Laced in Poison (RBMC: New Orleans National Chapter #11)

Prologue

LANTANA

I owe everything I have today to my mother, Lourdes.

While most kids spent their childhoods playing on swings and sliding down metal slides, I spent mine following my mom around from city to city as she built her career.

For the most part, I spent mine in greenhouses and labs that held more danger than beauty, learning very quickly that even the most venomous of things was in fact, both delicate and beautiful.

Lourdes never treated the world as something soft or forgiving, and she never raised me to believe that it was, because she understood better than anyone that survival belonged to those who could read between the lines, and those who could recognize that the same flower capable of healing could also be used to destroy.

Of course that depended entirely on the hands that chose to wield it.

My mother was a toxicologist, brilliant in ways that were never fully appreciated by the institutions that claimed to value her intelligence.

Basically, they considered her a threat because she was a woman.

To her face they’d nod and applaud her, but behind her back they’d ridicule and discredit her.

I don’t know how she kept going, but those criticisms and doors shutting in her face only seemed to fuel her forward.

She was a single mother who gave me everything she could even when it cost her more than she ever admitted, and I adored her for it in a way that shaped every decision I made long before I realized just how deeply her influence had rooted itself inside me.

I was not an easy child by any chance. You can say the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

I was not quiet, let alone obedient, and I was certainly not interested in following paths that felt too small for what I already knew I was capable of.

There was a time I didn’t give a damn about structure, about rules, or where anything I was doing was going to land me, because all I cared about was not feeling trapped.

I wanted freedom, or what I thought freedom meant, and I thought that could save me.

I wasn’t stupid. That’s the thing people always get wrong. I was just a rebellious seventeen year old girl who enjoyed breaking the rules.

I knew exactly what I was doing, who I was doing it with, and what I was getting into, but I didn’t care enough to stop it, because it was easier to drown everything out than to sit still and deal with my adolescent shit.

I convinced myself that I could step in and out whenever I felt like it.

I couldn’t.

That was just a lie I told myself as I realized shit was getting out of control.

And my mother saw it before I ever admitted it to myself.

Lourdes didn’t miss things, not in her line of work and not in her life, and when she looked at me during that time, she didn’t see rebellion or attitude or some phase I would grow out of.

She saw something eating away at me from the inside.

She tried to talk to me at first, tried to reach me the way she always had, calm, patient, steady, but I pushed back harder every time she did, because I didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to be told I was screwing up when I was still clinging to the idea that I had it handled.

I didn’t.

I thought I had control and that was part of the problem, because it never felt dangerous. Not when you’re choosing to be there on your own terms. When half the people there are people you barely know, people who will never get a chance to judge you.

The address changed every time, but the feeling never did.

It was a warehouse one night, all steel beams and concrete floors that were slick with spilled vodka and smelled like stale cigarette smoke and piss.

The air always felt thick with heat as bodies pressed too close together.

Lights flashed in sharp bursts that cut through the dark just enough to make everything feel disconnected, the music so loud it didn’t just play in your ears but vibrated through your bones until you started to feel that familiar numbness.

On another night it was a penthouse, expensive with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city.

I remembered the skyline stretching out in glittering lines that blurred when you stared too long.

Inside, the light was dim and people were draped over furniture that cost more than anyone could fathom.

Their laughter was always too loud, their movements just slightly off and exaggerated.

It always seemed as if time itself had slowed down just enough to make everything feel heavier. Empty.

It didn’t matter where I was.The energy was always the same. Both electric and unstable… and completely addictive.

I remember walking into one of those high-rise apartments, my boots heavy against the polished marble, bass already pulsing through the walls guiding you to the main entrance.

The second the door shut behind me, it hit all at once, the smell of sweat, smoke, something sweet and chemical that clung to the back of your throat, the kind of scent that told you exactly what kind of night this was going to be before you even took your first drink.

“Lantana,” someone called out, their voice cutting through the music, their hand already reaching for me, pulling me in without waiting for permission, because that’s how it worked in those spaces, everyone just assumed you were there for it.

And as naive as I was, I never resisted the pull. I didn’t want to stand still, because I figured if I kept moving, kept letting the noise swallow me, I wouldn't have to deal with any of the consequences.

“You’re late,” he said, leaning in too close, his breath sharp with alcohol and something else I didn’t bother identifying.

“I’m right on time,” I shot back, letting him pull me along because resisting meant thinking, and thinking was the last thing I wanted to do once I stepped into that space.

A drink found its way into my hand without me asking, and I was laid back on the couch, a white line drawn out on the table beside me.

“What is it?” I asked, more out of habit than concern, my voice steady even though something in the back of my mind was already telling me this was different.

“Relax,” he said, grinning, his eyes glassy, distant. “It’s clean. You’ll like it.”

That was all it took. And leaning forward, I took that long, sharp sniff.

The first few minutes felt normal, or what I had convinced myself was normal, that slow unraveling of tension, the way my body loosened, the way the music deepened, settling lower into my chest until it felt less like sound and more like something physical, something I could lean into.

Then it shifted and this time, the sensation hit all at once, sharp and wrong in a way I couldn’t describe it.

My breath caught first, a tightness pulling through my chest that didn’t release, and I remember blinking hard, trying to clear my head, trying to steady myself, but the room just tilted and I kept losing my balance.

“Hey,” I said, reaching for the closest person, my fingers brushing fabric, skin for just a second before it slipped again. “Something’s not…

The words didn’t come out right.

My tongue felt thick and heavy, and I was disconnected from the thoughts in my head.

“You good?” they asked, but their voice sounded too far away and distorted.

My chest tightened further, each breath shallower than the last, panic cut through the haze and I knew something was wrong.

“I can’t…” I tried to speak again, gripping at someone harder this time, but my fingers didn’t respond the way they should and I fell to the floor.

Hands were on me then, more than one, and I could tell the voices were becoming more urgent. But the party didn’t stop, the music didn’t slow down, and everything kept moving while I started to fall apart right in the middle of it.

“Shit, she’s not okay.” I heard a female cry out.

“I told you that wasn’t real shit!”

“Get her up, get her out of here now!”

The last thing I remembered was being dumped outside in the hallway.

Then nothing.

When I awoke, my chest ached with each breath I tried to take in. I coughed, opening my eyes slowly and then hissing, covering my face from the bright light. I slammed my eyes shut before I tried a second time, focusing on the ceiling above me, realizing I was back in my room.

I pushed myself up too fast, the world tilting again, my stomach turning hard enough that I had to brace myself against the bed to keep from collapsing back into it, my breath uneven, my head pounding as everything started to piece itself together.

“What…”

“Don’t.”

My head snapped toward the door.

My mother stood there, arms crossed, her expression controlled in a way that made something in my chest tighten immediately, because I had never seen her look at me like that before, not even when I deserved it.

Lourdes didn’t raise her voice. She just stood there and watched me, her eyes taking in everything, every movement, every breath, assessing me in that way that mother’s did, and I immediately knew that she already knew exactly what had happened.

“You stopped breathing,” she said, her voice steady, clinical, but there was something underneath it that she wasn’t letting surface yet.

The words hit harder than they should have, settling heavy on my chest as I lacked any words to respond with.

“What?” I managed to say, but my voice sounded rough.

“They brought you here instead of a hospital,” she continued, stepping further into the room, closing the door behind her quietly. “Which means I had to stabilize you myself.”

I stared at her, the weight of that sank in slowly, piece by piece, until I realized what she meant by stabilize.

“You overdosed.”

A heavy silence fell over the room and I swallowed hard, my throat dry, and my mind racing to understand what my mother was saying. I started to say something, anything, but there was nothing to say, nothing that didn’t sound hollow the second it came out of my mouth.

She watched me for a few seconds, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded sad and disappointed.

“I am not going to bury you,” she said quietly, and that was the first time I heard it, the crack beneath that control she held onto so tightly. A fear she refused to let fully surface. “I didn’t raise you just to watch you destroy yourself.”

Something in my chest twisted, because there was no arguing with that, no deflecting it, no turning it into something else.

“I’ve tried everything I could think of with you. You’re a bright girl, I figured you’d come to your senses.”

“Mom…” she held up her hand, cutting me off from whatever I was about to say.

She exhaled slowly, then reached into her pocket, pulling out her phone. She looked at me while she dialed.

“Who are you calling?” I asked, my voice quieter now, uncertain.

“The only person I know, whom I can trust with you. Someone who can reach you in a way I can’t anymore.”

My chest tightened and I tried again. “Mom…”

She barely looked at me, and when she spoke, her voice was steady again.

“I need your help,” she said.

I knew it was taking everything in her to ask for help. I didn’t think my mother knew how to do that.

“It’s about my daughter.”

And just like that, my mother set the wheel in motion and my life, the one I knew until now, was about to take an unexpected blow.