Forty
Moses
I don’t go back to the house until I’ve exhausted myself with a punishing workout and spent a couple of hours walking the French Quarter, just for good measure, to calm my temper.
Magnolia fires me up the way no one else can, that’s for damn sure. When I get inside, Trey is still working at the table, but Jules is nowhere to be found.
Trey’s head swivels when he hears the sliding door. “I wondered if you were ever coming back.”
“I’m back. What of it?” Guess my mood still isn’t all that great.
“Nothing. Didn’t hear any breaking glass or anything after Jules put her in your room. I figure that’s a good sign, considering how pissed off she was when he brought her inside.”
Of course Jules would put her in my room. I don’t know whether to shake his hand or ask him if he’s fucking crazy when I find him.
“She eat?”
Trey shakes his head. “Not hungry, or so she said. I think she was feeding on the fires of her rage, if you want to know the truth.”
His sense of humor usually makes me laugh, but tonight, I’m not in the mood.
“Thanks, man. I’m crashing.”
His eyes widen. “In your room with the fire-breathing beauty?”
I think about it for a second. “Yeah, that’s exactly where I’m heading.”
“God bless and Godspeed, my man. I hope I see you alive in the morning.”
“If I’m dead, Jules gets the Rolls,” I tell him as I cross the kitchen to head for the bedroom.
“That’s not fucking fair,” Trey says as I disappear around the corner to the hallway.
I take a long shower in another bathroom before I finally head to bed with a towel wrapped around my waist. I listen outside the door for a few moments, and when I don’t hear anything inside, I open it. Part of me expects her to be breathing fire and smoldering from the ears, just like Trey said, but that’s not what I find at all.
No, inside there’s a gorgeous raven-haired beauty with golden skin curled up on top of the covers, her chest rising and falling rhythmically.
She’s asleep.
I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or relieved.
Silently, I cross the room and slide under the sheets, careful not to disturb Magnolia. But I’m clearly not as silent as I think I am, because her sleep-roughened voice comes out of the darkness.
“I only played chess with him because it reminded me of you, Moby. It’s the only time I ever let myself remember us.”
I couldn’t have known how good it would feel to hear her say those words, because I never thought she would.
A lump rises in my throat. “Sleep, mama. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
She reaches out, finds my fingers, and I squeeze hers back. It doesn’t take but another minute before she’s breathing deep and even again.
I lie awake for as long as I can, savoring the moment. Until eventually, I succumb to a deep sleep, where my dreams are filled with laughter and sunshine, and dark-haired babies calling me Daddy and asking for their mama.
It’s a good sleep. A real fucking good sleep.
Forty-One
Somewhere else in New Orleans
“Please, just let me go. I gave you the money. I’ve got jewelry too. You can have it. All of it. Just take whatever you want and go. Please, just leave me alone.”
She hasn’t stopped crying since I put her in her own trunk, drove back to her house, and tied her up to an ugly chair in the living room. I smile to myself because the blood that’s going to stain it won’t make it any uglier. It might even be an improvement.
I sit down on the coffee table in front of her and watch her cringe as I knock off a vase. It shatters on the floor and her gaze follows it. If she wasn’t tied up, she would have jumped out of her seat to save it.
She doesn’t realize her problems are just starting. Perra estúpida.
“You are going to tell me what I want to know.”
Wide-eyed, she jerks her head around to look at me. “What do you want to know?”
I pull out the only picture of Ricky I have and hold it in front of her face. “You know him?”
She squirms against the duct tape trapping her in the chair. “Why?”
I pull a knife from my boot and test the sharpness on my thumb. Blood wells as the blade slices into it. I smear a red streak across her cheek. “I am the one asking the questions here. Another one out of you, and this will be your blood. Understand?”
Tears stream down her face as she trembles, nodding her head so fast her teeth clack together.
I hold the photo up again. “You know him?”
“I don’t know him. I just saw him once. At a bar. When you called, I thought you were him.”
I nod slowly. “Good. Who did you pay him to kill?”
She goes sheet white. “How—” Correcting herself, she shuts her mouth and takes a deep breath. “Three people.”
“Who?”
She snuffles and nods. “My husband. His whore. And the madam.”
I shake my head at her. I was right. Estúpida perra.
“Names.”
“Alberto Brandon. That’s my husband. His phone said the whore’s name was Naya.”
“And the madam?”
“Magnolia Maison. She owns the house they fuck in. I looked her up on the property tax records.” There’s snot rolling out of her sniveling nose. So pathetic.
“And did this man,” I tap the picture, “call you to tell you that he had completed any of the kills?”
She shakes her head. “No. I told you, I thought . . . I thought he might be dead because the police found a body—a man—in the madam’s condo building. I thought . . . maybe it was him. I thought maybe that bitch killed him.”
Ice-cold rage fills my veins, but I don’t let it show. I learned long ago how to mask my feelings. That’s what working with the cartel teaches you. Never let them see your emotions on your face.
I smile at her instead, hoping her blood runs just as cold as my rage. “Where is your husband?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in over a week.”
“Good.”
She looks hopeful all of a sudden. Puta perra.
“Are you . . . are you going to cut me loose now?”
“I told you not to ask questions.”
My blade flashes, and she gurgles as I slit her throat. She’s dead in less than a minute. I wipe the blade on the chair and slide it back into my boot.
Now I’m going to go find the woman who killed my brother. And she will not die so quickly. No, I will make that last a long, long time.
Forty-Two
Magnolia
I wake up alone, but I know Moses slept next to me. I remember the heat from his body last night. The pillow still shows the indent from his head.
I can’t believe I slept in the same bed with him for the first time in fifteen years, and we just . . . slept. That’s not happening again, I decide.