Chapter 5 Keller
FIVE
Keller
Secret Societies: Many of New Orleans’ earliest krewes operated as secret societies, with undisclosed membership lists and invitation-only access to private balls.
Anonymity and exclusivity were central to their power, reinforcing social hierarchy while allowing members to operate behind ritual and spectacle.
The buy-in tonight is two hundred thousand. Eight players sit at the table, and every one of them knows exactly what this is. Every single player is hand-picked after detailed vetting by me.
West stands near the bar with a glass in his hand, watching the room without looking like he is. He keeps one eye on the exits and the other on the players who have more money than they know what to do with. That's why losing a million dollars in a night doesn't even register for them.
I make a slow pass behind the chairs, hands in my pockets, listening more than I speak. You learn more that way. Men talk when they think no one important is paying attention.
I shift my path. The man at the head of the table, Lawrence Hollis, is sweating. Not the good kind of sweat you get from excitement. It's the kind that comes when you're about to do something stupid.
He doubles his bet. When the dealer flips the cards, he loses.
West stands and moves toward him with the same calm he uses when defusing anything. He leans in closely, his voice low enough that the rest of the table won't hear unless they're listening for it.
"You're at your limit, Lawrence."
Hollis doesn't look at him. He waves his hand like he's swatting an annoying housefly.
"I'm good for it."
"We agreed to the ceiling before you sat down. It's in writing."
"I said I'm good for it."
I step in before West has to escalate. The last thing we need tonight is a scene. I slide into the empty chair beside Hollis and rest my forearms on the edge of the table. I don't speak right away, letting him feel the pause.
His pulse throbs in his neck. I notice that his left hand trembles just slightly as he reaches for his drink. His eyes are glassy, but not from the alcohol. It's the hunger. I've seen it a hundred times. It's the thing that keeps this room profitable.
"Lawrence, look at me." My voice is low and calm so as not to make a scene. At this point, everyone else is focusing on their game.
He finally looks at me. I keep my voice even, offering no judgment.
"You're tapped. That's not a problem. But if you want to keep playing, we renegotiate new terms. Extended credit carries a twenty percent markup, compounded weekly, documented, and enforceable. You sign tonight, but you have to make sure you're clear on what you're agreeing to."
I pause, letting the numbers land.
"Or you walk now, settle your balance tomorrow, and we're square. No harm, no foul."
He stares at me, and I don't blink. I'm not twisting his arm or holding a gun to his head, but I'm offering him exactly what he wants at a price.
That's the thing people don't get. I'm not the villain in this room. I'm the guy who gives people what they ask for. If they can't handle it, that's on them.
Hollis swallows. His hand steadies just enough to pick up the pen West slides across the table.
"One more hand."
"One more hand," I say as an exclamation. I slap the table as I stand up and let West handle the paperwork.
He signs, West collects the document, logs it, and steps back. The dealer shuffles, and cards fall. Hollis goes all in.
He loses. Again.
Fuck.
I casually walk around the room to give him space, adjusting my glasses, and keeping the temperature of the room low. Hollis will pay. He always does. Men like him don't walk away from debts when their reputation is on the line.
The room settles again as another hand starts at table one. A woman at table two is up thirty thousand and smart enough to cash out. I nod to the dealer, who processes her chips without delay. She leaves smiling. That's good for business, too.
West finds me near the bar during the lull. He hands me a glass of whiskey I didn't ask for but want anyway. The amber liquid catches the low light.
"Hollis will be fine."
"I know he will. He's like an abused dog. He never learns. As long as he keeps paying, that's all I care about. He can keep coming if that gets his rocks off."
"You let him dig himself deeper."
"I let him make a choice."
West doesn't argue. He sips his drink and glances toward the tables, scanning for anything off. Then he shifts, his shoulders loosening just slightly.
"So. Green dress?"
I nearly choke on my whiskey.
"What?"
"You heard me." West grins. "Are you going to see her again? I saw you walk out with her at the gala. Goddamn, you're a dog."
I take another sip instead of answering right away. The burn of the whiskey gives me something to focus on besides the fact that West is grinning at me like he already knows.
"It's not what you think. And yes, I think I will see her again."
"Oh, yeah? Alright." He leans against the bar, hazel eyes locked on me with that steady, patient look he gets when he's decided to wait me out. "When?"
I adjust my glasses. The frames press against my temples, and I focus on that instead of the way my pulse kicked up when I saw her name on my screen this morning.
"I'm not sure yet. I texted her Sunday, and she just texted me back today. I'll probably ask her to grab a drink tomorrow night or something."
"And?"
"And what?"
West laughs, low and rough. "You gonna play this game all night, or are we gonna talk about the fact that you've been checking your phone every twenty minutes all night?"
"I have not."
"You absolutely have." He raises his glass toward me in mock salute. "No shame in that, brother. Like I said. She's a looker."
"No shame here. I'm just telling you I'm not checking my phone for any reasons you seem to think."
His eyebrows lift. "Sure, whatever."
I ignore that. My fingers tap against the side of my glass, a rhythm I don't realize I'm keeping until I catch myself and stop. The room behind us is quieter now, just the shuffle of cards and the low murmur of conversation. Table four is running a slow hand. Table one just folded.
I scan the space out of habit, clocking positions, reading body language. Everything is steady.
"She gave me her number on a matchbook, man. How about that shit?"
West blinks. "That's amazing. When, after y'all disappeared for a while?"
"Yeah, at the gala, shortly before we left. She walked past me, slipped it into my hand, and kept walking." The memory surfaces sharp and clear. The brush of her fingertips. The scent of jasmine and something sharper underneath. The way she didn't look back. "That's hot, right?"
West's grin widens. "Yeah, you've got to see her again. I've got to hear how this one ends. Because they all end. But this one may have a hold on you already. I think I like her already."
I drain the rest of my whiskey and set the glass down with a hard clink. "You're an idiot."
He is more right than I will admit to him. She let me kiss her, push her against the wall, let me slide her dress up her thigh, and press her against the shelves until her breath caught. And then she stopped it.
I was hard enough to ache, and she still stepped back like she hadn’t just come apart in my hands. Most women would have let it go where it was already headed, but she didn’t. She drew a line and held it.
For reasons I can’t quite explain, that’s hot as fuck.
The cards slide across the black felt at table two.
The sound is crisp, precise. The dealer turns them with practiced efficiency.
Four players, two mid-level regulars, one newcomer, and the one woman here tonight who's been winning for the past forty minutes.
She watches her cards without expression.
I track the rhythm of the game, the way the bets shift, the energy at the table.
The door opens behind me.
I don’t turn right away. West tracks the room so I don’t have to react to every shift in the air. My focus stays on the woman who just shoved her stack forward without blinking.
The pattern of movement changes first, and the awareness that ripples through the room when someone enters who doesn't belong to the game. West catches my eye from across the floor and tilts his head toward the entrance.
I turn my head to see Rhodes. He's the youngest of the six brothers, and he has a hardness about him that he's had since he was a kid. He was four when our mother died, so I'm guessing whatever softness she gave the rest of us never had time to settle into him.
He moves through the space without noise, but the players sense him anyway. Shoulders tighten, and conversation drops. He waits near the bar until the current hand finishes at the table closest to the bar. Chips stack and the dealer collects the cards.
I step away from table two and cross to him. He's wearing dark jeans and a black leather jacket, his hands loose at his sides and jaw set. His eyes don't scan the room the way mine do. They lock on me and stay there.
“Ridge wants you to review the new security rotation.”
I keep my voice low so it doesn’t carry past the nearest table. “It’s been five months, Rhodes. When is Ridge going to stop obsessing over the security? I think things have settled back into something resembling normal.”
Normal is relative. Five months ago, our father was murdered because he refused to open his ports to a competitor who wanted to move fentanyl through them. When my father said no, he signed his own death warrant.
Ridge stepped in as CEO of Stone Intermodal before the ground had even stopped shifting beneath us. The business stabilized faster than most people expected, but that did not mean the threat evaporated.
“Five months doesn’t mean they’re done,” Rhodes says evenly.
There was the incident at the tables before the dirt settled on our father's grave. Laurent Boudreaux’s men walked in during a live game and fired shots into the ceiling. No one was hurt. It was meant to remind us that the port wars were not theoretical.
Ridge de-escalated a full-on war, but he still upgraded the surveillance and rewrote the entry protocols. He also increased the armed security posted at every event, even though it was supposed to be temporary.
West drifts a step closer, reading the shift in energy. I give him a small nod to let him know we're good.
Rhodes holds out a folder. I take it and skim the contents while the dealer at table three begins the next hand. The assignments are detailed, and entry points have been redistributed to keep everyone fresh.
Two additional rotations have been added for overnight coverage. Overkill.
Ridge’s handwriting runs along the margins, explaining the rationale behind each adjustment. It is thorough, strategic, and predictable.
I close the folder and hand it back to him. “Tell Ridge it’s fine.”
Rhodes doesn’t move right away. His shoulders remain tight, fingers pressing into the cardboard edge of the file. I know he wants to stay here and hang out, but he doesn’t need to be here when I know he has schoolwork to do.
I lower my voice further. “And go to class. You have one year left. Finish it.”
His eyes flash. “I’m not a kid. And I don’t need a degree to work for our own company.”
“You know what Ridge said,” I reply calmly. “You’ll have a job once you graduate, not before.”
He hates that answer, but he also knows it will not change. It’s the same hard line our father carried. We all had to go to college, or he wouldn’t have a job waiting for us at Stone Intermodal.
For a second, I see the hardness in him that almost seems to haunt him.
He gives one short nod and turns toward the door. It closes behind him without sound.
West exhales quietly at my side. “He’s wound tight.”
“He always is.”
I return to the floor, adjusting my glasses as I step past table one. The rhythm settles again.
West catches my eye from across the room and grins. He mouths two words to me. "Green dress."
I don’t break stride and mouth back one. "Fucker."