Chapter 3
CASED UP
ORI
Since Pappy had given me the good news I’d been more and more involved with the family business and I was spending more time with my brothers.
For the first time in decades, I felt that my life was going in a direction that I was in control of.
Since I learned of the family business that I was a part of and the connections it brought I never once shied away from it.
The power that this collective of families could harness despite our humble beginning was a matter of pride.
Almost two months had passed since Pappy had given me the news and the way I’d celebrated the potential change still lingered on my mind.
And my tongue. The woman I’d been with that night would’ve been easy to find had I wanted to.
The Franklin side of the family owned the club and it would’ve been as simple as asking one of my cousins for her information since it was one of the Franklin holdings.
I wasn’t stupid enough to do that shit, though.
Asking them for a favor meant they might want one themselves.
I didn’t do favors. With the type of resources I had outside of them, I could find out who she was but it seemed pointless.
Their knowing I had an interest in someone would mean they knew I had the potential for a liability.
With so much upheaval about to happen in my life, I wasn’t going to take on something as labor-intensive as a woman.
She wasn’t the type who would settle for anything less than the very best that I could give her and I admired that about her.
And despite how she seemed to abhor men, which again I admired about her, I couldn’t offer her anything besides dick if she caught feelings for me.
Which was the inevitable conclusion of any type of long-term attachment.
Despite how she left me in the middle of the night, an act that still had me shook that I’d slept through her departure, I knew like any normal person she would get attached.
That wasn’t something I was in danger of.
So, I fell back and allowed the memories to be more than enough. And for the last few weeks they’d tried to seep into every part of my dreams. And my waking hours too.
Taking over for Pappy was my focus and closing out everything I had to do with the Bureau to ensure that transition could happen sooner rather than later.
The elders still hadn’t decided who was going to move in to replace me when it came time for me to leave but I hoped I would have some input on who it was when the time came.
Knowing the elders, they wouldn’t give us that knowledge until the last minute, if at all.
“Agent Nakoa?”
My eyes flew open annoyed at the interruption.
I’d spent a few minutes in silent revelry thinking about the bombshell behind the mask.
How she felt like a fist squeezing my dick as she battled her way down my length so she could ride me.
The way her taste was seared into every bud on my tongue making even the most nostalgic foods seem offensive because nothing compared to her.
She was a distraction, one I only allowed myself for a few brief minutes a day and now this woman was interrupting my reprieve.
Is this what attachment felt like? Couldn’t be.
I had hoped by ignoring her presence and keeping my eyes shut that she would go away.
It was clear that my ploy hadn’t worked since she was standing in front of me looking as though she’d rather be anywhere but here.
She’d stood watching me for over three minutes because despite my eyes being closed I was more than aware of my surroundings, and I’d felt her as soon as she’d entered the room.
I’d subconsciously kept track of how many times she’d paced back and forth silently in front of my office door before she’d been able to formulate her game plan on approaching me and gathered the courage to bring her ass in here.
Thirty-one.
Thirty-one times she’d paced in order to interrupt my well-earned fantasy.
Fuck.
It was all I could think as I ran a palm down my face wiping away the memories of a woman I’d never see again but whose scent permeated the room like she’d recently been in it.
I hadn't had more than two consecutive hours of sleep in the last two days and had hoped this interruption was necessary. Between doing work for the family and the work for the government, I was worn the fuck out. Besides meeting with my brothers to help with various issues. I’d hoped to clear up my last few cases and be able to walk away before it was time for Xerxes’ wedding but that wasn’t looking good.
Unfortunately, this admin was only on her third day.
Which meant she didn’t know how I worked or how to handle my moods.
The same issue I’d had with the last one, which is why she’d been pacing.
“What is it?”
I sat up lazily and folded my arms across my chest. I removed my legs from their place on my desk disturbing the paperwork beneath them.
A custom chair had to be brought in to fit my body but it still hadn’t done shit to make sitting down for long periods of time any more comfortable.
My body craved being in the field and being mobile, another reason why this desk shit was old to me.
Hopping in a jet to skirt off and handle a problem with my brothers or checking out the ports our ships used was the type of work I was looking forward to because what I currently did was draining the bit of sanity I still had.
My hair was smoothed off my face, the stubble that I’d allowed to grow out since the last time I’d seen her caused me to scratch slightly at my cheek.
I wasn’t sure if it was my question or my actions but she jumped when I spoke.
Probably still surprised by the depth of my voice.
Nervously, the intern handed me a stack of papers as she fidgeted waiting for me to review them.
Her eyes danced around the room looking at the accolades I’d shoved dejectedly onto shelves and I could almost smell her impatience as she waited on me to speak and provide her some direction.
Everyone wanted me to decorate this place as though their validation was supposed to mean something to me and it never did.
My medals were in a drawer, promotions and plaques stacked on the shelves here because I didn’t want them in my home.
Being a lackey for the system wasn’t a reason to gloat.
My only satisfaction was when I got to put shitty people in the ground or in jail.
And I could do that with my brothers with much less red tape and paperwork.
I’d run a background check on my new assistant just to see the type of person she was.
She’d grown up in Virginia to parents who’d worked for the government in some capacity her entire life.
She’d written in her intern application about wanting to be a part of something that made a difference.
Typical shit that meant she’d be willing to do whatever as long as her emotional needs were being met and made her feel like a savior.
People like her were the type that the FBI loved because they were malleable.
The higher-ups could feed them a lie and their reasoning and morality would shut off because the part of their brain that made them feel as though they were justified would take over.
Typical white savior mentality that had been ingrained in them for generations.
I’m sure she thought she’d be here working for someone that looked like her or her father and meeting me had her thrown off. I was sure she didn’t even know what the hell I was, she just knew I was an other and that interrupted her idea of who the good guys were.
She seemed as if she were petrified of feeling my wrath so she rarely spoke to me. No matter what I’d done to be out of her way since she’d been hired, she gave me the same look that most women always did: fearful curiosity.
It was the type of attention that men would think they wanted but if they had to live it for a day, would drive them insane. That was if they had any moral compass and weren’t relying only on patriarchy’s version of a man to make them confident about themselves.
So yeah, maybe I was the only one who was tired of this shit.
There was only one person in the world that I knew could understand how I felt.
My brother Yacouba was even taller than I was and our builds were similar.
He’d laugh when I told him how uncomfortable I was around the people I’d been forced to work with.
He said it was the natural feeling of a caged lion being watched by gazelles: you knew you were at the top of the food chain and had your chosen prey dangled in front of you daily without being able to partake.
Couba reminded me that our people had always been made to feel inferior and that went doubly for me.
My Black ancestors had been caged in human zoos, enslaved and had their identities erased.
My Hawaiian and Samoan ancestors had made the mistake of thinking that kindness and the declaration of sovereignty by our monarchs would keep the sharks of capitalism at bay.
That working with the white man meant you had their respect.
Now, many islanders couldn’t even afford to live on their native land because tourism and the influx of vacationers and millionaires from the mainland owned such a large portion of every island.
And that was after we’d been overthrown and plantations had been erected on stolen land.
I sighed heavily as my thoughts weighed me down the sound causing her to jump.
The fleeting thought of not being an asshole went out of the window just as quickly as it’d come in.
There was no hope and the last thing I wanted to do was lower myself for others.
Been there and tried that. It made me feel like my attempts to look less threatening were seen as a reason to attempt to dominate me.
Big mistake.