Page 141 of Vega

VEGARRO “VEGA” MORETTI

Iwas sitting at the island in the kitchen doing my favorite thing, watching Sonnet do her thing at the stove. She was cooking breakfast. Glasses could throw down. She couldn’t just simply cook. She cooked with care. She cooked like feeding somebody meant something to her.

And she was doing all of that in a black cotton bra and panties. The set was plain, with no lace or fancy touches. Still, it turned into lingerie on her body. Her skin, curves, and hair pulled up messily while she flipped potatoes made me forget about how good the food smelled.

I loved that she loved to cook. But I hated why she was so good at it, though. Sonnet hadn’t learned because a relative taught her family recipes. She learned because nobody was there to make sure she ate when she was a teenager. She learned because survival had forced her to figure out how to feed herself. Now she cooked whatever she wanted because she finally could, and she did it with excitement.

“What did you actually do at work?”

She glanced over her shoulder with a questioning look, then put her attention back on the grits she was stirring.

“You mean Roman’s little file didn’t already tell you that?” she quipped with sarcasm.

I chuckled. “I know it had something to do with health informatics analyst and data analytics. But what the fuck is that?”

I watched her relaxed, almost distracted expression change as she thought of the answer. Her brows lifted slightly as her eyes brightened, like something inside her had just been lit up.

She turned the heat down under the grits and faced me with the spoon still in her hand. “Okay, so we handled surgical supply data, device tracking, inventory trends, vendor usage, and order patterns for hospitals and outpatient surgery centers.”

I chuckled dryly and she pointed the spoon at me. “Don’t laugh. It’s actually very interesting.”

“How, nigga?”

Her head tilted as her eyes narrowed at me. “Can you even say ‘nigga’? Ain’t that racist coming from you?”

“I’m half-black, asshole. It’s my mama’s side saying it.”

We started cracking up as I told her, “I was chuckling because you got excited as hell talking about the nerdy shit.”

“Because nobody ever asks me that.” She turned back to the stove, but her voice had more life in it now. “People hear data and immediately check out, but it actually matters. Say a hospital keeps running out of a certain implant size or a specific surgical tray keeps getting delayed. That can mess up an entire surgery schedule. So, my job was to look at the numbers and figure out where the problem started before it became a bigger problem.”

I leaned back, watching her get worked up over hospital supplies while standing in my kitchen half naked. That shit was so fucking cute.

“I built dashboards, cleaned data, tracked usage patterns, and flagged inconsistencies. Like if a facility usually ordered twenty units of something every month and suddenly ordered two hundred, I had to figure out if it was a real demand shift, a mistake, or somebody entering data wrong.”

“You liked that?”

“I loved it. It was puzzles all day. Numbers tell on people. They expose habits, mistakes, waste, laziness, fraud, everything. People can lie, but data has a harder time keeping up with the lie.”

I grinned, while watching her. “You cute when you talk nerdy. You’re glowing.”

She tried not to smile and failed as she reached for my plate in the cabinet.

Roman’s file had given me her title, address, and routine, but it hadn’t told me that she lit up when she talked about solving problems. It hadn’t told me that she got excited over spreadsheets and catching mistakes before they cost people money or time. It hadn’t told me my woman had built a life out of being useful, sharp, and needed, even after the world had given her every reason to stop trying.

That was the kind of stuff I wanted to know. Because Sonnet was mine now, and I wanted every piece of her story she was willing to give me.

“You want cheese on your eggs?” she asked.

“You know I do.”

My phone vibrated against the island with a notification of a text message from Jamir. I read the message from the drop-down notification without picking up the phone. As I read, I sat up straighter.

Roman is at 146th and Loomis. It’s an old body shop. It looks like his new product storage spot. Live ping came from a burner that connected to the Wi-Fi there three times this morning. Cameras nearby caught his driver’s truck outside twenty minutes ago. Move now or lose him.

I called Jamir, while sneaking peeks at Glasses’ booty jiggling as she moved around the stove making my plate.

“What’s up?” Jamir answered.