“Jesus. You’re making it worse,” he bellows. “And it still doesn’t make fucking sense.”
Some things never change.
RYKER
Most people have a life splintered by fault-line incidents, the kind of days that forever divide your existence into a before and after. I’m no exception, but fault line is too fucking weak for a couple of mine. Those were cyclones, ripping through everything I’d ever known and leaving nothing but shreds in their wake.
The gateway to hell.
My mother dying in our house fire with my two-timing father was the first. Those flames scorched any shiny veneer I had hoped my life would hold and plummeted me into the thick of darkness. It was compounded by the heart-wrenching aftermath of my siblings growing up without her, by the cognizance that nothing could ever heal that wound. Axel and I had little time to lament those embers because of all the responsibilities we inherited. Still, the ever-lasting burns were there.
Ashes and lies.
That was devastating, but nothing compared to finding Mercy’s lifeless body—bruised, bloody, broken, and listless—on a living room floor I’d never set foot on. Aged white oak, stained with crimson and slaughtered dreams.
Remy—Jett at the time—was only a few months old. He was screaming in his crib, wailing so violently that I assumed he sensed his mother was leaving this world and was determined to do whatever the hell he could to stop it. That same rage surged through me.
She coded twice over the next twenty-four hours—as hell-bent to die as she claimed yesterday in the stairwell. And after weeks of sleepless nights with my heart outside of my body, when she finally started to turn a corner, I knew that even though she had survived and my mother hadn’t, this would be the tragedy that never stopped shredding me.
And that was before I woke to find she’d disappeared.
White oak and screams.
But there is one day I now consider a fault-line incident, even though I didn’t recognize it at the time. It cracked through my grip on reality in a different way than the others. This one offered the sparkly side of hope.
Champagne and delusions.
While Mercy was in her senior year of college, her mother died. And a week after she graduated, her father drove into a tree.
I hadn’t stayed in touch with Mercy during her college years. She was safer that way. The closer we were, the more she’d be seen as a pawn by someone my family and I had pissed off. So, once Axel and I were running La Lune Noire, I distanced myself.
But then she was back, claiming I was the only one who could possibly understand her pain, that she needed a friend, that losing both parents had wrecked her in ways no one else could relate to. Once she flashed her doe-eyed pout, there was no turning her away. I nursed her through those early days of grief, assuming she’d eventually dust herself off and be on her way to brighter pastures.
She did some impressive dusting, like the badass she was, but she insisted that she couldn’t leave again, that my family was her family, that New Orleans and La Lune Noire were home. And that I was her best friend, the wingman she wanted beside her in the nursing home someday. She acted it out as if we’d be fucking gluing in our teeth, arm in arm, on the prowl.
Adorable and … irksome.
It rubbed me the wrong way for multiple reasons, but I wouldn’t outwardly admit to it. There was always a part of me that wondered about us beingmore.
She’s fucking … Mercy. Smart. Sexy. Strong. I think it’s the quirkiness that comes out of nowhere that has always gotten me most though—equal measures of exasperating and enchanting.
Anyway, at the time of this fault-line incident, she was attending law school in New Orleans and sowing her wild oats. I think she told me she wasgetting her oats onor something equally absurd, but uninterested in digging too deep, I let her have that one. Plus, she backed it up with some nerdy explanation. Because …Mercy.
She was doing her thing, and I was doing mine. Neither of us got serious with anyone else. We had flings, and we had each other. Sometimes, it bothered me when she shared details, but I’m not sure I even understood how much, until one night.
It was her twenty-fourth birthday, and I shut down the Blind Tiger—the original speakeasy that my great-grandfather had opened—so we could celebrate, just the two of us. She was gorgeous that night, as always. The dim amber bulb lights made her brown eyes shine with a caramel hue. Her smattering of freckles was more pronounced against her pale winter skin. Her lips were fucking strawberry pillows. She’d finally regained some of her exuberance. And she knew it. The sexy confidence that had always captivated me was back.
Mercy raps a drumbeat on the bar top, her eyes gleaming. “So, what’s on the menu, barkeep? Something fancy?”
I chuckle, already knowing what I’m going to serve her. It will be far better than the two lemon drop shots she downed when we stopped off in the high-rollers lounge. “Fancy … sure. I bet you’ll love the French 75.”
“Ooh.” She hops off the stool and sashays over to the antique phonograph, perusing the albums. “Champagne and gin, right?”
A scoff flies out of my lungs as I shake the cognac, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and simple syrup on ice. “Champagne? Yes. Gin? Not in my goddamn establishment.”
She glances back over her shoulder. “So uppity, Noire. Isn’t gin a staple of a speakeasy?”
“Other speakeasies,” I volley, setting the chilled champagne flutes out on the shiny wooden counter to pour all the ingredients together. “We always sold gin, but my great-grandfather hated the shit, so he built his bootlegger’s paradise on cognac.”
