A game piece to be moved around the board.
He hadn’t been abusive, precisely, but he’d never made any secret about his expectations, and my feelings were never important to him in that regard.
It wasn’t going to take much for me to increase my anger toward him, and if he’d sent Brooks into the Landry mansion to her death...
“He thought that taking her would start a war,” Daniel said quietly.
I nearly turn and stab the man, just to have something to do with my hands.
“Dominick Landry has done more than enough to start a war on his own,” I snap.“And Gemini didn’t want to make it any worse?”
Daniel hustled to catch up to me.“You know Gemini,” he muttered.“He wants to name the time and place.And he didn’t want you getting caught up in the crossfire when it happens.”
That last sentence nearly gives me pause, because it actually makes a lot of sense.If I’d been in Dom’s house when my father decided to attack him, I would have been either a pawn or a dead man walking.And once the shooting started, they wouldn’t have been able to protect me.
“Say it like that and I’ll start to think the old man actually cares about my well-being,” I say, giving Daniel the benefit of an almost-smile.
When he answers, I can hear that he’s taken it.“And if you believe that, you’re even more of an idiot than I thought.”
I laugh then, caught off-guard by a joke from the man who never tells jokes, and stride quickly into the war room.“I’m twice as smart as you, and you know it.I’ll accept that my father may have had a reason to get me out of there, but I’m not willing to let Brooks stay.We’re getting her out, Daniel, and we’re doing it now.We’re not leaving her in there a second longer than we have to.I don’t give one single fuck if itdoesstart a war.And I don’t care what my father thinks about it.”
We make our way quickly toward the main table in the room, where we’ll have a clear view of the five flat-screen monitors on the front wall, and take our seats.I hit a button to turn everything on, wait for the screens to light up, and then ask Daniel to tell me exactly what we’re looking at.
Because they may have left Brooks behind on my father’s orders, but they haven’t seen what I saw at that port.The girls in handcuffs, their faces white as snow and their eyes shadowed with pain and the realization that no one is coming to save them.Battered and bruised arms.Unwashed hair.
A horrible lack of any sort of sound coming from them.
Those girls have been sentenced to a fate worse than death and they all know it.Brooks came to New Orleans to try to get them out, and when I agreed to help her, I threw my whole being into it.
Now she’s caught in the trap of the man running that ring again.I saved her once before, and thought for a few moments that we might actually have won.
We didn’t.
And now that she’s stuck again, it’s going to be twice as hard to get her out.I don’t think Dom Landry will let her go easily.
But I won’t rest until I get my girl back.
And I don’t care how many people I have to kill to get it done.
* * *
I stare at the grainy, black and white video in front of me, my eyes focused on the front door of the Landry house while I listen to Luke and Daniel in the background.They’re talking about what the Landry clan has been doing since yesterday, who’s coming and going and how many soldiers are in the house, but I can’t seem to focus on anything they’re saying.
Because Brooks is behind that door.She’s somewhere in that house, somewhere in one of those rooms, and I’m going through every room in my memory, trying to figure out where she is.
If I were to break into the house right now, where would I find her?If I were there, charging through that door and screaming her name...
I’d expect to find her in her room, but I know she wouldn’t actually be there.It would be the first place I went, and I’d find it empty and probably as stern and undecorated as it always was.I’ve known Brooks since she was twelve and I was sixteen, and the girl’s always had a hold over me.For years, we were nothing more than friends, her tiny form a sidekick I never managed to get rid of, her hand always tucked into mine and her voice always in my ear, giving me commands or asking me questions.Then, when she turned fifteen, something changed.Her eyes began to linger longer on mine, her touches became more gentle, and I...
And I...
I was nineteen at the time and already knew more about the world than I should have.I’d been running my own gang for years already, and had rackets all over the city that my father didn’t know about.But looking into that girl’s deep blue eyes, watching her lips as she licked them nervously, did something I wasn’t expecting.She’d murmured something about needing to go home and I hadn’t let her.I’d turned her, pinned her against the wall of the alley we were in, and sealed my lips over hers, drinking so deeply of her that I didn’t think we’d ever come back up again.And God, it had been more than I’d ever dreamed of having.A world I hadn’t even known existed, a feel of flying that I’d never known was possible.
That tiny, blond girl had taken me in the palm of her hand and curled herself around me, winding her energy through mine and tying us together until I didn’t ever want to be away from her.
And I’d never managed to let her go.
Now, the thought of her in there alone, without an ally while her father forced her to do whatever he wanted...
