Chapter 16 Lucien
Lucien
I shove the doors of the warehouse open and storm through them, my men following me with our prisoner.
“Put him on the wall,” I snarl.
I’m beyond angry. Brooks has been missing for twenty-four hours and I haven’t been able to find anything about where she might be.
I gave the kidnappers ten minutes, just so they wouldn’t realize I’d known what they were going to do, and then I tore through the ball, looking for any sign of Brooks or the men who’d taken her.
But everyone had disappeared. The captain of the circus. The man who’d been following Brooks. I didn’t see the girl Brooks had been talking to or the men who’d shoved past me to get to her, either.
I couldn’t even find Dom Landry, which was strange, considering it was his party. I’d seen Beau Landry momentarily, but he’d looked harried and upset, and had been on his way out the door.
And since then... Nothing. No one was talking. My contacts didn’t know anything, and if they did, they weren’t sharing.
Brooks was caught in a smuggling ring, being held captive in some dank, dark cell somewhere, and I was up here fighting to get someone to tell me something I could use.
Enter Simon leBanc.
I turn and glare at him now, so angry I can hardly see straight.
“You’re sure this guy knows where she is?”
Simon turns large, frightened eyes from me to the man now handcuffed to the wall of the warehouse, and nods once. “He sure does. He’s one of their main guys.”
“And how the hell were you able to get to him?”
Some of Simon’s fear melts at that and he gives me a cocky grin. “I’ve been working for them for a while. Turns out they trusted me more than they should have.”
I almost laugh at that, because it’s a level of self-awareness that I never would have expected from a freelancer like Simon.
Though he’s right. Whoever hired him was fucking stupid to think he’d have any loyalty to the organization.
He’s an outlaw. Doesn’t belong to any one family and goes wherever the wind takes him.
Or where the money’s better.
I cleaned out an entire set of stock holdings to make sure I was paying him more than Landry’s organization.
And in return, he gave me the name and location of the highest-placed man he knew.
Simon himself doesn’t know anything, of course.
He’s just a set of eyes, in charge of figuring out a girl’s schedule for easier kidnapping.
But he reported to some of the snatchers, and those men reported to the guy in charge of organizing it all.
That guy is now chained with his hands above his head in my warehouse.
And I’m going to do whatever it takes to find out what he knows, and where Brooks is.
“James Saldana,” I say, strolling slowly toward the man. “You work for Dominick Landry?”
He narrows his eyes and glares at me. “I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Right.” I brace a hand on the wall near his head and lean toward him. “Then who do you work for? Let’s start there.”
Instead of answering, the man spits in my face.
He actually spits. In. My. Face.
I jerk back, disgusted, and then, before I can stop myself, I hit him right in the mouth. His head jerks back and hits the wall, and I feel a disturbing sense of vindication at the sound of it.
“That was rude, James,” I say quietly. “Let’s try this again. And I’ll warn you right now: I’m going to start nicely. But if you don’t tell me what you know, this is going to get ugly.”
The man just grins. “Bring it on, Boudreaux. You don’t have the balls to do anything I haven’t experienced before. This isn’t one of your little gambling dens.”
This guy.
“So skipping right over the nice part, then?” I ask, forcing myself to be polite and polished.
I can’t say I’m surprised at his statement.
People around here tend to think I’m more of a gentleman than I am.
Someone who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty.
Maybe it’s the way I dress, or the fact that I make my money at card games and roulette tables.
Could be the fact that I don’t run in any of the street gangs, like so many of the mafia kids do these days.
Or maybe it’s the cane.
Without another thought, I toss my cane up in the air, catch it, pull the blade out of it, and swipe it through the air, the metal whistling as it flies. My aim is perfect, and by the time I stop the swing, James’ left hand is laying on the floor.
He doesn’t even realize what’s happened until he looks down and sees it there.
Then he starts screaming.
“I think you’ll find, James,” I say, pushing my rapier back into the cane, “that I’m capable of a lot more than people realize. And I’m willing to use every single skill in my repertoire to get the answers I want. Now tell me what kind of ring this is and how many girls are involved.”
It’s not the question I want to ask. I want to ask where the fuck Brooks is and how I can get her out.
But if I jump right into that, he’ll know how valuable she is, and at this point I’m praying they don’t realize she’s related to Dom Landry.
The moment they do, she becomes worth more, and that means she’ll be in even bigger danger.
I have to play it cool, no matter how much it kills me.
“Fuck you,” James hisses. “I’m not telling you anything.”
Well, this is interesting. I thought this guy was a manager, not a soldier. Not someone who’d keep his mouth shut in the face of torture. How much was Dom paying him to inspire such loyalty?
“Is that so?” I ask, letting my surprise show on my face. “In that case, I guess we need to keep going.”
I pull a butterfly knife from my pocket and whip it open, then press it to his cheek. “What do you think, Daniel, the mark of the devil, or the mark of Boudreaux?”
“Boudreaux,” Daniel growls. “This family will last a whole lot longer than the devil.”
“Good call,” I say thoughtfully. “And I wouldn’t want to accidentally summon Satan himself by drawing his mark in blood.” I place the tip of my knife into Daniel’s cheek, press it in deep enough to draw blood, and start carving our family crest into his flesh as he screams.
And I think of Brooks as I do it with her favorite type of knife. And I wonder where the fuck the girl is and how I’m going to get her. Because every minute in that ring is a minute too long. I don’t even have time to stand around torturing James.
But I don’t know how else to get the information I need.
***
An hour later, James is dead, having given us very little to work on. When I mentioned Brooks, too jittery to keep her a secret any longer, he’d laughed at me.
“Brooks Landry? That red-haired bitch? Oh, we know her. We took her on purpose. With that last name, she’ll bring even more than the rest.”
“And you don’t care that she’s your boss’ daughter?” I asked, shocked at his sudden candor.
“Care? Why would I care?” he sneered. “Dominick told us to take her.”
I’d stabbed him then. Again and again. And then I slit his throat and let him fall gurgling to the floor as his life drained out of him.
I was furious. So angry I could hardly see straight.
My girl was in there fighting for her life–or at least risking it–and the man not only wouldn’t tell me where she was, but laughed when I demanded to know.
And then he said her own fucking father had recommended her as a mark.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. What father wanted that for his own daughter? What father knew what he was sending her into, and then did it anyhow?
True, Dom and Brooks have never had a good relationship.
I don’t know all the facts, but I know he hit her more than once–tried to kill her when she found out too much about him, if the rumors are true–and that she started carrying her first knife just to protect herself from him.
I know Beau tried to protect her for a long time, until he realized he was too small to take on his dad.
And if Camille told me the truth when I asked, Dominick was the reason Brooks left New Orleans entirely.
From the sounds of it, Dominick is still abusing Brooks. He’s just found a new way to do it.
I growl and punch the wall, frustrated at the fact that I still don’t have anything to go on. Brooks is in danger, we’re only two to three days from the ship date, and I don’t have any way to reach her. I don’t even know where to start looking.
Then I realize that I might have a way of finding out.
“Do we have his phone?” I ask, spinning to look at Daniel.
He cocks his head, but then pulls the phone out of his pocket. “I doubt he has numbers for anyone saved in here, boss,” he says, handing it to me. “No one in their right mind would save something like that.”
“I don’t need numbers,” I say holding the phone up to James’ face to unlock it.
“Take a picture of his face. Close as you can get.” I turn away from the dead man, my fingers busy on the phone as I open up the settings and go to his GPS history.
If this guy is in the ring and is as important as Simon claims, he’ll have been to some important locations.
Including, I hope, the distribution centers where they’re holding the girls.
I might be able to find Brooks without having to kill anyone else.
Though I’ll kill an entire army if I have to.
I’ll kill anyone who gets in between me and my girl, and I’ll do it so fast they don’t even see it coming.
“What do you have, boss?” Daniel asks.
“His GPS history. We’re about to do a tour of the city and figure out where their distribution centers are.”
True, the GPS locations might not be as specific as I’d like, but they’ll give me a place to start searching. And I’ve known this town a long time. If I can get into the right neighborhoods, I’ll find people there to help me.
By hook or by crook. By threats or by money.
I don’t care.
“Gear up,” I say. “We’ve got a couple days. And I want her out.”