28. Chapter 28
King Damini
The heavy mahogany front doors had been locked from the outside by my own men.
Adanna had made her orders crystal clear before she stormed out: Keep the King inside.
She knew I wanted to be out there on the pavement with her, tearing the city apart block by block until we found Brooklyn and ripped her throat out.
But Adanna wasn't having it. She wanted me secured, protected, and off the streets while she hunted.
So there I was—a fuckin' hostage in my own mansion.
I paced back and forth across the floor of the main living room.
Every single guard posted at the doors stared straight ahead, avoiding my eyes.
They knew better than to make eye contact with me right now.
They were following the Queen's orders, but they also knew I could snap one of their necks if I lost my temper completely.
I hated being useless. I hated sitting in the air conditioning while my wife was out in the dark doing dirty work.
And what burned worse than the confinement was the suffocating weight of my own past hanging over my head.
Brooklyn wasn't just some random enemy—she was a person from my old life.
A woman I had used before I took my role seriously.
Knowing that my past had crawled back up to bite us, knowing that my connection to Brooklyn was adding gasoline to Adanna's fire...
it made a knot form in the pit of my stomach that no amount of liquor could dissolve.
"Fuck," I muttered under my breath, dragging a hand down my face.
I walked over to the glass table, grabbed the last rolled blunt of my dark purple strain, and sparked it with my gold lighter. I took a slow, heavy drag, letting the thick smoke coat my lungs, trying to force the anger out with the exhale.
I finished the blunt down to the filter, the heavy strain finally taking a small edge off my hyper-vigilance.
My eyes felt heavy. The stress, the grief for Chairman, and the mental exhaustion of the last forty-eight hours finally caught up to me.
I dropped onto the leather sectional in the center of the living room, leaning my head back against the cushion, staring up at the high ceiling.
Just a quick ten minutes, I told myself. Just gotta rest my eyes till she gets back.
In the quiet hum of the house, right in the middle of me slipping under, a faint sound cut through the silence. A soft, barely audible rustle near the side entrance.
My instincts tried to flare, but my body was already half-submerged in sleep. I blinked, my eyelids feeling like lead. Before I could even raise my head from the leather, something soft and fine brushed directly across the bridge of my nose—like a sweet powder drifting through the air.
I didn't even have time to register the scent. The world went instantly pitch black.
My eyes snapped open.
I gasped for air as my heart hammered. I leaped off the couch into a sudden, defensive stance. My chest was heaving, and cold sweat slicked my forehead. My eyes scanned the quiet living room but no one was there.
I stood there on the marble, trying to catch my breath, trying to figure out why my heart was beating so fast. But as the fog in my brain began to clear, a strange, sickening sensation washed over my lower body.
My pants were unbuttoned. My dick was hanging completely out of my boxers, resting exposed in the cool night air.
I stared down at myself, my brows drawing together in pure confusion.
I quickly shoved my dick back into my shorts and pulled the zipper up, but as soon as I did, my body registered the physical evidence.
That faint, unmistakable heaviness in my lower stomach, the hypersensitivity, the residual warmth...
it was the exact aftermath of a fresh orgasm.
What the fuck just happened to me? Did I masturbate and forget? Why did I feel so heavy?
Before I could even process the thoughts, the front doors unlocked and swung wide open.
Adanna stormed into the foyer, and her face set in a deadly mask of exhaustion and rage.
Our eyes locked across the dimly lit room.
I squinted at my wife, my head tilting slightly as a wave of utter confusion hit me. Adanna returned the glare, her dark eyes scanning my face.
"Sorry I've been gone," she said as she closed the distance between us. "I was out searching."
I cocked my head to the side, my throat dry, my mind completely scrambled. "You... you haven't been home?"
Adanna squinted right back at me, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. "No. Why? Was something wrong?"
I scratched my scalp, my fingers digging into my hair as I tried to make sense of the last few hours. The fog in my head was thick, and my body was telling me one thing while my mind was telling me another.
"Uhh..." I stumbled, shaking my head to clear the haze. "No, I don't... no, I'm okay. Are you okay?"
Adanna let out a sigh, the edge in her posture softening as the grief for her uncle pulled at her shoulders. "I won't be until I find his killer." She stepped closer to me, looking up into my face. "Can you come lay with me after I shower?"
"Yeah," I nodded, my voice low. "Yeah, okay."
She didn't move right away. She got closer, her eyes scanning my face, picking up on the subtle tension in my jaw and the weird energy rolling off me. She squinted.
"Why are you looking like that?" she asked quietly. "You sure you're okay?"
I forced a lazy smirk onto my lips, leaning down to press a soft kiss against her warm forehead. "I just got too high last night. I'm trippin'."
"Mmm," she murmured against my chest, taking comfort in my touch before heading toward the grand staircase.
"Go get washed up," I said softly. "I'll be right up."
As she started walking up the stairs, I turned around and took another long peek back at the couch.
The cushions were slightly rumpled. The faint, lingering trace of a perfume that didn't belong to Adanna drifted almost imperceptibly in the air before vanishing completely. My skin crawled.
I stood there in the quiet room, trying to force myself to feel normal, trying to convince myself it was just the weed. But deep down in my gut, a dark, heavy instinct was screaming at me.
Things weren't over. Things were about to get a whole lot worse.