Welina Hou #2
“That’s your fault for getting caught slipping. You should’ve taken something to combat that shit before you went over there. You probably made her even more suspicious of you.”
Hakeem only shook his head the look on his face the one I was growing more familiar with. “Got damn you’re in love. You over here defending her trying to kill your blood.”
“‘The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’.” I quoted that verse with the same passion I felt for my wife and the fervor of my brother who might be delivering a second eulogy on me when he saw me again.
“That has Priest written all over it. The lessons that you learn in The Order stay with you forever.” A part of his history that he was giving me. Trusting me even though his place as my second was already set.
“I kept what was useful and discarded the rest. Now, we've got everything straight for what needs to happen?”
Hakeem pulled out his phone going through a checklist of tasks I’d give him.
“Told you before that crackheads were useful. So are my girls. All that shit is done. I assume you’re done waiting to take your place as the head of the family?”
I ran a hand over my hair thinking that the hardest challenge was in front of me and not behind. “If I survive the night.”
He turned to me and had his gun back in his hand before I could finish my comment. “Who we gotta ride on?” His desire to solidify both of our places in the family meant a lot to me.
It was comical to see that his devotion was as real as my mother said it would be.
Hakeem’s loyalty was to the family and seeing it prosper.
Unlike his relationship with Theo, we didn’t have bad blood.
That meant we might have been as close as my brothers but we didn’t have a mutual hatred to overcome with each other either.
“You not killing my wife.” I didn’t bother to raise my voice as I was sure he didn’t realize I had been referring to Asha.
“What are you talking about?”
“You might believe that my wife is sad and I’m sure she is. But that doesn’t mean that she’s not about to kill me for being away from her for so long.”
He blinked a few times before he nodded his head and tucked his gun in his pants.
“You right. She gave me the runs because of her suspicions. She knows that your ass faked being dead so you definitely got something to contend with. Shit, I ain’t trying to run this shit at all so you gotta survive. Good luck, my nigga.”
“What kinda second are you?”
He looked around confused before focusing on me. “Oh, my ass official now that you in the middle of some shit? The fuck am I supposed to do? I don’t get in between people and their marriages. That type of shit ain’t my business.” He held his hands up in surrender and I couldn’t blame him.
“Smart man.”
“And even though it’s been my job to look out for your wife and make sure she’s good while you’ve been out, I know if I tried to intervene between the two of y’all only one of two things would happen.”
I couldn’t wait to hear what he thought the consequences would be. “Hit me.”
He ticked off the first point on his finger without hesitation. “One, you’ll kill me for moving wrong with her.”
I pointed to him because he wasn’t wrong. “True.”
“Two, your boys would’ve killed me for moving wrong with her.”
I smiled because, again, he wasn’t wrong. “Also true but you forgot one.”
“Which is?”
I stretched prepping myself to go because I knew now was the time to face my consequences. Talking about her made me miss her too much and I could no longer fight my desires.
“That Asha would’ve killed you before any of us had the chance.”
I braced myself as I opened the door to the penthouse.
The place was exactly as it had been when I left months ago.
I could see it on the cameras as I studied them while we were apart but nothing would beat being here physically.
Taking an inhale of the smell of Asha’s perfume and the gourmand and pistachio room scents that she always used.
Home.
It was one thing to see it but to physically be here, to smell this place, to know I’d made it back to her was something that almost took my breath away.
Despite what I knew would be an immense amount of anger, I couldn’t help but walk the familiar path down the hall to where I knew she would be.
It was the place that she’d made her own since I’d been gone.
The place she apparently felt closer to me since I’d been gone.
I took a deep breath before I stopped just short of the doorway and watched her.
I didn’t think she was sleeping, although she’d done a lot of that when I’d first gone away.
An ache had settled in me that only observing her could ease but then that stopped being enough.
Her grief at my being gone too much for her to handle and I wasn’t there to carry it for her.
Asha shifted in the bed and sighed and I found it funny that this was the room she chose. The one where I’d ended a man’s life for daring to think he could violate her or our home. In its own twisted way, it was romantic.
She was probably taunting the hell out of his ghost.
She looked up and instead of being shocked she shocked me as her face broke into a smile and then a scowl.
“It’s about bloody time you got your arse here.”
I stared at her wondering what the hell she was talking about. And didn’t know if she had figured it out all this time and felt that I’d taken too long to get to her.
I mean she is a genius.
Cautiously, I watched her not wanting to spook her by coming closer.
“You expected me to get here quicker than I was?”
She sat up her face relaxing and I watched as the light blanket fell off her body. She rolled off the bed and stretched and she was smaller than before I left.
Damn, she really has been going through it.
“Did they have you waiting in a vestibule in heaven or something? I’m sure that whole being morally gray thing was probably the hold up but I assumed the ancestors would’ve been happy to welcome you to the other side.
” She smiled but it was sad still filled with the loss of me and not the joy I expected.
Wait.
I took a step forward my foot scraping the floor as I held my hand out to her. Her eyes shot to the floor and then back to my face and the richness of her skin fled as all the blood seemed to drain from her body.
“Asha—”
“No. You’re not real.” She took a step back and put her hand to her head, tapping it like she could somehow stop herself from the reality that was staring her in the face.
“You’d rather me be a ghost than be real?”
“Ghosts are fine. I have no problem paying veneration to the ancestors that came before and enabled me to be here. But if I’m hearing sounds that aren’t there besides your voice then that means I’ve truly lost my mind and I don’t know how to deal with that type of fracture.
My mind is all I have, Ori. If I lose that—” She was worried about me being flesh and blood but happily hoping I wasn’t because by her logic it would mean she was sane.
“That’s not true.”
“What’s not?” When she looked up at me with watery eyes I let my chest tighten and thought about how much strain I’d put her under.
Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons was much better in theory.
“You have me.”
“You know what I mean—”
She stopped speaking as I walked closer to her, purposefully dragging my feet the way I did when I wanted to annoy her. Just like then, I wanted her to acknowledge my presence and did it to annoy her. Annoying her was much easier than making myself vulnerable. But that had come anyway.
Her breathing accelerated and despite knowing what was about to happen I was powerless to stop her from falling to her knees. I ran across the room and braced her before she could hit the ground. When our bodies made contact tears flooded her eyes and I felt her body break out in chills.
“Ori?”
“It’s me, Ka’iulani.”
A watery smile spread across her face before her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out.
I watched the rise and fall of her chest waiting for her to wake up but not wanting to rush her. I didn’t think Asha would be so overcome that she would pass out. I thought I’d be dodging knives, books and bullets not waiting for my wife to wake up because she was unconscious.
“He referred to me as your wife, not your widow. He knew?” I glanced up at her face seeing that her eyes were finally open. She couldn’t have been awake long because her breathing patterns hadn’t changed. Keeping it steady made me wonder if it was something she’d learned when she’d been a hostage.
I knew who she was talking about because he was one of the few people who had been around Asha for the last few months. And the one who had taken it upon himself, probably out of guilt, to ensure she was okay.
“He did. Alec has always been a good friend, and his help in this was crucial. Without him and the Ortega-Castillo family, I wouldn’t have been able to make it out.”
She sat up shakily and when I moved to help her she held up her hand stopping me. It stung but I understood and kept my hands to myself. “You mean your brothers wouldn’t have been able to help you?”
“Their involvement would’ve been too much and too obvious.”
“You all were under their scrutiny.” I knew she would figure out that all of this had something to do with the Consortium and my old job. I’d wanted her to do it while I was gone but grief had been too much for her to think about the reality that I might be alive.
“They always were. Being present at their weddings and them at mine of course solidified things. Connection doesn’t mean complicity and of course no evidence of crimes normally.
But someone was working with the government trying to take us all down and I had to make a move to halt them attempting to undo over a century’s worth of progress for my family. ”