Page 8 of Tell Me

I felt the laugh go through her body, and when she leaned back to look at me her brow was creased. “Exactly what you need right now? Do you start all conversations that way? What are you doing back in New Orleans?”

“Nothing good. But I need backup. Are you in?”

I reached my hand out to her, my heart in my throat. No, I didn’t actually need her—not really—but the scene with my father had done something to my confidence. I didn’t feel like New York’s Brooks right now.

I felt like a girl who needed her best friend with her, and Sloane wasn’t available.

Luckily, Camille was. She gave me a sideways grin and took my hand. “Have I ever said no to you? Where are we going?”

I squeezed her hand and turned, my eyes on the front door and my mind trying to figure out how much damage the Dukati might have taken during its skidding trip across the driveway.

“The Boudreaux mansion,” I said quietly. “I need to see Lucien.”

6

BROOKS

I streaked through the door, feeling solid for the first time since I’d arrived in New Orleans. I could do things solo. Stand on my own and take down any bad guy. But every experience I’d had told me that if you could get someone to stand up with you, that bad guy went down a whole lot faster—and potentially without you getting hurt.

Having Camille with me was going to change everything.

At least I hoped it was. Because I might not be precisely welcome in my father’s mansion, but I at least knew I’d been relatively safe walking into it. This was my childhood home and a place I’d run to whenever I was in trouble, I might have been gone for ten years, but I was still part of the family that owned the place.

In theory.

The next stop on my list?

I’d never lived there, and I’d never been part of the family. They’d expected me to join them at one point, though.

I’d turned them down and run to New York.

At the time, I’d thought I was being strong and calling my own shots. I’d been sure I wasn’t going to let anyone else decide my life for me. The truth was, of course, running for New York had set another war in motion here in New Orleans. The Boudreaux clan was made up of some of my father’s biggest enemies, though they moved in different circles than the Landry family, and when he brokered a deal for me to marry into the leadership of the Boudreaux, he’d thought it was a way to end the rivalry.

At least that was what he’d said.

I’d seen it for what it was: an attempt to get someone on the inside with a family he hated. He’d seen me as his back-door deal. The opening into their leadership circle and a way for him to take the family out of the equation. He wanted their rackets, and he didn’t want to buy them the old-fashioned way. So he’d come up with a plan to marry me into their family and use me to undermine them. Make deals they never would have made otherwise. Figure out what they were up to so he could stop them.

He’d been stupid enough to tell me about his plan up front. I’d already known he’d brokered a deal the marriage deal, but at first I’d been up for it. I’d thought it might be my way into a better life. When he came to me with his plan, though, thinking he could convince me to go through with it if he told me how important it was, I’d changed my mind.

I’d run home to New York, and I’d never looked back.

And in doing so, I cemented my place as an enemy to the head Boudreaux, who hadn’t known what my father was doing. He’d just seen an opportunity to make an alliance with Dominick Landry. Gemini Boudreaux had been furious when I left instead of going through with the marriage, and even more furious that I’d left without giving anyone any warning. He’d declared me an enemy for life.

At least that was what I’d heard.

I hadn’t exactly gone to his doorstep to ask how he felt about me. I’d been too busy shoring up my protections in New York.

Until right now, when the people I loved in New York—the people who had protected me from Gemini Boudreaux without even realizing it—were in trouble and I needed men. Dominick Landry had the biggest operation in New Orleans, so he’d been the first one I thought of.

But Gem Boudreaux had an operation nearly as big. With nearly as many men. And I happened to have a personal connection to someone Gem considered important.

Look, going to him for men wasn’t my best idea ever. But I was desperate, and I was willing to do whatever it took to save the Rossi and Brennan families from what was coming for them.

And the idea that I might get help from a man my father hated with the heat of a million suns? That was just the icing on the cake, as far as I was concerned.

Hey, I never said I was above a little pettiness.

I was smiling at the thought, my eyes roving the driveway for the Dukati, when someone hit me from behind. Camille’s hand was yanked from mine and whoever had hit me jerked my hands behind my back. I turned and thrust my forehead toward the guy, instinctively going for his nose, but he moved out of the way before I could hit him, his chuckle a dark whisper on the wind. I had a moment to wonder what the fuck was going on here—how I was being assaulted in my own father’s driveway—and then my eyes met those of a man I’d seen before.

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