Maison Beniot #2
“The fuck are you doin’ here?”
“Jemma Marie Benoit I will get the Ivory right now!”
Ms. Lynn hollered from her position within the house, and I could only roll my eyes. I was over thirty years old and didn’t need to be kept in line. Besides, now wasn’t the time with decorum with a weasel like this.
“Is that Ms. Lynn? Dang I missed her. Let me say hello—” He had the nerve to step forward as though he were going to breach the threshold of my home without my permission and my gun went to his chest as my eyes met his.
“Have you lost your ever lovin’ mind?”
His hazel eyes were fastened to the gun that was now poking him in his chest. He knew from experience how my temper was and didn’t bother to move. His hands went up in surrender. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Reginald St. Germaine, what do you think you’re doing here?”
He grinned revealing perfectly white teeth and a smile that had melted many a heart back when I thought he was a friend. “I was gonna pay my respects to—”
“You can start by paying them to me. And where are your manners? And why are you here?” I waved my gun carelessly in the air just so he could understand that I wasn’t wrapped too tight and would absolutely shoot his ass.
“I came to see you.” He turned up that grin a notch as though flattery was going to gain him entrance into my home and into my life.
The blue linen of his shirt was starched to perfection something I knew his personal attendant had done.
He was the only man I knew who’d kept a valet in the twenty-first century but his people were uppity like that.
Clinging to old ways that made them relevant since their name was fading in the circles of the upper echelons of New Orleans society.
My brow furrowed and I tapped my gun against my knee impatiently. “For what reason? I haven’t seen you in years so help me understand what has you on my doorstep?”
“I can’t see my fiancée?”
I reeled back his confidence in his words giving me pause as a sinking feeling crept up my spine. “You think a relationship that was over more than a decade ago is supposed to hold weight now?”
“It bodes well if I still have a binding contract with you.” That charming smile turned triumphant and then almost vicious as he delighted in the stress he was causing me with his revelation.
“That’s laughable. You can’t force me to marry you.
I don’t give a damn what that contract says.
” I could have his body cut up and dropped into the middle of the gulf within four hours but I knew that crow was standing around watching my every move.
I wouldn’t put it past her to have someone keeping tabs on me and what I was doing just waiting on me to slip up so she could declare me insane.
“You seem to forget how things go around here. You think your tante is going to want you sullying the family name by backing out of this contract? She’s already given me her blessing to enforce it.” He stepped forward again and was met with the barrel of my gun yet again.
“Hmmm, how nice that everyone is makin’ plans about my life without me.”
He stepped back again and put his hands up. “Well, you might not be in the right mind. Being in an asylum and all.”
“And you’re sure that you want to tie yourself and your bloodline to all that potential madness?” I twirled my pointer finger around my ear to emphasize just how loony I was.
“Things can be done to keep you in line.”
I laughed at how serious he dared to look. “Same ol’ Reggie I see. I guess you didn’t have any growth happen while I’ve been gone. Same reasons I left you then are the same ones that won’t have me with you now.”
“You seem to forget that first blood means something.”
I rolled my eyes, wondering if he thought that old ass virginity bullshit was going to keep me bound to him.
“If you think you can hold me to some antiquated first blood nonsense that I’m sure you tried to have someone work a hold on me then think again.” A spot of blood would probably be enough for a love spell but I wasn’t enthralled with his ass at all so they’d failed miserably.
“We’ll see about that.” That smile was again sinister and he backed off the porch and walked down the walkway toward the iron gate that separated the property from the sidewalk.
I made a note to work on a spiritual fence cause I hadn’t gotten so much as a tingle that danger was near.
Gotta tap into the energy of this place again.
I slammed the door not wanting to give him another second of my time.
After I reset the locks, I looked around the room angrily at the invisible ancestors chiding them for not giving me a heads-up to what I was about to deal with before strolling back through the hallway.
He wasn’t about to stress me out with whatever he and my aunt had concocted but now I needed to really get my mind on getting control of the family seat.
“That boy hasn’t learned anything in all this time.”
Ms. Lynn came from the hideyhole that was near the steps that allowed her to have a clean shot to the front door in case she needed to put our visitor down.
“No, he hasn’t. But I’m almost glad of it. I should’ve never dealt with him in the first place but I can remedy that error now that I’m back.’
“What are you going to do?”
“It’s time to call in reinforcements. It’s been lingering for this long and she’s finally made her move. It’s time to get this show on the road.”
Ms. Lynn slapped her hands together in triumph. “It’s about damn time.”
“Now who needs the Ivory?”
She childishly stuck her tongue out as she took the gun out of my hand. “Girl, I’m grown. Get those boys on the phone and let me know when they’ll be arriving. I’m going to make a food order and see just how many of the houses we need to open up to accommodate them all.”
“It probably won’t—”
She put her hand up shushing me. “Hush. Even if they all descend into this place you can always say it’s for your birthday in a few months.
It gives you time to get things set up and in place for when you take over free and clear.
” I opened my mouth to say something but that finger went up again.
“I ain’t hearing it. Go make your call while I make mine. ”
She walked off like she were the one who paid the bills and I could only shake my head at her brazenness.
Some things never change.
My hand went into the pocket of the loose-fitting striped pants I’d paired with my graphic tee to lounge around the house. I pulled out my phone and prepped to make the call I’d been avoiding.
“Hey, Ori.”
There was a pause and I knew I’d come off far too eager to make this phone call and sounded too chipper. I squeezed my eyes shut bracing myself for the questioning that was on the way.
“You good? You sound funny.”
My brother sounded far more relaxed now that he’d been resurrected and retired. The work he did for the government had to have been taxing on him but I could hear his tone grow harder as he spoke.
“You gonna be taking any trips down south soon? I hear Nawlins is a great place for a second honeymoon.” I didn’t want to alarm him or anyone else because they would come through with brute force when finesse was now needed.
My aunt already signing off on this agreement despite it happening when I was a minor was the sign I’d been waiting for.
She was making her play. By law she could use the fact that I’d been in an asylum, even if it was at her insistence, to keep control over Benoit Industries.
She could also argue that although I was a minor her being my guardian made the contract binding and now I had to act fast. I hadn’t spent the last dozen years dawdlin’ waiting for her to have them kill me.
I’d been studying. With each passing year, I knew there was a reason she’d kept me alive and I spent my time learning everything I could.
There was no way I was going to lose the legacy that my family fought for and put it in the hands of a bitch that had no reverence for our lifestyle, our livelihood or our history.
Evergreen being used as a fucking wedding venue was a testament that she had to not only die but to suffer as she did for her sins.
Which was why it was necessary to call in the big guns.
“I already had a second this would be the third.”
I rolled my eyes silently tickled at how he was bragging. Yet another trait that Asha had unlocked in him. “Let my friend up for air, please.”
“She enjoys being too filled to inhale, Jem.”
My mouth gaped at the joke he was making followed immediately by disgust at his revelation. “That is information I didn’t need to know, Ori Nakoa.”
He didn’t bother to hide his laughter letting it flow as though I was going to join in. I didn’t want to think about him putting my girl through the mattress especially since I hadn’t had male attention in years.
“You would know that type of life if you stopped playing with my friend but that’s a different story. But jokes aside, what’s wrong?”
I waited knowing this would set off a firestorm I wasn’t sure I could contain but I knew I couldn’t handle this on my own. Despite the plotting I’d been doing for years, this was real life and it wasn’t just my fate on the line. The Consortium couldn’t survive if Maison Benoit crumbled.
“I might need your help after all.”
He’d offered as soon as they’d flown out to Atlanta to free me. Wanting to immediately make right every wrong that had kept me away. But I knew I needed time and that assumption had proven to be correct. But now I was calling in the favor.
“What’s gone down?” His tone was harsher, hardened.
I knew he was on the move by the sounds I could hear over the line.
His chair creaking and a television that Asha had to have been watching booming louder and then quieter as he moved throughout the house.
I was sure she was now walking with him the whisper of clothing coming in clear and then the metallic clicking of cartridges being inserted into guns.
They were in their safe room.
My heart swelled thinking that my brother and his wife were on the move with no questions asked.
“It appears I have a debtor and he’s coming to collect.”
They didn’t know the details of the contract with the St. Germaines.
It was a deal done in secret and then long forgotten since I was gone so shortly after it was signed.
I was sure that the elders, then still the heads of each branch of the family, had them under scrutiny for years, wondering if they had something to do with it.
That was a cold case that now needed to be further explored.
“Collect what?!”
I sighed again because I wouldn’t be able to stop the fallout from what I was going to admit. I would have to apologize to Mother Nature for the large increase in emissions from the number of private jets that were going to be landing in Louisiana within the next forty hours.
“Me.”
The End