Chapter 9 Lucien
Lucien
The room I’ve chosen as my war room takes up much of the bottom floor of my house, which means it also includes most of the windows on this side.
It’s always given this room the best view of the sunrise in the morning, with the sun coming up over the driveway and shining into the house like it went through the whole night dreaming about how it would illuminate my mansion once it rose from its slumber.
I’m just very rarely up to see it happening.
But I didn’t sleep last night. I got home from the Landry mansion with the blood so hot in my veins I wondered if it was going to evaporate. Seeing Brooks again was relief personified, and having her under my hands, having my fingers inside her...
I brush my fingers against my top lip and inhale, taking in the deep scent of her body, and allow myself to relive the moment when I had her pushed against the wall, her thighs clamped down on my hand and her scream coloring my palm.
I wanted the girl like I’ve never wanted anything, my cock hard as steel in my pants, but knew we didn’t have time for that.
I’d also known with every instinct I had that the last thing I could afford was to be caught on Dominick Landry’s balcony with my pants around my ankles.
Bad enough that I’d had to leave my girl there.
I whirl around and get to work at that thought, because I might have left her there last night, but the next time I see her, I’m going to snatch her from whatever she’s doing, shove her into my car, and bring her home.
Some people might call that kidnapping. But when you’re in love with the girl you’re stealing, isn’t it more like rescue?
No?
“Where are we?” I ask. I snag my coffee cup from off the table where I set it and walk toward Daniel, taking in the maps and schedules tacked to the walls alongside a number of grainy photographs.
This morning we’re working with the information Hunter managed to collect yesterday, and that means a number of new girls going into our own records.
New collection sites.
New trafficking routes.
New export dates.
“We’ve narrowed the next shipment out to a pier,” Daniel says quickly, hitting a few last keys before he looks up at me. “All the girls currently marked for shipment have the same pier number.”
That seemed... too easy.
But I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“All shipping out at the same time?” I ask.
He nods. “Tomorrow night. Pier 9. A ship called the Dodo.”
“I don’t really care about the ship’s name,” I note. “How many girls?”
“Thirty,” he says, and dives into a complicated explanation of where they’re coming from–all from a warehouse in the district–and where they’ve been up to this point.
The truth is, I don’t care about any of that, either. I don’t need to know where they’ve been or how they got there. I just need to know where I can get to them before they end up on that ship, being transported to foreign buyers. Because once they’re on the ship, I can’t save them anymore.
And I’m not willing to let any more of them go.
I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to forget the faces of the girls I didn’t save last night.
We got only one of them, the girl Brooks had with her when I found her, and that girl died early this morning, courtesy of the wounds she’d received before Brooks could get to her.
Twenty other girls were loaded onto a ship in the midst of the battle and sent to destinations I didn’t know.
Twenty other girls who’d been right there, ripe for the taking, and who we’d missed because we weren’t as prepared as we needed to be.
I hadn’t known the shipment was happening until Brooks figured it out and left without me.
Leaving a note behind, apologizing.
This time, I don’t have her as a loose canon, though, and I’m not going to make the same mistakes. I’m running this rescue mission the way I want to, and I’m counting on Brooks to stay the fuck out of the way rather than screwing it up.
A part of me knows I’m being unfair even thinking that.
It knows that she was doing what she thought was best, and doing it for the girls she was trying to save.
But a larger part of me is well and truly pissed that she’s thrown herself into danger again, and refused to let me pull her out last night when I could have, and that part is pleased as punch that she won’t be able to screw this mission up.
While also furious that she insisted I leave her where she was.
I turn back to the planning to distract myself from that, and run through the list of girls.
It’s not a complete list–or at least we don’t think it is–but it does include some very important names.
Aislyn Brennan, for one. The governor’s daughter, second.
The girls I thought were being used as bait.
They’re scheduled to go to the port tomorrow night, so they’ll be at Pier 9, but I’m not positive they’ll actually go onto a ship.
I think they’re being handed off to someone else.
Either that or they’re being used as bait, just to try to draw me out.
I’m going to feel pretty stupid for falling for it, if that’s the case, but I’ve got important business with those girls.
I want to get them out of the ring and into my own house.
And then I want to start questioning them about how this all works.
I want witnesses from inside the ring to tell me where they’ve been, how long they’ve been held, and how many men there are.
I want to something I can hold over Dom’s head.
Most of all, I want to get to the bottom of this and figure out who’s running the whole thing.
The victims might not have all the answers, but they’ll have some, and as long as Brooks is going to insist on infiltrating her father’s operation on her own, I’m going to keep myself busy with something else.
Other girls, as the case may be. Because I’m more than a little angry at her for continuing to put herself in dangerous situations. I let her stay this time, but the next time I see her, I’m not giving her a choice.
In the meantime, I just need to figure out how to save this group without tipping my hand... or losing Brooks.
I don’t know what Dom knows about me at this point, or if he thinks I’m dead.
From what I can tell, he hasn’t inquired about me at all, which seems strange when I was stolen right out of one of his vans.
He should be raising hell trying to find me, and the fact that he’s not makes me extremely nervous.
It’s almost like he didn’t expect to keep me.
Like he knew there’d be a rescue attempt, and that his men would lose me.
The thought freezes me in my tracks, because it feels like I’m hitting the mark on the head with it.
Dom’s men didn’t kill us last night when they could have, and if I wasn’t mistaken, we got away a lot easier than we should have.
There were fewer of us than there were of them, and they definitely had bigger guns.
Yet we didn’t lose anyone.
We got away clean, while Brooks was left behind in the van. On my father’s orders.
Oh my God, had my father called ahead to warn Dom that my men would be breaking me out of there? Had they made some sort of deal that Dom could keep Brooks if my men got away with me?
I despise the thought, but it makes a whole lot of sense, and it wouldn’t be the first time Dom and Gemini made deals regarding Brooks and me that they didn’t run by us first.
“We go in without any of Gemini’s men,” I say abruptly, turning toward Daniel. “No one who might have any allegiance to my father. No one who’s worked for him before.”
Daniel looks up from his computer, his forehead creased. “That’s going to be hard to accomplish, Lucien. Most of our men worked for your father at some point.”
I slam my coffee cup to the table, splashing coffee across the surface. “And some of them have worked for me from the start. Those are the only men I want with me. No one who might have ties to my father. Get on the phone to Simon. See if he has any inside information about Pier 9 that we can use.”
Daniel gives me a long stare, no doubt wondering when I lost my mind, but then nods and goes back to work, reaching for his phone and dialing a number by heart. I watch him for a moment, knowing how lucky I am to have a man like him, then turn when I hear someone else come into the room.
Luke has more coffee, thank God, and is wearing a grim expression that tells me he’s about to deliver more bad news.
Terrific.
“What?” I ask, grabbing at one of the coffees.
He holds the tray closer so I don’t have to struggle, then takes a sip of his own. “I met with Jacky again. He says his father has plans at the port tomorrow night. Says there’s some outside money Sean wants to meet with.”
Outside money.
Foreigners.
The Russians.
Why the hell are they going to be at the port on the same night the girls are being transferred. Are they there for the highest profile girls? For Aislyn and the governor’s daughter?
Whey would they come to collect them personally?
If they have enough money to buy girls of that caliber, surely they also have enough money to pay for a fucking transporter.
They’ve never been welcome in New Orleans, and if the families find out the Russians are in town–and that they’re stealing our girls–there’s going to be hell to pay.
Though maybe that’s the whole point.
God.
“Anything else?” I ask, hoping he has more to give me.
Luke shakes his head, though, and I think for a moment that it might be better to send Luke into the Duhon operation himself.
Let Jacky take him in and make him an ally within the house.
Jacky would never wear a recording device, but Luke would, and if I could get more information about what Sean is up to. ..