16. Greer #2
Zaria pulls me deeper into her world in increments—testing my reactions, watching how I handle each new level of violence and danger, always prepared for me to flinch or break or prove I'm not actually built for this after all.
I never do.
Most nights, she waits for me at Marco's bar.
I've started keeping a change of clothes in my car—trading button-downs for henleys or simple t-shirts, swapping slacks for jeans that won't stand out in her territory.
The transformation happens in bar bathrooms or my car, shedding my work identity to become someone who fits beside her.
She drags me along wherever she needs to go.
Supply pickups at the docks where shipping containers get loaded and unloaded with practiced efficiency.
Meetings with her crew where strategy gets hammered out over beer and sharp words.
Collections from businesses under Bennett protection, where she's firm but fair in ways that make people respect rather than fear her.
I watch and learn. Study the dynamics, the hierarchies, the unspoken rules that govern this world. Take mental notes about who defers to whom, which territories border theirs, what products move through which channels.
My marketing brain translates it all into patterns and systems, ways to optimize and predict and strategize.
I start offering suggestions—small things at first, testing whether she'll actually listen.
She does, incorporating my insights when they make sense and explaining why they don't when they're off-base.
It feels good. Necessary. Like I'm finally using my brain for something that matters instead of helping corporations sell products people don't need.
Some nights, Zaria shows up at my office building unannounced. My coworkers notice—Jake makes jokes about my "mystery girlfriend," Sarah stops trying to catch my eye during meetings, and my boss comments on how distracted I seem lately.
I don't care.
I take more sick days and work-from-home days than I ever have, just to be available when Zaria needs me. My performance reviews can suffer. My career trajectory can stall. None of it matters compared to being part of her world, being necessary to her in ways that go beyond just wanting her.
The sex is constant and consuming. We fuck in her apartment, in my house, in the back rooms of bars where privacy is relative and danger makes everything more intense.
In my car after tense meetings. Against walls in dim hallways.
Once, memorably, in a shipping container while her crew loaded product ten feet away.
She's addictive. The way she takes control, the way she praises me when I'm good and punishes me when I'm not, the way she looks at me like I'm simultaneously the best and worst decision she's ever made.
I can't get enough of her.
And the thing is—I'm not some submissive guy who bends for everyone. At work, I'm direct and assertive. With Hayes, I give as good as I get in our verbal sparring. Even with Lilah, I don't let her push me around when I think she's wrong about something.
But with Zaria? I bend. Drop to my knees. Follow orders with an eagerness that would embarrass me if it didn't feel so fucking right. She's the only person who's ever made me want to submit, the only one who's earned that kind of trust and surrender.
The first time she has to beat someone up in front of me, I watch with clinical interest instead of horror.
A dealer who shorted his payment and tried to play it off like the numbers were wrong.
Zaria doesn't hesitate—just walks up to him and breaks his nose with an efficient punch, follows it with a knee to the gut that doubles him over, then grabs his hair and slams his face into the bar.
Blood sprays across the wood. The dealer whimpers, begging, and Zaria tells him exactly what happens next time he tries to cheat her.
When she turns back to me, there's something wary in her expression. Like she's waiting for me to be disgusted, to see her differently now that I've watched her brutalize someone.
Instead, I just hand her a napkin for the blood on her knuckles.
"He's lucky you didn't break his jaw," I say calmly.
The wariness melts into something warmer. She kisses me hard, right there in front of her crew, marking me as hers in ways that go beyond just words.
Cain is there for most of it—a constant presence in Zaria's life that I have to learn to navigate.
At first, the irritation sits heavy in my chest every time he appears.
Not jealousy exactly, since Zaria made it clear nothing romantic exists between them.
But something territorial, possessive, like Cain represents the parts of her life I'm still trying to access.
Zaria notices. She always notices everything.
"You two need to get along," she tells us one night after watching me and Cain exchange terse greetings. "Cain's family. You're—" She pauses, weighing her words. "You're important. So figure it out."
The shift happens gradually. Cain stops looking at me like I'm some tourist playing dress-up and starts treating me like someone who might actually belong.
He tests me—asks questions about how I'd handle situations, watches how I react to violence, gauges whether I'm really built for this or just faking it.
I pass whatever internal metrics he's using.
"You move like Hayes taught you," Cain comments one night, watching me spar with one of Zaria's guys. "But you could be better."
"Then teach me." The words come out before I fully think them through.
His eyebrows rise. "You want combat training from me?"
"I want to be useful. Really useful, not just strategically useful." I wipe sweat from my forehead. "So yeah. Teach me."
He does.
Over the next two weeks, Cain becomes an unlikely mentor.
He takes me to an abandoned warehouse early in the mornings before I have to be at work, pushing me harder than Hayes ever did.
Shows me how to kill efficiently—where to stab, how to snap a neck, the quickest ways to incapacitate someone larger than me.
Teaches me to shoot properly, not just the basics Hayes covered but real tactical training. How to clear rooms, how to fire accurately under pressure, how to reload fast when adrenaline makes your hands shake.
The work is brutal. I leave every session covered in bruises and sweat, muscles screaming from exertion. But I also leave feeling like I'm actually becoming someone who belongs in Zaria's world instead of just visiting it.
Cain warms up to me somewhere along the way. Starts making jokes, including me in conversations with the crew, treating me less like an outsider and more like someone he's choosing to trust. It feels significant in ways I don't fully understand but appreciate anyway.
"You're not what I expected," he tells me one morning after a particularly intense training session.
"What did you expect?"
"Some rich boy slumming it for thrills." He tosses me a water bottle. "Someone who'd run the first time things got really ugly."
"And now?"
"Now I think you might actually last." He studies me with those dark eyes. "Z chose well. Even if she fought it like hell at first."
The approval settles something in my chest I didn't realize was still unsettled.
I'm part of this now. Part of her crew, her world, her life in ways that feel permanent and necessary.