Page 113 of Laurels and Liquor

My heart slows, peace filling every corner of my body. I breathe deep, filling my lungs with whiskey, mulled wine, graham crackers, and lemonade. My pack is here. And nothing will tear us apart again.

Chapter sixty

Alexandra

Rainpattersagainstmyumbrella as I stand beside the ornamental duck pond of Everton Park. I roll my eyes again over Gideon’s choice of a meeting location. If we wanted to be less conspicuous, we could have met at my office. But no, we have to be a cliché. He’s definitely inherited my father’s flair for the dramatic.

I pull my phone out of my coat pocket and check the time. He’s cutting it too close. I don’t have all day to wait. The wind picks up a little, the remnants of last week’s storm bringing an unseasonable chill to the air. Gideon’s been on my ass for the last few days about finishing this mess, but today’s the first time Lydia’s felt okay enough to let any of us leave the house. But even still, I can feel her longing for me in my chest like heartburn. I want to rub at the phantom ache under my sternum, but that would mean exposing my skin to the biting wind.

“We said eleven,” a familiar voice drawls behind me.

I turn to see the Trio of Trouble approaching. Hunter stays back toward where the path around the duck pond breaks off from the main walking trail, back to us as he keeps watch. Delano and Gideon come right up to me, our umbrellas bumping. Delano strolls casually, moving to my other side, but still within conversation range.

“It is eleven, exactly,” I snap, already irritated.

Gideon flicks his arm to lift his sleeve, revealing a Rolex on his wrist. He hums and frowns a little in surprise. “Huh, so it is. My mistake,” he says simply.

I roll my eyes. That’s as close to an apology as I’m ever likely to get from him, so I don’t bother responding.

“For your collection,” Delano says from behind me.

As I face him, he’s extending a manila envelope toward me. I take it, startled when he steps up and slides my umbrella from my grip, holding it for me so I can have both hands free. As I blink up at him, he nods at the envelope expectantly. I break the seal and open it to find half a dozen photos, polaroids by the look of them. My stomach turns as I flick through them, but I force my face to take on a mask of unruffled calm.

Darren McLaughlin and Seth Douglas piled together like crash test dummies. Darren and Seth in a vat of greenish liquid. The same vat, now reddish brown with chunks floating in it. The chunks in a bucket, now with bones included. The bucket at a pig farm, a pair of arms tipping it into a feeding trough. A fire, plastic sheets visible in the blaze.

“Where’s the gun?” I ask, shoving the photos back into the envelope so I don’t have to think about them anymore.

“About a mile out in Baltimore Harbor. It fell overboard when we went deep sea fishing last weekend,” Gideon says with a sigh, like he’s annoyed I even asked.

I nod and go to stick the envelope in my pocket. But before I can, Delano snatches it away, handing me back my umbrella. I can only watch in shock as he pulls out a lighter and, in one smooth, practiced motion, flicks it open, ignites it, and sets the envelope ablaze.

“What—”

“No evidence, Lexi. No witnesses,” he says simply.

A wave of ice sends shivers down my spine, and I watch the ashes drop from his leather-clad fingers and into the water below. I don’t dare ask what happened to the men who did the clean-up. Plausible deniability.

“Though it seems like this mess has sorted itself out, I take responsibility for it happening in the first place. I made you a promise that he wouldn’t ever darken your doorway again, and I failed. So we’ve done a full debrief and dealt with the men who lost sight of Mr. Douglas accordingly,” Gideon says suddenly.

I blink at him, too stunned to speak. That’s… more than I ever expected from him. Admitting you’ve made a mistake is most assuredly not part of the St. Clair playbook. There’s something flickering in the depths of his hazel eyes, a sadness I recognize. Guilt. If I were a different sort of person, I’d take my well-deserved victory lap, but instead, I just nod graciously.

He clears his throat and adjusts his stance before nodding at me. “Your turn,” Gideon prompts.

I swallow and pull the half-full vial of bond breaker from my pocket, passing it to him. He holds it up to the sky, not that there’s much light to see by. But whatever he detects, it makes his frown deepen. Especially after he shakes the liquid a little and then lets it settle.

“Same shit?” Delano asks, an edge to his voice that cuts through the tense silence.

“Yep,” Gideon grunts in response before slipping the vial into an inner pocket of his wool coat.

“What’s going on?” I ask, concern and curiosity rising.

“Nothing you need to worry about, Alexandra. Just a supply chain issue,” Gideon says, a little too casually.

I give him a long, searching look, considering my options. If there’s something he’s not telling me, and it could affect my pack, then I do have something to worry about. I hold eye contact, lifting my chin slightly as I adjust my weight into a more imperious posture, like I’d been taught. Gideon sighs and rolls his eyes after only a few seconds.

“Someone’s trying to move in on our market, okay? And it looks like your problem child and the thorn in our side might have been using the same supplier,” he says.

“Anything dangerous in there I should know about? Fentanyl? Meth?” I demand.

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