Chapter 9
Dallas
I slam my fist onto Trace’s steering wheel. “Fuck!”
The same goddamn, smug, arrogant fucking bully that he always was, and now he thinks he can get away with it with me.
He thinks he’s powerful, and maybe he can do everything he says he can, but not before I shove his eyeballs down his throat and his teeth up his ass.
He doesn’t have my kind of power, and I’m going to fuck him up.
Swerving right, I cross the tracks, splashing through puddles as I enter the Bay. “Fuck,” I growl again.
He has power over me still. I went over there to stand up to him, to threaten him and let him know that the game is on, but the fucking sight of him—beautiful and wet—just reminded me of how good it felt to have him under me. Fighting me, squeezing me, sweating on me.
Or in my mouth, helpless and wanting it so badly.
My dick swells again, and I push it down, punching the gas.
I thought I was rising to the challenge. Letting him know he didn’t scare me.
All I did was give him a show.
“Fuck him,” I mutter.
Pulling up to my house, I see both box trucks slightly hidden down the side of the town garage across the street, under the cover of trees. Macon’s truck sits to my left.
Climbing out of the car, I bolt up the steps and push open the front door.
“What the hell were you doing?” Macon shouts, starting in as soon as I walk into the house.
I brush past my brothers crowding around the living room and head to the kitchen, digging the vodka out of the freezer. “You said you needed more information.”
As if that excuse is going to fly.
He glowers. “We make decisions together!”
I look at my brother, uncapping the bottle. “Don’t yell at me.”
I’ve never told him what he can and can’t do, but I also haven’t given him much reason to worry about me the past few years.
But I’m too damn old now. He’s not raising me anymore.
I tip the bottle back, gulping down a couple of swallows as I head back through the living room. I keep going, past my family, until I push through the door to the courtyard on the side of the house. It’s too hot in there.
Not that it’s any cooler out here, but at least there’s a breeze, and I’m going to hit someone if I get more aggravated.
I’m fucking disgusted with myself…
I take another swig, turning my eyes up to the stars that have started peeking through the clouds.
I’m glad Macon kept this part of the house when we renovated.
Columns rise around the perimeter, connected with beams, and I drift over the uneven cobblestone foundation as the door behind me opens again.
My family follows me, all of them present and accounted for. Krisjen hops up onto the outdoor buffet, her husband leaning back between her legs, while Army stands at the head of a picnic table, hands in his pockets.
Trace and Iron sit in chairs, while Liv sits in the open window between the patio and dining room, her girlfriend, Clay, on a chair in the room next to her. No idea why Aracely is here, unless Macon told her to be. She lingers in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest.
“Krisjen will speak to the council tomorrow,” Macon tells me, catching me up. “And Army will see what he can do.”
I shake my head. “It’s not the cops or the city council. It’s the Ministry.”
Of course, Callum is using the police, but they’re just carrying out a wealthy citizen’s strongly encouraged advice. Backed by their hefty annual donations, I’m sure.
And Callum is flanked by his friends. The picture of their dark forms lurking outside my classroom the other night drifts through my head. It was a warning.
“What do they want?” Macon asks me.
“What the Ameses have always wanted.” I hand the bottle to Iron. “The land.”
My brother doesn’t take a drink, though, handing it off to Trace.
I look around at my family, knowing the kids are asleep upstairs and feeling the glow of the streetlamp piercing the trees. I can still smell the crab and crawfish from Mariette’s down the road as I lean into the column.
“This is how they drive us out,” I tell them. “Hinder our businesses, threaten our citizens, and decrease the value of everything here.”
“How?” Trace asks, still not getting it.
But before I open my mouth, Macon replies, “Our people will be arrested,” he states, “fined, and/or inevitably detained if caught breaking curfew. Some will flee by the end of the summer. It’ll be too much trouble to deal with.
Our businesses will become less profitable, including Liv’s movie, and this will kill our liquor distribution. ”
“They want to hinder any ground we’ve gained over there,” I explain to Trace, “and they want us away from their women.”
A laugh breaks the somber mood, all of us looking to Aracely.
“Army doesn’t fuck his own,” she teases. “What will he do now?”
“I work days.” He narrows his eyes without missing a beat. “And I get an hour for lunch.”
I would snort if I weren’t so tired. He can still sleep with Saint women, I guess, as long as he does it when the sun is up.
She tosses him a snide smile, but she doesn’t break eye contact till he does.
“Fucking focus,” Macon tells us. “We knew this wouldn’t be easy.”
We’ll figure it out. Our ancestors didn’t fail, and we’re not losing the Bay on our watch.
But his phone rings, interrupting us. He holds it to his ear. “What?” he answers, his tone clipped.
We could get the liquor to Trace’s, albeit in smaller shipments. Several trips back and forth in smaller vehicles that won’t look suspicious during the day. It’ll take longer, though, which will increase the likelihood we’ll be discovered.
Maybe a laundry truck? We have people who work, cleaning and transporting bedding and towels to the hotels. The police won’t take a second glance at them on the roads.
They will wonder why those trucks are pulling in and out of Trace’s pub, though. Fuck.
“What?” Macon bites out.
We all turn, looking at him. His dark brow is pinched, his body as tense as stone.
“Goddammit!” He pulls the phone away from his ear and hangs up.
Krisjen hops off the buffet, ready to be there, and I grab the bottle back from Trace, because I’m gonna need it.
“They’re not releasing Santos and Torres,” he announces, then addresses Army. “You either deal with this, or I’m sending in the lawyer.”
“Just let me do my job,” he retorts, grabbing his radio and holstering it along with his firearm. “I’ll bring them home.”
He leaves, and I know Macon doesn’t blame him, but Army didn’t know about the curfew.
The sheriff hid it from him, probably because he was asked to, but it definitely means our brother is being deliberately stonewalled in his own department.
Doesn’t do much for the relationships he’s trying to foster there, as if cops from Sanoa Bay aren’t equal.
If they kept this from him, they could consider him expendable in dangerous situations, too.
Trace knocks Iron on the shoulder. “Iron and I will move the trucks to the drive-in for now,” he tells Macon.
They both leave the same way Army did, squeezing past Aracely. “Be careful,” she says to them. She didn’t say that to Army.
Liv hasn’t said anything, and honestly, I don’t know why I expect her to. Macon and Army survived so we could thrive, and as the youngest, she was shielded from most of the bullshit it took to get us prosperous.
Macon drifts toward me. “Do you remember when I said not to fuck with him?”
I hold out my hand, gesturing to his wife and then to Liv’s girlfriend, Clay. It’s okay for them to fuck Saints and not me? How was I supposed to know?
He gives me a lazy smile, turning and wrapping his arms around his wife.
“You have surveillance at Fox Hill,” I remind him.
“Which I’ll use when I’m ready.”
I almost start laughing. “If there’s ever a greater need for that leverage, I can’t imagine what it is.”
I mean, what the fuck? He’s had hidden cameras all over this town, especially the country club and the entrance of their secret little Wolfe Room. He’s been collecting dirt to use to blackmail people for years.
Callum could actually destroy us with this fucking curfew.
“Do you have footage on Callum?” Clay chimes in.
I twist my head.
“Going into the Wolfe Room, you mean?” Macon asks. “Why?”
“Do you?” she presses.
He hesitates, and I wonder if he knows for sure. We don’t have cameras in the Wolfe Room—security is tight—but you can get a view of it when they open the door as people arrive and leave.
But he replies, “Yes.”
I narrow my eyes, turning to my brother.
He does?
“He’s been in a couple of times,” Macon tells us, “but he leaves within ten minutes.”
She seems to ponder for a second and then nods. “You should get a camera inside. He’s going to have to go in and participate, if he hasn’t already.”
I walk toward her. “How do you know that?”
Why would he have to do anything?
“The Wolfe Room is an exclusive club,” she explains. “I can imagine my parents were invited—given their status—but it wouldn’t have been something they would’ve entertained.” She swallows. “Deviant and disgusting, as it is…”
I’d seen some of the footage, most of which Macon never kept, as it was irrelevant, but it didn’t seem that bad. Raunchy but not illegal.
I’d heard stories, though.
“But in high school, I did hear Garrett tell Callum,” she goes on, “that he would prove how trustworthy he was someday when he joined in at the Wolfe Room.” Her eyes shift from me to Liv to Macon. “Callum’s twenty-two now, and…”
I nod. “…and his father still doesn’t respect him.”
“What makes you say that?” Macon asks me.
It’s time to let Callum prove himself, Garrett had said.
“He knows Callum doesn’t want to fuck women,” I say plainly. “And he’ll want him to prove to him that he’s willing to do as his father says.”
“Well, I’m not waiting for the slight chance he decides he needs his father’s respect,” Macon spits out. “We’re either going to find a way into St. Carmen or find a way around the curfew, but we’re going to do what we’re going to fucking do.”
“Hell yeah,” Aracely concurs.