3. AMAI
AMAI
Not because my alarm went off. Not because Syx was making noise downstairs or Priest was calling about territory disputes.
I woke because my body knew.
Today mattered.
I lay in the dark for three minutes, staring at the ceiling, irritated with myself for caring. For the anticipation humming beneath my skin like a low-grade fever I couldn’t shake.
Fourteen candidates in eleven months.
Fourteen women who’d walked into my estate, sat across from Raymond, and failed to be what I needed.
Too eager. Too detached. Too curious. Too scared.
This was number fifteen.
Truth Renois.
And I’d woken up early for her.
I threw off the covers and headed to the shower.
The water hit my skin at exactly 102 degrees—hot enough to wake me up, controlled enough not to scald. I stood under the spray longer than usual, letting the heat work into my shoulders, my neck, and the places where tension lived even when I slept.
I washed with the same precision I did everything else. Methodical. Efficient. No wasted motion.
But today, I caught myself adjusting the temperature twice. Rinsing my hair a second time. Standing under the water an extra thirty seconds like I was stalling.
Like I was nervous.
I shut off the water harder than necessary.
I wasn’t nervous. I didn’t get nervous.
I was a menace. I’d built an empire from the Lower Ninth Ward with blood and strategy and the kind of control most men only pretended to have. I didn’t lose sleep over women. I didn’t wake up early for interviews.
Except I had.
And that pissed me off.
I dried off and moved to the closet.
Normally, I grabbed whatever was clean and expensive—Tom Ford, Brioni, Zegna, it didn’t matter. Power dressed the same in any label.
But today, I stood there longer than I should have.
I pulled out a charcoal suit. Put it back. Too severe.
Navy. Too corporate.
Black. Too funeral.
I settled on slate gray—Ermenegildo Zegna, custom-tailored, with a crisp white shirt and no tie. Professional but not cold. Approachable but still in control.
I dressed slowly, buttoning each button with the same care I used when loading a clip or signing a contract. When I looked in the mirror, I saw exactly what I wanted the world to see.
Wealth. Power. Control.
A man who had everything.
Except the one thing that mattered.
I turned away from my reflection and headed downstairs.
The estate was silent at this hour. No staff yet. No Syx lurking in hallways. Just me and the weight of old money soaked into every piece of furniture, every painting, every floorboard.
I walked into my office and closed the door behind me.
The room smelled like leather and old wood and the faint trace of cigars. I didn’t smoke but kept them around because they reminded me of my grandfather—the only man in my family who’d ever looked at me like I was more than a weapon.
I sat at my desk and pulled Truth’s file from the locked drawer.
Raymond had already gone through it. Background check. Financial history. Medical records. Psychological evaluation. Everything was clean. Everything checked out.
But I wanted to see her again.
I opened the file, and her photograph stared back at me.
Truth Renois. Twenty-seven years old. Divorced. Living in the Seventh Ward in her mama’s shotgun house.
But it was her face that stopped me.
Chocolate skin. High cheekbones. Full lips that looked like they smiled more often than they frowned. Hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, no makeup, no pretense.
And her eyes.
Kind.
That’s what got me.
Not beautiful—though she was. Not sexy—though I’d noticed that too.
Kind.
Like she’d been through hell and came out the other side still believing people were worth saving.
I leaned back in my chair, studying her.
Raymond’s notes were clipped to the inside of the folder. I’d read them twice already, but I read them again.
Bloodline traces back to the Treme Guardians—one of the foundational families in New Orleans.
Community anchors. Protected by ancestral power.
Spiritual lineage runs deep. Maternal grandmother was a root worker.
Great-grandfather helped rebuild after the 1927 flood.
The Renois name carries weight in certain circles.
I’d grown up hearing stories about families like hers. The ones who’d survived slavery, Jim Crow, Katrina, and every other attempt to erase them. The ones the ancestors watched over because their blood was tied to the city itself.
Old magic. Old power.
The kind you couldn’t buy or steal.
And here she was—living in a shotgun house with an alcoholic mama, working double shifts at a nursing home, broke in every way that mattered. Raymond’s notes were through.
But her eyes in this photograph didn’t look broken.
They looked alive.
I traced the edge of the photo with my thumb, then caught myself and pulled my hand back.
What the hell was I doing?
This wasn’t about her. This was about biology. A contract. A solution to a problem I couldn’t fix any other way.
I’d rejected fourteen women because they didn’t understand what this was. They thought it was romance or rescue or some kind of fairy tale where the rich man falls for the poor girl and everything works out.
But Truth hadn’t looked like that.
She’d looked like she was trying to figure out if all this was real.
And when the form asked her why she wanted to do this, she didn’t lie.
Because I need the money. And because I’m good at keeping promises.
No performance. No manipulation.
Just honesty.
I stared at her photograph and felt something shift in my chest—I didn’t have a name for it and didn’t want to examine.
She had light in her.
Real light.
The kind that didn’t come from money or power or control. The kind that came from surviving and still choosing to be soft.
And I was a man who lived in the dark.
I closed the file and set it on the desk.
This was dangerous.
Not the contract. Not the surrogacy. Not even the risk of my enemies finding out.
Her.
She was dangerous because she made me want things I’d stopped wanting years ago.
Connection. Warmth. Something that wasn’t transactional.
I stood and walked to the window, looking out at the Garden District in the early morning light. The streets were empty. The mansions quiet. Everything perfectly controlled.
Just like my life.
Just like this contract.
I turned back to the desk and picked up the file one more time.
Truth Renois.
In six hours, she’d walk through my door. Raymond would ask his questions. I’d sit there and watch her, looking for cracks, for lies, for anything that told me she wasn’t what I needed.
And if she passed?
I’d offer her $250,000 to carry my child.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
This wasn’t about her kindness or her light or the way her eyes looked in a photograph.
This was about legacy. About the Landry name surviving. About proving I wasn’t broken in the one way that mattered most.
I closed the file and locked it back in the drawer.
By the time she arrived, I’d have my walls back up.
By the time she left, I’d know if she was the one.
And if she wasn’t, I’d keep searching.
Because I didn’t have a choice.
I didn’t get to want things.
I only got to take them.
The hours crawled.
I tried to fill them with work—the kind of work that usually consumed me completely, the kind that required precision and focus and left no room for distraction.
It didn’t work.
At 7:15 AM, I called Priest.
“Talk to me,” I said when he answered.
“About what?” His voice was rough with sleep. I’d woken him up.
“Anything. The docks. Rahsaan. That shipment coming in next Thursday.”
There was a pause. Then: “You good?”
“I’m fine. Just give me the update.”
Priest sighed. “Docks are quiet. Rahsaan’s people been sniffing around the Bywater territory, but nothing serious yet. Thursday’s shipment is on schedule—Dominic’s handling it personally after yesterday.”
I almost smiled at that. Dominic would be handling everything personally for a while.
“Good. Keep me updated if anything changes.”
“Amai.”
“What?”
Another pause. “You sure you good?”
“I’m fine,” I said, and hung up.
I wasn’t fine.
I was distracted, and that pissed me off.
At 8:30 AM, I went to the gym in the east wing of the estate.
I ran five miles on the treadmill—fast, punishing, the kind of pace that should’ve cleared my head. But every time I tried to focus on my breathing, on the burn in my legs, on anything except her, my mind drifted back to that photograph.
Kind eyes.
Living in the hood but still soft somehow.
Bloodline protected by ancestors.
I increased the speed. Pushed harder.
It didn’t help.
By the time I finished, I was drenched in sweat and no closer to control than I’d been when I woke up.
At 10:00 AM, I showered again and changed into a different suit—navy this time, Tom Ford with a white shirt and silver cufflinks that had belonged to my grandfather.
I told myself it didn’t matter what I wore.
I changed the cufflinks twice anyway.
At 11:00 AM, Kaisen called.
“You really doing this?” he asked without preamble.
“We’re not having this conversation again.”
“I’m just saying?—”
“And I’m just saying we’re done talking about it.” My voice was ice. “You got something else to say, or are you calling just to piss me off?”
Silence.
Then, “Mama’s asking about you.”
“Tell her I’m fine.”
“She wants to see you.”
“I’ll call her.”
“Amai—”
I hung up.
Kaisen had been calling more often lately. Ever since Raymond started the surrogate search. Ever since he’d figured out what I was doing and why I had no other choice.
Guilt, probably.
Good.
He should feel guilty.
At 12:30 PM, I ate lunch in my office—blackened catfish and dirty rice that Layla had left in the fridge with reheating instructions. I barely tasted it.
I kept looking at the clock.
1:00 PM. One hour until Truth arrived.
I pulled up security reports on my laptop. Reviewed territory maps. Checked shipment schedules. Answered emails that didn’t need answering.
Anything to keep my hands busy.