I let Mac tell her everything, my thoughts elsewhere. This is all becoming too consuming, and I’m not sure how to handle that. I know how to handle everything; maybe this marriage isn’t the best idea, but the idea of him marrying the blonde pisses me off more than him ruling my every thought.
Chapter Nine
PAXTON
Having friends in high places can be rather helpful. I’m calling in a few favors to get the information that I need so I can get things lined up before she lands. That’s okay; I have been stockpiling them.
I had an idea of where Naomi was off to. If she wanted to dig more into me, then the best place to do so would be on the West Coast. It’s where I have spent an abundance of my time. It also gives me a home field advantage.
I hadn’t set myself up in California only because it could be lucrative for me and a nice fuck you to everyone else who hadn’t managed to take over a huge chunk of the docks’ imports and exports, but also, it put Naomi at a greater distance from me. It hasn’t been easy to bide my time, but I knew it was what I had to do. I had to play this all very carefully. Normally waiting and idling time is my specialty.
Sloane says I have the patience of a saint. Dealing with my father, I’m sure, plays into that. The man was often getting in his own way and pulling triggers far too quickly. At a young age, I’d learned to watch everything and pay attention to all the details. Learning to read the tells that people have and how they respond to things has been one of my greatest assets.
The devil is really in the details. Honing in on the skills, I was able to build my own wealth outside of my father. It started with hitting a few poker games and went on from there. You can bet on all kinds of shit, and the more you know, the easier it is to place those bets.
Which football players have drug problems or injuries? You could even wager on who was hard up for money. One bet after another, I was making a killing. It didn’t only supply me with money, but it helped further my understanding of people and the things they do, the whys, which can be the most important.
My father became the easiest to predict over time. I could lead him right into a trap of his own making. Slowly I started to dismantle the world he’d built around him. Studied all the people he both feared and respected. Those who had deals and understandings with him.
That is what led me right to Naomi all those years ago. I’ll never forget that day. I’m sure she hasn’t either, except she has no idea I was the man who fought at her side.
I’d traveled up the coast with only one target in mind. War Marino. My father hated how much he depended on War and the control he could hold over his docks and him. It had started with War’s own father decades ago, but like all things, in time, the Marinos didn’t want to dabble in the darker aspects of the sex trade and dirty drugs. And the fact often is, the dirtier you are, the more money you can make.
When War took the reins over from his own father, things started to shift. He pulled back some of the protection they’d once given my father from others that tried to move in on what he had.
War made it clear: Clean up shop, or he would keep taking action. My father was never quite sure what that action would be. It could only be one of two things: He’d take it for himself, or he’d leave my father to the vultures.
That had him cleaning things up for a while. I knew myself that it would only last so long. It went against my father’s nature. The Marinos would have to take action at some point, and I needed to make sure I was the one that would pull that trigger, lining up all the dominoes in their place.
I knew that back then and had to form a real understanding of who the Marinos were and how I’d need to do that. I knew the only way to truly do that was to have eyes on them myself. To learn everything about all of them, from how they took their coffee to how often they took a shit. The plan had been to go unnoticed. I was only there to simply observe until my hand was forced that day.
Years ago
In the time I’d been watching War and his family, it became clear rather quickly that his oldest daughter was likely to follow in her father’s footsteps. Naomi was the most like him in the personality department. Very controlled, calculated, and showed an enormous amount of restraint when it came to her emotions.
The Marinos had been interesting to follow. They were quite different from other Italian families I’d grown up around in power. War was more than willing to let his daughter step up even with having three younger sons.
That had me shifting my attention to her, Naomi. If I were to play the long game, that meant she would be key. I was struck by her instantly. She wasn’t an average teenage girl by any means. She was different, and that meant she thought differently. It tracked a somewhat similar pattern to her father, but not always.
There were a lot more moving parts in Naomi’s life, and by that, I mean the people around her she was growing up with. A slew of cousins. Who you surround yourself with is a keymarker to how you might change and grow. I had accounted for all the factors that needed consideration.
What I hadn’t accounted for was Naomi’s patterns wavering. It was hard for me to understand or get a full grasp on them. It drove me crazy at first and then amused me. At that time, I could only speculate that those tendencies fluctuated due to her internal struggles with her identity.
She became an obsession, and I was verging on stalking, or maybe I was already there. Naomi more often than not stayed in the city at her father’s home there. During that time, she took many different classes, but none of them were the normal curriculum for her age. They were more in life skills. I respected War for noticing she was different and allowing her to explore her potential.
Every day Naomi would train. I watched the girl run miles at a time. The determination in her at such a young age was impressive and also relatable. Except she wanted to please her father, and I wanted to end mine. The goals were different, but the destination was the same. In the end we’d be taking over.
Naomi is smart and never formed a steady pattern. She could run at all sorts of times of the day and in different locations. It took me a month to get down to the rhyme and reason of her schedule enough that I could predict her moves. It had become a game she didn’t know we’d been playing.
It doesn’t matter how hard you try not to form a pattern; your nonpattern will form one.
That day it had been lightly snowing as she made her way down to the riverfront, where there was a long trail. I’d guessed this one right; only my timing was slightly off.
She was a tiny thing, her dark hair pulled back, concealing her curls. I watched as she stopped at a bench to adjust her thin jacket and put on her gloves before heading down the trail that disappeared into the trees, which made it somewhat isolated.Of course you could come across others, but there was also a chance you wouldn’t.
I waited to give space between her and me, letting her fall from my sight. But I hadn’t been the only one watching her. I spotted two men in their twenties take notice of her. One was short and stocky in gray sweats with a baseball cap. The other was lanky in jeans and a hoodie.
The stocky one tossed down the cigarette he was smoking, nodding to whatever the man next to him was saying before they started off behind her. I knew they weren’t on a fucking stroll and their intentions weren’t good. One could bet that they might be meeting with another person, a dealer, but I hadn’t encountered any of that on this trail before. That meant they were following her.
