Chapter 3
JABARI KNOX
Corporate floors made my skin itch.
The upper levels of Meridian Tower were a costume designed for civilians: bright lighting, clean lines, polite signage, smiling receptionists with practiced voices.
They even engineered the damn air. Expensive coffee and synthetic freshness pushed through the vents to convince everybody that nothing ugly could happen here.
My body never bought that kind of lie. I believed in loyalty, territory, and threat. That’s just how I’m wired. Glass did not change them, and neither did a badge that said CONTRACTOR.
I started below the corporate floors, where the air remained cold and honest. Where walls were concrete instead of glass, where doors did not open unless they were told, where men did not pretend they were harmless.
It smelled like home.
I ain’t grow up with money. I grew up where humidity sat heavy on your shoulders, where the roads ran dark between small towns and bigger sins.
Born on the Carolina and Georgia line, raised around men who measured respect by tone and violence by follow-through, I learned early talking was something you did after you already had the advantage.
Meridian ain’t ask me to be polished. Meridian asked me to be effective. That’s why Malachi kept me close, why he trusted my hands when the rest of the world needed a smile.
The service elevator waited in a private corridor with no cameras visible, which didn’t mean there weren’t cameras. Pack Meridian watched everything. We just didn’t announce it. The moment I stepped inside, the elevator recognized my access.
The doors sealed with a mechanical click.
Elijah’s voice slid into my ear. “She’s already packed. She’s at the elevator bank.”
That got my attention. “Already, sir?”
“She hesitated,” he replied. “Her screen locked and told her to remain at her station for escort, and she looked for exits before trying to escape. No panic, no calls. She’s at the elevator bank now, waiting on doors that aren’t opening.”
Yeah. That right there had my temper startin’ to climb.
My shoulders rolled once, loosening the jacket across my back, letting that familiar coil of violence settle behind my ribs. Malachi’s order stayed clear in my head. Alive. Unmarked. Quiet.
That didn’t mean gentle.
I ain’t built for gentle. The scars on my skin ain’t decoration, and they ain’t lessons learned slow neither. They proof I survived the kind of men who thought pain made you smaller. It don’t. It just makes you useful, long as it don’t kill you.
The elevator climbed in smooth silence. My reflection stared back from the brushed steel, and for a second I saw the man Meridian made outta me.
Locs pulled back. The scar on my cheekbone healed ash-light against my skin, earned when I fought blood for blood.
My eyes ain’t leave much space for anybody to mistake me for kind.
I checked the file on my phone as the elevator rose. Hawthorne and Vale contractor. Forensic accountant. Designation: beta.
Man, that’s bullshit.
I couldn’t smell her through several floors of concrete and steel yet, but my instincts was already pricklin’. Meridian don’t lock down a workstation for some harmless beta doing harmless work. Something about that girl was off.
Elijah’s voice came back, calm and precise. “Her employee record says beta. The system is flagging suppression markers.”
“Medication, sir?” I asked.
“Possibly,” he confirmed. “Or chemical masking.”
Betas don’t mask. They ain’t got to. Omegas do. The thought crossed my mind and I shoved it right back out soon as it showed up. Sounded stupid even thinkin’ it. Omegas couldn’t work here. No way Meridian would’ve hired one.
Omegas were trouble, not ’cause they weak, but ’cause they powerful in all the wrong ways. An unclaimed omega could turn disciplined men into damn fools.
The elevator chimed soft on the seventeenth floor. The doors slid open onto expensive quiet: carpet thick enough to swallow footsteps, glass walls turning every office into an aquarium, and lighting softened by fixtures trying real hard to look warm.
The people in that space didn’t belong to Pack Meridian. They belonged to the cover story. Contractors in pressed clothes. Analysts with tired eyes. Assistants walking around with tablets.
When I stepped out, heads lifted. They clocked my size first. Then the way I walked, the way the building seemed to make room for me. After that they looked away. Folks didn’t need pheromones to recognize danger. They felt it in the way a man moves when he ain’t asking permission to exist.
I moved down the corridor with my phone in one hand, the other hand free and ready. The cameras in the ceiling didn’t turn obvious, but I felt them. Small corrections in the lenses as they tracked me. Meridian saw what it needed to see.
Meridian moved with me.
The overhead lights dimmed by a fraction, subtle enough to feel like building mood instead of a lockdown.
Two men in maintenance polos appeared at the far end of the hall pushing a cart stacked with boxes.
They angled it just right, blocking sight-lines from the open floor.
A woman with a badge that said COMPLIANCE stepped into view, smiling calm, her voice soft enough to sound harmless.
“Network issue,” she told the nearest cluster of desks. “Please remain at your stations. IT is addressing it now.”
People listened because they wanted to. Folks wanted safety more than they wanted the truth.
I called the Hawthorne and Vale supervisor. Not because I didn’t trust Elijah, but because I trusted my instincts more than anybody, and right then my instincts was loud.
The supervisor picked up on the second ring with irritation already in his voice.
“This is Meridian building security,” I said. My voice left no softness in the room and no space for negotiation. “Nyx Brooks. I need information on her. Right quick.”
Silence. Then a nervous chuckle.
“She’s one of our contractors. Is there a problem?”
“Designation, sir,” I said.
“What?”
I repeated it slower.
He cleared his throat. “Beta. On file, she’s a beta.”
On file. Files was paper. Paper could lie.
“Tell me about her, sir,” I said.
“She’s quiet,” he replied quick. “Hard worker. Always early. Always turning things in before deadlines. She doesn’t really socialize. No friends on the floor. She does her job and leaves.”
“And leadership rounds, sir?” I asked.
He hesitated. I let the silence sit there a second.
“She calls out sick,” he admitted. “A lot. Whenever the managing partners do their rounds. It’s a pattern.”
So she dodged the boss. Came to work, collected her checks, then disappeared before anybody important could stop her and take a real look.
“Any disciplinary issues, sir?”
“No,” he said right away. “None. Honestly, she’s one of the best people we’ve had.”
Best people don’t trip Meridian’s alarms.
I ended the call and kept walking. My steps stayed steady, but my mind was moving fast. An omega hiding as a beta don’t land on our floor by accident. Not in this tower.
Elijah’s voice came through my ear again. “She’s still on camera. She keeps looking toward the corridor. She knows an approach is coming.”
“Send her the pop-up for me,” I said.
“A warning?”
“A command,” I corrected. “Make sure she knows we know, sir.”
A beat.
“On what channel?”
“Her terminal and her phone,” I said. “MeridianSecure. DO NOT MOVE.”
Elijah didn’t ask twice.
I pictured the message hitting her screen hard, same corporate-polished threat she already got the first time.
THIS TERMINAL IS LOCKED. PLEASE REMAIN AT YOUR STATION FOR ESCORT.
Then the next line on top of it, the part meant to make her choose instead of asking nice.
I kept my voice low when I spoke again. “You got her in your sights, sir?”
I said it that way on purpose. If another man was listening on the channel, he’d hear it and start wondering.
Wonder why I was hunting a contractor on a corporate floor.
Wonder what kind of problem was about to happen upstairs.
And when men start worrying about optics, they move to get involved.
Not because they care about her, but because Meridian don’t allow mess where people can see.
Elijah answered right away. “Yes. Elevator lobby. Bag on her shoulder. Shoes off. The escalation just hit. She went still when she read it.”
“She finna bolt,” I said.
“She is positioned for it,” he replied. “Exit path planned. Stairwell C is her likely play.”
My mouth pulled tight. Let her try.
I reached the elevator corridor. The space outside the elevator bank was all mirrors and fake calm, built to make people forget somebody always watching. Bright light bouncing off the glass made the hallway look wider than it really was.
It wasn’t. Meridian just liked folks thinking they had choices.
Nyx Brooks stood there with her bag already on her shoulder, shoes kicked off beside the wall like she planned to run. She angled toward the doors that wouldn’t open, posture tight and ready.
She stopped the second she saw me.
For half a second we just looked at each other, and the room felt smaller.
She didn’t widen her eyes and beg. Didn’t smile like she could charm her way out of trouble. Her gaze lifted to mine and stayed there, sharp and measuring.
That was the first thing I clocked.
The second thing I noticed was she was beautiful. The kind of Black beauty that ain’t asking permission to exist. Skin deep and rich. Curves pressing against that office blouse, not hidden, not trying to be small. Just there. Solid. Real.
And my body didn’t react to her like she was just some woman standing in a hallway.
My alpha took that personal. Heat rolled low in my gut, sharp and ugly. Nothing tender about it. Nothing romantic. Aggression first. The kind that wanted to press her against a wall and make her hold still long enough for me to figure out what she was.
Fear flashed across her face, quick and controlled, a spark she tried to swallow before it could crack.
Good.