Chapter 11 Lucien
Lucien
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I snarl, already regretting having come to this meeting.
I’m sitting in a cafe near my father’s favorite gambling den, brought here by yet another text from my father, and though I came here thinking it was a good chance to get some information out of my father–like whether he’s fucking working with Dominick Landry–I’m starting to rethink that.
He doesn’t seem like he wants to talk about anything other than me getting married.
And we’ve already covered that more times than I can count.
“I’m not, and it’s time you start taking this seriously,” he returns.
I stare at him for several moments as I try to rein my temper in.
He’s got Corinne’s coloring, light brown hair and hazel eyes, and though you would think that’d make him look friendlier, you’d be wrong.
My father has always looked like he’s hiding secrets, like he knows more than you do about things, and that hasn’t changed with age.
My mother died when I was young, and though Gemini was nice enough to me when she was alive, the moment she died, that changed.
He became cold and hard, as if he blamed me for her being gone, and immediately started treating me like I was nothing more than a tool to be utilized.
I’d responded by leaving the house as often as possible and making my own way through the city, complete with my own crews for the rackets we ran, and I never looked back. I’d stayed in his house until I was eighteen, partially for appearances.
Partially because I’d wanted to make sure he was taking care of my little sister.
Since I moved out, we have less to do with each other than ever, and I’ve been just fine with that.
I help with the family business when it suits my purposes–usually it doesn’t–and live my own life as the Boudreaux heir who likes to do things differently than his father.
I have my own gambling dens and weapons enterprises, and he. ..
Well, he does whatever he does, and generally I’m happy to be left out of it.
I do not like the idea of him trying to pull me back in, and I’ve just told him so, in no uncertain terms.
“I take this family very seriously, but I do not want to get married, and I do not want to take over the family business. I’m just happy with my own rackets,” I say, my jaw tight and my throat closing up with anger.
Where the fuck does this man get off, coming in here and trying to tell me how to run my life?
Whether I should or shouldn’t get married?
And yes, I realize that I told him a few months ago that I’d consider getting married to further the family line and all that.
But I’ve reconsidered it, and decided against the idea.
Gemini’s hand snaps out, wraps around my wrist, and pins me to the table, and he leans in like he’s going to fucking kiss me, his eyes dangerously bright and his mouth twisted into a sneer.
“And I’m telling you, boy, that the only way you’ll get to keep those rackets is to do what I fucking tell you to do.
I want you settled down and tied to New Orleans.
I need someone responsible in charge. Someone I can count on.
I’m not getting any younger, and there are things I don’t want to do anymore. ”
I yank my hand away from him, but I’m listening, now.
What in devils has him so nervous?
“I’m listening,” I say. “Speak, old man.”
A glimmer of triumph flashes across his face, but he’s smart enough to get rid of it before I can react.
“In case you haven’t noticed, things aren’t going smoothly down here. I’m hearing things I never thought I’d hear of men I thought I knew, and some of the things legitimate families are trying...”
He shakes his head as if he can’t understand how things got so out of control, and I fight to control my expression.
Because if he knows even half of what I know about what the families of New Orleans are doing, he’s understating the case by saying things aren’t going smoothly.
“Even worse,” he continues, “your sister is missing. I don’t know how long she’s been gone or who might have taken her–or if she just up and left–but I want her back, and I want it now.”
I nearly bite my tongue at that, because I wasn’t sure he’d even noticed that she was gone.
Hell, I thought he might have had something to do with it.
He looks actually pained at her absence, though, like he might be legitimately worried about his only daughter, and I wonder–not for the first time–what their relationship is like.
If I disappeared, I doubt he’d give it two thoughts.
But Corinne is missing and it’s bad enough for him to try to pull me back into the family.
And because he knows me, he doesn’t trust me enough to stay on my own. He’s trying to corral me with a wife so I have no choice.
He can admit that he needs me, but Christ help him, he still can’t treat me like he trusts me to do the right thing.
Actually, it’s kind of smart. He knows I don’t like him and that I’m not tied to the city. If I wanted to leave, I’d do it in a heartbeat, and this is his way to get around it. I’d actually respect that–if it didn’t include me being forced to marry, just to gain control of the family.
“The terms,” I say, my voice sharp.
“A wife,” he replies. “Simple as that. And one that I will choose for you.”
My teeth grind together so hard I’m surprised they don’t crack. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
“I thought you wanted me to marry Brooks Landry.”
My father gives me a long, hard look. “The girl you ran to New York for? The one you wasted one hundred men protecting? I’ve heard she’s back in town, and that you went to collect her the moment she arrived. Did you marry her already? Is that what you’re telling me?”
My hand goes immediately to my cane, my thoughts of nothing short of murder. Have I mentioned how much I hate my father and his arrogance? Mentioned that he and Dominick Landry once cooked up a plan for me and Brooks to get married, supposedly to ally our families?
Brooks and I, already the best of friends and half in love, had thought it was the best idea in the world.
Until she decided it wasn’t.
“No, I haven’t married her,” I snap.
Half a second later, I realize that I should have said I had. It would have ended this conversation immediately–and, evidently, secured my spot as head of the family.
My father leans forward, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils pinched. “Then I suggest you get a move on, because I’m not giving you access to our family’s power gain until you have a wife. And suddenly Ive got an urge to have Dominick Landry’s baby girl under my thumb.”
He gets up and strides out the door, leaving his coffee unfinished and my mind reeling wit questions.
First among them, of course, is how the fuck I’m going to get Brooks to agree to anything like that.
Because we’ve been engaged before, but she decided it was nothing more than a ploy on her father’s part to put a spy into the Boudreaux household, and she wasn’t going to do it.
She left town to keep from having to, without telling anyone.
And then stayed away for five years of horrible, deafening silence.
I hadn’t heard from her at all during that time, and though I could have searched for her–should have, perhaps–I had just watched the love of my life leave me without so much as a goodbye kiss or a note.
She’d escaped in the middle of the night, telling no one but her cousin where she was going, and I’d been so angry that I hadn’t been able to even say her name for a year afterward.
Yes, I could have searched for her.
But she could have searched for me, too. And she hadn’t.
Now, though...
Now she’s come back to me not once but twice, and we’ve been tearing through New Orleans like we were always meant to be together, our hands reaching for each other as we fight the devils running rackets down here.
My hand on her back as we sneak through darkened catacombs, her lips to my ear as she whispers about her next move.
My name on her lips as I bury myself inside her, my cock so deep in her body that I can’t feel where I end and she begins. My teeth buried in her skin and her nails raking down my back when I make her orgasm again and again.
I breathe out slowly at the memory of her body surrounding me, the squeeze of her around my cock and her cries tearing down my throat, and shift as my cock starts to grow hard in my pants.
Then I remember that I’m in a fucking cafe in the middle of the day, in public, and that Brooks isn’t here. And she’s certainly not fucking me the way I’m remembering.
Though the memory of us working together for the last week remains.
Right, down to business, then. Brooks is in her father’s house, trying to get him to trust her enough to give her details and no doubt coming up with some truly bad plans for how to take him down. While I’m out here, being pressured by my father to settle down and get married.
Luckily, that pressure comes with new information.
My father wants me married and secured, with roots in New Orleans so I don’t leave.
Because he doesn’t trust the business happening in this town–which makes me think he knows more than I realized about Dom’s new smuggling enterprises.
I suddenly remember the message I was supposed to pass to Dom on that day fifteen years ago, when my father sent me to the Landry mansion with words for the head of the household.
I passed them on–and then grabbed Brooks and ran.
But I remember the message. I see you. I see what you’re doing, and I don’t approve.
I found out later that Brooks had seen girls in Dom’s basement, and had tried to help them. That was why he’d been beating her. She’d seen something he was trying to hide.
And now he’s smuggling them again. Or still. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. If my father’s message to Dom back then was about the smuggling, and today he’s worried about what people are doing in New Orleans, then that means...
I blow out, half amazed and half horrified.
If my father is talking about Dom’s smuggling ring, and mentioning Corinne in the same breath...
Then he might be more helpful than I realized.
Although that doesn’t solve the problem of him expecting me to find a wife. Because that complication is still there. Find a wife and settle down, or I can’t have access to the family’s power anymore.
And without that access, I can’t help Brooks.
Only my father wants me to marry Brooks, which would mean she also had the protection of the family.
Except that she will never in a million years marry me if she knows it’s my father’s idea.
And I...
Would sell my soul to marry the girl. I’ve been in love with her since I was sixteen, and have done terrible things to try to protect her. Hell, I’d do worse things. I’d sell my own father if it meant keeping her safe, and I wouldn’t bat an eye.
So marry her?
Yes.
But I’ll do it for reasons my father has never even considered.
If she’ll have me.
If I can get her back alive, rather than in a box designed by Dom Landry himself.
I slide out of my chair and make for the exit, my thoughts on Brooks and my hands reaching for the girl already. I’m tired of letting Dom control her life–and mine.
I want her back, and I want it now.
Because I’ve spent too many years being separated from her. I want her back within reach, and I’m tired of fucking waiting.
***
I get home to find Kate and Camille rushing out of my house and into the driveway like someone is chasing them. Camille has car keys in her hand–did they bring a car, or are they stealing one of mine?–and Kate is on the phone, talking so quickly I can’t understand a word she’s saying.
I reach out and grab Camille as she tries to pass me, yanking her to a stop and forcing her to look at me.
“Where the fuck are you two off to?”
She bites her lips and narrows her eyes like she’s not going to tell me, but Camille has never had Brooks’ confidence, and she gives up within seconds. “Out.”
I let my face reflect my suspicion. “First you show up to my house and use it as your safe space without permission. You eat my food, you distract my men. And now you’re rushing out without any explanation?”
She meets my eyes, and though I can see that she wants to look away, she fights to maintain the stare. “Brooks needs us. And we didn’t distract your men, Lucien. We’ve been busy. It’s not our fault if they’re not working hard enough.”
She jerks herself out of my grasp and runs for the car Kate is getting into, and I have enough time to realize that they are in fact stealing one of my cars before my brain registers what she’s just fucking said.
Brooks needs them.
So Brooks is still in touch with them, then? What the fuck does she need? What’s she doing that she needs backup? What is she planning, and how dangerous is it?
And why the fuck didn’t she call me?