Chapter 9 Brooks
Brooks
I get to my father’s mansion without a real plan for what I’m going to do, and that’s so unlike me that I have to pause before I hit the driveway and get my brain to actually think.
The moment I saw that logo in the photo at the apartment, I knew what it meant.
Honestly, I’ve had the thought since Aislyn first went missing, and then again when Lucien told me girls were disappearing, and then again when I saw all those files.
Even if I hadn’t thought about it consciously, my subconscious was making sure I remembered the girls filing through the hall in the basement, years ago.
I’ve been dreaming about it since the war with the Poffo clan, though the two don’t seem to have anything to do with each other.
Something inside me knew this was going to happen. When I saw my father’s mark on that building, the pieces just fell into place.
And you’d think that would mean I know what the fuck I’m going to do about it. But you’d be wrong. Because for possibly the first time in my life, I don’t have a plan ready-made for this.
Maybe because ‘this’ is a situation where I suspect my father is buying and selling girls for sex and money, and doing it despite how deranged and disgusting it is.
I snort at that. ‘Deranged and Disgusting’ could be my father’s middle name. Names.
I sit on the bike and stare up at the gates of the mansion, with their wrought iron curves and embellishments, and let my mind travel beyond them to the house.
It’s huge and gothic, gray stone with turrets and a ridiculous roof, and the inside is just as bad.
My father is sleek and modern, but his house is gaudy and overdone, like he went to the kingdom of the Sun King to get the internal decorations.
Everything is done in gold and burgundy, with plush carpets and dark wood.
And you’d think, with all that gold, that the place would shine like the sun, but the opposite is true.
The house is cold and dark and very intense. It reeks of evil. Particularly at night.
A shiver passes over my skin and I move on from the house, trying to gather what I know.
I suspect that my dad is buying and selling girls, or at least moving them for someone else, and given what I’ve seen before, this isn’t a reach.
If he was doing it when I was a kid, and making money, I don’t see any reason he’d stop.
But according to our research, the game has changed.
The girls I saw when I was thirteen were scratched up and dirty.
Street girls who didn’t have anyone to save them.
The girls I’ve seen in the files from Lucien are from a higher class.
Girls with money and guards. Families who should have protected them.
Those aren’t the sorts of girls you traffic because it’s easy, and I want to know what the fuck my father’s playing at.
I also want to know who’s paying him to do it–or who’s buying them from him.
I’ve seen enough in New York to know that no one works alone in a racket like this, even in New Orleans, where everyone is a freelancer.
There are hundreds of girls in those files, which means this is a big ring. Too big for him to run on his own.
If I can figure out who’s pulling my dad’s strings, I might be able to stop all of this.
And if my timeline is correct, I only have a couple days to do it before Aislyn is shipped off to wherever they’ve promised someone a girl.
Right. That means I don’t have time to be sitting out here playing the guessing game.
I leave the bike where it is and walk to the gates, pushing them open like I still own the place.
I know how I look as I’m walking up the driveway: like I know exactly what I’m doing, and like I don’t have a doubt in the world.
It’s not true. But no one else needs to know that. The only thing they need to know is that I’m back, and I want back in. Actually, I only need one person to think that.
My father.
Because if I can go in there and convince him that I’m on his side–that I’m home and want to come back into the family–I might be able to get information the easy way. And that will mean getting to Aislyn more quickly.
I can do it, I assure myself. I can act like his friend for an hour. Maybe two. Especially if it means getting what I want.
And then afterward, I’ll do the other thing I came down here for.
Mission 1: Save the girls.
Mission 2: Take my father down, and bury him in a grave no one will ever fucking find.
***
He’s waiting for me at the top of the steps that lead up to the front door, a smirk on his mouth and his shirt unbuttoned at the top, like he was just sitting down for dinner. All casual and relaxed, his hands hanging open at his sides and his stance easy.
All a lie.
But I force my shoulders down and a smile onto my face, to match his attitude. I even make that smile as friendly as possible. I can do this. I can play nice. For a little.
“Dad,” I say, reaching for bashful and charming.
“Daughter.” The word is friendly but cautious, as if he’s not sure he can believe what his eyes are telling him right now.
Smart.
“Did you walk here? Because I would have sent a car for you.”
It takes me no time flat to see that statement for what it is. Bait. He wants to know why I’m in town and whether I’m here with anyone else. Where I’m staying. Whose side I’m on.
“I’ve got a bike at the front gate,” I say, stepping up the stairs and coming to a stop facing him. “But I wanted a walk before I saw you.”
His face grows even more cautious. “Why?”
Time to lie, Brooks.
“Because the last time I saw you it didn’t go well, and I wanted to make sure this time was better.” I say it without my voice cracking, which is a feat of strength unto itself, and without rolling my eyes at the lie.
Also a miracle.
He considers that for a moment, staring into my eyes and waiting for me to break, and I hold eye contact and tip my chin up, daring him to question my motives.
I can tell from the look on his face that he doesn’t know how long I’ve been in town or why I’m here.
If he did, he’d already be so angry he wouldn’t speak to me.
Thank you, Lucien, I think, glad for the first time that he’s able to move through the city like smoke, leaving very little evidence behind him. Evidently when I’m with him, I’m hidden in that smoke, and that almost makes being around him worthwhile.
Almost.
“Dinner?” he suddenly asks. “I was just sitting down for steak.”
I almost laugh. That was a whole lot easier than I expected it to be. The fact that he didn’t take one look at me and kick me out is a miracle. After all, the last time we were here I told him I was going to kill him.
To be fair, he’d just refused to give me men to save my friends, so I had a good reason.
It was why I went to Lucien in the first place–though ‘going’ to Lucien wasn’t exactly how it happened.
I’d been on my way there, sure, but I was kidnapped first, by Lucien’s second-in-command and at Lucien’s bidding.
Camille and I found ourselves in the catacombs, trapped with a group of Boudreaux men, when a group of Landry men attacked us.
I never found out why they attacked, and suddenly I’m not so sure of my father’s welcome. The men who came after us in the catacombs worked for my father, and if Lucien and his men hadn’t protected us, Camille and I would both be dead right now.
Or, if my suspicions about him are correct, worse.
I fight to keep from narrowing my eyes at the memory. He can’t know that I suspect anything. I’m here for information, not to blow my cover. I learned a long time ago that sometimes a girl needs to keep her brain to herself, and that usually means withholding more information than you give up.
Men tend to underestimate how much a girl can do.
And that always leads to an advantage for the girl.
So I give him my sweetest, most innocent smile–one of the biggest lies I’ve ever told in my life–and tell him I’d love to have dinner, and steak sounds terrific. Then I follow him into the house, already planning how I can ditch him and get into his office without him knowing about it.
***
The house is exactly how I remember it–not shocking, since I saw it just a week ago–but I fight the need to turn around and run back out again.
This place doesn’t hold many happy memories for me.
My father screaming at my mother. Me and my brother hiding in each other’s rooms when the dark became too dense at night, the sounds of the house too frightening.
All the girls I couldn’t save.
The things my father did to me when I tried.
This was where it all started, my need for control and the knowledge that no one was going to come for me when I needed help.
I spent too much time comforting my mother after he hit her, and even more time running to my brother and begging him to tell me it would be okay.
And I learned early on that no one else could make it okay for me.
My brother couldn’t make the dark any less scary, and my mother couldn’t make my father stop hitting me.
No one could help me save the girls in the basement, and I’d been too young and small to do it myself.
Being here in this new guise, with my guns and knives and all the street smarts I gained in New York, is like seeing the place with different eyes. I’m not here to ask my father for anything, and that frees me, as well. I’m here to take information, by hook or by crook, and that right there?
That’s pretty fucking empowering.