Chapter 3
Lucien
God, she’s beautiful.
It’s been a week since I’ve seen her and I’d already forgotten the way she takes up all the air around her.
The tip of her chin, as if she’s waiting for the world to fall at her feet.
The flash of that gaze, just daring anyone to get in her way.
The face of an angel, with broad eyes and cheeks round enough to dimple when she smiles.
If you can get her to smile.
My hands clench at my sides with the memory of how soft that skin is, and the scent of her neck. Her hair. The spot right behind her ear.
I was in love with this girl, once. More than in love.
I was going to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her, and I would have thanked God or Satan or the closest witch doctor every day for putting her in my path and convincing our fathers that our marriage was the best way to an alliance.
I would have held her and protected her for the rest of my fucking days.
If she’d stuck around and let me do it.
Now...
Now I remind myself that she’s not just beautiful but also a she-devil. Dangerous. Reckless.
Annoying.
I watch her storm in my direction, her face covered by a glare, and can’t stop the smile that creeps over my lips.
Or the way my cock is suddenly pressing against the zipper of my trousers.
Because my brain might remember her beauty and danger, but my body remembers something else entirely.
Something hot and reckless in a dark closet we weren’t supposed to be in, with people strolling along outside the door and my hand over her mouth.
I can’t help it. I’ve always liked dangerous things. And Brooks Landry is the most dangerous creature I’ve ever met.
I don’t move to greet her, though. Because I’ve been following her for the last week, intent on bringing her to heel after the promise she made me, and now that I’ve finally found her, I’m not going to make it easy on her.
This time, I’m going to force her to come to me.
“You,” she hisses, drawing to a stop right in front of me.
“Me,” I agree easily. “Were you expecting someone else?”
Her eyes flash to the cane at my side, and she smirks. “Not really. Finally admitting your age, Lucien? Or is that just a fashion statement?”
I nearly laugh at that. Classic Brooks: right to the offensive. I managed to catch her by surprise and now she’s trying to get her footing back. I don’t rise to the bait, though. Not with words.
Instead, I grab the handle of the cane and jerk, pulling the hidden blade out of the body of the walking stick and swishing it quickly through the air. Once. Twice. When it stops, the tip of the steel is at the base of her neck.
“Fashion statement,” I growl.
Her eyes move from the blade at her throat to my own, shocked and almost laughing, and before I can say anything else she’s moving, quick as a cat and twice as sharp.
A butterfly knife appears in her hand and snaps open, then whirs through the air to clash with my own blade and toss it away from her.
“What is this, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Because you’re no Dorian Gray,” she murmurs. “It’s not about the size of the sword, Lucien. It’s how you use it that matters.” She flips her butterfly knife closed again, exaggerating the movement, and tosses me what can only be called a smirk.
I’m about to answer when my phone rings, and when I see Daniel’s name, I take the call. Some things are more important than putting Brooks in her place.
“Boss,” he says quietly.
My lips twitch. Daniel Boniface is my second, and my best friend, and takes his job very seriously. But he never calls me ‘boss.’ The term must mean he’s with someone he’s trying to impress. “Daniel. What’s going on?”
“You need to get home. Things down here are... not going well.”
The smile drops off my lips. “You’re going to need to be more specific, Daniel.
” Because there are a range of things that aren’t going well right now.
A quiet war in New Orleans between some of the most powerful families, including my own.
Shady deals that never see the light of day.
The Big Easy has always believed in a less organized version of organized crime, and when I left a week ago, it had reached a truly disturbing level of chaos.
I need to know whether there’s anything new.
As usual, Daniel gets straight to the point. “More girls missing. Some of them from families we know. Many of them from the same classes we’ve already guessed at. Word is, whoever’s taking them is expanding to other cities, too. Word is, they’re coming for specific families.”
And now I’m flat out scowling. Not new, then, but definitely more serious than I realized.
He’s talking about the sudden rash of kidnappings in New Orleans.
Girls are disappearing right and left down there, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.
No patterns, and nothing I can see that connects the victims. The thing is, this isn’t a new phenomenon–we’ve heard rumors about sex trafficking in the city before–but it’s escalating.
In the past, my sources told me there were shipments of ‘inventory’ coming through our port.
Girls being shuffled from one ship to another in the dead of night as they made their unwilling way to the cities where they’d serve new masters in the sex trade.
But they weren’t girls from our city. At least not that we could discover. They’d been from other cities and countries, brought through the New Orleans port because it was conveniently understaffed when it came to law enforcement. And they’d never been my problem.
My family didn’t deal in flesh. We ran weapons and owned clubs, making our money from guns and cards, the way nature intended.
We would never have touched people. And we certainly wouldn’t sell them.
But when girls we knew started disappearing as well, I started to ask questions. Unfortunately, I hadn’t had the contacts to make quick progress in that world, and I was still in the process of breaking the walls they’d erected around that operation.
Then Brooks turned up in New Orleans, asking for my help in some war she’d started in New York–or maybe one that she just wanted to finish–and I’d put my New Orleans affairs on ice, leaving Daniel to continue the research.
If what he’s saying is true, I’m overdue for getting back. I have friends who need saving.
And a friend here who doesn’t yet know what sort of danger she’s in.
“You made me a promise,” I tell Brooks, ending the call with Daniel. “If I came to help you finish your war, you’d come home. And yet you’re still in New York.”
She makes a face at me. “Promises extracted under duress don’t hold any weight, Lucien, and you know it.”
I finally take a step toward her, and then another, bringing my body close enough that I can feel the heat coming off her. Smell her perfume, and the scent of the absinthe on her lips. Sazerac. Of course she was up there drinking Sazerac.
She still has more New Orleans in her than she’d like to think.
I lean in and turn my face down into her neck, inhaling the deep amber scent of her skin, and then lift my hand to run a thumb over her lower lip. Straightening up, I find her deep blue gaze and press my tongue to the pad of my thumb.
The tang of licorice greets me, with an undercurrent of rye whiskey and bitters.
“Sazerac?” I ask. “I didn’t know you still drank it.”
Her eyes go wide and dark and she stiffens. “I don’t,” she whispers too quickly.
Her response sends fire scorching through my veins.
Christ, this woman. Get too close and my need for her is already taking over.
I take her chin between my fingers to hold her still, and brush my lips gently against hers, reveling in the tremors that run through her body.
“And yet I can taste it on your lips and smell it on your skin. You’re a terrible liar, Brooks Landry. ”
For a moment, the air between us is so thick you’d need a knife to cut through it, and I nearly take another step toward her, just to feel the brush of her body against mine. My cock is straining in my pants, fighting to get to her, and my skin feels as if a million razorblades are slicing into it.
Devils, just being around her makes my body forget everything my brain has learned.
Suddenly she jerks away from me, though, taking three steps back and tipping her chin up. “You don’t know anything about me, Lucien. Not anymore. And my name isn’t Landry. It’s Peterson.”
Her words douse whatever tension I might have been feeling, and I get down to business.
“I know a hell of a lot more than you think I do, Brooks, and it’s time you started listening. If you’d taken any time to ask what I was doing in New Orleans when you showed up, you’d know that things aren’t going well down there. Wars are being fought that could change the city.”
“Hard to ask for news when I was busy running for my life,” she retorts.
This time I do grab her, then spin and pin her against the car. I’m suddenly furious at everything. The fact that she was promised to me and then left like it didn’t matter. The lack of any news after that.
The way she never called to tell me she was safe.
And then she showed up in New Orleans asking for help like I somehow owed it to her, expecting me to play hero, and I’d fucking done it. Marshaled my men and laid an army at her feet, like some god-cursed suitor begging for her hand in marriage.
Which was exactly what I’d been. I’d sold my own family out to come to her rescue, on the promise that if I did it, she’d come home with me. Only to fight the battle and then have her disappear into the darkness like fucking smoke.
Now Daniel is calling me telling me things are going badly in New Orleans, with more girls disappearing and families I know losing people, while I’m up here waiting for Brooks Landry to remember how to keep a fucking promise.
I’m the Boudreaux heir and no one ever disrespects me.
If they do, they find themselves dead in no time flat.
Yet here’s Brooks, pulling on my heart strings the way she always has and asking me to help her, then going back on her word the moment she changes her mind.
Breaking promises and putting herself in danger. And this time, if my sources are right, she’s up against something I’m not sure I can save her from.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
“This isn’t a joke, Brooks,” I growl, getting as close to her as I dare.
“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but you’re already in over your head.
All this research you’re doing? The missing girls, and that girl you’re searching for by name?
The fucking war I came here to fight for you?
You think that’s not connected? You think it’s some sort of coincidence? ”
Now she finally lets her expression show something. “What?” she asks sharply. “What are you talking about?”
My hands clench on her arms. God, for such a smart girl, she can be really dense. “I’m talking about the case you’re on right now. The girl, Aislyn Brennan.”
Confusion slashes through her gaze, followed by defiance, and then anger. “How do you know about her?”
There are a million answers to that question, but only one of them matters. “Because I’ve been following you since I got here. And because the people you’re talking to are passing word along to their keepers.”
She shoves me off, now, that temper of hers getting the better of her, and glares at me. “And what the fuck does that mean?”
“It means,” I tell her coldly, “that according to my sources, they’re involved in something a lot bigger than you realize, and they don’t like you poking around.
They’ve put a hit out on you. You’ve been asking too many questions, and now they’re after you, too.
And these aren’t the sort of people you can run from, because they’ll find you. No matter where you hide.”
She opens her mouth, no doubt with some other smart-ass question, but snaps it shut when the first bullet flies our way.