Chapter 16 Ridge
SIXTEEN
Ridge
Jackson Square: Named after Andrew Jackson for his role in the Battle of New Orleans, this historic square is the heart of the French Quarter, with live music, artists, and the stunning St. Louis Cathedral as its backdrop
.I sit at a booth near the back of the Orchid with paperwork spread in front of me, the list growing instead of shrinking. There is always something else waiting for my attention.
Some music I’m not paying much attention to plays through the speakers. It’s more atmosphere than sound. It rounds off the edges without demanding focus.
The space is reserved tonight, closed to walk-ins, the way rooms like this often are when privacy matters.
The bartender moves unhurriedly behind the bar, polishing glassware he’s already cleaned once, passing the time.
Beau sits at a nearby table with his laptop open, close enough to be useful, far enough not to intrude.
The double doors open, and I look up.
émile Girard steps inside in a tailored gray suit, old money precision in every line of him. His cane marks a quiet rhythm against the wood floor as he crosses the room, unhurried, a faint smirk already in place.
“Mr. Stone,” he says, dipping his head. “Thank you for agreeing to meet.”
I gesture to the seat across from me. My expression stays neutral. “I want to be clear. We’re done.”
He sits with practiced ease, resting his cane against the booth. His hands fold neatly on the table. His gaze is sharp behind wire-framed glasses, assessing, cataloging.
“Laurent sends his regards,” he says. “And his thanks for returning Coco unharmed.”
Her name pulls a sharp, unwanted image into my head anyway. The steadiness in her eyes, the way she held her ground when she should have been afraid, the sound of her footsteps leaving, measured and unhurried, like she refused to let me decide the moment for her.
My chest tightens, fast and unwelcome. I lock it down before it shows.
“She left the same way she arrived,” I say evenly. “Laurent should appreciate that, and we should be square.”
“He does appreciate that you didn’t hurt his daughter,” émile replies, leaning back. “But he does not take lightly to interference with his family.”
Behind me, Beau shifts. I lift a hand without turning, and he stills.
“Coco’s return was the message,” I say. “One Laurent would be smart to read carefully. I didn’t cross a line that didn’t already exist. I reacted to the belief that my father had been killed by Laurent.
When I learned that intel was wrong, I corrected it.
I returned his daughter. That is the end of it. ”
I don’t mention the restraint it required or explain what I chose not to do. Those details belong to me.
émile’s smirk deepens. “Some mistakes are easily brushed aside,” he says. “Others are not.”
He lets the silence stretch, testing it. I hold it without blinking.
Finally, he speaks again. “Laurent asked me to deliver this personally. ‘If I come for you, you will not see me coming, Ridge Stone. And if you ever touch anyone in my family again, you will not see anything at all.’”
The room goes still. Beau shifts once more. I stay where I am, jaw tight, letting the words settle. Laurent had chosen his target carefully. Not my men. Not my money. My credibility
I expected the message and the threat. What grates is hearing Coco spoken about like property being passed between hands. Like something handled and warned over.
“Message received,” I say, leaning back. I angle my chin toward émile. “Tell Laurent I have no interest in touching anyone in his family, so long as he keeps his distance from mine.”
émile rises as smoothly as he sat. He retrieves his cane, his eyes lingering on mine a beat longer than necessary. “For now,” he says, “let us hope we remain mutually disinclined to escalate.”
I watch him leave with the same deliberate calm he arrived with. The doors close behind him. The room feels colder for it.
Beau steps forward. “You good?”
I don’t answer immediately. My fingers tap once against the table, controlled, measured. émile’s words replay, not the threat itself but her name in his mouth.
The truth sits there, uncomfortable and unwelcome. I did the right thing by returning her. I closed the door and ended one war.
That does not mean I liked it.
“I’m fine,” I say at last, standing. I adjust my jacket and turn toward the exit. “Let’s get back to work.”
Outside, the humid New Orleans night presses in heavily. Her image follows me like the sticky heat. The steadiness of her gaze, the calm in her voice.
The bunker is emptier now that she’s gone.
She took something with her. Not anything I could name or justify reclaiming.
But it’s significant.
And I carry the weight of that loss with me into the dark, knowing it is the price of choosing control over what I wanted.
I sit at my desk with the lights low, the glow from two monitors washing the room in muted blue. One screen runs numbers. The other tracks messages that do not stop coming in, feeds Wells built to update whether I am watching or not.
The glass of whiskey sits untouched at my elbow. I have not decided whether I want it.
There are too many decisions stacked too close together, and each one pulls at a different piece of the board. I stare at a sticky note that Clara left for me, and I can’t even make sense of the letters to form a coherent thought.
My phone buzzes. I pick it up without looking.
“Rhodes,” I say.
“Hey, brother.” Rhodes’s voice comes through steady and controlled.
“What’s up?”
“I wanted to check in on Tripp. No movement on my end. Are we keeping him pulled for now, or do you want to escalate?”
I lean back in my chair and drag a hand along my jaw, the scrape of my beard grounding me. The pressure in my chest doesn’t lift. It hasn’t since the night my father died.
“Where are we with him?” I ask. “Exactly. I’ve been buried. Walk me through anything new.”
“He’s still secured,” Rhodes says. “Vin said the directive came from you. We’ve gone through what he’s willing to give, but there’s nothing concrete about what he was doing with the Duvalls. No proof he understood what he was stepping into. It’s possible he didn’t.”
My fingers tighten around the phone as I fist my beard.
“Do you think he’s lying?”
There’s a pause. Rhodes doesn’t rush it.
“I think he’s scared,” he says. “Not strategic. Not ambitious. Loyal, if that still matters. But careless enough to cause damage without meaning to.”
Vin sees a compromised asset. I see a system exposed at the wrong seam, at the worst possible moment.
“I’m not interested in making an example out of him,” I say. “I want clarity. If he touched something he shouldn’t have, I need to know how. If someone used him, I need to know who and why.”
“Understood,” Rhodes says.
“Where is he?”
“Warehouse off Elysian Fields. He’s secured and isolated. Do you want to try to talk to him? I can meet you there.”
“I’m going, but I want to do it alone.” My answer is immediate. “I’ll handle it. Who’s on rotation?”
“Guerrard and French. One of them will be on site.”
“Good. Keep it tight. No one improvises.”
We disconnect. I let the phone drop onto the desk instead of setting it down carefully. The sound is dull. Final.
Tripp isn’t the question.
He’s the entry point.
And if he leads me to the people who killed my father, I won’t hesitate.
But I won’t burn the wrong piece just to feel like I’m doing something.
That’s when I notice the weight in my breast pocket.
I reach in and pull out the photos. They’re bent now, the edges creased from being carried around longer than they should have been. I thumb through them again, slow and deliberate, like I’m studying evidence instead of something that keeps refusing to make sense.
Vin’s face stares back at me.
So does the man who slit my father’s throat.
There are others in the stack. There are men I recognize, but several I don’t. Faces that look ordinary enough in still frames. Nothing about them stands out, except for the fact that one of them ended my father’s life and somehow ended up photographed and hidden away in my father’s desk.
The images refuse to line up into anything coherent.
Coco took these. She hid them. Not sloppily. Not by accident.
I set the photos down on the desk and lean forward, elbows braced against my knees, hands pressing into my temples. The more I turn it over in my head, the more unstable everything becomes. Threads I thought were solid start to fray the second I pull on them.
Tripp never struck me as a mastermind. He never struck me as the kind of man who could build something this layered and keep it standing on his own.
Which means he either knows more than he’s said. Or someone else made damn sure he never understood what he was part of.
I scoop the photos back up and shove them into my pocket. The chair bangs into the wall when I stand, piercing the quiet room.
Beau is outside the door. I know that without checking. I also know I don’t want him with me for this. This needs to be handled without witnesses. Without an audience. Without anyone else deciding what comes next.
I head for my car with the photos back in my pocket, each one cutting away at the version of events I have been working from. Rhodes said Tripp is at the warehouse, so that’s where I’m going first.
I’m not looking for explanations. I want him to tell me his version from start to finish without four men staring at him. Just him and me.
The moment this stopped being a coincidence and started being something someone planned, that’s what I want to find. Tripp may not know what he was used for, but he is the first place where the story stops lining up.
The drive passes in a blur of sodium lights and empty intersections, my thoughts circling the same images without settling. Faces my father thought worth keeping. Faces I do not yet have context for. I will take these to Vin, too, once I know what questions I am actually asking.