Disclaimers: DO NOT COPY OR REPOST MY WORK. DO NOT TRAIN AI WITH MY WORK.
Warnings: You are in charge of your own experience! Mature Audiences ONLY: 18+, Minors DNI- Use of the N-word, Profanity, Gun Violence, Asphyxiation Pairing: black male x black female Words: 4,062k
A/N: Sorry it took so long! I am back with Part 5 of this series. This is is another development in the story. No smut this time, sorry, however I think that Adrian's story in Part 4 was enough to hold yall for now. LOL.
Summary: Terry looks for ways to advance the case and notices his longing for Y/N in her absence. When unusual circumstances bring them together, Terry has to fight to keep them both afloat. Will he rise to the occasion or must he deal with the consequences of his inaction?
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TERRY
I hadn't seen her in a few weeks, and she missed the morning department meeting. She forwarded her notes to SA Hilt, and from the presentation, she has been working her ass off. Uncovering the next auction and securing a platinum voting card to be duplicated had just brushed the surface. She retrieved snapshots of some of the faces behind the syndicate. Planning to purchase yet another real estate space for a gallery, she gathered some intel that they may be using it as a storage facility instead. What the actual inventory was remained a mystery. Last month, I took inventory of each of the containers at the docks.
During the meeting, I told the team about what I learned about the construction of the containers, weight, size, contents, and compartments. Most of the containers had hidden compartments with the sides and the rear. I found massive amounts of platinum cards in one of them— the same ones we learned were used for voting. The weight of them differed. At least four of them seemed to be of different weights even though their color, width, and length were the same. I passed the ones I collected off to SA Hilt to see if they could break down their contents. Same coating but different materials. The difference in weight had to be the key to how they were bidding or which items they were allowed to bid for. Maybe it was a way to turn in their chips after bidding, so to speak. I found no traces of coke or any drug paraphernalia anywhere. This was strange.
A good portion of the clients attending these bidding wars had strong connections to different cartels. I couldn't open the canvases on the art without it going unnoticed, but all the paintings in the storage containers were of the correct weight. Nothing felt too hollow or too heavy in one particular area. It bothered me ever since I left. Making sure to connect at least five of the security cameras to our feeds and servers, I gave the video encoder to SA Donovan. Before leaving her cubicle, I subtly attempted to ask where Y/N had been.
"Checking on your boo is sweet. You tryna make me jealous or somethin'?" she asked in a lighthearted faux snarl.
"Just wanted to make sure everyone on the team is straight. This meeting was an all-hands-on-deck meeting. She's lead, and she wasn't there." I took time making sure my delivery was even and reticent.
"Riiiiiiight," she started with a knowing eye. Technically, you've been leading since you got here, Hot Shot, and she forwarded all of her materials to you via SA Hilt. With all the information she's uncovered, I would think she's allowed a personal day or two."
"So that's what this is about? She's protesting meetings because I'm technically lead?"
"I didn't say that. I just pointed out that your statement was false and that she did her work. That work was presented on time in the meeting. That is what is required in our huddles at The Box." She was defensive and cold.
"I see" was all I managed.
"I'll let her know that you asked about her—for her safety, of course," she flashed a small, curt smile and went back to looking at the image on her screen.
Taking my leave, I wondered what that was about. Am I on Donovan's shit list too? I don't even know what I did. Regardless, I needed to lay eyes on Y/N. Stakes were getting high, and anything could happen. I arrived home in the early evening after all the paperwork I had to write, fill out, and send. That's one thing I miss about just being an SA. There is very little paperwork outside of your case. Everything has to be reviewed and signed off by me, so I'm doing most of the paperwork in my department.
Breaking up the monotony of scribbling, underlining, circling, and clicking on keys, I went for a run. The trail next to my hold-up was beautiful at sunset. I would clear my head and figure out what the next move would be. In the next two days, everything has to be flawless.
I'm sure my presence is being felt on campus, judging by the stares I get from certain employees. Adrian, no matter what Y/N wants to believe, isn't clueless or harmless. He's exactly who I think he is, and if he thinks I'm law enforcement, he will likely inform others in his organization.
As I ran, I mentally reorganized the pictures on the case board in my office, picturing where Adrian fit in all this. He wasn't the main guy, but he literally came out of nowhere. Something about him doesn't feel right. How does an ordinary curator hire eyes on a college campus? How does an ordinary curator have a detail? I get the expensive cars and luxury apartments in the city, but he has influence. I just don't know why. Two miles skated by me according to my Apple watch; I could get in two more before heading home to hit the showers and re-working the case.
My body collided with another after making a sharp left turn. Contents of a cover cup slipped in the air while papers from a well-tanned leather satchel flew in the other direction.
"Shit!" yelped the voice beneath me.
"Damn, I'm so sorry. I didn't see you. There is sort of a blind spot…"
"It's okay. I know what you mean."
Either my eyes were deceiving me, or this was … no, my eyes definitely weren't deceiving me. I could never forget her face. Why would she be here? How was she here? If she recognizes me, that could blow the whole case, especially if she's a part of what is going on in and around that museum. She looked exactly the same as I remembered her all those years ago. She stood five foot ten inches with long jet-black hair that kissed her back two inches above her waist. Her pupils were infused with the color of jade, her lips were soft and shaped in a relaxed pout, and her facial structure was every model's dream. Her athletic frame was garbed in a loose burgundy jumpsuit and a black leather jacket.
I stood paralyzed for a moment before deciding to help her up. Holding out my hand, I pulled her onto her feet and made my way to the scattered papers. Gathering the ones I could, I returned to her to present my findings in scattered disarray.
"Thank you"
"Again, I apologize for running into you."
"That's okay. You know, you look really familiar."
"Do I?"
"Yeah, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels like we've met before," she chuckled. "My friends laugh at me and tell me that I literally say that about everyone these days. My name is —"
My phone rang loudly, interrupting the sentence I didn't need her to finish. I was well aware of who she was, but I wanted to stick around and see if she remembered who I was.
"Excuse me for a minute," I said, answering my phone. "Hello?"
The phone on the line was quiet for a moment before replying.
"We need to talk. I can meet you at The Box."
"I'm not there. I can send you an address, though."
"Okay. I'll see you there."
I turned back, eager to pick up my previous conversation, but she was no longer there. At least that remained the same. I texted the coordinates in my phone to the caller and ran home. Showering and changing into a comfortable Maison Cashmere sweatsuit, I headed out of the location. I parked two blocks down from the side entrance and walked around until I came to the front of the diner.
After ensuring I wasn't being followed or there weren't any marks in the surrounding areas, I walked in the door. I sat in the booth in the far back and ordered a coffee. I wouldn't drink it, but I did want something to warm my hands with. Besides, coffee mugs are always made for good weapons. I had taught that lesson several times to my former students at the Corp and the occasional 'badass' who tried me. The scent accosted me. I missed it. I longed for it. I silently cursed it for being absent for so long. She sat down with another man across from me in the booth. I looked at her intently, waiting for her to explain her cryptic phone call and the man beside her.
She took her time revealing the nature of this impromptu meeting; I made her feel my gaze until she started to speak.
"SA Richmond, this is Matthew. Matthew, this is SA Richmond."
"SA Richmond? What does Matthew mean to this case, SA Olisa."
"Matthew is a runner for Adrien and his half-brother."
"His what?"
"His half-brother," she said shakily.
I lifted my eyes from her and turned them on him. I didn't know whether she had secured a key witness or endangered our whole case. I watched him fiddle with his ring. His hands were steady, but he kept rotating his ring with his thumb. He had a family or at least someone he cared about losing. He caught me staring at his ring and stopped fidgeting.
"If you want to know if you should be sure about me. I don't know. I don't know about me either. I ain't never been on this side," he said, voice low and raspy. He was loyal and always had been it appeared.
"So why are we here?"
"Cause he's going too far, and I can't have that."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that he's flying a little too close to the sun, and it's starting to affect what I got going. That's a big problem."
"So y'all couldn't work it out? Say what you're not saying, or we can leave here. I got shit to do." He looked on for a while, then began to speak.
"We were thick as thieves. I was his left and right hand. Everything was good after we came back from Panama. We were on top. Then, he took a trip to El Salvador alone. I didn't hear from him until two years later. I was managing things in his absence as he requested, but we started to worry. We went to look for him for the third time, and he just popped up. He was quiet, had new scars, had new close. He looked like my nigga, but that wasn't my nigga.
Then, he got a job as a curator. I'm thinking something happened to him and he wanted out the game. No. He wanted to maintain everything we had going on and then some. Three weeks later, a lot of whites and Latinos started showing up at our shop to talk shop. I went to sit in on a meeting, thinking that we would move more weight, but he had one of the boys tell me I was gonna sit this one out. When the meeting was over, I confronted him about it. He told me that it was a separate aspect of the business that would bring us more money than ever, and it had to do with moving illegal art. Since I didn't know much about art, he would handle that. What he did want me to do was figure out how we could move weight through sculptures and shit. I was satisfied with the answer, but I was still salty that he didn't tell me himself and had a little nigga come tell me that my presence wasn't wanted.
I started noticing he would never come by the house anymore. He used to come by every chance he got to see my kid and buy her all kinds of shit she shouldn't be having. She still hasn't seen him 'till this day. I chalked it up to him not wanting to be around the women and kids because of whatever fucked up shit he had seen when he was missing. He kept his distance, and I didn't pry. Last year, around the springtime, we dropped off the illegal art out the back of the gallery, and I saw her. Alana. He ain't tell me he had a girl. He met my great-grandmother. He wouldn't keep something like him having a girl from me unless he was truly cool on me. All the things I made up in my head about him not wanting to be around women and children were a lie.
I went inside from the back and went to the gallery floor. I picked up a program and a glass of champagne and watched him make a speech. His eyes were hollow. Everyone clapped as he rejoined the crowd. I watched him with her…you," he said, looking at Y/N, "he looked like he found something. Like you brought a flicker of whatever he had left back to the surface.
I interrupted them and introduced myself. He was polite, but he was annoyed. After Alana and I exchanged words, he started treating me like the help. I waited until he was finished and looked him in the eye. Facing him head-on, I ensured he caught the drift I was sending before apologizing for interrupting their evening. Then I left. Since then, this niggas had been giving me dummy missions to do. Whenever I tried to confront him about what was happening, he made an excuse to leave. The last time we got into a heated exchange.
Last week, I got a call from him saying that one of the drivers was missing and something went wrong. He needed me to be at the port, get the container, and then drop them off at another location. When I tried to question why I needed to drop off a seaside container at another location when we had already paid to occupy a private portion of the port, he told me that I needed to do what he said for once. Then he said the word 'please'. This nigga rarely used the word please and I damn sure never heard it since he got back from where ever the fuck he was for 2 years.
That's when I knew something was wrong. I got to the port, intercepted the container, and took it to the location he sent me. I had to know the reason this nigga begged me to get this container. When I opened it, I couldn't believe what the fuck I saw." His voice caught in his throat. His eyes moistened. "They not running drugs man, they running—"
"Excuse me, I was wondering if you all had an extra bottle of ketchup on your table. They forgot to bring me some packets for my burger," a stranger with a red hat said, motioning to the ketchup on the table.
Matthew stilled. I handed the ketchup bottle to the man and turned back to Matthew.
"Aye, I gotta go," Matthew said.
"Wait, where are you going?" Y/N asked.
"Thanks for your time," he replied.
"Matthew, you told us—" Y/N started.
"Thanks for your time," he repeated, cutting her off.
It was no longer safe. He stood, looking at me for a second, and then he was gone just as quickly. I motioned for Y/N to sit back down. We sat quietly, eyes saying what we knew our lips could not. I stirred my tea as I looked up at all the exit signs. Where there were once slate grey doors now stood men, appearing like shadows emanating from no particular place. They varied in height but were not below 5'9". They wore dark clothing, faces obscured. No one else in the diner seemed to notice they were there until they started walking towards us from all directions.
"210, 240, 175, 180," I said calmly, still stirring and hoping she understood what I meant. Her eyes left me, and she looked behind me.
"210, 245, 176, 180," she corrected.
I took a swing of my coffee. It was just how I liked it.
The first man approached. Mr. 210. He approached me from the right, attempting to place his gun discreetly at my temple. His first mistake is that he got too close. Close combat was where I came alive. Grabbing the gun with my left hand and reaching the man's neck with my right, I slammed his head on the table repeatedly. The other approached from my two o'clock position to help his "friend". Y/N, to my surprise, jammed her steak knife into his right leg just in the inner.
Doubling over in pain, 245 made enough space between him and 176 for me to throw the now empty coffee mug in the air and have it land right in between 176's nose. Retrieving 210's gun from his waistline, I wasted no time firing two rounds into 176's leg and thigh. I turned around and found Y/N struggling with 180. He had her in the air by her throat. Sweat streamed down her face as she tried to free herself from his grasp. She kicked and clawed, but he was unrelenting. The light was leaving her eyes as blood failed to reach her head. As she got closer and closer to unconsciousness, so did I.
The walls began closing in, and invisible shadows took hold of my limbs. Breathing became difficult. My heart rate tripled, and my chest tightened. Vomit threatened to escape my lips while my stomach churned. My vision darkened. Her eyes turned slowly toward me as if I was the last thing she wanted to see before she went. Pleading. Summoning. Beckoning. Conjuring. Her eyes rolled back.
Blood spattered on the side of her face. She dropped. The man who previously had her in death's grasp fell to his left. The sound of his body hitting the floor caused me to look around to see who fired the shot. He wasn't the only body hitting the floor. The rest of his crew lay in puddles of their own crimson. I scanned the area quickly and realized that there was no one else here but us, and the heated metal that laid them to rest lay in my hands. Pushing the questions of how this came to be and how I couldn't remember any of it aside, I ran to her.
"Y/N, hey, wake up for me. Please. Get up for me, sweetheart," I pleaded. She stirred but not by much. Scooping her in my arms, I headed for my vehicle. Leaving through the diner's doors, I noticed a final body lying on the floor a block away. Without getting any closer, I already knew who that body belonged to.
My pace quickened. Once in the car, I headed to the nearest hospital. In the emergency room, they peeled her from me while they placed her on a gurney and rushed her into a room. The questions and discussions around me melted into the background. I couldn't address them without addressing some of my own.
What would've happened if she died? Would I have died too? Would it have sent me back to that place? How would she explain this to that fuck nigga who probably arranged for this ambush? Could she go back there? Are her things there? Is her cover blown, and if so, how was she made? Would she mind staying with me? Is there someone she would want me to call to let them know that she's okay? Shit, is she okay?
"Sir, I need you to tell me what happened," a voice said. I looked down toward where the sound was coming from.
"It was an ambush."
"Are you too gang or law enforcement?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't know what I think. You haven't answered a single question since you got here, and you showed up with an asphyxiated woman in your arms?"
Gathering the darkness in her tone and the scenario she painted, I began telling her what happened.
"I need to use your phone. I need to call the team."
"There's a phone at the nurse's station."
Within minutes, the team swarmed into the hospital in plain clothes. I debriefed as best as I could under the circumstances. We still had no word on her whereabouts until finally, the doctor came out to the waiting room. Brooke and I were the first on our feet.
"Is this the Olisa party?"
"Yes," Brooke and I said in unison.
"Nice to meet you all. My name is Dr. Sanders. She was fortunate. A second longer, and she wouldn't have recovered."
"So she's okay," Brooke asked, pleading for good news.
"She'll recover, but it will be slow. A good bit of time passed when oxygen wasn't getting to her brain. Her memory will start coming back slowly but surely. She knows who and where she is but doesn't remember how she got here. Hopefully, seeing your faces will jog her memory. I will say her reflexes are impeccable."
"What do you mean?" I inquired.
"Well, one of the nurses startled her, and she grabbed a syringe from the table and stabbed him with it. The whole thing happened in less than 2 seconds," he replied, fascinated.
"That's slow for her. I need to see her," Brooke urged.
"I can take you to her, and you all can visit her two by two. She will need her rest, but I understand that you all have questions to ask her," he finished, leading Brooke to the room.
Two by two team members went into her room and visited her. Some debriefed her and reported how much she knew.
"Sir, she can't go back to that apartment," I blurted. I didn't know that her cover wasn't already blown or how she would explain what happened today. Her phone was in the wind, and she hadn't checked in with that nigga all day.
"We have people sitting in the apartment. No one has come in or out of there since you placed the call. Y/N had people tailing Adrian when she apprehended the asset. He was at the museum all day. We don't know who is behind this or how much Adrian knows. Until we find that out, her being in the wind will raise suspicion."
"With all due respect, I don't give a shit. She's not going back there."
"Not sure when you and Y/N got so close, but you need to get over that and look at this logically. This is going on 6 months of hard work, and how we handle this is crucial."
"She brings his former right hand in and is ambushed at a diner across town. Do you think this is, what, a coincidence?"
"You should watch your tone. We've known her way longer than you have. We all have a vested interest in making sure whoever did this pays for what they did. Now is not the time to get reckless."
"She doesn't even remember this asshole. What lie are you going to make her say that is actually going to stick.? Her life depends on lying this day away and making it so convincing that he doesn't dig further into who left marks on her neck. You haven't met this nigga. He's not the type to let that go. He's either going to think she's fucking around and would burn the city looking for who she's sleeping with, or he knows how and why she's fucked up right now and will be looking to finish the job. You're sending her right into the pit. It's all fucked. She's not going back there."
"Where do you think it's safe for her to go to?"
"With me."
"And you think internal affairs would be good with that?
"I'll have her held up at her own space of my choosing where I can have close eyes on her and guys I trust until I string that bitch up and get answers."
He stopped asking questions because he knew my mind was made up and there was no use in discussing the topic any further. He cursed under his breath and left, pressing numbers into his cell phone. I hoped whoever he was calling was packing up all her shit from her house because she was coming with me. She was mine.
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As always, thanks for reading!! Check out all the previous parts here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Please hit the comments with your feedback, give suggestions on what you'd like to see, and let me know who you like and don't. Talk TO ME!!! I've tagged everyone that I could remember, but if you're coming across me for the first time and want to be tagged in this fic or any others, please comment and let me know you wanna be tagged!
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