Page 15 of Tell Me

“Asshole,” I grunted.

Unfortunately, the shot gained the attention of the man who’d been right next to the one I shot, and the guy next to him. And before I knew it, the entire Landry crew was looking at us, their faces covered with leers. I didn’t know a single one of them, I realized. They were all low-level soldiers, then, and probably didn’t have a fucking clue who I was. They’d been sent in to shoot the Boudreaux, not save me, and that meant they probably didn’t even realize that getting me or Camille out alive was important.

When they got up and started running for us, I knew we were in trouble. I was out of bullets and Camille didn’t have a gun. We were alone in a room full of Boudreaux and men who should be our allies but weren’t.

I grabbed Camille and started running toward the Boudreaux side of the room. They might not be our allies but when it came down to it, Lucien Boudreaux was the only one in the room I thought I could trust.

I just hoped like hell he had some loyalty left in that black heart of his. Because I hadn’t come down here to die at the hands of my father’s fucking soldiers.

12

LUCIEN

I reached over my head and shot again, aiming only in the general direction of the wall where the Landry men had taken cover. I didn’t have the time to actually be careful anymore. I was too busy trying to figure out what the fuck was going on here. The Landry crew had shown up out of nowhere—probably killing the lookout we’d placed at the front of the tunnels—and started shooting without bothering to announce themselves. Granted, they were our enemies and had good reason to try to kill us, but Dominick Landry ran a relatively tight ship and almost always demanded that his crews start with a negotiation. He was a businessman, after all, and if he could get things done without losing his men or spending money on bullets, he would.

This shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach didn’t fit that mold.

And how the fuck had they known we were down here in the first place? What were they after? They’d come raging onto our turf, guns blazing, and for what? We’d already killed at least five of them and they weren’t in a defensible situation. What were they trying to gain with this little battle? Thank God I’d demanded my men come down here with their guns fully loaded. I hadn’t expected trouble, but I’d been head of my own crew for long enough to know that it was better to be prepared than caught flat-footed.

Still.

My father was going to go after Dom’s throat for this, which would mean more war on the streets of New Orleans, and no one needed that. The city was still recovering from the last hurricane and the economy was down. Our business coffers were healthy but wouldn’t welcome the expense of a war with the Landry family.

Especially a war that had started for no reason.

I looked to where I’d last seen Daniel, ready to start putting out some commands, but a flash of red caught my eye before I could find him. When I glanced up, I saw that the flash of red was actually a curl. Which was attached to a head that was pretty important to me.

Brooks was on the move, Camille in tow, and they were racing for the pillar where she and I had been hiding when this all happened. What the fuck was she doing? She wasn’t shooting, which meant that she must be out of bullets, and by the looks of it, Camille didn’t have a gun at all. What kind of girl came to something like this without a gun?

A girl who hadn’t thought she’d be caught in a shootout, I realized immediately. She and Brooks had been kidnapped out of their own driveway. Hell, they’d probably been on their way to a movie or something, and hadn’t thought they needed to be armed.

Except that Brooks had a gun. I smiled at that, remembering the way she always traveled with at least one weapon tucked into her clothing somewhere. Same old Brooks.

But Brooks without a second magazine, if the silent gun was any indicator.

And the Landry men were after her. Two of them were already racing for the wall she’d been hiding behind, and though they weren’t shooting, one look at their faces told me they had something far worse on their minds. They evidently weren’t worried about Brooks being the only Landry daughter and an ally of some of the biggest families in New York.

Wait. What the fuck were Landry men doing going after Brooks?

Something wasn’t right there. Strike that; something was very wrong there. The Landry soldiers should have been here to take Brooks back home, not shoot at her and run after her like they were going to pin her down and rape her on the spot.

Unless they were soldiers Dom hadn’t yet trained appropriately.

Shit, had he sent men he couldn’t trust down here, not knowing that Brooks would be here? If they’d come after us and he’d merely thought he was going to make trouble, they might not even recognize the girl who hadn’t been in this city for ten years and had both grown up and dyed her hair fire engine red in the meantime.

They had no idea who they were about to attack.

Not that it should have been my problem. She was a Landry, not a Boudreaux, and had straight up run out on me when we were only eighteen. She’d never called or written or apologized for ripping my heart out and leaving it in the dust as she ran for New York.

And I didn’t give one single fuck. I still wasn’t going to let them have her.

Brooks was home and she was mine, and I was going to be damned if I was going to lose her again this quickly.

I jumped to my feet, my gun up and firing at the guys who were chasing her as I started for the wall she was now hiding behind.

“Cover me!” I screamed to my men. “And get Camille out of here!”

I didn’t bother to wait for them to lay down the cover. My eyes were on Brooks and my feet were already moving.

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