His first night in the hospital he’d told Mama and his grands what had happened but refused to talk about it ever again. His grands had tried to heal him through the church, then therapy but he refused to open up, so his grands let him rage until he exhausted himself, then he would quietly go about trying to clean up any sign of destruction he’d wrought.
By the time he was thirteen, he was bigger than most grown men, and after his grandmother had been injured by the hutch he’d torn from the wall and thrown across the room, his grandfather waited until he’d come back to himself, then took him to the back pasture and told Big Country in no uncertain terms:Son, I’ll forever regret I wasn’t there to stop what that woman did to you, what my son did. I love you more than words can convey and thank the Lord daily that Almaya brought you to us, but I’ll tell you one time and one time only, never again will the women in our house be hurt or left to pick up the pieces after you let that beast inside of you loose. You don’t want to talk about what happened and I respect that, but you’ll have to find another way of dealing with that pain or you’ll have to go.
And to a degree Big Country had found a way. He’d go out to the pasture or far from others when the coldness started to take him. He learned to hold tight to calm, he learned to let things roll off his back, to let humor be a kind of therapy, he learned to avoid the drama of relationships, relegating women to the realm of pleasure and release. He engaged his mind, he created, he solved problems, and he got justice for folks who didn’t have the power or know-how to fight and win on their own.
“You still don’t understand the damage you’ve done,” Stormy said to Belle Mère. “If you cared, if youtrulycared for Lucas, you wouldn’t force him to fight him and Merlee free from you and your husband again.”
“Look, you, I know what ya are and what ya not. Thisfamilybusiness, and your black ass definitely ain’t family. My boy got a good woman, nowyouget the fuck out.”
She reached for Stormy, but his sienna-red woman was faster.
She grabbed Belle Mère by the upper arm and shoved her backward. Belle Mère yelled out, enraged, and jerked her arm free, balled up her fist and cocked it back to strike Stormy.
“Bitch, I wish you would,” Stormy growled, stepping forward, sounding as if she wanted to kill Belle Mère.
Lord, his poor heart swelled. His champion, his woman, his…justhis.
Big Country shrugged at Belle Mère. “If you feeling froggish and you got them legs, I dare you to jump.”
“Yes, ’cause I’m definitely willing to lose my license over this shit,” Stormy said.
He couldn’t help it, he pulled her to him and kissed her, hard and fast. “Woman, I think you just made me finish falling for you, I mean hitting the ground with meteor-impact hard.”
“Oh, dear Lord, I was not prepared for this storm!” Delilah exclaimed as she walked into the house, maneuvering two full grocery bags. She froze when she saw Big Country. “Beloved…you came,” she said, dropping the bags. “I knew God would bring you to me, I knew He—”
Big Country reached for the gun holstered at his back and fired.
Screaming, Belle Mère fell to the ground and Delilah simply blinked in confusion, as if struggling to accept that he’d shot at her.
Stormy had kept her alive by pushing Big Country’s arm up, making the bullet lodge in the wall above the front door.
“Lucas, what the hell!” Stormy shouted.
“That woman ordered a hit on Mama’s House. She doesn’t get to live.”
“But Mama and Terry said they needed to find out more about the Shepherd and this Patron, she has that information,” she said, trying to reason with him.
“She tried to take outmy family.”
“Your family harbors the killers of the Patron’s son,” Delilah said, no longer hiding her motivation for engaging the Brood. “The death of Zeus and Sabrina is ordained, beloved. The Shepherd has ordered it, God has willed it, and because Cornelius has obviously failed, I will now be the one to execute it.”
Heavy feet thumped against the floors upstairs, making the ceiling vibrate…or was that the thunder?
“Emilia, what’s dat noise goin’ on down there?”
Delilah pulled a phone from her purse and left the house.
He wanted to follow, to stop her from making another move against the Brood, but heavy footsteps moving toward the top of the stairs stopped him.
Three men descended one after the other: Armand, Thibideux, then PaPere.
“Oh shit,” Stormy muttered as she looked up to see his father and two brothers come down the stairs, all as big, if not as densely muscled, as Big Country.
Yeah, he thought, securing his gun against his back. Shit was about to go down.
Three versions of Lucas, one as imposing as the next, walked down the stairs, temporarily distracting Stormy from the sight of Delilah leaving the house by foot, then by car, neatly avoiding the altercation she undoubtedly played a part in exacerbating.
The first man down the stairs was the youngest, which meant he was Armand. He reminded her most of Lucas and it wasn’t just because of his coloring and size; it was in the loose way he wore his faded jeans and gray T-shirt, it was in the appearance of calm assessment, the perceptiveness hiding within his brilliant green gaze.
