8. Chapter 8
King Damini
My wife suggested we get some fresh air before returning home, but I was starving.
Whenever my anxiety flared up or my mind was scrambled, my appetite went through the roof.
And this whole situation with my father, Brooklyn, and them setting me up was fucking up my mental state in ways I couldn't even put into words.
My own father setting me up like that was insane and I wanted to kill him for it.
Who does some shit like that to their son?
It makes me feel like he only wanted me to come home for his own benefit.
My father was nothing but a sperm donor who tried to instill fear in me, but never tried to actually get to know me as his son.
Maybe, I was just a pawn on his chessboard the whole fucking time.
This betrayal cut down to my bones. A heavy ache settled behind my face.
My whole life, I prided myself on being a royal heir who handled his own business without needing a soul to lean on.
I was raised to believe that blood was thicker than water, but my own blood had tried to strip me of my dignity.
And yet... here was Adanna.
I glanced over at her in the passenger seat as the island scenery blurred past. I had spent weeks looking at her like she was a ticking time bomb, a beautiful, sociopathic gremlin who was one wrong move away from blowing my head off.
But watching her navigate this madness, a strange, overwhelming reality hit me.
She was caring for me more than my own people ever did.
My own father tried to turn me into an asset and humiliate me, while my wife was out here hunting down a person who laid a finger on me.
Shit was really fucking with my head. Maybe she wasn't as crazy as she acted—or maybe her brand of crazy was the exact thing keeping me breathing. I needed to stop being so damn hard on her. She was holding up her side of this marriage, and as terrifying as she could be, I found myself praying she’d still want to be with me at the end of all this.
As I gripped the steering wheel, Adanna reached over from the passenger seat and gently caressed my thigh. "You okay?"
I gave a tight nod, staring at the road ahead. "Yeah, thank you."
The second those words cleared my lips, her gentle energy vanished. She snapped her fingers. "Cool. Bust a left right here and keep going."
I squinted at her, but I didn't question her. I hit my blinker and cut the wheel, taking us down a private, wooded access road I had never paid attention to before.
A few miles down, a fortified perimeter fence topped with razor wire loomed out of nowhere. It was the entrance to the main Okoye military base. I slowed down, confused. The moment the armed guards in the tower saw our SUV pulling up, they hit the controls and the steel gates swung open.
I slowly drove inside since I'd never seen the inside of this compound before.
My eyes jumped out of my head as I looked around.
Huge artillery guns were mounted on reinforced platforms, and lines of dark blue tactical tanks were parked along the perimeter.
Further down the gravel field, I saw a group of female officers putting a platoon of male soldiers through a combat drill.
Adanna snapped her fingers again, staring straight ahead. "Just go straight, baby."
I kept rolling, surprised by just how many weapons they were hiding back here.
As we passed a line of barracks, I spotted Nyah stepping out of one of the houses.
She was clad in full gear, typing on her tablet.
She caught my eye through the tinted window, tipped her head in a salute, and kept strolling toward the front gate.
In fact, it seemed like no one was really back here.
We kept rolling further back until we reached the deep rear of the base, right where the private deep-water ports met the ocean.
Sprawled out across the concrete was a giant, metal maze of hundreds of those massive steel shipping containers.
They were the kind that stack on cargo ships to move freight, or use to smuggle weapons, contraband, and people across foreign waters.
Adanna pointed toward a dark alleyway between two towers of containers. "You can stay right here. I'll walk the rest of the way."
I hit the brakes, confused as I put the truck in park. "Wait, what?"
She didn't answer as she hopped out of the passenger side and immediately unbuttoned her blouse. She stripped her top off right there in the open.
"Aye!" I yelled, throwing my door open and hopping out after her. Then, I looked around to make sure no soldiers were watching. "What the fuck are you doing?"
She stood by the trunk in just her bra and panties, unfazed. She pressed her palm on my back taillight, and the taillight slid out as if it was a drawer—revealing a secret compartment in the body of the car that I had no damn clue was even there.
I stood there staring as my jaw dropped. "Since when the fuck is my taillight a hidden compartment?!"
Adanna didn't look back at me. She reached inside the hollowed space and pulled out a sleek duffle bag.
"I told you to wait in the car," she said flatly.
"And I thought you said we weren't splitting up anytime soon," I countered.
I watched as she grabbed a pack of face wipes from her bag and aggressively wiped her skin, stripping away her makeup until her face was clean.
She let out a sigh, and threw the dirty wipe into the bag. "I guess you gotta get used to it at some point... in case you need to handle something like this in the future… Leave your watch in the car, follow me, and keep up."
She was moving fast as fuck.
She pulled a black baby tee over her head, stepped into a pair of dark sweats, and dropped her ass onto the bumper just long enough to shove her feet into a pair of black kicks. Her hands were a whole blur as she yanked the laces tight and sprang right back up onto her feet.
Without a word, she took off down the aisle, cutting into the maze of shipping containers.
I stood there stuck on stupid, confused by the sudden sprint.
Before I could even open my mouth to ask what the hell we were doing, Adanna turned on her heel and skipped into the towering steel layout.
Within three seconds, she vanished out of my line of sight.
"Adanna!" I muttered under my breath. Then, I snatched my watch off my wrist and tossed it onto the leather seat before I sprinted into the metal maze.
My shoes were pounding against the ground until I finally caught up to her. She was leaning casually against a set of locked double doors. Her arms were crossed over her chest like she hadn't just sprinted a quarter-mile.
She looked up as I skidded to a halt. She stood there, letting me catch my breath before she looked me in my eyes.
"Did you eat yet?" she asked.
"Nah," I panted out, wiping my forehead. "Why?"
"Good," she whispered.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out that little steel key she’d shoved away earlier, and slid it into the latch. The rusted metal handle let out a nasty, high-pitched shriek as she yanked the door wide open.
She looked at me, and I looked at her.
She tipped her head toward the pitch-black darkness waiting inside. "Walk in."
My heart thudded. I stepped past her, crossing the threshold into the darkness of the metal box. She didn’t waste any time closing the door. Then, she flipped the switch and my stomach dropped.
In the very back of the container was a reinforced steel cage.
Inside were Guard Obo and his guard partner.
They were both chained up, bloody, bruised, and literally salivating at the mouth like rabid pit bulls.
Their eyes were bloodshot, pupils were blown wide, and they were eying us through the bars while rattling the steel.
I backed up a step. "How did you find them?”
“Ha! I had them before they were lost.”
“Why the fuck are they amped up like that, and what the fuck are you about to do?!"
Adanna stepped over to a workbench, calmly gathering a row of knives. "I wanted to handle this the right way, and get any information we need before they died."
"Wait, wait, wait," I stammered. I pointed at the cage as one of the guards slammed his face against the iron mesh. "Adanna, look at them!"
"Oh, yeah. I bought this truth serum from my connect in Atlanta," she said. "They about to sing like some canaries."
She walked back over to me, and shoved a pistol into my hand. Then, she looked me over before pulling a large aerosol canister and slapping it into my other palm. I squinted at the orange label in the dim light.
It was a giant can of bear spray.
"Bear spray?!" I yelled, looking from the can back to her face. "Adanna, are you out of your goddamn mind?!"
"Well, Shay—I mean, my connect said to go easy on the dose, or else they might have side effects," she offered nonchalantly. "That’s probably why they acting like that."
"Side effects?!" I shouted.
Adanna ignored my breakdown and said something that made my balls drop to the floor. "Look, I’m gonna let them go."
I repeated, “Let them go?!"
"Yeah, keep up," she said, rolling her shoulders. "I’m gonna let them go, and we will hunt them down."
"Adanna, what?!" I backed up against the container wall, holding the bear spray in one hand and the pistol in the other, completely freaking the fuck out.
"HUNT THEM DOWN?! They are out of their fucking minds! And you think we should hunt THEM?!"
She turned around to face me, and her dark eyes flashed with excitement. She pointed a manicured finger at my chest. "Yeah! What’s up with you?! Tighten up!"
"I am tightened up!" I barked back, staring at her since she’d lost her damn mind.
I had never in my life seen this woman look this genuinely happy. She was vibrating, looking like a kid on Christmas morning,
"After we hunt them down, they will tell us everything they know," she chirped. Her voice was light and almost playful as she tapped her chin. "Oh! Thennn, we taking them to a place worse than hell."
I couldn't even force another word out of my mouth. I just stood there frozen in the container, staring at my beautiful wife. She said that shit so casually, as if she was planning a Sunday morning brunch menu instead of an execution.
She was dead serious. Completely out of her mind, fully unbothered, and showing every single one of her crazy stripes.
And the worst part was watching her with that sinister glow on her face... I was falling for her all over again.
Adanna leaned up on her tiptoes, pulled my collar down, and pressed a kiss to my lips. "Remember to be safe and have fun."
"Ready?" she asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"No—"
"Set?"
"Adanna, do not—"
"Go!"
She slapped her hand down on a red button on the wall. A loud horn blared, and the gate of the cage slid wide open.
The two feral guards charged out of the cage toward us. I felt my dick join my balls on the floor.
"Oh, FUCK!" I screamed, raising the bear spray and the gun at the exact same time.