The Summer I Married An Unhinged Kingpin

Chapter One

Dominic Masters

I didn't flinch when the heavy steel doors of the warehouse groaned open.

The chilly night air rushed in, meeting the scent of oil and old blood.

I didn't flinch when my shooters dragged those three bums across the concrete.

Their sneakers scuffed against the grit as they struggled against the zip ties, as if they actually had a chance of getting away.

I just stood in the shadows, smoke from my cigar curling around my head like a crown.

I watched the duct tape peel halfway off their mouths from all that panicked, frantic breathing.

They shook like they already knew how this story was about to end.

Honestly, they should have known better than to touch anything with the Master's name on it.

These were the type of niggas who got bold off a little bit of desperation and a whole lot of stupidity.

They thought a couple of cheap masks and some stolen heat were enough to walk into my shit and take something from a man like me.

They took from the wrong nigga. Tonight, they were going to learn the price of disrespect in my city a debt you paid with a soul

Glass crunched under my designer boots as I stepped out of the darkness.

I moved slowly on purpose, wanting them to feel every second of the countdown.

Nobody spoke a word. The only sound in that massive, hollow space was the echo of my footsteps.

They hit the floor like a gavel. I let the silence sit on them, sinking deep into their bones until they shivered from the inside out.

Their eyes darted, searching the warehouse for an exit that didn't exist.

I stopped right in front of the one who thought he was the leader.

My shadow towered over him while he tried to shrink back into the wooden chair he was strapped to.

I took a long drag of my cigar and exhaled smoke directly into his face.

He coughed and sputtered, his eyes watering from the sting.

He looked like he wanted to speak, but terror gripped his throat too tightly to let words through.

I found a dark satisfaction in seeing a grown man reduced to a trembling mess from the weight of my presence.

"You really thought you could come in here and take from me?" I asked him, my voice coming out low and steady, which was always a thousand times more dangerous than if I had been screaming my head off.

I let my gaze sweep over the three of them, taking in their raggedy clothes and the way they couldn't even hold their heads up to look me in the eye.

"You thought you could touch my people and my livelihood and just walk away like it was a game?"

The one in the middle swallowed hard, his whole-body jolting when I stepped an inch closer.

He started tripping over his words, his voice sounding thin and shaky like a child caught in a lie.

"We… we didn't know it was your crew, Dom.

We swear on everything. We thought it was just a local spot.

Tell us what we've got to do to make it up, man. We can work it off or something."

I let out a quiet, cold breath. Dragging my tongue over my teeth, I stared at him like he was the most pathetic thing I'd ever seen.

"Shut the fuck up, you buster. You can't save yourself now, and you damn sure weren't worried about making things up when you were pointing guns at my workers."

Silence followed, heavy and suffocating.

It was the kind that comes right before a storm breaks everything in its path.

I was the storm, and if these fucking cornballs didn’t say the right shit I was gonna start breaking fucking jaws.

I circled them like a predator, the butt of my Glock tapping lightly against their temples as I passed.

I wanted to keep their pulses jumping. They needed to understand that their days were numbered and they were living on the very last one.

I wasn't just a boss in these streets. I was the judge, the jury, and the executioner.

Tonight, I wasn't feeling particularly merciful toward anybody who dared to try my hand.

That was when the rhythm of the room shifted entirely. The atmosphere got even more pressurized as the sound of a cane hitting concrete reached us before he did. It was a slow, deliberate tap I had known my whole life — a sound that usually meant someone was about to lose everything they loved.

My father walked into the light. Even though the sickness was eating him alive and making him look thinner than he used to be, he still carried himself like a god among men.

Power doesn't just disappear because a man gets a diagnosis.

My father was the type to spend his last breath making sure every nigga in the city knew who ran Atlanta.

He stopped next to me, his sharp eyes cutting through the gloom, and looked at the three men tied to the chairs.

His expression was pure, unadulterated disdain.

"Renny Taylor," my father said, his voice sounding like gravel being crushed under a heavy tire. "You had the nerve to try to rob my son after everything I've done to keep your family fed over the years?"

Renny looked like he was about to have a heart attack right then and there, his face turning a sickly shade of gray.

My father didn't wait for an answer. He just raised that silver-headed cane and cracked it across Renny's face with a sound that snapped through the warehouse like a whip.

Renny's head whiplashed to the side, and blood started leaking from his nose immediately, but he didn't even try to fight back.

He just sat there sobbing, the panic pouring out of him in a way that made me want to look away out of pure second-hand embarrassment.

"Please, Mr. Masters, I was desperate," Renny blurted out, the words tumbling over each other in a messy heap. "I got debts I can't pay, and people are coming for me. I didn't think it through. Just give me one more chance to fix it."

My father just looked at him with cold, dead eyes. He leaned on his cane, shaking his head as if he were disappointed in a stray dog.

That was when Renny said the one thing I never expected to hear from a man's mouth. "Look… I got a daughter, Donny. She's twenty-two, and she's pure. She's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Take her. She's yours. Just let me walk out of here, and we're even on everything."

I froze for a second, staring at the back of Renny's head as a wave of pure disgust washed over me. I'd seen a lot of foul shit in these streets. Still, a man offering his own flesh and blood to save his skin? That was a new level of low I didn't even know existed.

I crouched down until I was at eye level with him, making sure he saw the murderous intent in my gaze. "You really out here offering your daughter to keep from getting your brains blown out? That's where we're at in these streets now?"

Renny couldn't even look at me. His throat worked as if he tried to swallow the shame, but it was clear he meant every word. I straightened up and looked at my father, who was watching me, and his expression was stoic and impossible to read.

"Everything has value, Dominic," my father noted.

His voice dropped into that cold, lesson-teaching tone, the one I hated.

"You keep fighting me on this marriage thing, but right now, you have a solution in front of you.

You want a legacy and to keep the bloodline clean?

Here's a girl with no history in the game, and a father who just handed her over. "

I looked at my father as if he'd lost his mind, muttering that I couldn't be as desperate as Renny, but he just stared back, his expression unmoved, making it clear this wasn't a suggestion.

I turned on Renny and told him to get the hell out before I changed my mind, watching him scramble away like the rat he was.

That night was a blur of cold leather and city lights.

I sat in the back of the SUV, the engine idling while I waited for Taz to bring her to me.

When the door swung open and he shoved a girl into the seat, the mood in the car instantly changed.

She started screaming the moment she hit the leather, her hands flailing in a blind panic that was starting to get under my skin.

Taz didn't say a word. He pulled a black bag over her head to muffle the sound and keep her from seeing where we were going.

He nodded to me before stepping back and closing the door.

Once he was gone, it was just her and me. The only sound was her frantic, ragged breathing as she struggled against the restraints. I felt a flicker of something like pity, but I pushed it down deep. She had no clue that her father had sold her soul for a chance to keep breathing.

"Quiet," I ordered. My voice was flat and cold, cutting through her panic like a knife.

She instantly froze, her whole body tensing up as she realized she wasn't alone in the darkness. The car started moving through the streets of Atlanta. I sat there watching her, my mind racing with the weight of what I was about to do.

When we finally arrived at the house and I reached over to pull the bag off her head, the world seemed to stop for a second.

She had big, light-brown eyes filled with terror and sharp intelligence.

Ginger hair spilled over her shoulders in messy curls.

She was beautiful. Her skin glowed under the dim interior lights, and her curves filled out her clothes in a way that had my mind drifting to places where it shouldn't be going.

"This summer, you're mine," I told her, making sure my voice was firm enough to let her know there was no negotiation.

She looked at me as if I were a monster, her chest heaving as she tried to process the fact that she was sitting in a luxury car with a man she didn't know.

When she asked why she was there, I didn't hold back the truth.

I told her exactly what her father had done, watching the light die in her eyes as the reality of his betrayal settled in.

I could see the heartbreak shattering her from the inside out, but I didn't back down.

I told her I needed a wife and an heir to keep my father's dream alive, and that she was the one I had chosen to fill that role.

The weight of it all was too much for her, and before she could even say another word, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she passed out right there on the leather.