Marriage was a trap. Tony learned this the hard way, watching his parents fight when he was a kid. For Howard Stark, his marriage had been a way for him to gain access to the Carbonella fortune and to produce an heir for his legacy.
But to the world, Howard had been a staunch family man. However, in reality, he had been coldly indifferent to his only son and had a steady string of women who cycled in and out of his bed.
Tony Stark was self-aware enough to know exactly where he had gotten his fuckboi tendencies from. Unlike his dad, he was strong enough to resist the pressure from the board and the press to start a family and not put someone else through what his father did to his mom.
Which, in hindsight, made his pattern of getting blackout drunk and waking up married to strangers even more perplexing.
When he was 19, he married a man, and at 26, he married a woman. But with his vicious team of attorneys, they managed to erase those marriages like they never happened. Hell, even after all of these years, Tony still couldn’t remember any of his previous spouses’ names.
But there had been something different about Kendis Black from the very start.
His new spouse was undeniably hot with those bright green eyes and that sexy grin that made his heart skip a beat. Tony had wanted Kendis from the moment he had seen them spinning on that pole back at Juicy Lucy’s. Kendis wasn’t some vapid beauty; they had a fire inside of them that was a match for his own.
Even though whoever made up Kendis’s new identity was very thorough, Tony had a gut feeling that every detail from Kendis’s background check was fake. What was their real name? Where had they come from? What were they hiding? And if her reaction to that black envelope on her desk was anything to go by? It was something pretty important.
But this time round, he couldn’t stop thinking about Kendis. For once, it just wasn’t about the fantastic sex or the way their hole had felt as he sank deep inside of her. No, he couldn’t stop thinking about her reaction to that letter. She had been angry at him, but he had seen right through Kendis’s anger to her obvious fear.
And her fear stirred something inside of him.
Even days later, she was still on his mind. His gaze shifted from his computer monitor to the unremarkable brown folder sitting on his desk. For perhaps the millionth time, Tony picked up the folder and looked over the documents.
He grabbed his pen and turned to the last page, looking for the signature line. He paused, hand hovering, then slammed the folder down. Tony should just sign the papers and give them back to Pepper, but he was hesitant.
Tony hated feeling so indecisive. Whatever happened to the ruthless playboy image he had worked so hard to create? And why did Kendis get under his skin? She was just another notch on his belt and nothing more.
“Shit,” Tony muttered while running his hand through his hair.
“Are you quite alright, sir?” Jarvis asked.
“Fine, Jarvis,” Tony replied, curtly. “Let’s me see the feed from the camera I left by the gate.”
“I will remind you, sir, that nonconsensual surveillance is highly illegal in the state of California.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “The feed, Jarv.”
The tiny camera he had placed on top of the security box was a new invention. It wasn’t as bulky as older surveillance cameras were. This one was relatively undetectable and was about the size of a quarter with 4k video quality and top-of-the-line nano microphones. He watched, for a moment, as a bald, stocky Black man and Kendis walked out of the garage, her large dog following on their heels as the two talked.
Tony was about to ask about the audio when suddenly the camera flickered once, then twice, and went blank. Tony’s mouth dropped. “What the fuck?”
“I’m attempting to get the feedback up now, sir.”
Tony went through the code and the blueprints for the camera. It had been solid work, and to his knowledge, there had been no bugs in it. Hell, Tony had been planning to pitch it soon to the board.
“Sorry sir,” Jarvis replied. “I’m unable to reconnect.”
“There is no logical reason for that camera to malfunction.”
He felt frustrated and angry, and he knew that only spending some quality time with his work would calm him down.
“Jarvis, blackout mode. I don’t want to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency.”, he ordered. “Put on my usual playlist.”
Black Sabbath’s Paranoid blasted over the speakers, and Tony rolled his eyes before he got back to work.
Time went by, only marked off by the switch in music from Black Sabbath to Pantera’s Reinventing the Steel album and then on to his usual fair.
He finished fixing the bugs in the Jericho targeting system to get Obie and the board off his back. The board didn’t know about the latest Mx. Stark, but Obie did, and he was just as bad as Pepper at badgering him to get the annulment pushed through as quickly as possible.
Tony ended up having to take out his frustration at pounding on a sheet of steel when he thought about it. Because it brought his thoughts right back to Kendis, and he brutally pushed those thoughts back and switched his focus to the non-lethal weapon prototypes he was working on. He knew he could at least sell The Secret Service on adding them to their arsenal.
AC/DC’s “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be” blasted from the speakers, and he bobbed his head along to the beat while putting on his welding goggles.
Thankfully, Tony managed to dodge all thoughts of Kendis for a while and finally slipped into the comforting headspace where he could work on his calculations and blueprints in peace.
Tony took three days to come out of his latest binge, and when he did, he felt calmer and like he had his head on straight for the first time since Vegas.
And the mental break gave him some much needed insight to why he couldn’t stop thinking about Kendis and why he felt such a pull to her.
Kendis Black was a mystery he had to get to the bottom of. His latest obsession had all the telltale signs of a hyper fixation. The upside to solving the mystery of what was going on with Kendis was that he could move on and finally get back to his normal life.
Besides, his pride demanded that he figure out how Kendis could dismantle his camera. It couldn’t have just malfunctioned. It was a Tony Stark invention, and those didn’t fail.
“Jarvis, give me any feeds near Enchanted Engines and run Kendis’ face through the facial recognition database.”
Mini video screens popped up on his desktop. Most of the businesses and shops that lined Victory Boulevard were closed. It was ten o’clock at night, and Tony wasn’t all that surprised.
Tony motioned at Dum-e to give him another coffee, and the bot happily rolled over with a fresh cup. He patted Dum-e on the head and then shooed it away to finish the rest of its chores.
He was looking at the screens, about to check his camera’s code, when he suddenly saw movement. And even though the feed was shitty, Tony could tell it was Kendis getting on that sweet black and red Kawasaki ZX-6R.
A moment later, the gates slid back, and she rode past the gates and into the street.
“Jarvis? Use her license plate number to track where she is going.”
Video feeds popped up and disappeared on his computer, and then there was a map as he watched Kendis go down via I-5 South, and out of Burbank into Glendale, and then drove an hour south and later made it to Crenshaw Boulevard.
“Where the fuck is she going?”
Tony hacked into a nearby bodega’s CCTV feed and smirked as he saw a familiar red 1993 Mazda RX-7
“Jarvis, call Dom Toretto.”
“Sir?”
“I think it’s about time I visit some of my old stomping grounds.”
