Which dovetails with what I’ve already been thinking: that my father is involved in this.
I drop my gaze back to the screen in front of me, trying to distract myself from that thought, but pause, frowning.The laptop has shuffled through the pictures and is now presenting one I haven’t seen before.The note attached to it says it’s where Lucien suspects one of the girls disappeared.At the very least, it’s the last place where she was seen by anyone else.
And I recognize the spot.
I also recognize the logo on the wall.
Because it belongs to my father’s organization.
Camille, of course, notices when I gasp.“What?”she asks sharply.
I stare at the screen, wanting to be sure of what I’m seeing, but I know I’m not mistaken.And I know what it means.
“I think this girl disappeared when she was on a Landry property,” I finally say.
And though I already suspected that this is where I’d end up, saying it out loud makes it worlds more complicated.
Lucien
I’m going to kill the man.
And not nicely.It’s going to be messy.Bloody.And incredibly dramatic.
“You’re not even fucking listening to me,” I growl.
“And you don’t have any respect, boy,” my father snaps back.“You take off for New York at the drop of a hat without giving me any reason.Then you come home with that girl in tow and go right back to your house like you don’t have any responsibilities.Do I need to remind you that we have a fucking family to run?”
I clench my hands into fists, ready to punch something.“Of course you don’t.I know my job.”
“And yet you’re still not doing it.If you want to take over, Lucien, you have to play the game.You know what you have to do.Either you get it done, or you’re out.”
He hangs up before I can answer, and a part of me is glad.
Because that conversation wasn’t going to end well, no matter how long we stayed on the phone.
I slam my phone down on the table in front of me and glare at the wall, trying to get my emotions under control.I almost never lose my handle on my temper—I’m famous for it—but talking to my father is uniquely frustrating.The man never saw a guy he didn’t want to fight with, and for some reason, I’m his favorite partner when it comes to confrontation.It’s always been that way.My mother died when I was ten, courtesy of a rival family’s bullet, and the day we buried her, my dad started in on me.He must have thought he was building character or something.
For me, it just felt like he’d decided he hated me as soon as my mom was gone.
Devils, maybe he hated me when she was alive, too, and my mother had just protected me from it.That makes more sense than I like.She was an angel on earth, all blond hair and blue eyes, sparkling laughter and a heart too good for this world.When she died, my world went dark, like the sun disappeared or all the light bulbs had been snuffed out.I’d never thought I was a mama’s boy, but life without her was the worst thing I ever experienced.Even worse when my father started treating me like his biggest rival.
I wondered for a long time whether he actually blamed me for her death.I didn’t know how he could have, when it was his enemies that killed her.I hadn’t even been there.But the ties between my father and I broke the day she left us, and we never managed to rebuild them.
These days, he’s trying to threaten my future in the family.
Tomorrow it will be something else.
Even if I give him what he wants—which is what he called about—it won’t be enough.He’ll just find something else to demand.Some other way to prove that I don’t live up to his expectations.
And I never will, as long as he refuses to see what I’m doing.The truth is, he has no idea how seriously I take the family business, mostly because I don’t bother to tell him.Why would I?How could I explain what’s going on right now?The girls disappearing are bad for business.No, we don’t trade in girls, obviously, but we do count on the city to run the way it should, and instead, girls are being snatched off the street.
Our girls.Our sisters and cousins and girlfriends.
And eventually, the kidnappings will bring the feds down on us.New Orleans already walks a fine line between heaven and hell, with an underworld that puts New York to shame.We’ve got gamblers and hustlers and smugglers, not to mention the dance halls and meat markets.All of it unregulated, and not controlled by anything like New York’s Cosa Nostra.No one has control down here, and we like it that way.
The last thing we need is the FBI in our town poking around.But kidnappings draw the wrong sort of attention, and it’s only a matter of time before they catch wind of it.
Then there’s the deal I made with Brooks.
