Chapter 3 Ridge
THREE
Ridge
Birthplace of Jazz: New Orleans is hailed as the birthplace of jazz. Pioneers like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Sidney Bechet laid the foundation for this global genre, with the sounds of brass and blues echoing through the city streets.
Vin’s already in my office when I walk in.
The building is quiet in the way that it only gets late at night, after the phones stop ringing and the crews rotate out.
The city hums beyond the windows, indifferent to the fury raging inside of me. Everything that needed to happen today already has. Calls were made, legal teams were looped in, and the damage was contained before it could ripple outward.
This is what’s left.
They left my father on the side of the road in the Warehouse District, stripped of context and witnesses. They made it look like a mugging so he would be found quickly and written off just as fast, nothing tying it back to the ports or the work he was doing.
But I know.
I have no idea who or how they cleaned up the warehouse and got rid of the bodies I left behind, but that’s not my concern. Mine is to make sure it doesn’t derail us and whoever is responsible pays.
Vin leans against the edge of the desk, jacket off, sleeves rolled up. He’s been holding everything together since the first call came in last night. Calm as ever, watching me the way he always does, like he’s taking inventory without making it obvious.
“You alright?” he asks, nodding toward my right hand.
The bandage is clean, fresh gauze wrapped tightly. There are seventeen stitches underneath. It throbs when I move it, which is often enough to be annoying.
“Fine,” I say. “Looks worse than it is.”
He doesn’t argue. We both know a busted hand isn’t the problem.
I shut the door and cross the room, dropping into the chair behind the desk that used to belong to my father. The weight of that doesn’t escape me. It shouldn’t. It won’t.
“How bad?” Vin asks.
He already knows. He just needs to hear how I’m going to say it.
“A fucking shitshow,” I reply. My voice comes out steadily, which surprises me under the circumstances. “They wanted it seen. Made sure of it.”
Vin nods once. He’s been my father’s Director of Port Operations for as long as I can remember.
He isn’t muscle or a figurehead. He’s the one who knows which terminals stall if a permit gets delayed, which crews get reassigned when a contract shifts, and how to keep the entire system moving when something vital gets ripped out of it.
“I heard they found your father early this morning,” Vin says. “Warehouse District. Looked like a robbery gone wrong.”
“So I hear,” I say.
Vin nods. “Uniforms are treating it that way. Street cameras, canvassing, the usual noise. Nothing that points back to the ports.”
Silence settles between us. It isn’t awkward. It’s the kind that comes from knowing exactly what the other person is thinking.
“I have no idea where the other three went,” I say, not as a question.
“He must have hired someone to clean it up and get rid of them.”
I study his face. He gives nothing away.
“I never knew they had it in them to do all of this,” I say. “I know we aren’t church boys, but fuck.”
“This business is ugly. Keep your wits, though. Everyone’s watching you,” Vin says. “Competitors. Regulators. Anyone waiting to see if the Stones lose their footing.”
I meet his gaze. “They won’t see a thing.”
He holds my eyes for a beat, then nods. “You sound like your father.”
I don’t respond because that thought is chilling. I never thought of my father in this light. I always knew he skirted the law, and he taught us all how to handle and carry weapons, but I never thought we’d use them like this.
Vin shifts, folding his arms. “You said one of them talked.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Didn’t take much. Gave the name up like it was currency.”
“Laurent Boudreaux.”
I don’t blink. Neither does he.
“That lines up with what I’ve been hearing,” Vin continues. “This wasn’t random. He’s been angling to expand his reach in the ports for years. And he wanted you to know it was him, if you ask me.”
“They’re watching to see how we respond.”
Vin’s mouth tightens. “Then they picked the right way to get one.”
I lean back in the chair, the leather creaking under my weight. The office smells faintly of polish and old paper. It’s familiar and grounding, smells and sounds that have made up the fabric of my entire life.
“We need to move,” I say. “Fast enough that nobody thinks we’re hesitating. Clean enough that nobody knows what happened. Except the ones waiting for a response.”
Vin straightens. “Then you already know what we have to do.”
We. Vin is wearing this on his shoulders just like I am.
I study him. “What are you suggesting?”
He doesn’t rush it. Vin never does.
“Boudreaux has a daughter,” he says. “Coco.”
I take a second longer than necessary before responding.
I hold his gaze. “And?”
“And she’s the one thing he won’t ignore,” Vin replies. “You don’t posture. You force engagement.”
I shake my head once. “We aren’t in the business of snatching women, Vin. That wasn’t my father’s style, and it’s not mine. Boudreaux is who I want to hurt. No need to bring his daughter into it.”
“No, you’re right,” Vin agrees. “But we make statements, and we make it hurt. She has to be part of the equation.”
I push out of the chair and pace toward the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the city. Lights flicker along the streets. Life carries on like nothing cracked open underneath it.
“This isn’t something my father would’ve done,” I say.
Vin doesn’t argue. “Your father never had to bury his own father.”
The words lodge in my throat. I swallow once, then again. I’m not an emotional man, but the weight of all of this, of losing my father, of considering doing something like what Vin is suggesting, is heavy.
I turn back to him. “You want to kidnap the girl?”
“I think that’s the only way to do this.”
Holy fucking shit. I can’t believe this is where I am right now. That I’m actually considering doing this.
“If I agree to this, I’m not killing her. I want to make that clear. It’s her father I want.”
Vin’s expression stays flat. That’s what makes it dangerous.
“Right now, Boudreaux can sit back and wait. He can deny, stall, let the noise die down. We need him to move.”
“Good point.”
“She’s leverage in a closed system. Temporary. She stays safe as long as Boudreaux plays this smart, which I believe he will once his daughter is part of the equation.”
“So what if he doesn’t bend, then what?”
“Then we keep tightening the system around him until he has to engage.”
I stand there, turning it over. Not the morality. The cost.
This isn’t about anger anymore. That burned off somewhere between sunrise and the last phone call. What’s left is colder. Focused.
“People will talk,” I say. “They’ll say I moved too fast. That I stepped into my father’s place before his body was cold.”
Vin snorts. “People always fucking talk.”
He pushes off the desk and straightens. “What matters is whether they move. You let this sit, then you give them room to think the Stones aren’t a force anymore. You move decisively, and everyone recalibrates.”
I exhale slowly and nod once.
“Alright,” I say. “We do it clean. No noise. No spectacle.”
Vin watches me for a beat, like he’s weighing something. Then he nods.
“Good,” he says.
I glance at my hand, flexing my fingers despite the sting. “We move soon.”
Vin straightens, already shifting into motion. “I’ll make the call.”
As he pulls his phone out of the breast pocket of his shirt, he looks up at me.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “this city’s been waiting to see which Stone would show up next.”
I meet his eyes. “They’re about to find out.”
I cross my arms and focus on a single food vendor on the street. Vin doesn’t stir.
Then I turn around, reach for my jacket, and put it on as if it’s my armor. Work isn’t done yet.
“Alright,” I say finally, my voice cold. “Take care of it. And you make sure everyone knows why.”
I straighten my cuffs as my mind’s already working out the logistics. “Put Beau in charge. He can keep her__”
Vin cuts in, his tone sharp, “Not Beau.”
I stop and look back at him. “What?”
“It has to be you,” he says, stepping closer.
“If you delegate this, it looks like you’re insulating yourself.
Like you don’t have the stomach to get your hands dirty.
Boudreaux will see that and so will everyone else.
If this is about showing the city who’s in charge now that Robert is gone, Ridge, then it has to be you. No one else.”
I hold his gaze as the weight of it settles in.
My father trusted Vin. Always had. Trusted him to see what others missed. To say the things no one else would.
He’s right.
If I don’t do this myself, it won’t carry the same weight.
The idea of dragging an innocent woman into this war sits like a cinderblock in my gut, but this business has never been clean. And it has never been fair.
If I’m going to run my father’s business now, I will have to make difficult decisions. This may be the first, but it won’t be the last.
The stakes are too high to pretend otherwise. My father taught me to do what has to be done, even when it costs something.
“Fine,” I say after a long exhale. My voice stays steady. “I’ll do it. But the second we have her, this moves fast. We hit them hard, and we don’t stop until my father’s death is answered in a way no one can ignore. And then we let her go.”
Vin’s expression doesn’t change. He just nods once.
“That’s the way,” he says. “People will think twice next time.”
The room goes quiet when I walk in.
It isn’t completely silent, but everything goes still.
The air smells like burnt coffee and cigarettes, the residue of a long day spent putting out problems. Conversations die off one by one as my brothers turn toward me, each of them waiting to see what I’ll say.
Or what I won’t.