Forced Matrimony With An Unhinged Menace

Chapter 6

I was sitting in my car crying my eyes out and I had never even been a crier like that.

But two days ago my father sat me down in his office and told me I had to marry a man I didn’t know. He said that it wasn’t up for discussion. Just like that.

He said that shit like he was telling me what was for dinner, like my whole life was something he could just rearrange when it was convenient for him and this came out of nowhere.

He knew I had someone I’d recently started dating and was really feeling, so I couldn’t understand this random demand he’d come to me with.

A marriage wasn’t some shit to take lightly, but he wanted to make it seem as if it was a small deal.

I knew he wasn’t telling me everything. That’s what made it worse. My father, Tyree Taylor, had gotten himself into something deep and instead of handling it like a man he was laying it on me. Wanted me, his own daughter to walk into some stranger’s family and fix what he broke.

That wasn’t happening.

I loved my daddy. More than almost anything. But there was a limit and he had hit it two days ago in that office. I was giving him a break. I needed him to sit and think about his request while I disappeared out of his life for a while.

I wiped my face, started my car and backed out the driveway.

I needed to get out of Dallas for a while.

I had to leave long enough so I’d miss the wedding that I’d just fuckin’ learned about.

I was about to show them that I really wasn’t doing this shit.

I had to clear my head. Figure out my next move because I had things going on in my life that nobody knew about and a forced marriage was going to mess up everything.

I backed up and got halfway out the driveway before a black truck flew up behind me out of nowhere.

I slammed my brakes hard, my heart pounding from the damn wreck I had just avoided.

I looked in my mirror trying to figure out what was going on and before I could even process it, the passenger door of that truck flew open and a big, husky man jumped out moving fast and direct, straight toward my car.

Something in my gut said lock your doors.

I reached for the lock too late.

He snatched my door open and grabbed me out of my seat like I was nothing.

He was throwing me over his shoulder. I screamed, yelled, and grabbed at everything I could reach.

The steering wheel, the seat, the door, I was kicking and punching him as hard as I could but this man didn’t even flinch.

He just put his hand over my mouth and I couldn’t do anything but breathe hard against his palm while he dragged me across my own driveway.

I was being kidnapped.

In broad daylight. In front of my own fuckin’ house. This was it. I was about to die.

“You can have it all! Everything I got. I’ll empty out all my accounts, please just don’t kill me, pleaseeee! If it’s the money you want, I can get it.” I cried, and this big ass nigga ignored me and didn’t respond.

He got me to the back of the truck, threw me inside and I hit the floorboard hard. I scrambled back trying to get away from the door and that’s when I realized somebody was already in the back of the truck.

He was sitting across from where I had landed, looking disgusted at me.

Like I was the last face that he wanted to see.

He was fine as hell, though. Handsome in a way that didn’t make him look any less dangerous.

Dark eyes, jaw tight, looking at me like I was a problem he had to figure out how to solve.

He had a scowl locked on his face while looking at me and wasn’t trying to hide it.

He didn’t say anything right away. Just stared at me like he was waiting on me to calm down.

I was shaking. Crying. Trying to catch my breath from being snatched out my own car.

“Sit down,” he said. Teeth clenched. Low.

I couldn’t even respond.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked.

I shook my head no. Was I supposed to know this gangsta?

He leaned forward and looked me dead in my eyes.

“I’m the nigga you ‘bout to marry.”

I stared at him trying to find something in his face that looked like he was playing.

There was nothing there. This was Kaseem Carter. It had to be him, sitting in front of me, and the nigga looked more dangerous than the stories I’ve heard.

“I don’t know what my father told you or what kind of arrangement y’all think you have,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “But I’m not marrying anybody. Especially not somebody who just had me snatched out my own car, in front of my home. This is beyond crazy!”

He looked at me like I hadn’t said a word.

“You’re going to marry me,” he said. Flat.

Like it was already done and I was just the last one to find out.

“I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you think.

That part ain’t changing. I have shit that I have lined up, and you not about to fuck that up for me.

So yeah, yo ass is gonna marry me and that ain’t up for debate. ”

“You can’t just—”

“Where were you going?” he asked calmly, but cold.

The shift in subject threw me off. “What?”

“Where were you going.” He said it again slower like I hadn’t heard him the first time. His eyes were locked on my face reading everything I was trying not to show.

“For a drive,” I said. “I just needed some air.”

He nodded slow. The way people nod when they already know you’re lying and want you to know that they know.

“For a drive,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“With duffel bags.”

My stomach dropped.

I turned my head toward the window and through it I could see one of his men standing next to my car pulling my bags out of the backseat.

My three duffel bags. The ones I had packed this morning after I decided to skip town and run from this damn arrangement.

The ones that were supposed to get me far enough away from Dallas that this whole situation couldn’t reach me.

I turned back around.

He was still watching me. Hadn’t moved. Hadn’t changed his expression even slightly.

“Those are — I just had those in there from—”

“Stop.” He didn’t say it in a mean way. He said it the way you talk to somebody when you’re tired of hearing them. “Don’t insult me.”

His men loaded my bags into the back of the truck and closed it. That’s when it hit me all the way. They weren’t taking me somewhere and bringing me back. This wasn’t a warning or a scare tactic. And I couldn’t pay these people off.

“Please.” The word came out before I could decide whether I wanted to use it. “Just let me go. I’ll talk to my father. I’ll figure something out. Just please don’t do this.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes but it didn’t reach the rest of his face.

“This wouldn’t be happening if you had just agreed,” he said.

“You think I got time to be chasing grown women down driveways? I got a whole operation to run.” He leaned back.

“But you made it clear you were about to run. So now I gotta make sure you don’t.

You’ll stay at my house until the wedding.

After that you’ll have more room to move around. But right now you don’t get that.”

“You can’t keep me at your house—”

“Yeah, all right. Watch me.”

I opened my mouth and closed it because there was genuinely nothing to say to that.

“Hand me yo phone.” he said, holding his hand out.

I looked at his hand. Then at his face. “Are you serious right now.”

He didn’t repeat himself. Just kept his hand out and waited with the patience of a man who had never once not gotten what he asked for.

I reached into my pocket and put my phone in his hand. My hands were shaking and I hated that he could see it.

He looked at the phone, then looked at me. “You get this back when you act like you got some sense.”

“That’s my phone. You can’t just—”

“I just did that too.” He tucked it away. “You got anything else you want to test me on right now or are we good? I’m not the nigga to play with, and I hope you catch on sooner rather than later,”

I pressed my lips together so hard they went numb.

I was shaking, phoneless, my bags were in the back of his truck and I was sitting across from a man who had not raised his voice one single time and that somehow made him scarier than if he had been screaming.

There was nothing behind his eyes that looked like he would lose sleep over anything he decided to do.

Nothing that looked like there was a line he wouldn’t cross.

My biggest fear was of what he’d do to me whenever we got to wherever the hell he was taking me.

My own father had thrown me to the wolves. I’d never forgive this.

This man would hurt somebody then go home, eat dinner and sleep peacefully like nothing had happened.

I knew it, that same way you knew things that you couldn’t explain. You just felt it.

So I sat there. Hands in my lap. Tears drying on my face because even they knew it was time to stop.

He watched me settle. Then he reached over and put two fingers under my chin and lifted my face toward his. His touch wasn’t rough but it wasn’t gentle either. It was just firm. Like everything else about him.

He looked at me for a long moment. Up close he was even finer and that made me even more angry because this situation did not need that complication on top of everything else. I shouldn’t be attracted to someone who was trying to take my life and freedom from me.

“Fix ya face, Mrs. Carter,” he said quietly. “This shit can only go bad if that’s how you make it.” he looked at me with a stern expression. Calling me by his last name.

He dropped his hand, leaned back and looked out the window like the conversation was over.

And I sat there staring at the side of his face trying to figure out how a man this crazy could look this damn good.