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“What did you do?” I asked, pursing my lips.

“My teacher is trying to say I got an attitude with her. When my mom asked me about it, she claims that I got an attitude with her, too.”

“Mm, where does she think you get that attitude from?” I giggled as I followed her deeper into the house.

“You want my daddy?” Shyanne asked, stopping in the living room.

“Yes, ma’am. He knows I’m here.”

“I’ll get him,” she told me before heading down the hall.

I had a seat in the living room. I smiled at the array of toys scattered over the floor. Maven and Chime’s home wasn’t a mess, but you could tell children lived there. I couldn’t wait for my house to have the evidence of little ones in it.

The life growing inside me made me want to move differently. I needed to live my life on my own terms. It was high time that I did what was best for me. Liam buying my house back from the guys was the first step.

“He said come to the back yard, TT.”

“It’s hot out there,” I fussed as I stood from my seat.

No wonder it was so quiet in the house. When I made it to the back yard, I found Maven, Psalm, and their kids playing.

“What you doing over here, ugly?” I asked Psalm.

He looked at Maven. “He lives here.”

“You know I’m talking to you.” I grinned.

“Oh hell, I heard ugly and automatically thought you meant bro.”

“My brother is not ugly, big head,” I said, playfully pushing Psalm’s head.

“It’s about time you visited your big brother. I was starting to think you forgot about little ol’ me,” Maven chastised.

“You know better. I just got so much going on that I haven’t had a chance to get over here. You know where I live too,” I reminded him.

“I don’t want to hear that shit. How are things going with Whitmore?”

Both he and Psalm looked up at me expectantly as they waited for my answer. I wondered how much Syre had told them. Knowing him, he hadn’t said anything to them about the baby yet. I didn’t plan on bringing it up either. Things were stressful enough without me being pregnant.

“It’s going. We have some thing to go to tonight. Psalm, are you any closer to tracing that video?”

“Man, they got some top-of-the-line coding and encryption protecting their files. You know they’re into some bullshit when I can’t even hack their system.”

“You ain’t lying. I’ve never seen a code that you couldn’t crack.”

“Wait a minute now. Don’t insult my skills. I didn’t say I couldn’t crack it. I need to get to the mainframe and disarm it. I sent someone to their headquarters with a scrambler, but it was only able to get me so far. I didn’t find what I was looking for other than the knowledge that the business is going under, and his ass is forty-five million dollars in the red,” Psalm mentioned.

“Damn,” I mumbled.

“No wonder he’s so hard up for money. I knew there was something to it,” Maven acknowledged.

“Right. That money we’re paying him is just a drop in the bucket. He hitched his whole wagon to Sherrod’s career, trying to prove his business savvy to his pops and just ended up sinking the whole ship.”

“So what can we do? He claims he has all this dirt on me and Liam. I can’t let Liam go down for this. I know he’s starting to think about it. If we keep waiting, he’s either going to kill Zane or turn himself in for unaliving Sherrod,” I said, looking around to see if Shy was in earshot.

“I need you to get into his house. I believe that the mainframe is there.”

“I can do that tonight. What do I need to look for?” I quizzed.