Page 3 of Cognac Secrets
Crazed with guilt and grief, I’d gone rogue. I’d gone digging… and I’d found the call had come frominsidethe house.
Mia’s little brother was to blame. Some shit about removing his competition when it came to their daddy’s fortune well before it was even Daddy’s time to pass away. I mean, the old goat wasn’t even that old! Late sixties, early seventies – maybe?
He’d tried to protect his son. I mean, I got it, but… it was the last thing he did.
Took me a while, but I went through every last one of them. In a chef’s kiss perfect moment of cosmic divinity or karma, or whatever you want to call it, I took the last surviving member of the family out on the one-year anniversary of Mia’s death – which was coming up on five or six years ago now.
I know, it sounded like something straight up out of an action movie – which was stupid, and also the reason I couldn’t watch that kind of shit anymore – but it’d happened and I still wasn’t over it. I never would be.
I’d come to New Orleans because it’d been the place Mia and I had been the happiest. I was talking the best two weeks of our fuckin’ lives, where we’d come down here to party and I’d been picked as her round-the-clock protection – but it’d ended up being a two-week blissful break of us getting the chance to live almost as authentically as possible. No brothers, no daddy, no other bodyguards, or staff to whisper behind our backs – just her and just me.
At the time, I’d wanted it to hurt. I’d wanted the memory of our happiest time to be around every corner of The Quarter. I wanted the acute pain of the ghost of our happiness dogging every single one of my steps. It was what I fucking deserved for not protecting her. For trusting her little brother’s detail when they’d said they’d checked the convoy for explosive devices. For not having done it myself.
I rubbed my face with my hands and threw back the sheet over my lap, getting up and padding over to the master bathroom.
I flicked on the light and winced at my rough appearance in the mirror. My beard was getting in need of a trim, and I needed to get my act together.
I’d arrived in NOLA on my bike, with a few sets of clothes, my new set of governmental IDs to start over with for a year or two before I could resurface as my authentic self of Austin Irby – and last, but not least, a stack of cash.
I’d gone to work roughing it in a trade, framing houses, and day laboring to stay under the radar for the first year.
That was how I’d met Rusty, who’d invited me somehow, someway, to a cookout at the Voodoo Bastard’s clubhouse one Friday night after work.
I hadn’t had anything better to do than what I usually did, which was sit in my shitty flophouse room and drink my favorite cognac until I passed the fuck out – which was getting old by then – and so I’d gone.
That was when I’d met Baby Ruth and the rest of the guys. The rest, I guess you could say, was history.
The club had given me something back, to be honest. Given me some core tenants to believe in for a while. The one I was on board with the most?Fuck the man…but just like any structured unit – be it military, crime family, or biker club – the corruption seeped in through the cracks and around the edges. It didn’t take me long to figure out the core of that rot was Ruth himself.
I thought I’d been the first or the only one to notice that the emperor had no clothes, but then, one night, Hex and I were sitting outside the club and he brought it up. Said he knew the look I’d had and that he’d felt it, too – that things needed to change, or shift, and that shift needed to come soon.
I’d agreed, and I think that night was the first night that thingshadstarted to shift. Had started to change track and had gotten us off the collision course that was coming if we didn’t act, and soon.
I had no regrets about any of it. I wish I had known now back then… wished like a motherfucker that things could be different and that Mia could be here with me instead of in the cold ground.
I hated that things couldn’t be different, and hated even more that I had a lot of years left to suffer and atone, and to make sure I never got complacent and to never make the same mistake twice.
To that end, that’s why I stayed single.
Not just for Mia, who I think would be disappointed by that fact – but for me – because my heart couldn’t take it a second time.
I’d lose my fucking mind.
I looked up in the mirror and sighed, staring into the abyss that was my eyes, watching my reflection stare back at me.
I couldn’t honestly say I was sane, but I sure did have a lot of practice faking it.
“You alright?” The voice was soft, lilting, with a very real edge of concern… and it was totally unfamiliar to me.
I whipped around to find a woman I didn’t know, curled up in the old winged-back chair in the corner of the room I rented. She was pushing my old poncho liner off her and sitting up, stretching like a cat. All I could make out about her in the dark was long dark hair and lightly tanned skin.
“Who the fuck are you?” I demanded and winced at the thunder of my voice in my ears.
“Sandrine…,” she said on the tail end of her yawn, lowering her arms, her hands flopping into her lap as she blinked owlishly at me. “Everyone was calling you Bennie. Is that your name?” she asked.
“It’s the only name you’re getting,” I said, scowling. “Why the fuck are you here?”
“Woo boy,” she said. “That’s a story and a half. You must have beenblackoutdrunk.”
