VICTOR #3
“That’s not something I forgive, Victor.
That’s not something I negotiate. That’s not something money or leverage or a daughter I don’t care about can buy back.
” He gripped his cane and pushed himself up, every motion costing him.
“You made a choice. And now you’re going to live with what that choice costs you. ”
He stood over me for a long moment, and I understood—clearly, coldly—that the only reason I was still breathing was the marble floor beneath us and the invisible eyes watching from every corner of this room.
“It won’t be long now,” Winston said quietly. “I want you to sit here every day, wondering when.”
He turned and walked away, his cane tapping against the floor in a rhythm that sounded like a countdown.
I picked my cigar back up. My hand was steady. It always was.
But the taste had gone bitter, and no amount of smoke could fix that.
Delacroix’s had bought me an hour of safety. Nothing more. The moment I stepped through those doors, back into the city, back into the war, Delacroix’s rules would no longer apply.
And I would need more than neutral ground to survive what was coming.
I finished my cigar in peace, or something close to it.
Winston’s threats meant nothing tonight. Not here. I ordered another Pappy, let the burn settle my nerves, and told myself the conversation had gone exactly as I’d needed it to.
Winston still didn’t know where the money was.
That ignorance was the only leverage I had left.
My phone buzzed against the table. Tyler. One of six men on my payroll who existed specifically to watch things I couldn’t watch myself.
I answered without greeting. “Talk.”
“Boss, we got a problem.” His voice was tight, clipped. Tyler didn’t rattle easy, which meant whatever this was, it mattered. “The transport route changed two hours ago. Nobody told me. Nobody told Desmond either, and he’s supposed to be running lead on that shipment.”
“Changed how?”
“Original route had it going through the warehouse on Tchoupitoulas, same as always. Rahsaan’s people rerouted it to some storage facility out by Kenner. I only found out because one of my guys clocked the trucks going the wrong direction and called it in.”
My hand tightened around the glass.
“And the safe location?”
A pause. The kind of pause that told me the answer before Tyler said it.
“Empty, boss. I sent somebody to check twenty minutes ago. Whole thing’s cleared out. Not a dollar left.”
“What about the guards? The two men Rahsaan posted?”
“Gone. Nobody’s seen them since this afternoon.”
I sat there for a moment, cigar smoke curling toward the ceiling, and let the pieces settle into a shape I didn’t want to see but recognized immediately.
Rahsaan had moved the money.
Not repositioned it for safety. Not adjusted for security concerns after the warehouse shootout. Moved it—quietly without a word to me—and pulled his men off the old location like he was closing a door behind him.
“Keep eyes on Kenner,” I said. “Don’t approach. Just watch.”
“Copy.”
I hung up and dialed Rahsaan immediately.
It rang four times before going to voicemail.
I tried again. Same result.
A third time. Nothing.
I sat with the phone in my hand, watching the ice melt in my bourbon, feeling something cold settle in my chest that had nothing to do with Winston’s threats.
Then, my phone buzzed once. A text.
Rahsaan: You said arrogance gets men killed. I’m just making sure it’s not mine. Don’t bother watching Kenner. I have the money somewhere safe.
I read it twice.
Then a third time, in case the words might rearrange themselves into something less final.
They didn’t.
Rahsaan wasn’t hiding the money from Winston. He was hiding it from me. Positioning himself to disappear the moment things went sideways, leaving me holding a war I’d started, a daughter I couldn’t save, and nothing to bargain with when the Landrys came collecting.
I set the phone down carefully, like it might shatter if I gripped it too hard.
Winston wanted my life. That much was clear, spoken plainly, unambiguous in its brutality.
But Rahsaan wanted the money, and he’d apparently decided I was expendable in that pursuit—a partner turned liability the second the vault opened, and the cash became real, tangible, something worth running for.
And Yahmaria sat between us, a bargaining chip nobody actually wanted to cash in.
I finished my drink in one long pull, set the glass down without a sound, and stood.
The lounge’s rules would protect me until I walked through that door. Out there, Winston’s patience had a clock on it, and now Rahsaan had given himself a head start I couldn’t afford to let grow any longer.
I nodded to the hostess on my way out, calm, unhurried, every inch the man who had walked in an hour ago.
But my mind was already three steps ahead, running through contacts, safe houses, ports, airstrips—every place Rahsaan might run, every route he might take, every hour I had left before he vanished with everything I needed to survive this war.
I wasn’t leaving Delacroix’s because I was safe.
I was leaving because I had one man to find before the Landrys found him first.
And unlike Winston, I didn’t need Rahsaan alive.
I just needed to know where the money was before I decided how he died.