so imagine my surprise when I saw you panting while holding your belly. I waited it out and found your room about three hours later. You were knocked out, so I know you don’t remember, but I saw the adoption papers lying beside you. Like you said, me trying to right my wrongs, I stalked your baby until I turned eighteen and could adopt her. By now, she was already placed with a family, but money talked. I adopted her and Bregan and I raised her as our own. She was too little to remember, so she fit right in with us and I never treated her any differently from Logan,” he spat out.

I couldn’t believe that this shit was happening. I had never told a soul that I gave my kid up after becoming pregnant after I was raped by Rod. I was ashamed and I knew that at twelve years old, I couldn’t raise a child. Now, here she was being raised by Game the entire time, and the shit just further enraged me. Like, how long did he think that he would be able to hide this shit from me? Did he think that we would just be together and I wouldn’t start to ask any questions? I always questioned in my head how he had a daughter so old in age, but I never minded it. Nigga was slower than I thought.

What kind of fucking game was he playing? He had really gone and got my kid and played daddy to her. I sank down to the floor and sobbed to myself, and Ava, my daughter, came and hugged me. I wanted to push her away, but I hugged her closer. She smelled like me, and she even felt like me. Being wrapped in her warmth felt so damn good, but now I was conflicted. I didn’t know whether I should finish what I sought out to do or if I should run and hide. I had been gamed and I didn’t know what to do.

Who will win in this game of love and war. . .

To be continued.