6. Brooks
Istreaked through the door, feeling solid for the first time since I’d arrived in New Orleans. I could do things solo. Stand on my own and take down any bad guy. But every experience I’d had told me that if you could get someone to stand up with you, that bad guy went down a whole lot faster—and potentially without you getting hurt.
Having Camille with me was going to change everything.
At least I hoped it was. Because I might not be precisely welcome in my father’s mansion, but I at least knew I’d been relatively safe walking into it. This was my childhood home and a place I’d run to whenever I was in trouble, I might have been gone for ten years, but I was still part of the family that owned the place.
In theory.
The next stop on my list?
I’d never lived there, and I’d never been part of the family. They’d expected me to join them at one point, though.
I’d turned them down and run to New York.
At the time, I’d thought I was being strong and calling my own shots. I’d been sure I wasn’t going to let anyone else decide my life for me. The truth was, of course, running for New York had set another war in motion here in New Orleans. The Boudreaux clan was made up of some of my father’s biggest enemies, though they moved in different circles than the Landry family, and when he brokered a deal for me to marry into the leadership of the Boudreaux, he’d thought it was a way to end the rivalry.
At least that was what he’d said.
I’d seen it for what it was: an attempt to get someone on the inside with a family he hated. He’d seen me as his back-door deal. The opening into their leadership circle and a way for him to take the family out of the equation. He wanted their rackets, and he didn’t want to buy them the old-fashioned way. So he’d come up with a plan to marry me into their family and use me to undermine them. Make deals they never would have made otherwise. Figure out what they were up to so he could stop them.
He’d been stupid enough to tell me about his plan up front. I’d already known he’d brokered a deal the marriage deal, but at first I’d been up for it. I’d thought it might be my way into a better life. When he came to me with his plan, though, thinking he could convince me to go through with it if he told me how important it was, I’d changed my mind.
I’d run home to New York, and I’d never looked back.
And in doing so, I cemented my place as an enemy to the head Boudreaux, who hadn’t known what my father was doing. He’d just seen an opportunity to make an alliance with Dominick Landry. Gemini Boudreaux had been furious when I left instead of going through with the marriage, and even more furious that I’d left without giving anyone any warning. He’d declared me an enemy for life.
At least that was what I’d heard.
I hadn’t exactly gone to his doorstep to ask how he felt about me. I’d been too busy shoring up my protections in New York.
Until right now, when the people I loved in New York—the people who had protected me from Gemini Boudreaux without even realizing it—were in trouble and I needed men. Dominick Landry had the biggest operation in New Orleans, so he’d been the first one I thought of.
But Gem Boudreaux had an operation nearly as big. With nearly as many men. And I happened to have a personal connection to someone Gem considered important.
Look, going to him for men wasn’t my best idea ever. But I was desperate, and I was willing to do whatever it took to save the Rossi and Brennan families from what was coming for them.
And the idea that I might get help from a man my father hated with the heat of a million suns? That was just the icing on the cake, as far as I was concerned.
Hey, I never said I was above a little pettiness.
I was smiling at the thought, my eyes roving the driveway for the Dukati, when someone hit me from behind. Camille’s hand was yanked from mine and whoever had hit me jerked my hands behind my back. I turned and thrust my forehead toward the guy, instinctively going for his nose, but he moved out of the way before I could hit him, his chuckle a dark whisper on the wind. I had a moment to wonder what the fuck was going on here—how I was being assaulted in my own father’s driveway—and then my eyes met those of a man I’d seen before.
A man who shouldn’t have been anywhere near Dominick Landry’s house.
I opened my mouth to ask what the fuck Daniel Boniface thought he was doing, but that was as far as I got. A bag came down over my head, cutting out Daniel’s smirking face. Moments later, something hit me, and everything went dark.
* * *
The smell of water and mildew were the first things I noticed when I came back to consciousness, and I grew still, nostrils flaring as I tried to figure out where I was. Damp and darkness, though I still couldn’t see anything. I felt the shadows pressing in on me, a drip, drip, drip in the distance telling me that we were near either the ocean or one of the canals.
No sound of waves, though.
We were near a canal, then. One of those that divided the city into pieces and let the ocean creep into the city without taking out buildings or people who lived there. Water was a constant presence, the Mississippi pushing the city one way while the ocean pushed the other. The canals had been built for commerce first, a way to move goods and people from the sea to the big river, but over time they’d become just as important for flood control. Ours was a city built where no city should have been, and the fight against the water had started early.
So far, the city was winning.
The damp, though...
I took a deep breath, breathing through my nose to try to keep it quiet, and narrowed eyes that couldn’t see. No fresh air. No hint of the sea breeze. No sound of cars or people. The air was thick and still, pushing against my skin like a living being.
We weren’t just near a canal. We were under one.
The catacombs.
Shit.