Chapter 5
JOSIE
Iwas halfway through my second pancake when the door swung open and a guy with huge arms, a shaved head, and a vest with more patches than fabric, walked in looking like he had trouble to unload.
"Blackheart," he said. "There's some clown sitting outside the gate in a yellow Hummer. Been there about twenty minutes."
My fork dropped. My body stopped moving.
Casey’s yellow, pimped-out Hummer. He loved it more than me.
Lucien looked at me, and whatever was on my face told him everything.
"It's him," I said. My voice sounded far away, like it was someone else talking.
Lucien stood up slowly.
"Stay here," he said.
"No."
He looked at me for a long second, then he nodded.
We walked out together. I heard chairs scrape behind us and by the time we reached the gate there were four Jokers at our backs. Big men. Quiet men. The kind of quiet that isn't peaceful.
The Hummer was parked sideways across the road like it owned the street.
Because that's what Casey did. He took up space.
Every room, every conversation, every square foot he could claim.
The engine was running. The windows were tinted but I could see his outline behind the wheel and my chest tightened.
He stepped out.
He always looked good. That was part of the problem. Clean jeans, fresh sneakers, a polo shirt that cost more than most people’s wardrobes. He leaned against the door and crossed his arms and smiled like this was a social call.
"There she is," he said. "Been worried about you, baby."
“Fuck off, Casey,” Lucien said.
This was a different Lucien than I’d seen so far and I liked this one too.
Casey looked at him, then the men behind him. I watched him do the math. I'd seen him do it a hundred times. Sizing up a room while deciding whether to charm or threaten. He chose charm.
"Hey, brother, I'm not looking for trouble. I'm just here to pick up my girl."
"She's not your girl," Lucien said.
"Is that right?" Casey tilted his head and looked at me. "Josette. You want to tell your boy how this works?"
I opened my mouth but Lucien stepped forward.
"I know how this works. You're going to get back in your bling-box and you're going to drive away and you're never going to come near her again. That's how this works."
Casey laughed.
"Man, you don't even know the situation. She owes me. You know that, right? She tell you that part? Or did she leave that out while she was crawling into your bed?"
My face went hot. I could feel the men behind me shift.
"How much," Lucien said.
That caught everyone off guard, including me.
"What?"
"How much does she owe you?”
Casey smiled. The one I used to mistake for confidence before I learned it was cruelty wearing a mask.
"Eight thousand," he said. He held up both hands, fingers spread, then brought them down like he was weighing something. "Four for the left. Four for the right."
Lucien went still. His jaw locked and one hand curled into a fist. For a second, I thought he was going to end this in a way that couldn't be undone.
He didn't.
"Give me your number," Lucien said.
Casey blinked.
"I'll wire it to you today."
"Lucien, no," I said. I grabbed his arm. "You're not paying for them."
He looked at me, and his eyes were soft even though the rest of him was set in stone.
"I'm not paying for them," he said. "I'm paying for him to go away."
He turned back to Casey.
"Take the money. Leave her things where they are. We'll come by to collect them. And then you disappear. You don't call. You don't text. You don't drive past her in that stupid fucking truck. You vanish."
Casey pushed off the Hummer and puffed up the way he always did when he felt control slipping.
"And if I don't?"
Lucien took one step closer.
"Then the money stays in my account and you go away anyway. The only difference is you won't be able to run because I will catch you. And when I do, you won't be able to run ever again."
He said it like the outcome wasn't in doubt. Just stated a fact, laced with danger, and it made me shudder.
Casey looked at him, then the men behind us. Then he looked at me like this was somehow my fault, which in his mind it always was. I watched something I'd never seen before move across his face.
Fear.
He pulled out his phone and showed Lucien his banking details, and Lucien took a photo. No shared contacts.
"Her things stay where they are," Lucien said. "We'll be there by noon. If anything's missing, the deal's off and we go to plan B."
“Plan B?" Casey asked, trying to get the last word.
“The one you don’t want,” Lucien said.
Casey got back in the Hummer. He slammed the door, revved the engine, and yelled ‘whore’ at me as he raced away, tires barking against the asphalt.
I dropped into a crouch right where I was standing and held my face in my hands. Lucien crouched beside me.
"You okay?"
I was shaking, furious and relieved, ashamed and grateful, and I hated that I was all of those things at once.
"You didn't have to do that," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "I did."
One of the guys behind us said something low to the others, and they left us to ourselves.
Lucien
Money had never mattered to Mama or me. It never fixed the things we wanted. It never changed who we were or what we were.
Mama chose to live in an area most people wanted to leave, and she could have lived anywhere. She chose to be with her people.
Me… I didn't even fit that world.
My father had always tried to solve everything with money. But money couldn’t buy me what I really needed.
His money couldn't buy me a place where I could just be me, yet here I was in the Deep South with a bunch of bikers who never judged one another, feeling like I had finally found my people.
And there she was. Josie Comeaux. The sweet girl I felt I'd known all my life even though I still had so much to learn about her. Tortured because of someone else's baggage.
The woman I had fallen for so fucking hard it hurt.
At least, for once in my life, money might have had a purpose. I just hoped she didn't see it as another debt she could never repay.
Josie
We took the van to the hotel. Lucien looked across at me.
"It'll be fine," I said.
He nodded.
My key card still worked, so I let us in, and stopped.
My things were on the bed. Casey’s were gone.
I lifted the first piece of clothing and saw it.
Faceup where he knew I'd find it. A photograph of me before the surgery. Standing in his bathroom mirror, naked, laughing at something he'd said. I remembered the moment. I remembered being happy, thinking he'd taken it because he loved me.
My hands went numb. I didn't pick it up because I knew Lucien had already seen it.
He reached past me and turned it over. On the back, in Casey's handwriting… You're welcome.
He handed it to me.
"That girl in the photo," he said. "She’s beautiful.”
He pulled me into his chest and I cried, but not for long. I was tired of crying over Casey Landry.
When I pulled back I wiped my face and said, "He's got more."
Lucien pulled out his phone and walked to the window and made a call.
"Morrow." A pause. "Where are you?" Another pause. "I need you to find a pimped Hummer headed toward Terrebonne. Driver's name is Casey." He looked at me. He smiled. "Nah, it's a guy."
I smiled. Yeah, Casey was a girl's name too.
"He left the Quarter in the last two hours. Find him. Pull him over. Take his phone. Take every phone he's got. Check the glove box, the trunk, all of it. Anything with photos or files, I want it. Then tell him the eight grand is off the table and I'm coming for him."
A pause. Morrow said something.
"No," Lucien said. "Don't hurt him. Just make sure he understands pain is headed his way."
He ended the call and turned from the window.
"You're going to hurt him?" I asked.
“Yes. If he tries to hurt you again… I will hurt him."
He crossed the room and held my face in both hands and kissed me and I opened my mouth to let him in as deep as he wanted to go.
When we broke from the kiss I moved to the door and flipped the lock.
"The room's paid for," I said. "You've seen all of me."
When my hands went to my t-shirt, his went to his own.