Chapter 16
Lucien
I rush back to my house with only one thing on my mind.
Well, two.
Someone knew we were going to be at that port.
Actually, cancel that, because there are two options there: Either they knew and were ready with guns and men, or they were also there to steal the shipment, probably for some nefarious purpose.
And that brings up a whole host of other questions.
Was Dom actually the one shipping out girls tonight, or was it someone else?
Everything we saw told us there was a group leaving, complete with port number and descriptions of girls—though no destination—but there was no designated distributor.
I just assumed it was Dom, given everything we’ve seen.
So why was someone else at the port with guns, when Dom wasn’t there?
Were those actually Dom’s guys, there to secure the docks ahead of time? Did he learn his lesson during my first mission tot he docks and realize that his cover had been blown? If he did, it would make sense for him to have sent men ahead of time to make sure no one was waiting for him at the dock.
But I’ve known Dom a long time, and the man isn’t careful. He almost never thinks ahead, and I wouldn’t expect him to suddenly start.
It makes more sense that someone else was there to interrupt the shipment.
But who?
I burst through the door of my war room and hit all the switches, flooding bright electric through the night and illuminating our research and tech.
A glance around the room shows me everything I already know is here: the computers, the screens, the tables full of laptops, tablets, and phones.
Wall after wall of grainy pictures, maps, and lists.
Stacks of papers on the tables where Daniel and I have been going through information like our lives depend on it.
Nothing new. There’s not going to be anything new in here, and what we have here doesn’t help me. I know this because we’ve been through it eleventy-seven times, at least, and still haven’t learned what we need to know.
There’s certainly nothing here that will help me with my biggest concern.
Brooks.
Shit.
I walk to the first table, slap my hands on it, and sweep them violently to the side, throwing computers, papers, and phones to the floor. I know as I do it that it’s a mess I’ll have to clean up later, but what else is new?
I’ve been cleaning up messes since Brooks showed up in my catacombs weeks ago, telling me she was in trouble in New York and needed men.
I smirk at that, though, because she would skin me alive if she heard me categorize it that way. She wasn’t in trouble, she would tell me. Someone else was making trouble and she was finishing it. She didn’t need men.
She expected them.
She’d given me the chance to satisfy her expectations.
And only I knew the truth: that she or her friends had been in trouble and when the chips were down and her own family had sold her out, she ran for me. Because I was the one she knew she could always count on.
Even if it meant trusting me to keep the secret about her vulnerability in that moment.
My smirk turns to a more brittle smile, because I might be the only one who’s seen Brooks Landry’s vulnerable side, but that doesn’t make me the only one who takes advantage of it.
Her father has her in the most vulnerable position possible right now, and my gut is telling me that he’s going to ruin her with it.
I sit at the table, ignoring the mess I just made, and force myself to think.
Everything about this feels wrong to me, and it’s making me even twitchier about Brooks being under her father’s roof. It’s the Russians. It has to be.
No, it’s the fact that the port didn’t happen the way it was supposed to. Brooks told me that a shipment was happening and that a high-profile target was involved, but her information turned out to be the opposite of true. Instead of a shipment, we found armed men shooting at us.
Again.
She didn’t have the correct information. Either the details she saw were changed after she saw them, or she was intentionally misled. Given the wrong information on purpose.
Or she was set up, which is even worse.
Did someone feed her details that would put me at the port, just to see whether she would pass them to me?
God, if that’s true, and I showed up there with guns blazing, it was a glowing neon finger pointing right at her. It set me up for an attack, and it set her up for whatever the fuck her father has planned for her.
“Christ,” I breathe, my blood freezing at the thought.
God, I might have just signed her death warrant. And if her father is involved, that death will be ugly. Long and bloody and horrible.
I jump to my feet, unable to sit still any longer, and start pacing.
I have to get her out of there. i don’t know if she’s gotten any real answers yet, but it’s too dangerous to leave her in that house any longer.
My instincts are screaming that we’re seconds away from being caught—and that’s if we have’s been discovered already.
Who the fuck knows what kind of crazy decisions she’s been making in the last day.
If I know Brooks, she’s probably done at least five things that will get her caught on her own.
She might already be dead.
No. I can’t think that way. It will kill me.
But the driving urge, the absolute need, to see her is so overwhelming now that I feel like someone has injected acid directly into my veins.
I have to know that she’s okay, and what she’s found out.
I have to work on a plan to get her out of there.
Which means I need her cooperation, because I won’t be able to extract her unless she works with me.
Fuck me.
That won’t be easy… but I think I know exactly how to do it.
I just have to count on Dom to keep being the arrogant, insufferable asshole I already know he is.
***
“You’ve lost your fucking mind,” Daniel mutters from beside me.
I look up at the mansion in front of us, the cobbles of Dom’s driveway under my feet and his guards around us, their guns drawn and their faces deadly serious, and think that he’s probably right.
But Brooks is inside that house, and it’s high time I get her out of there again.
I’ve already waited two days too long to have her back in my hands, where she’ll be at least a little bit safe.
Though if she’s done anything stupid since I last saw her, the first thing I’m going to do when I get her is take her over my knee and punish her.
Actually, I might do that regardless. The thought of her spread across my lap, that ass bare and vulnerable to my hands, my name on her tongue and her hands wrapped around my ankles, is glorious enough that I dedicate several seconds to it, my mouth nearly watering at the idea.
“Lucien,” Daniel snaps. “I said something.”
Right.
“And I heard you,” I snap back. “I just didn’t think it required a response. After all—” I give him a smile that’s all sharp teeth and evil intent. “—It’s not the first time I’ve lost my mind over a girl.”
Daniel doesn’t look like he thinks this is very funny.
“Over this girl,” he corrects. “And you don’t usually risk your own life for it.”
I poke one finger into his shoulder. “If you think that, it just means you’re not paying attention. Maybe I need to rethink the raise I was going to give you. Stay out here. Keep your mouth shut. I’ll be back once I’ve finished negotiations.”
He glowers like he likes this even less, but I don’t give him a choice. I turn and gesture to Dom’s guards, then walk through his front door, surrounded by his men, like I know exactly what the fuck I’m doing.
And the truth is, I do know what I’m doing. I’m here to negotiate a purchase.
And if Brooks is being as much a pain in the ass as I suspect she is, then I’m guessing Dom will be more than ready to sell.
We walk through the foyer, which is just as horrible and overdone as I remember, past the staircase, and into Dom’s office, where I find the man himself behind his desk, looking like he’s cosplaying as Lucifer.
His still-dark hair is swept back in waves, with a mere sprinkling of salt at his temples.
His skin is smooth as a baby’s and still wrinkle free, despite the fact that he’s literally old enough to be my father, and when his eyes turn to me I see that they’re just as black as they’ve ever been.
I think briefly of the portrait of Dorian Gray, that painting that took decades of aging upon itself to save its real-life subject from the years, and wonder whether Dom has started practicing witchcraft to stop aging. Maybe voodoo.
I’m guessing a deal with the devil, myself. I’ve never met a man more willing to sell his own soul than Dominick Landry.
Though it’s far more likely he sold someone else to the underworld and kept the benefits for himself.
“Dom,” I say smoothly, walking forward. “It’s been a long time.”
I decide I’m going to be friendly and put my hand out to shake, but he looks at it with disgust and turns away.
So I guess we’re not being friendly, then. That suits me just fine.
“Not long enough, though I have to admit I’m surprised it took you this long to call me,” he mutters, his hands behind him and his stare on the window, where the sun is coming up over the wall around his house.
“After all—” He turns and gives me a disgusting, lascivious smirk. “—I do have your girl.”
For the millionth time in my short life, I think that I’m going to have to kill Dom Landry.
I’m going to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze until something cracks, and I’m going to watch the light go out of his eyes, enjoying every minute of it.
The last word he’s ever going to hear is going to come from my lips, and it’s going to be Brooks’ name.
But only after I get what I want.
“You do, and I want her for the night,” I say, ignoring his insinuation. Or maybe playing into it. “I’m here to broker a deal for that.”
He’s displeased at my refusal to take the bait he laid out, and distrust flickers through his eyes. Good. I like when I take men by surprise.
“Just like that?” he asks. “It’s dangerous to let me know what you want, you know. Hasn’t your father taught you anything?”
Now that’s a low blow, and my hands clench into fists at the lack of respect. The outright insult. I take a step forward, put my fists on his table, and lean in.
“Be careful, Dom. You have something I want and I’m asking nicely to do a deal for it.
You and I both know that I have more money and power in my little finger than you do.
I don’t have to come to the table for Brooks.
I could take her by force, and spend very little effort to do it.
But I’m more interested in being friendly than being enemies.
For right now. That could change quickly if you don’t watch your tongue. ”
It’s a bold move, and I know it—especially if he already knows I was at the port last night, fighting with some anonymous enemy over a shipment of girls Dom never sent.
But I’m betting he has less power than he pretends. And that he’s desperate for money. He might live in one of the largest houses in the city but he’s still depending on money his father made for the family, and everything I’ve seen points to him still working for someone else.
The mysterious business partner. The one pulling the strings.
Dom doesn’t have the power, here. And whatever that business partner is paying him probably isn’t enough. Dom is a selfish, greedy man who likes power and money more than anything else. I’m offering him both.
He just needs to reach out and take it.
He sneers like he can hear every thought racing through my brain. “What the fuck do you want with my daughter, Boudreaux? To keep fucking her?”
That’s not unexpected. After all, he found us fucking at the port and must realize how close we are by this point. Hell, chances are good he’s been using her as bait this entire time, just to come to this moment.
“You want your whore back, is that it?” he continues.
I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to choke him to death. I’m going to cut off his dick and watch him bleed to death with his own cock stuffed into his mouth.
“She’s not as impressive as you think, you know,” he says. “All mouth, no brains.” He gives me a considering look, then, and leers. “Although maybe that’s exactly why you like her. Big mouth is an asset on a girl like that, isn’t it?”
Stuff his dick in his mouth and gouge out his eyes, then. Fair enough.
I may also let Brooks choose one or two punishments.
I can already see, though, that he’s going to say yes.
He knows I have cash and power, and that I’m willing to pay to get some time with Brooks.
This also, I think, plays into the motivations he’s always had.
He was the one who initially suggested the marriage between me and Brooks, and though my father was hesitant, he eventually gave in.
My father wanted access to Dom’s shipping enterprises.
Dom just wanted powerful friends and access to the Boudreaux money. Even now, he doesn’t want to piss my family off. Hell, he’d probably still sell his soul to be related to Gemini Boudreaux by marriage.
And that’s my leverage.
“She was supposed to be my wife,” I say quietly. “And I want a night with her. I’m willing to pay handsomely for it.”
He narrows his eyes like he’s actually thinking about it—he’s not; his mind is already made up—and then chuckles. “I suppose you do have to test the merchandise before you buy it. I’ll sell her for $10,000. One night only. Pick her up at 7.”
I’m definitely going to let Brooks choose some of the things we do to him when we kill him.
Though I don’t know if I’ll let her have a knife.
If he’s been talking to her like that in person, I’m surprised the man is still fucking breathing.