28. Reva
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
REVA
Routine sneaks in like a thief, beginning with Homer.
The harness remains his enemy, but he has advanced from dramatic collapse to suspicious crouch-walking.
Every morning, I take him into the garden on his little black leash, and every morning, he acts like the brick path is lava, the grass is a trap, and the decorative fountain has insulted his orange bloodline.
By day three, he makes it all the way past the pool before flopping onto his side beneath a hibiscus bush.
“Progress,” I tell him.
He chews the leash.
“Rude progress, but progress.”
After that comes breakfast.
Cal cooks because no one stops him, and because the men of Blackwood House apparently understand that if a man is willing to make food, you get out of his way.
Pancakes once. Eggs and toast the next day.
Grits with cheese and bacon after that, because Cal has decided being in Louisiana and Blackwood House means he has something to prove.
He doesn’t, and we all know that, but that’s Cal.
Nash drinks coffee and reads messages on his phone until I glare at him, and he sets it down.
Ever watches the windows.
Shiloh steals bites from everyone’s plate and claims it’s quality control.
Deacon appears when he wants to, silent and dark-eyed and infuriatingly comfortable in his east-facing bedroom, as if moving into the house was a natural progression after defiling Nash’s desk.
Shiloh hands him a mug without looking at him.
Deacon takes it without comment.
Nash notices. Ever notices Nash noticing. Nobody says anything, which is somehow worse than arguing.
Then Homer chooses that moment to climb Deacon’s pant leg.
“Traitor,” I tell the cat.
Deacon looks down at him. “He has taste.”
Shiloh sighs. “Unfortunately, yes.”
No one mentions the office at Noir or Nash’s desk. No one has to. Nash had it cleaned and polished the next morning with all the subtlety of a man erasing the evidence of a crime.
And just like that, the assassin becomes part of breakfast.
I sit through all of it wearing clothes I did not own a week ago, drinking coffee someone else poured for me, eating meals in a kitchen where Cal knows which cabinet has the flour and Shiloh knows which mug I prefer. It shouldn’t feel this permanent. This domestic.
This much like…everyday mornings.
It’s kind of…unacceptable. I try not to think about exactly why it’s so unacceptable. I know it has to do with my complicated feelings regarding family and loss and permanency and all of that bullshit that I don’t like to think about for very long.
I’m trying. I really am.
Noir helps a little. The bar gives me something to do with my hands for a few hours a day.
I stock, count, wipe, carry, fold napkins, argue with Sonny about music, and pretend I am not being watched by at least one dangerous man at all times.
Sometimes it is Ever. Sometimes Shiloh. Sometimes one of Nash’s men, trying and failing to look like he is there for the excellent ambience of a closed bar before noon.
Sonny is the closest thing I have to normal, which says terrible things about the current state of my life.
“You look less murdery today,” she says on Thursday, leaning against the bar with a clipboard tucked under one arm.
“I’m pacing myself.”
“Healthy.”
“So I’m told.”
She narrows her eyes. “Are you sleeping?”
“Enough.”
“Eating?”
“Cal is stress-cooking, so yes.”
“Having lots of morally questionable sex?”
I drop a stack of cocktail napkins.
“Subtle,” I say.
“I’m living vicariously.”
“You are a menace in eyeliner.”
She smiles. “And yet you love me.”
I pick up the napkins and put them on the shelf beneath the bar. “I tolerate you with concern.”
“That’s basically love in your dialect.”
The problem is, she isn’t wrong.
The bigger problem is that all of it—the kitten walks, the breakfasts, the bar, Sonny, the new clothes, the men moving around me like I have become part of their map—starts to blur the reason I came here.
I came for revenge. I came to find Deacon Cross and put fifteen years of nightmares back into his body with interest. Then Deacon stopped being the answer, and Mother Superior—the Syndicate—stepped into his place. That should have made things cleaner.
It didn’t.
A target moving is not the same thing as a target disappearing. I still have one. It is bigger now, older, better protected. It wears pearls instead of a rosary mark and lets everyone else do the dirty work while it hosts charity events and makes decisions from beautiful rooms.
The Syndicate killed my family.
The Syndicate took my sister from me.
The Syndicate still wants me dead.
Knowing that gives me a direction, but direction is not enough.
I need the why. I need the shape of the thing.
What did my father do? What could possibly require slaughtering a family and hunting the mistake fifteen years later?
How does Delia fit into it? Why did she live in their hands while I grew up in Cal’s?
Every time I ask, the answers get slippery.
That afternoon, I finally lose patience in Nash’s study at Blackwood House.
Nash is behind the desk. Ever stands near the window. Shiloh sits on the arm of a chair. Deacon leans against the bookshelves, arms crossed, looking like the physical embodiment of withheld information.
Cal is not there.
Good.
I need one argument at a time.
“What did my father do to have the Syndicate decide he needed to die?” I ask.
No one answers fast enough.
I point at all of them. “See? That. I hate that.”
“Your father worked for them,” Nash says.
“For the Syndicate.”
“Yes. El Sindicato de la Rosa.” Deacon explains.
“The Rose?” My brain is stuck on the name.
“Yes, La Rosa,” Deacon corrects.
“La Rosa.” I roll the words on my tongue, tasting them. Hating them. “So what did he do that was so awful?”
“He left,” Deacon says.
“That’s it?”
“No.” His eyes hold mine. “He took your mother with him.”
The room goes quiet in a way I don’t like. Ever shifts near the window, and Shiloh’s expression turns…almost pitying.
“My mother,” I say.
Deacon nods once. “Your father worked for the Syndicate. But your mother belonged to the bloodline. That made her…betrayal…more difficult to forgive.”
Something begins to hum in my ears, and I blink several times, rapidly, as though that might drown the sound out. Help me make sense of what I’m hearing.
Deacon is still speaking. “The Syndicate is one of the most powerful stateside cartels…in recent history. And like many cartels, it is very quietly operated by a matriarchal power structure. Do you know what that means?”
I drop to sit on the nearest seat, which happens to be Nash’s knee. He makes space for me easily, one hand coming up to stroke my back and then settle at my hip. I can’t focus on everything at once. One thing stands out.
“My mother was cartel? And the Syndicate…this is because she ran?”
“And because she took you and Delia with her.”
Something cold moves through my stomach.
Nash’s voice is flat. “Mother Superior believed your mother had no right to keep you from the life you rightfully were born into, even if you were the daughters of Hart, a white man. To punish your parents for trying to run, to take you from the Syndicate, one daughter would be returned to the Syndicate. One daughter would be—” He looks down.
“Killed,” I finish. “Me. Because those thirteen minutes were really that significant.”
No one says anything.
“The life I was rightfully born into,” I repeat.
“There’s something I don’t really understand though.
I mean, there’s a lot I don’t understand.
But if my father was going to run…going to escape…
why did he stay here in Nola? Apparently we lived in that house, in hiding, for several years.
We were right under the Syndicate—my grandmother’s—nose.
Why didn’t he go to fucking Canada? Or Alaska? Why stay here?”
Deacon watches me with that calm I have started to understand is not calm at all. It is a locked door with something violent behind it. He shrugs a little.
“I have no fucking idea. Arrogance? He needed to stay near his contacts? No clue. The only thing I know is that your father did something she considered betrayal,” he says. “So the Syndicate made an example of him. And by extension, you.”
His mouth goes flat. Shiloh says my name softly. I ignore him.
“Why finish it now?” I ask. “Why me? Why not leave the mistake alone if I stayed dead so well?”
Nash speaks before I can explode. “Because dead mistakes can be useful. Living ones ask questions and seek revenge.”
“Well. I guess there’s that.”
I leave the room, unable to stomach any further discussion.
The mail arrives that evening.
I only know because Homer has gotten one claw stuck in the edge of the runner in the front hall, and I am on my knees trying to free him while he acts like I am performing field surgery without anesthesia.
“Stop fighting me,” I mutter.
He yells.
“I am trying to help you, you little beast—”
He yells louder. A pair of shoes stops beside me. I look up.
One of Nash’s men, one Nash determined would stay as extra security while we waited for Mother Superior to make her stupid move, stands with a stack of envelopes in his hands and no idea where to put his eyes.
I am on the floor, hair falling over one shoulder, kitten attached to a rug, and ass in the air.
“Uh…I have some mail, ma’am.”
“Well, put it down before it bites you, I guess.”
The man blinks. Then he sets the stack down on the console table and leaves quickly. Poor guy.
I free Homer’s claw, and he immediately attacks the rug again.
“Natural selection is coming for you,” I tell him.
He sneezes.
I stand and glance at the mail without much interest. I don’t get anything now that Deacon is here.
Bill.
Bill.
Thick ivory envelope with my name… Not only mine.
Mr. Nash Blackwood
and
Miss Reva Leigh Hart
The air leaves my lungs, and I pick it up carefully. The envelope is heavy, sealed with black wax pressed into the shape of a cypress tree wrapped in a crown of thorns.
Nash appears at the end of the hall before I call him.
“What is it?” he asks.
I hold up the envelope. “Either a wedding invitation or a villain has excellent stationery.”
His face changes when he sees the seal.
“Open it.”
“See, that tone makes me not want to.”
“Reva.”
I slide a fingernail beneath the flap and break the wax.
Inside is a formal card on cream stock, the lettering black and raised.
The De La Rosa Foundation
requests the honor of your presence at
La Nuit des Masques
A private masquerade gala benefiting the restoration of Saint Aurelie’s Home
Hosted by Isabel Rosario
Friday, eight o’clock in the evening
The Beauregard House
Beneath that, in smaller print:
Mr. Nash Blackwood
and
Miss Reva Leigh Hart
No guests. No substitutes.
My fingers tighten around the card. Nash reads over my shoulder. He doesn’t curse or speak or utter the first sound, but his face says plenty. This isn’t good.
She’s making her move.
Shiloh comes in from the side hall with a glass in his hand. “Why do both of you look like someone found the bodies?”
I hand him the invitation.
He reads it.
His brows lift. “Rude.”
I stare at him. “Rude?”
“The no guests thing. I am delightful at masquerades.”
Ever enters behind him. “Who is hosting?”
“Isabel Rosario,” Nash says.
Ever’s face goes still.
I look between them. “It’s her, isn’t it? Mother Superior?”
Deacon appears in the doorway to the library like the house summoned him from a wall.
“Yes,” he says.
I look back at the invitation. The card feels heavier in my hand, with its fancy, raised black letters. The cypress seal. The polite language wrapped around a threat.
Isabel Rosario. Mother Superior. The woman who called me a mistake. One who needs to die—again.
Shiloh looks at the card again. “A masquerade. Very subtle.”
Deacon takes the invitation from Shiloh and studies it. “Beauregard House is hers.”
“Is it open to the public?” I ask.
“Through the foundation,” Nash says.
“Her foundation sounds fake.”
“It is.”
“Nice.”
Ever’s attention is on the front windows. “This is a summons.”
Nash nods once. “Dressed as an invitation.”
“Should we decline?” I ask.
Every man in the hall looks at me. The answer is obvious before anyone says it.
Shiloh’s voice is lighter than his eyes. “I could wear a mask and pretend to be Nash.”
“You are several inches shorter,” Nash says.
“I would compensate with personality.”
“No one would believe I had one.”
Despite everything, a laugh jumps in my throat. It dies fast.
Cal walks in from the kitchen wiping his hands on a towel. He takes one look at all of us and stops. “What now?”
I hold up the card.
He reads it over Nash’s shoulder, and his face goes ashen in a way I do not like.
“Absolutely not. Not happening.”
“Cal,” I say.
“No.”
“Apparently it’s not optional.”
He looks at Nash. “Make it optional.”
Nash does not answer.
Cal’s jaw works. “She is not walking into that woman’s house.”
“The woman invited me,” I say.
Cal turns on me. “That is exactly the problem.”
His fear is too naked. It does something to me.
A few days ago, it would have made me soften. Now it makes my chest tight and my temper rise because fear has become another room men keep trying to put me in.
I look back at the invitation.
La Nuit des Masques.
Cream of society event. Old money. Masks. Champagne. Pretty dresses. Weapons hidden beneath polite smiles. Hosted by the head of the De La Rosa Syndicate herself.
I came to New Orleans looking for a man with a rosary tattoo. Now the woman behind the order has sent me stationery.
My revenge has adjusted its target.
My fear can catch up later.
I lower the invitation.
“There’s no problem here,” I say. “The Syndicate wants to see me, and so I shall be seen.”