With only one small window high above, I discovered that I was in a garage stall or maybe a gardener’s shed. It wasn’t the large garage I’d been taken to on the first night. This one was small as if it had been constructed before cars. Maybe a guardhouse or carriage house. I couldn’t think of any other way to describe it.
The only door besides the one I’d entered was the garage door. One tug of the handle told me it was either too heavy or locked. I’d been about to give up when I startled at the sound of a motor.
A quick look up confirmed it was an electric garage door.
Quickly, I pulled closed the door leading to the concrete lot and ducked below a workbench. The sensation of spider webs sticking to my hair and skin made my flesh crawl as dirt and sharp grit poked at the soles of my feet. Holding my breath, I willed invisibility as the garage door lifted. Sunlight flooded the bay seconds before a large black SUV pulled inside and the huge door began to close. The windows were tinted, yet I could see a man in the front seat looking down at what I assumed was his phone.
This was my chance.
Could I get out before the door closed completely? More important, could I escape before being noticed?
I had images of a movie where heroes and heroines rolled to safety as large doors closed and dinosaurs came up inches short of securing their next meal. My only problem was that this wasn’t a lost world and I wasn’t trying to outrun a Tyrannosaurus rex.
The man I was trying to outrun was a much scarier monster.
One more look at the driver and I made a run for it, making it out before the door closed but not without activating the door’s safety response. I was out on a hedge-sided sidewalk in a residential area with large palatial homes, and the big door was rising.
A quick dash and I ran beyond a large row of hedges. Afraid to open the gate, I waited, my nerves stretched to their limit.
Did the driver see me?
Would he come after me?
I closed my eyes.
Rett
Itapped my pen on the top of my desk as Cole Kensington gave me some fucking excuse about what had gone down last night on the river walk. Cole was young, but he’d put in his time for me over the last few years, making his way up in the ranks by being street savvy and a quick thinker. The longer he talked, the more I believed I’d been sold a bill of goods. Other players had come and gone who made their way on looks, a smart tongue, and just enough knowledge and loyalty. I was over just enough. Either you were one hundred percent behind the Ramses name or you were one hundred percent against it.
I wasn’t the only one listening to Cole’s monologue. Noah Herbert was sitting to one side of him and Jaxon Cormier to the other. The whole incident last night had been a series of clusterfucks, and I was still pissed.
Kyle O’Brien, a.k.a. Isaiah Boudreau II, was continuing to be a thorn in my side, one that I was beyond ready to extricate. Despite my efforts, the man wanting my position and my city was disrupting the order of New Orleans. Last night a confrontation began as an altercation. Two men, fists flying—the fight was broken up by a street cop.
No report.
No consequences.
That was the first mistake.
NOPD was getting on my fucking nerves. I had a meeting scheduled for tomorrow with the police chief to discuss the way some issues were being handled and how that would change.
That fight wasn’t two punks duking it out. No, it was the prelude to what was to come. A simple run of the men’s rap sheets would have told the green-behind-the-ears flatfoot that the men involved were each members of rival gangs.
Two years ago, I’d settled the turf war for the greater New Orleans parishes.
I’d met with different leaders. They’d pleaded their cases and I listened. That’s what a fucking leader did—listen. I also had men on the streets, eyes and ears. There had been enough rumblings.
When it came to last night’s rival gangs, those rumors proved my instincts were right. The gangs had received an influx of green—cash—from dear ole Isaiah Boudreau II in an attempt to turn them, not against one another, but against me. He promised a better New Orleans with him at the helm.
Last night, after the initial altercation, there was a meeting, one I should have fucking known about. By the time I got word, the minions were declaring war on one another and on me. They were courting Boudreau, claiming they could give him New Orleans.
There were times when a king sat on his throne and gave orders.
There were other times when the king’s presence was needed on the street, in the fight, and fucking getting in my own shots. Last night was one of the nights that took me away from my throne.
With me on the scene, we quelled their siege. Shut it the fuck down.
The whole process, rounding up the men who would answer for the disruption, took longer than I fucking intended. Mostly because up until right before eight p.m. I had no intention of spending my night combing Port NOLA. Goddamned shipping containers made a maze complicated by Tetris—objects piled one on top of the other in a tight formation.