Page 8 of What I Should Have Felt (Anchors and Eagles #4)

COLETTE

I flipped the final chair on top of the table and sighed.

It was after two in the morning, and I was alone.

My parents deserved to be home after such a busy day, and Azelie had returned with them.

Besides, I wanted a moment to collect my thoughts.

We’d made a decent amount today. But the profit would barely make a dent in the debt.

No matter how hard we worked, we wouldn’t be able to hold out forever.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure we’d make it another week.

The streets were now as silent and hollow as my own soul.

Shadows writhed in front of the restaurant’s windows, reminding me of that stupid childhood legend my parents told me growing up.

The Rougarou had come to haunt me tonight, it seemed.

I knew the fable too well—it was recited to me by heart growing up—which made venturing back home this late a little risky.

But I was exhausted and chalked up the strange fluid movements outside the building to my lack of sleep.

Until knuckles rapped against the closed door .

Blood rushed to my ears. There had been no one around for at least an hour. Not just inside, but outside as well.

The door frame rattled, and wood groaned beneath a relentless pounding fist.

I hadn’t believed in the Rougarou since I was a child.

But red glowing eyes hummed at the back of my mind.

If the question was, “Would you choose a man or a bear?”, I would take the Rougarou over O’Connor and his cronies any day. At least that foe had more respect and dignity than this low-life motherfucker.

Slipping my hands into my pockets, I gently removed the knives from their secured location and gripped the hilts, lining the blades up with my wrists. The rapid pounding became solid, purposeful blows of something heavy.

I stared. Watched the door shiver. Any second now.

O’Connor may be here to get me, but I wasn’t about to succumb without a fight. He’d already hurt my dad, so if he came after me, I had no issues swinging first and asking questions later.

A sharp crack and the door splintered, then burst open. A man kicked away debris before others behind him poured through. My eyes widened as dark-uniformed men rushed into the restaurant. O’Connor’s Cronies . Here to collect the debt that my family owed.

“Colette LeBlanc.” O’Connor’s slimy voice followed them, snaking into the air as anger and determination boiled in my veins.

The ten men, who all wore black shirts and pants, formed a semicircle around me, blocking the entrance. I retreated half a step, only to be met by pressure against my back .

Game on.

With a grunt, I swung my right hand behind me. The sharpened blade sliced into whatever flesh it could find. A wail from sharp pain met my ears. I spun and slashed with my other knife. The blade squelched across the chest of the towering frame in front of me.

Warm, sticky, wine-red liquid coated both silver knives as I stabbed the man’s stomach for a third time.

“Stop her.” O’Connor’s voice met my ears.

I ripped the blade from this assailant’s flesh as he crumpled forward, and I sprinted around him.

Something solid slammed against the back of my head, and everything turned black.

The world spun as nausea crept up in my stomach.

Something bit into my wrists, and my shoulders groaned from an ache, telling me that my hands were tied behind my back.

Prying my eyes open, I was met with the restaurant still in perfect order, other than the table to my right no longer had two chairs stacked on top of it.

My ass was numb, and my feet tingled from the zip ties that cuffed my legs to the chair. In front of me sat the man I hated. The back of my skull pulsed with every beat of my heart, and I could imagine the giant welt forming from where I’d been hit.

I closed my eyes, attempting to cull the swaying of the room and swallow the nausea. “O’Connor,” I grumbled.

“So, you know who I am. How lovely since we’ve never officially had the pleasure,” he replied, and I cracked my eyes open.

He ran slender fingers through his crisp and tidy acorn-brown hair.

He looked just like I’d expected before searching for him on the internet.

His hair was parted on the side, combed to perfection without a strand out of place.

It was just long enough to prove that he wasn’t balding, but short enough to be professional.

His pinstriped suit looked as expensive as I imagined, and the baby-blue eyes that looked back at me were hollow and empty of emotion.

I kept my mouth shut as he adjusted the matching navy pocket square and then crossed his legs. “The deadline was tonight. As I am very aware you know. And now you’ve gone and mucked up the situation even more. Why’d you have to stab Fred? He was just doing his job.”

“As was I,” I hissed.

He snickered and slid his hands into his pockets. “I know this is so cliché. My…methods.” Removing them, he clutched both of my knives and waved one around. “But why change something that works?”

“It clearly hasn’t been working, since we’re not selling.” I gritted my teeth, feeling like a dumbass because if that wasn’t a scripted line from some fucking movie, I wasn’t sure what was. But what else was I supposed to say ?

He clicked his teeth and twisted the tiny blade between his fingers. “Except you will have to sell. See, I bought the loan company that your parents got their most recent loan from. And that loan is due. Tonight. In full. With interest.”

My stomach sank to my toes. There it was.

The escalation I hadn’t thought of. I bit down on my bottom lip.

I would never concede to this fool. A bruise or two here or there, I could handle.

He could threaten me physically in any way, and I would be fine because he’d already done it. But selling to him would never happen.

“Now, where’s that attitude that you gave my men?” he asked and raised a brow.

“You can take your loan company and shove it up your ass,” I hissed.

And knuckles from the side crashed into my mouth. The jolt of pain split my face and vibrated across my skin as the taste of hot iron pooled in my mouth. I groaned and slid my tongue across my split lip. Rolling my neck, I faced O’Connor again and grinned wickedly. “Try again.”

“You know, these men haven’t had a day off in a while. Which means they’ve…” He rose from his chair and slid his eyes around at his men. “They’ve lacked the companionship of a woman. Maybe I’ll go fetch Azelie, and then—”

“NO!” I lunged forward. My wrists and ankles caught short against their binds. “ No. Please.”

He spun on his heel to face me again. “But you don’t have the money to repay your debt. I know. I counted what’s in that register and broke open your very cheaply made safe that was laughably secure at best. ”

“Use me. Take me. Not her. She’s not even fifteen yet.” I squirmed against my restraints. Desperation was not a good look, I knew that. But I wasn’t some trained spy in some shitty B-grade movie. I was simply trying to protect my family.

“Exactly,” he cackled and stopped moving. “She has so much more to lose. So much more to give than you.”

“Just give me a week. I just need some time, and I’ll have the money,” I pleaded.

“I don’t want your money, and you don’t have a week. You sign the restaurant over or…” He sat back down in his chair and crossed his legs as if he were in another usual, above-board business deal. “Well, you know you can’t stop me or these men even if you wanted to.”

My breath caught in my throat. “Why this? Why now? Why us?”

“What you’re really asking is…” He leaned forward, bracing his elbows against his knees. “Why not the Thibodeauxs?”

A shaky breath escaped my throat, but I nodded. Guilt swarmed within me, coating the anger and, yes, fear, that surged through my veins. But I wanted to know what they were going to do to escalate against the Thibodeauxs, because his threats always came in pairs.

“How do you know this isn’t about them? Besides, they have a son who just showed up,” he hissed and nodded his chin.

A crack sizzled through the air. To my left, the eleventh man I’d slashed in the stomach collapsed to the floor. My eyes widened as blood seeped from the bullet hole in his head. But the man who had shot him barely batted an eye.

Ten. Back to ten .

O’Connor grabbed the arm of my chair and tugged. Metal grated across the floor as he closed the gap between his seat and mine. “What does—” I gasped, gulping down mouthfuls of air. “What does their son have to do with anything?”

“Well, one, Fred there clearly didn’t do the background dive into the Thibodeauxs as well as he should’ve, or we would’ve already known about this son. So, isn’t it obvious?” He tipped his head and blew air slowly from his lips.

“You’re going to focus on what and who you do know,” I finished for him.

“Exactly.” He leaned away from me and glanced back at my knives. “These are really nice. Too short to really do much damage, but easy enough to carry around undetected.”

“Give them back,” I snarled. But how fucking intimidating was I when I barely passed five feet tall and certainly had no leverage or advantage being restrained and tied to this FUCKING CHAIR.

I rocked back and forth violently, thrashing against my restraints, when the lights went out.

“What the hell?” O’Connor muttered.

Faint illumination from the streetlamps cast an eerie, dull yellow glow around the room.

With the chairs stacked on top of the tables and men staggered about the room, odd shapes shivered in the darkness as if they were swaying beneath water and then extinguished by simply shifting the angle with which I looked at them .

A scream tore my attention behind me, but the bellow was cut short. Suddenly, a shadow darted across the diner. I whipped my head to the right as several bodies disappeared into the ethereal black with a faint grunt.

Six. Maybe seven? Either way, there were certainly fewer than ten men standing around me now.

“The fuck ?!” a man shrieked, and then one of the shadows thumped to the floor.

A thud followed.

The strangest silhouette raced across the restaurant at nearly inhuman speed.

Rougarou?

All my bravado fled. O’Connor’s cronies looked like they were being torn apart, and my earlier thoughts about childhood fables didn’t seem so innocent now. My heart hammered in my chest, and my ribs felt as if they could barely contain the fervent pounding.

“WHAT THE—” Another man’s scream was cut short as this massive creature barreled into three of the cronies, all standing in a line.

“WILL SOMEONE FUCKING DO SOMETHING!” O’Connor shouted, his darkened form rising in front of me.

“Like what?” a man to my left defiantly asked. He shifted on his feet, darting wildly from side to side. In the dim shadows, I could make out his gun, which he waved around recklessly but with no aim. I mean, was there anything to really aim at?

“I don’t know. Shoot the fucking thing!” O’Connor shrieked, his voice sounding a bit further away from me, high-pitched with panic.

“Where is it?” the man beside me cried out, spinning in a circle .

Everything within me froze as a monster rose behind him. Towering at least a foot or two taller than an average human, and twice as wide, the creature’s massive frame blocked the streams of light from the street. His own shadow bathed me and the man holding me hostage in total darkness.

All I could make out through the darkness were two beady, blood-red eyes set deep beneath thick brow ridges.

Oxygen seemed as much my enemy as O’Connor, hiding in the dark. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t voice a word.

The man hard up beside me trembled. The gun in his desperate hold rattled as he pivoted around as slowly as possible.

I couldn’t look away.

I couldn’t move.

I refused to let someone else fight my battles for me, but this wasn’t a someone.

The muscles in my body were as tight as the bonds holding me captive. My blood stilled, turning to ice within my veins as the creature raised his massive paw, tipped his head, wrapped his claws around the man’s head, and jerked.

Like wood splintering, bones crunched, and the man’s body crumpled like a sack to the floor in front of me.

The creature’s red eyes returned to mine as its broad chest rose and fell, thick shoulders pulsing with each breath.

As rhythmical and threatening as the scream lodged in my throat.

Footsteps faded with a tinkle of the bell, indicating a few cronies had escaped.

And the lack of O’Connor’s grating voice told me without looking that I was alone.

Alone with this… thing.

Red eyes. Bigger than a human. Disheveled hair draped around its face.

A face that, from its nose down, was hidden beneath a strange mask with detailing I couldn’t quite make out in the dark shadows that slithered around it.

Razor-sharp teeth had to be waiting behind the mask but restrained by the metal casing of its curse.

“Rougarou,” I whispered involuntarily.

The creature raised its massive paw again, and my eyes slammed shut.

It was my turn. I hadn’t left thirteen objects out to confuse it.

And I certainly hadn’t practiced Lent in at least ten years.

Plus, I just spoke its name. All notions of this strange legend had left when fantasy met the real world, and I was burdened with debt and a life I couldn’t escape.

Yet here I was, about to meet my demise by a creature who shouldn’t exist. Who didn’t exist.

The floor rattled beneath my feet, and something snapped through the air. I dared not open my eyes as I felt the bonds around my ankles fall, and my shoulders finally rotated forward.

I waited even longer for silence to once again become my sole companion.

Something had just saved me.

A creature who didn’t exist. Who shouldn’t exist.

And I would say nothing about it because, even though I saw it, I still didn’t believe it.

I would simply go to bed and pretend like nothing happened.

I would return early in the morning and clean up the mess that was made and somehow find a way to dispose of the body or bodies that were left behind.

Because a Rougarou wasn’t real .

But men were. Men with terrible intentions. Men who were going to go after Azelie.

And I had to find a way to stop them.