Love and Fire: Book 1 of The Young & Luxurious E-Book

Korienne

As an L.A. lawyer, leader, and power player, Korienne Haughton has spent years sacrificing marriage and a family to be the epitome of black excellence. At last, she's leaving the Los Angeles D.A.'s office. And sweet, unhindered love with Easton Worthen awaits her. As well as her real dreams of starting a lifestyle brand empire. But the last day Kori is set to head for bliss, the murder of an LAPD police officer brings rage and a firestorm from the courtroom into hers and Easton's bed. Now for the final time, Kori faces her toughest trial yet - what's more important to her? Excellence, or Easton?

Easton

Handsome, accomplished, and born into a wealthy family, Easton Worthen seems to have it all: money, a thriving law practice, and at long last, the woman of his dreams. Until scandal rocks the Worthen family, and East's love for Kori is thrown into the middle. He's been delaying an inevitable showdown with his father for years. Now, with the city revolting against them, their family's vast empire on the line, Easton must finally face the most consequential choice of his life. In the City of Angels, is Kori & Easton's bond strong enough to ride through trial and tribulation on angels' wings?

Paperback Page Count: 293

Tropes: Age 30+, women's fiction, accomplished professionals, family drama, legal suspense

Heat Level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️/5

If Kor goes through with this, I’ll never have my dad and my wife beside me.

Another driver lays on their horn, but that doesn’t stop me running a red light. Dodging and swerving, I’m fortunate my office on Wilshire is within sight of downtown LA. In about twenty minutes, I’m riding north and exiting the one-ten freeway in East LA, trying not to lose my shit with these jaywalkers taking their sweet time in the crosswalk.

I’m stumped by this energy of reporters and activists on the street, particularly that one damn activist who shows up every time she sees there’ll be cameras—Fannie Kilpatrick. 

Riding around to the employee-access garage for county staffers, I see another group of cameras lurking at the back entrance. I’ve driven here on nights after Kor had a trial and she was scared of violent defendants or their families, so I would come to get her.

Protestors creep to this side of the building and underneath the security gate to go wait at the door.

Shit.

Kor hasn’t left yet since her navy Mercedes is visible with her sorority plates, in the garage. 

Calling her phone, I breathe a fat sigh to hear her voice. 
“East?”

“Kor, baby, bring protection with you.” 

The sight of protestors motioning for others to join them strikes lightning across my fucking heart valves.

With no keycard to get in the gate, I parallel park illegally, put on the emergency lights, and hop out.

“East? Where are…?”

“Kor, baby, bring some protection with you. These protestors are out here!”

“Hello?”

“Korienne—”

Damn! Spotty reception. 

Through the glass doors of the building, stepping off the elevator and oblivious to what’s going on, out comes Kori, talking on the phone.

My phone buzzes with her calling me again.

She’s only accompanied by one police officer, and they both appear stunned at the growing mass of bodies swarming them at the door.

“Will you be making any statements?” a reporter yells at Kori.

“Get back!” the officer yells, pulling out his radio. “Code seventy-seven.”

“There’s a special place in Hell for you, sellout!” one of them yells at a paralyzed Kori.

Attempting to maintain her composure, she scans around her for a way out.

“Kori!” I call out from behind a group of about twenty people surrounding her.

“LaShauna better not do no time or this will be personal, bitch! Do you hear me?” a woman screams at her.

“Address her peacefully. Peacefully!” Fannie Kilpatrick arrives and calls out to the others. “Ma’am, will you please drop the charges against LaShauna Hoffman? That’s all we’re asking.”

Seeing nothing but Kori, I jerk bodies out of the way and shove toward the mother of my baby. “Get the hell out of her face!”

“Your wife is a coon for protecting oppressors!” 

I lunge for this person’s throat. “Shut the hell up!”

“Sellout!”

“She’s a whore for them cops!”

“I bet she was just in there sucking their dicks!”

Lips spit and a “psst.” A glob hits my neck.

Instantly, my disgust at their gall flies out of me in a smack of my arm at whomever stands next to me.

The isolated cop doubles down and whips out his baton. “I said get back!”

The slave-whip crack of the cop’s voice over all our heads only amps up the group.

Infuriated, they scream at the cop and Kori where she stands frozen, unable to walk away.

“Kori!” Every one of the nine years I’ve waited for her extends into my fingers that reach through all these damn people and pry them out of my way.

Alarmed, blinking, her hunt for me evident on her face, she scans.

“Easton!”

“I wish you would hit me with that damn thing! Get off me!” somebody snaps at the officer.

More officers bust out of the doors. “Break it up! Now! Get back!”

One of them lunges at me. “I said, get down!”

“Give me my fiancée first!” I don’t recognize the voice of whatever creature said that. 

Another officer, a beast, a threat, rears his baton.