Epilogue #2
"Not a penthouse. A cottage off Annunciation, eight blocks from here.
Two bedrooms, a porch that's seen better days, a yard out back gone to weeds.
" I tuck a piece of hair off her face, careful with it, careful with her.
"I'm thinking we could go see it this week.
I want you to see the yard, because I'm thinking you could plant a garden back there. "
She's quiet, and I let her be. The woman who sold every solid thing she owned to learn she could stand without it looks at me like I've handed her something heavier than a penthouse and lighter than air.
"A garden would be really neat," she says.
She's been growing herbs on the windowsill in her kitchen for the last year, increasing her stock a little at a time.
Her eyes shine. She doesn't move off me or reach for the floor, just settles deeper into my chest like she's putting down roots right there. "Yes," she says. "I'd like to go see it. I'm ready to have you with me every day."
So we stay. The river slides past beyond the window, and the city wakes two blocks over. Neither of us moves to meet it.
The old me would have called this the most dangerous thing a man can do, hand someone every soft place at once and trust her not to press. I don't call it that anymore. I call it home.
Did you read Ridge’s book before this one? If not, it will give you more insight into their father’s murder and how the eldest Stone has to make difficult decisions to get to his HEA. Revenge, Kidnapping, and Enemies-to-Lovers will take you on a wild ride!
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PROLOGUE
My father leans close enough that only I can hear him.
"Look around," he says quietly. "Everyone who controls the Gulf is standing in this yard tonight."
I follow his gaze. Men in tailored suits cluster near the bar and along the edges of the lawn, their conversations moving with the easy rhythm of men who have been doing business together for decades.
"I do like that they raise money for the dock workers' kids," I say. "Sometimes these things feel like they're just for show, but this actually does some good."
A lot of the kids I grew up with were children of the men my father staffed on the docks. Most of them didn't have the same access to schools and tutors that I did.
"It ’s still for show, my dear," my father says. "But yes. At least this show helps someone."
Before I can answer, a subtle shift moves through the crowd near the center of the lawn. My father straightens slightly, then steps forward.
The man walking toward us is probably my father's age, handsome and broad through the shoulders. He exudes the easy confidence of someone used to being listened to.
"Robert, good to see you."
"Laurent," he says. "What a beautiful evening."
"This is my daughter, Corrine. Corrine, this is Robert Stone. He runs Stone Intermodal."
"Nice to meet you." He gives me a brief nod, his attention already shifting to someone approaching from across the lawn.
They exchange a few quiet words about shipping traffic and the latest numbers coming through the Gulf. I recognize enough of the terminology to follow along, but I couldn't be less interested in anything they're saying.
"Enjoy the evening," he says to us both as he nods and steps away.
I watch him go, noticing the way people subtly reposition themselves when he moves through the crowd.
My father exhales slowly.
"Working in this industry, you need to know that man. Whether you want to or not."
"Who is he?"
He tilts his glass toward the man disappearing into another conversation. "That's Robert Stone. He’s the biggest importer and exporter on the Gulf, and probably top five in the world. He's got six sons, too. One of them is here tonight somewhere. I'll introduce him to you when I see him.”
Stone. I remember hearing that name in our house growing up.
I look back toward the crowd, but Robert has already disappeared into another cluster of executives.
"That much power sounds exhausting," I say.
My father's mouth curves slightly. "Power always looks exhausting from the outside."
He's pulled into another conversation a moment later, leaving me to drift toward the bar. I pause near a table, grateful for a little space from the press of people and the hum of industry talk.
That's when I notice him.
Across the yard, a man with a full beard stands beneath one of the oaks.
The first thing I register is that he isn't doing what everyone else is doing.
He isn't working the party or performing for anyone.
He's watching it with the quiet attention of someone who understands exactly what's happening around him and has no interest in participating in the performance of it.
He's younger than most of the executives here, but the two older men beside him lean toward him the way people lean toward someone whose response they're waiting on.
His white sleeves are rolled just enough that I notice ink beneath the cuff. Tattoos under precise business attire. The contrast catches me before I can decide not to let it.
Then his gaze shifts across the lawn, and I realize with a start that it doesn't shift randomly.
It moves directly to me, with the particular certainty of someone who already knew where to look.
He was watching me before I noticed him, and now I know it.
The awareness of that moves through me in a way I don't have a name for.
The contact holds for a beat longer before someone steps between us, breaking the line of sight. I exhale slowly and look away, telling myself it was nothing, the way you tell yourself things at parties when you don't want to examine them too closely.
I keep moving toward the bar, threading through a gap in the crowd. That's when the crowd shifts around me without warning, and he's suddenly there, close enough that his arm brushes mine as we pass each other in opposite directions.
The contact lasts less than a second. He doesn't stop. Neither do I.
But I feel it after, a register of heat that lingers past the moment that produced it.
I turn instinctively, already knowing what I'll find. He’s already a few steps away, his back to me, moving through the crowd with the same unhurried quality he had under the oak.
He doesn't look back.
"Coco. Come meet someone."
My father's voice pulls me toward the other side of the lawn. I don't look back toward the spot where the crowd has already closed in and swallowed any trace of him.
I think about him on the drive home anyway, briefly and without any useful conclusion, the way you think about a door that closed before you could see what was behind it. Some things don't go anywhere. I've always been practical enough to know that.
CHAPTER 1
The Warehouse District: Situated between the French Quarter and the Mississippi River, it blends its 19th-century industrial roots with modern revitalization, featuring art galleries, luxury apartments, and trendy restaurants with a backdrop of warehouses still being used in the Ports of New Orleans.
Six Weeks Later
Wells and Keller trade laughs across the table, loud enough to carry over the clinking of glasses and the low hum of the bar.
I've long since stopped tracking whatever they find funny tonight because that's always been the difference between us. They know how to be somewhere, and I've never quite managed it.
My bourbon sits half-finished in front of me, the ice gone, the glass sweating rings into the wood. I've been turning it without drinking it for the last twenty minutes, my head still working through the Calloway shipment due through the Gulf on Thursday, the customs window we can't afford to miss.
There's also the labor dispute at the east terminal that Vin flagged this morning, and nobody's touched it yet.
I think about the day my father called me into his office and handed me a glass of bourbon without saying a word.
I'd expected a speech, some formal acknowledgment of what it meant to be named EVP of Stone Intermodal, the company he'd built from a single leased berth on the Mississippi into the largest import and export operation on the Gulf Coast.
Instead, he looked at me across the desk with that particular stillness he has, the kind that makes rooms go quiet, and said, One day this city will test you. Make sure it doesn't find out who you are before you do.
He picked up his own glass after that, and we drank, and that was the whole of it. I've been turning those words over ever since, wondering what exactly he meant, wondering if I'll recognize the moment when it comes.
I drag a hand across my jaw and finally take a sip of the bourbon, warm now, the oak and char settling heavy on the back of my throat.
My phone vibrates against the table hard enough that Wells glances at it before I do.
I'm already reaching for it, already clocking the blocked number on the screen with the particular stillness my father taught me, the one that keeps your face from giving anything away before you've decided what the information is worth.
I don't answer blocked numbers as a rule, but something about the timing of it, the weight of it sitting there buzzing against the wood in a bar where I'm supposed to be unwinding with my brothers, makes me pick up.
"Yeah." I keep my voice flat, giving nothing.
Static fills the line first, just enough of it to sharpen my attention before a voice cuts through. It’s low and deliberately distorted, the kind of alteration that takes effort. "701 Poydras. Come alone. Now."
The line clicks dead before I can respond.
I kill the screen and set it down on the table while I process the address.
That’s a warehouse we own on the riverside of the Warehouse District, leased to Gulf Meridian Imports for overflow storage.
It’s a property I haven't thought about in months because it runs itself and generates just enough revenue to make it worth holding.
Nobody calls about that address. Nobody has a reason to.