CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

V elina…

I lay against Saint’s side, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat. My fingers absently played with a curl of his long hair as I stared into space in what could only be described as a blissed-out coma but for the thoughts twisting and spiraling in my head.

“Make it make sense,” I whispered, and he jolted slightly underneath me, as though he’d been on the verge of sleep. He traced blunt fingertips, rough with the trade work he did, along my back, and I shivered with delight at the careful touch.

“Make what make sense, baby?” he asked me, and I couldn’t help the faint smile that graced my lips. I liked the way that sounded when he was referring to me… baby…

“Tell me again how all of this started,” I said.

He sighed, kissed my forehead, and said, “We honestly don’t rightly know. It all sort of started when they started gathering numbers. We didn’t care. They can do what they want – just not inside the city limits. That’s our territory.”

“Okay,” I said carefully, tone neutral and vague.

“Then they started fuckin’ with Cypress. Like really fuckin’ with him, out there in the swamps. He’s a gator fisherman by trade. Whole family is from his daddy to his grandpappy to his great-grandpappy before him. Hell, probably even before that, if we’re honest. The Gaudet family can trace their lineage all the way back to the original trappers who settled this area when it was still being discovered.” I smiled as his hands went up, and he put air quotes around “discovered.”

“Cy comes in and he and his daddy find out someone’s been poaching their lines. That’s big money out this way and just something you don’t fuckin’ do. Spits on just about any code of honor an Acadian has. Come to find out, it’s these Bayou Bitches poaching the lines and trying to declare turf war on us when all Cy and his daddy was doing was fishing their family lands and swamps the way they done since time immemorial.”

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Then what?”

“Then we hear they’re setting up shop out at this place called Swamp Daddy’s, just inside the New Orleans city limits. So, we got an issue with that – obviously. We had some business to take care of in the city lockup, so we decided hell, we might as well kill two birds with one stone and went out there and started some shit. Harmless shit, you know? ‘Get the fuck outta our town,’ some crash, bang, boom – a couple punches, a few broken bottles, and a bar fight later, we figure they got the message. Right?”

“Right,” I said, snuggling a little closer as the air conditioning kicked on in here.

Saint held me tighter and rubbed up and down my back, the other hand idly tracing fingertips up and down my arm, tickling a line from elbow to wrist, all the way up the back of my hand along the back of my middle finger to the very tip and back down. Over and over, making me melt.

“Anyway, they kept beefing with Cypress out there in the swamp, but then they really fucked up. They went after him at home, except it wasn’t technically his home. He lived there alright, but he lived there with his sister Jessie-Lou and his nephew Tate. They bit off more than they could chew with Jessie-Lou.”

I laughed at his unintentional rhyme.

“Still, in the end, one of them got themselves perished, and they did but fuckin’ great at pissing us the fuck off to the point we needed to send a bigger message.”

“So, what happened then?”

“Well, we had beef with Swamp Daddy’s at that point because they wouldn’t back the fuck down on letting the Bayou boys in and even went so far as to side with them and ban our boys for life over that little tiff with Cy’s poachers. So, we took care of it.”

“Define, took care of it. ”

“A bigger boom, when no one was there. No more Swamp Daddy’s, no more problem.”

“ Jesus, ” I said. “You guys!”

He shrugged underneath me a bit. “No one got physically hurt,” he reasoned, and I just tried to get my head around it.

“Still, you blew it up.”

“Yup.”

“The whole thing.”

“Yup. Five-alarm blaze.”

“That’s unhinged,” I argued.

He didn’t disagree, just said with a straight face, “Yup.”

Mind. Boggled.

He cracked a smile and chuckled at the expression on my face.

“And that was worth shooting up your clubhouse in retaliation?” I asked softly.

“Yeah,” he said and didn’t sound at all happy – which, why would he be? Louie was gone, and for what?

“We figure they’re big mad over Jessie-Lou taking out their little wrecking crew sent to beat down her brother, but legit, she was just defending herself and her son. So, what is there to get pissed off for?”

“They’re like some diabolical super villain group out of a comic book series,” I agreed, and he huffed a laugh.

“Best description if I’ve ever heard one.”

“And no one knows what got them so hard for you guys in the first place?” I asked.

“The only way I can figure it, it’s all about the power. We just had a sort of blowout not long ago in and among ourselves.” He swallowed hard. “A restructuring of the club, so-to-speak. These boys whipped up fast and outta nowhere. I guess they thought the blood in the water was some sort of chum, and the fuckin’ bottom feeder sharks that they are, they saw an easy meal.”

“Louie told me some things about that,” I said softly.

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, and the way he almost imperceptibly tensed beneath me, I knew I was telling him something he wanted to hear.

“Again, your secrets are safe with me,” I said softly. “We’re on the same team.”

He massaged up and down my back, thinking on it quietly, and finally said, “I like the sound of that – and you’re right. I’m on your side, so I need you to listen to me.” He tipped my chin gently to make me look up at him and locked eyes with mine.

“Whatever Louie told you, whatever you might hear when you’re with me or around the club – when it comes to the cops and shit? No, you didn’t, you get me?”

I nodded. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He smiled then.

“Good girl.”

I laughed at that, and I admit, it was a bit nervously because, after all, that did things to me. Entirely too many things, too many feelings, and all of them ones that I liked .

“What’d ol’ Louie tell you?”

“That the club had mutinied on the old president, and for good reason. That you all performed a sort of coup because the old president was out of his mind and playing entirely too fast and loose with things, dragging all of you into a hell of a mess of legal trouble and deeper into illegal things.”

“That was part of it,” he agreed carefully.

“He also said that he was being a greedy fucker, keeping the lion’s share of things for himself and letting none of it trickle down through the rest of the club.”

“That was another big one,” he said. “Probably the biggest.”

“He said you all had big dreams of a better life. One that was less risk, more reward.”

Saint nodded carefully.

“We did what we did to get what we wanted,” he said. “The biggest problem being, Ruth was getting everything that he wanted and then some – the rest of us not so much. We were supposed to be brothers, and he talked a good game to that end, but he never showed it. Not once. He was living high off the hog while the rest of us struggled. Lost a home, lost a parent to some stupid shit, if only their meds could be afforded. Ruthless didn’t treat us like brothers. He treated us like peasants fighting for scraps from his table.”

“Louie said something to that effect, too. Said he saw it. How Ruth treated the club like his mom treated him. With family like that, who needs enemies?”

Saint grunted.

“Something had to give. It wasn’t what we were supposed to be about. He was adding motherfuckers to our ranks willy-nilly and ignoring the bylaws about it having to be a unanimous vote. It was bullshit, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was loyalty – and by loyalty, he meant us putting our asses on the line to face prison time while he hid behind the curtain, the great and powerful Wizard of?—”

“Fraud,” I said. “Oz was nothing but a huckster – a fraud.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“So, the distillery, the gift shop, they’re not just to launder money?” I asked.

He chuckled.

“No, they’re to make money. Clean money from the word go.”

“And the other things you do?” I asked.

“What is it you think we do?” he asked.

“That, Louie would never say… just things . I imagine anything from drugs and guns to human trafficking and protection rackets.”

“Truth between us?” he asked.

“I thought we were doing pretty good with it. Why stop now?” I asked.

He chuckled and said, “Fuckin’ touché again .”

I giggled and stared up at him, patiently waiting him out while he made up his mind.

“Some of those things, yes, but definitely not all of them. The Russians were a big problem with human trafficking around these parts, and we helped nip that one in the bud, and all agreed – fuck that shit .”

“That’s a relief and definitely good to know,” I murmured.

“We do some other… imports and exports, but mostly it’s the absolute latter. Some places around here pay us handsomely to keep the peace, so-to-speak.”

“That’s wild.”

“That’s the life, sometimes…”

“And now you want to give it all up?”

“No,” he said. “We just would really like to scale back. Ain’t none of us getting any younger.”

“No, I suppose not,” I agreed.

We were quiet for a time, laying with each other, just touching and thinking. Lost inside our own heads for a bit.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he murmured a time later.

“It’s a lot of food for thought,” I whispered.

“It is,” he agreed.

“So, I guess now is a good time to say that I’m still here, I’m still in, and that I’m supposed to accompany Carver to a cookout in the swamp on my next Sunday to me.”

“Sunday to you?”

“Yeah, I don’t get Sundays off, but I get two days off in a row, so my Sunday.” I rolled my eyes. “Try to keep up.”

He laughed, shook his head slightly and growled out, “Watch the attitude, baby. I’ll fuck it right out of you.”

I grinned. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

He sat up, gripping my upper arms and thrusting me down, back flat to the mattress, his mouth crushing back down over mine.

My heart raced and started to soar – because, Lord, this man was intoxicating. The only man I’d ever met who could make me drunk off pleasure alone.