“It means you sound like your father,” he says. Not accusing, just stating it.
The words land wrong, heavy in my chest. “I’m nothing like him.”
“I know,” he says. “But that’s how it comes out.”
I look away, jaw tightening. “Let’s just both drop it.”
“Sure,” he says. “Sure, boss.”
Heat creeps up my neck. I don’t like how easily this slips onto me. How natural it feels to push when I should be pulling back.
We used to be equals. No titles or expectations. Just kids pretending we were brave.
Now I sound like someone I never planned to become.
The moment passes, leaving something colder behind. Like Delphine said, I’m either in or I’m out.
He glances at me again, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth. That little gesture softens me somehow. We’re still friends, at the end of the day.
I pull the envelope from my bag and hold it out. “Here. Let’s finish this.”
He reaches for it, and I hesitate. Just a beat. Long enough to search his face for any trace of the unease I saw last night.
It’s gone.
I let go, that unsettled twist tightening in my gut as he tucks the envelope into his pocket.
“Careful,” he says, glancing back at me. “If you keep talking like that, people are going to start thinking Laurent’s training you for more.”
I stiffen. “They can think whatever they want.”
He chuckles under his breath. “Whatever.”
He turns and walks away, leaving me standing between the tombs with the quiet pressing in around me.
I don’t like how easy that was. Or how natural it felt.
I watch him disappear behind a tall crypt. My mind still churns with the doubts and questions that refuse to go away, but I did what my father told me to do. I handed over the payment against my gut.
Because, as he said, I’m not supposed to think.
THREE
Ridge
Birthplace of Jazz:New Orleans is hailed as the birthplace of jazz. Pioneers like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Sidney Bechet laid the foundation for this global genre, with the sounds of brass and blues echoing through the city streets.
Vin’salready in my office when I walk in.
The building is quiet in the way that it only gets late at night, after the phones stop ringing and the crews rotate out.
The city hums beyond the windows, indifferent to the fury raging inside of me. Everything that needed to happen today already has. Calls were made, legal teams were looped in, and the damage was contained before it could ripple outward.
This is what’s left.
They left my father on the side of the road in the Warehouse District, stripped of context and witnesses. They made it look like a mugging so he would be foundquickly and written off just as fast, nothing tying it back to the ports or the work he was doing.
But I know.
