VICTOR #2
Everyone who mattered in New Orleans came through these doors eventually—judges, cartel men, politicians, killers with soft hands and expensive suits.
Old money sat two tables from new blood, and nobody so much as raised their voice.
The rule was simple, ironclad, absolute: no violence.
No threats. Not a raised fist, not a bared blade, not so much as a hard shove.
Reginald Delacroix had built this place on that single promise thirty years ago, and he’d enforced it with a ruthlessness that made men twice his size flinch when he entered a room.
Rumor had it Delacroix’s own blood ran through the Black Flame Mafia—cousins, maybe, or something deeper.
Nobody asked. Nobody wanted to know badly enough to test the answer.
Because the Black Flame didn’t posture. They didn’t warn. They simply erased.
If Amai Landry was a storm, the Black Flame was the ocean that made storms.
So, even men who wanted each other dead sat within arm’s reach here, sipping bourbon, discussing business, pretending civility—because the alternative was a war none of them could survive.
I was three inches into my cigar, savoring the slow burn of tobacco and cedar, when the temperature in the room shifted.
I felt him before I saw him.
Winston Landry walked through the entrance like he owned the building, his cane tapping once against the marble floor, his eyes already locked on me from across the room.
The guards at the door straightened, recognizing him, recognizing the danger radiating off him—but they didn’t stop him.
He was a member. He had every right to be here.
He limped toward my table, lowered himself into the chair across from me without invitation, and stared at me with a hatred so pure it should have set the tablecloth on fire.
“Victor.”
“Winston.” I took another pull from my cigar, exhaled slowly, let the smoke curl between us. “You look like shit.”
“I got shot because of you.”
“You got shot because you brought a war to my doorstep.”
His eyes shot me a venomous look. His hand—I noticed—rested near his jacket, close to where a weapon would sit. But he didn’t move. Couldn’t. Not here.
“I want my money back,” he said, “Every dollar.”
“And if I don’t have it?”
“Then I want your life, but I’m taking that regardless.
” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, close enough that I could see the exhaustion carved into his face, the pain he was fighting through pure will.
“That’s the only resolution I’m willing to accept, Victor.
Not the money. Not an apology. Not some clever negotiation where you talk your way out of what you did. Your. Life.”
I smiled and took another drag.
“Good luck with that.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it.”
“Then what does?”
“Patience.” He said the word like a threat, like a countdown already ticking. “I’ve got plenty of it.”
I set my cigar in the ashtray, buying myself a moment, watching him. Winston Landry had built an empire on being unpredictable, but right now he was exactly what I expected—furious, wounded, and cornered by his own pride.
“I’ll make you an offer,” I said. “Yahmaria for the money. All of it. Clean trade.”
Winston’s laugh was cold, humorless, ugly.
“You think I give a fuck if your daughter lives or dies?”
The words landed harder than I wanted them to. I kept my face still.
“She’s your son’s wife.”
“Was. She’s nothing now. Divorced, disposable, worth exactly what she’s always been worth to me, which is nothing.” He tilted his head, studying me like I was something he’d found rotting under a porch. “You really thought that would work? Dangle your own blood like she means something to me?”
“She means something to Amai.”
“Amai can’t stand that bitch, and you know it.
” Winston’s smile was thin, cruel. “You know what I think, Victor? I think you’re stalling.
I think you and Rahsaan are sitting in that fortress of his, trying to figure out how to one-up us before we come for what’s ours.
I think this whole conversation, this whole offer, is just you buying time you don’t have. ”
I didn’t answer. Because he wasn’t wrong.
“That’s what I thought.” He sat back, wincing slightly as his weight shifted, but his eyes never left mine. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Victor. You never were. You were just close enough to me that I mistook loyalty for intelligence.”
“Careful.”
“No.” His voice dropped, and something in it turned genuinely lethal—not loud, not theatrical, just evil.
“You be careful. Because I know something now that I didn’t know before that warehouse.
I know you didn’t just steal from me. You worked with the man who killed my sons.
You sat across from him, shook his hand, built plans with him—knowing what he did to Elias and Silas. ”
The air between us went thick.