by Callie Hart
Five years ago, however, Alexander Bastien, my then boss and the craziest motherfucker I had ever met, decided that I was responsible for the death of his sister. He’d asked me to watch over Serena. He’d also commanded me to fight against Luc Alameda, the reigning title holder of the Champion Ultime underground fighting tournament in New Orleans. While I was kicking the guy’s ass and taking his title, Alameda’s boss kidnapped Selena and decided to remove her head from her body. They sent it back to Alex in a box stuffed with bloody packing Styrofoam and torn-up ticket stubs from the fight. A clear message: you might have won the battle in the cage, but we’re winning the motherfucking war. Alex obviously lost his fucking mind. He came after me, and that was that. I had to go.
I knew he would go after Genevieve. I fucking knew it. When I left New Orleans, David and I dosed her and drove her twelve hours away to Dallas, put her on a plane to Washington, D.C., and that’s where she has been living and working as an elementary school teacher under an assumed name. Until now.
Fuck knows how Bastien found her. There was no way he should have been able to. We left no clues or trace as to her location. WITSEC wouldn’t have been able to give her a safer existence. David thinks she went back to New Orleans for some reason, and I’m inclined to agree. To say I’m mad at her is an understatement. She knew what would happen to her if she ever went home. She knew it would spell disaster for every single one of us, and yet here we are in the most dangerous of predicaments.
He forced her to marry him. He forced her to fucking marry him. To someone who doesn’t know Alex, it might make no sense. I do know him, though. I know how his sick, depraved mind works. He wants to take my sister away from me once and for all, the same way he thinks I did to him, but he hasn’t decapitated her. He wants to sever her emotionally from me. He wants her to love him, because despite all his madness, his violence and his need to destroy everything he touches, he still craves adoration. He desires it above everything else. His actions are always driven toward one end goal: for his people to fall on their knees and worship him. To idolize him. To view him as more than just the king of New Orleans. He demands to be revered as a god.
It’s three in the afternoon by the time we roll up outside Robert’s place. Our cousin lives across the river in the Garden District, a fifteen-minute drive from the French Quarter; he may as well live on another planet from the Bastiens. We don’t need to be too paranoid about being spotted out here, which is not to say we shouldn’t be watching our backs all the same. There are eyes and ears all over the place in this town. David and I climb out of the rental just as Robert walks out of his front door. His face lights up into a broad grin when he catches sight of us.
“Well met, guys. Well fucking met!”
“You headed out somewhere?” David asks.
“Yeah, man. It’s D-Day for Junior. I’m just about to go pick him up.”
Fuck. Junior. Poor kid was locked up a couple of years ago, caught up in some bullshit with Alex, of course. There was nothing I could do from L.A. to save him from serving out his time. It’s fucking amazing that he’s being released today. “You wanna come with?” Rob asks, flipping his keys over in his hand.
I’ve already been sitting in a car for far too long today. And on top of that, I would rather fucking die than ever set eyes on Orleans Parish Prison again. I’ve spent enough time there for one lifetime and that’s being polite about it. Rob must register the cold, hard steel forming in my eyes.
“Come on, dude. You don’t need to go inside. And imagine the look on Petey’s face when he sees you. He’ll shit his fucking pants.”
David grimaces. “I’m gonna puke if I roll over another pot hole,” he says. “I’m gonna go inside, get high, and pass the fuck out on your couch, man. I’ll say hey to Junior when you bring him home.”
Rob pulls a face at him then points at me. “All right. It’s just you and me then, cuz. I’ll let you pick the music. Jesus Christ, have you actually gotten bigger since I saw you last?”
******
Rob doesn’t shut up the entire forty minutes to the prison. I stew in my thoughts, fighting the urge to grab the wheel of his Ford F-150 and careen across the highway so we can hit an exit and head back in the opposite direction. I only spent twenty-two months in the Parish. Ninety-nine weeks. Six hundred and ninety-three days. Would have been a nice, round one hundred weeks, seven hundred days, but the parole board were apparently feeling magnanimous and let me out early. My time spent behind bars wasn’t as terrible as it could have been, but it wasn’t a fucking vacation, either. It was claustrophobic and tense. I felt like I was sitting on top of a powder keg. Every passing moment was a moment that a fight could break out. Death threats were traded in looks across tables in the canteen each morning. I’m a big guy, so people tended to single me out, always wanting to fight, to prove a point, to forge their status, to demonstrate how dangerous or fearless they were. I got really good at leaning against walls. If your back was up against a wall or the fence during yard time, no one could sneak up on you. I still do that now, no matter where I am or who I’m with. Force of habit.
A shudder runs through me as Rob turns onto the long, desolate priory road they built the prison on after the original monastery complex burned down at the turn of the twentieth century. The road runs for three miles from east to west, dirt and dust clouds kicking up from the tires as Rob puts his foot down and speeds towards the prison. The last time I found myself on this road, I was heading away from the grotesque, boxy complex of buildings before us now instead of toward them. It felt like the longest three miles of my life. I was fucking convinced one of the D.O.C. sedans was going to come chasing after us, to stop us, to take me back because there had been some kind of mistake and I wasn’t being released after all.
“You okay, man? You’re looking a little pasty over there.” Rob swings a glance in my direction. I grit my front teeth together, staring straight ahead.
“I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with.”
Rob’s a forger. He makes fake government IDs for people who can afford them, along with birth certificates and other various forms of official paperwork. If you’re rich enough, he can build you a whole new life, complete with credit score and exemplary rental history…but not many people are that rich. Lucky for me he’s family. When we needed to spirit Gen away from New Orleans, he did the work for free. He’s always had a soft spot for her, and besides, he knew I’d beat the shit out of him if he didn’t. He’s never been caught forging papers. People protect him if they’re ever caught; the crime syndicates of New Orleans regard him as a valuable commodity, serving all groups and factions, so no one ever rats him out. If a gang member were to betray Rob’s identity to the police, their own boss would automatically have them killed, or at least have their hands sawn from their body as punishment. Not a pleasant prospect.
Because of this, Rob’s never been inside. He’s talking to me right now with judgment coloring his voice, like he thinks I’m a pussy for being uncomfortable as we draw closer and closer to the Parish. He has no idea, though. No fucking idea whatsoever. And if he doesn’t correct the way he’s speaking to me and really fucking fast, I’m going to break his nose, cousin or no cousin.
My mood is black as tar. Black as pitch. Black as midnight. There’s an anger inside me that runs deep, like a bottomless well. Sometimes it feels as if that well is about to flow over. Rob must have a sense that he’s said the wrong thing, because he clears his throat and tightens both of his hands on the steering wheel. He doesn’t say another word until we’re parking up outside the front gates of the complex.
“Stay in the car if you want? I’m sure this won’t take a second.” I shoot him a sideways glance heavily laced with violence, and he pales. “Or not. I mean, I could use the company while we wait. We’re fifteen minutes early.”
The clock on the dash reads four forty-five. Normally the C.O.s refuse to tell you what time they’re releasing you from the facility. Just an
other way of fucking with you, lording their power of you. Apparently Junior was told he was being let out at five, though, so we sit on the hood of Rob’s Mustang, heels resting up on the grill, and we stare at the huge, closed iron gates, waiting silently for them to swing open. David showed up on the morning of my release at 9:00 a.m., the earliest they would ever release an inmate. When I hadn’t walked through the gates by ten, he knew I was being rotated out in the late release, so he went to IHOP and ate three meals to kill some time, drank seven cups of coffee, and came back at five. They let me go at 11:30 p.m., thirty minutes before cut off. Bastards. David was fucking pissed to say the least. My smart mouth hadn’t made me many friends amongst the C.O.s, though. Turned out they weren’t inclined to do me any favors.
Five fifteen rolls around and I begin to suspect we’re going to be kept waiting with Junior, too. I’m wrong. The gates begin to slowly swing open at five twenty, and there he is, my cousin, taller, broader and stacked with muscle—a vastly different look than he was sporting last time I saw him. He’s not cuffed. He’s carrying a black backpack over one shoulder by the strap, and the C.O. walking him out has his hands in his pockets, head down, smiling at something Junior is saying to him.
Rob gets up and is about to walk right up to them, but I stop him with a hand on his shoulder. “Bad idea,” I growl. “Things look fairly civil. No point in changing that.”
Rob sits back down on the hood of the Mustang, tutting under his breath. He doesn’t like being told what to do, but fuck him. Junior’s leaving prison with a hell of a lot more dignity than I did. That’s worth delaying our family reunion a couple seconds for. Junior looks up. His expression flickers when he sees me, and then he breaks out into a huge smile. He shakes hands with the C.O. and then steps to one side, turning around behind him. I haven’t seen her until now—the woman with the long black hair and the highly-flushed cheeks. She’s average height, I suppose, maybe five seven, but she’s wearing heels. In her right hand, she’s holding a boyish briefcase. She shifts it to her left as she reaches out to shake with Junior, but he steps toward her and hugs her instead. She freezes for a second, then slowly returns the gesture, wrapping her arms around him, squeezing him tightly. She looks up, and I see her sadness. She’s upset, her eyes bright and shining. How strange. When her cool, pale blue eyes make contact with mine, she freezes, and her sadness transforms into something else. She pulls away and says something to Junior, who looks back over his shoulder and shakes his head.
“Uh-oh,” Rob mutters under his breath. “You don’t have any outstanding warrants, do you?”
“Fuck you,” I snarl.
“Just asking. That bitch looks like she recognizes you. She doesn’t look very happy about you being here, man.”
“She doesn’t recognize me. I’ve never met her before in my life.” I would know if I had. I’d remember that day; it would be seared into my memory with the brightness of a thousand suns. I know, because that’s what it feels like is happening right now. Calling her beautiful would be a disservice. She’s sublime. She’s heavenly. She’s enough to steal all the oxygen from a man’s lungs and then some.
Junior makes his way over, looking chagrinned. The woman with the briefcase and the tailored white and blue pinstriped shirt is following after him, her jaw clenched defiantly, anger fizzing in those remarkable eyes of hers. When they reach us, Junior thumps Rob’s back, hugging him hard, then he does the same thing to me. Before he can say a word, though, the chick with the dark hair is speaking.
“You’re Peter’s cousin?” she asks me. She might as well be asking me if I’m Vlad the Impaler for all the venom and resentment in her tone.
I rock back onto my heels. “I am. Have we met?”
“No, but I’ve met a thousand men like you.”
“Ah. So you have me dead to rights then.”
“I’d say so, yeah.”
I could be hostile and jab back at her with a barbed comment, but I’m a little on the back foot here. Up close, she’s an interesting looking woman. The bridge of her nose is covered with a smattering of freckles. There are even some faint freckles on her full lips. There’s something odd about her. And then I realize…her eyes. I was wrong just now. They’re not pale, cool blue. Or at least not both of them. Her right eye is a deep chocolate brown. It’s a disarming feature to her face that stops me in my tracks. Rob has to see it at the same time as me, because he curses under his breath.
“Shit, man. What the fuck is up with your eyes?”
She turns her head sharply to look at him. “What the fuck is up with…all of you?”
Junior laughs. “It’s okay, Nikki. These guys are good people. This is Rob, my brother, and Tommy, my cousin. I haven’t seen him in…what? Five years?”
“Five years,” I agree. “Way too long. I’m sorry I didn’t come and see you, man.”
“It’s all good. Ma always hogged the visitation slips anyway. She didn’t even wanna share with Rob.”
Rob shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Their mother may have said she didn’t want to share, but the guilt radiating off of Rob right now would be obvious at eight hundred paces. He probably made excuses—he had work, he needed to head out of town, he was sick—and their mom covered for him. Asshole.
“I know perfectly well who you are,” the woman, Nikki, Junior called her, says. She hasn’t spared a flicker of interest for Rob. Her focus is locked and loaded on me, and boy… I’ve stared down the barrel of many a gun in the past, and fuck me if this isn’t more uncomfortable. “You’re one of Bastien’s boys,” she continues. “Junior’s been working his ass off while he’s been serving out his time, and it’s really shitty that your boss expects him to dive back into the bullshit that landed him here in the first place. You’re his blood, Tommy.” She spits my name out like it’s leaving a terrible taste in her mouth. “You’re meant to protect him. You’re a grown man. You’re meant to provide an example to Junior, not lead him down pathways he’s ill equipped to navigate. It’s…it’s fucking disgraceful.”
She’s the angriest woman I’ve encountered in a long time, and that’s saying something. There are plenty of women back in California who’d love to castrate me with a rusty butter knife, I’m sure. I’m not very good at returning phone calls or text messages, which leads to a lot of furious voice mails and occasionally the odd date showing up at the garage and reaming me out in front of whoever happens to be standing around at the time to witness the showdown.
Nikki’s anger isn’t the same as all those slighted women, though. It’s not her pride that’s been injured, or her ego. I realize with some amusement that it’s a perceived slight to her moral code that’s causing her to rant at me right now. It’s plain as day that she thinks I’m a bad guy and she’s trying to protect Junior.
“I want you to think really hard about everything Junior’s been through the past three years, okay? He hasn’t been away at Disneyland. I don’t want him to end up back here, and you shouldn’t either. Just…fuck. Try and imagine what it’s been like for him, okay?”
“Tommy doesn’t need to imagine, do you, buddy?” the C.O. pipes up. I look over at him and I know him. Of course I do. Today wouldn’t be perfect without running into a screw that knows everything about me. Everything they say about me on the streets, anyway.
“Mitch,” I say. “I see they promoted your ass.” He was just a standard officer when I was officially a guest of the state. Now it would seem he’s a captain. Assistant warden, too, by the looks of things. Mitch grunts, giving me a tense smile. We never had any trouble, he and I. He always did things by the book, which meant I didn’t want to kill him for being an outrageous prick. In return, I tried not to give him any grief either. There was an unspoken accord between us for the most part, and that suited me down to the ground.
“Ah. Well that makes sense,” Nikki says, her voice grim. “You were an inmate here, too. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
I shrug. “I guess n
ot.” I won’t give her anything else. She’s not open to hearing anything I have to say anyway. She’s wound up and stressed; the fewer words out of my mouth the better.
“Nikki, seriously. Tommy’s not a problem. He doesn’t work for Bastien anymore,” Junior tells her.
“It’s true.” Mitch moves to stand behind Nikki, hands on his hips. I instantly know he’s got a boner for the woman from the proximity he keeps, like he’s planning on throwing himself in front of her at the very first sign of danger. “I heard on the circuit that Bastien’s pretty keen on the idea of you being dead, Tommy. I thought all that had blown over?”
“When does Alex ever allow anything to blow over?” I rumble.
“Well…in that case, it’s surprising to see you here. You must have a pretty good reason for showing your face back in town.”
Nikki watches our exchange, wearing an incredulous expression.
“Good enough,” I tell him.
“All right, then. Be careful, man. The tides are constantly turning in this town. One second someone’s your best friend, the next they’re driving a pickaxe into your back. Believe me…it’s rough out there right now.”
“Mitch!” Nikki’s mouth is hanging open. “What the fuck? You’re offering a known criminal safety tips?”
Mitch doesn’t justify his actions with a response. He looks at Nikki for a second, eyes studying her face, and then he turns away and slaps Junior on the shoulder. “Keep out of trouble, man. I don’t wanna see you here again, you feel me?”
“I do. Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Nikki watches him walk away. Junior gives her another brief hug and then he heads toward the car with Rob, who’s notably kept his mouth glued shut for the past ten minutes. That leaves Nikki behind, working her jaw, squinting her eyes as she looks off up the priory road into the distance.
