I lean back in the chair, the leather creaking under my weight. The office smells faintly of polish and old paper. It’s familiar and grounding, smells and sounds that have made up the fabric of my entire life.
“We need to move,” I say. “Fast enough that nobody thinks we’re hesitating. Clean enough that nobody knows what happened. Except the ones waiting for a response.”
Vin straightens. “Then you already know what we have to do.”
We. Vin is wearing this on his shoulders just like I am.
I study him. “What are you suggesting?”
He doesn’t rush it. Vin never does.
“Boudreaux has a daughter,” he says. “Coco.”
I take a second longer than necessary before responding.
I hold his gaze. “And?”
“And she’s the one thing he won’t ignore,” Vin replies. “You don’t posture. You force engagement.”
I shake my head once. “We aren’t in the business of snatching women, Vin. That wasn’t my father’s style, and it’s not mine. Boudreaux is who I want to hurt. No need to bring his daughter into it.”
“No, you’re right,” Vin agrees. “But we make statements, and we make it hurt. She has to be part of the equation.”
I push out of the chair and pace toward the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the city. Lights flickeralong the streets. Life carries on like nothing cracked open underneath it.
“This isn’t something my father would’ve done,” I say.
Vin doesn’t argue. “Your father never had to bury his own father.”
The words lodge in my throat. I swallow once, then again. I’m not an emotional man, but the weight of all of this, of losing my father, of considering doing something like what Vin is suggesting, is heavy.
I turn back to him. “You want to kidnap the girl?”
“I think that’s the only way to do this.”
Holy fucking shit. I can’t believe this is where I am right now. That I’m actually considering doing this.
“If I agree to this, I’m not killing her. I want to make that clear. It’s her father I want.”
Vin’s expression stays flat. That’s what makes it dangerous.
“Right now, Boudreaux can sit back and wait. He can deny, stall, let the noise die down. We need him to move.”
“Good point.”
“She’s leverage in a closed system. Temporary. She stays safe as long as Boudreaux plays this smart, which I believe he will once his daughter is part of the equation.”
“So what if he doesn’t bend, then what?”
“Then we keep tightening the system around him until he has to engage.”
I stand there, turning it over. Not the morality. The cost.
This isn’t about anger anymore. That burned off somewhere between sunrise and the last phone call. What’s left is colder. Focused.
“People will talk,” I say. “They’ll say I moved too fast. That I stepped into my father’s place before his body was cold.”
Vin snorts. “People always fucking talk.”
