by Meghan March
“I’m as well as can be expected, given I’m stuck in this chair and can’t stretch my legs anymore.”
“You seeing double?” Moses asks.
She clamps her mouth shut for a beat before replying. “I was. But it passed. Nothing to write the president about.”
“Now, I’ve never been to medical school, so I don’t know much about this kind of thing, ma’am, but it might be worth making an appointment to follow up with your doctor, just to make sure.”
I think Norma and I both hold our breath as we wait for her reply.
Bernadette narrows her eyes on Moses. “Where are you from, boy? Who are your people? With that name and your accent, I’d say you’re Creole, aren’t you?”
He inclines his chin. “I am. My family started out in New Orleans, but I was born in Biloxi and raised by my grand-mère. She was a woman with strong opinions like you.”
Bernadette harrumphs. “You’ve got that right. There’s nothing wrong with a matriarch having a strong moral compass. No one knows how hard it is overseeing a family that doesn’t want to take direction.” At this, Bernadette looks at me. “This one was impossible to control.”
Moses rises and puts an arm around my shoulders. “She’s got spirit, all right, and that’s my favorite thing about her. You raised a hell of a woman . . . pardon my French, Ms. Maison.”
Bernadette looks from Moses to me and back again. “Maybe you can finally straighten her out. She’s taken the wrong path.”
I open my mouth to snap out something, but Moses speaks first.
“I beg to differ. She took a path that led her straight back to me, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m sure you wouldn’t either.”
Bernadette doesn’t know what to say. Moses put her on the spot, and she’s struggling. I can see she wants to contradict him, but she can’t get it out.
“She’s done right by me. I guess I can’t argue that.”
I can’t believe Bernadette doesn’t expire on the spot after making the admission, but something I never realized was tangled in my chest suddenly unknots. “And I’ll keep doing right by you, Bernie. You took me in when you didn’t have to. I’d like to keep you around a while.”
Bernadette’s gaze cuts to me, and I see something there I haven’t seen before . . . maybe ever. Affection.
“I’ll be around as long as the good Lord bids. Now, I suppose I could make an appointment with the doctor, just to make sure.”
“All right. I’ll have Norma give him a call,” I say, watching Norma nod in the reflection of a mirror across the room.
“Now it’s time for my stories. Thank y’all for stopping by.”
Moses crouches back down in front of her. “It was a pleasure, Ms. Maison. I look forward to seeing you again.”
Fifty-Seven
Magnolia
“You worked a goddamned miracle,” I tell Moses as Norma shuts the door behind us and we walk down the steps. “I don’t know how you did it, but you did.” I shake my head, still shocked that Bernadette didn’t slice him to ribbons with her sharp tongue.
“What can I say? I’ve got a way with the . . . what the hell?”
I turn to follow Moses’s gaze, which is caught on a fancy stretched black car parked behind his Rolls Royce. As the window rolls down, I see a familiar face.
Mount.
“Get in,” he orders before rolling the window up again.
“Fuck,” Moses whispers under his breath.
“What the hell does he want?” I ask him, but Moses just shakes his head.
My heart picks up, thudding harder as we walk toward the car, and I don’t know why. I calmed my fears about Mount after he and Keira got together, and I know he won’t hurt me because she’d kill him.
But still . . . something about this is unsettling.
Moses’s posture is rigid as V comes around to open the back door for us. I thank him and slide in first, taking the seat closest to the other side of the vehicle, opposite Mount. Moses takes the seat directly across from him.
“Is Keira okay?” I ask as soon as the door shuts. “Rory?”
“They’re fine,” Mount replies, and my pulse calms a little. “But Alberto Brandon’s wife was found murdered in their home yesterday. Her throat was slit.”
Goose bumps rise on my arms. “Jesus Christ.” I turn to Moses. “He’s the one the FBI was watching the house for.”
“I remember.” Moses is stiff and still where he sits across from Mount. “Who did it?”
Mount shakes his head. “I don’t know, but I heard the police determined that human blood was used to write on Magnolia’s condo wall later that same night. Makes a person wonder whose blood it was, and if the same person committed both crimes.”
Moses’s tone is clipped when he asks, “You having whoever you got inside the department running that down?”
“I’ve made the suggestion.”
Suggestion. Right. He gave an order.
“That means Cavender is going to come knocking again. And he’ll try to tie this to me too somehow.”
Mount nods. “He’s determined to take you out for that murder in your building. You kill the guy?”
“It was self-defense. He tried to stab me, but only sliced my side. Took me by surprise. I was trapped in the elevator. It was me or him, and I picked me.” Hearing myself say it out loud, I realize it’s the absolute truth. Life is like that sometimes. Kill or be killed.
“As one does.” Mount is quiet for a long moment. “Brandon’s in the wind. Know any reason why his wife might want you dead bad enough to pay someone to do it?”
My mouth drops open. “You think . . . you think she paid a hit man to kill me? I don’t even know the woman. I barely know who her husband is.”
“A woman scorned is dangerous and unpredictable,” Mount says.
“It’s not on me if her husband was fucking one of the girls. I don’t have shit to do with it anymore.”
The king crosses his legs. “Yet you still own the house. Maybe she assumed.”
I glance at Moses, who is being uncharacteristically quiet. I ask him, “You think that’s possible?”
Moses shrugs. “I don’t know. Anything’s possible. But we can’t ask either of them now. We just gotta find the motherfucker who killed her.”
“Good plan.” Mount’s attention goes back to Moses. “Now, have you told Magnolia everything yet?”
Moses’s face goes blank and he exhales, filling the cabin with this strange, thick pressure.
“Told me what?” I ask, something twisting in the pit of my stomach.
Mount shakes his head. “We made a deal, Gaspard. And just like last time . . . you’re too damn slow to hold up your end of the bargain.”
“I’m working on it,” Moses says, and the words sound like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “Let me do this my way, Mount. It’s not your concern.”
Mount taps his index finger against his lips, moving his gaze between us. “You forget, this is my city, and Magnolia’s under my protection. You don’t give me orders. You never did seem to understand that very well.”
“What the hell are you two talking about? Tell me what?” I look from Mount to Moses and back again.
Mount stares long and hard at Moses before turning to face me head-on. “That he’s been lying to you since the moment you met him, and it’s about fucking time he tells you the truth about why he was in your house fifteen years ago to begin with. Because it sure as hell wasn’t to save you.”
* * *
Moses and Magnolia’s story continues in Madam Temptress, the second book of the Magnolia Duet, which is now available for preorder by tapping on the title. You do not want to miss the EPIC conclusion to this incredible duet. I can't wait for you to read it! Also, if you haven't met Mount and Keira before Creole Kingpin, you can meet them for free right now in Ruthless King. Tap the title to download or keep reading for a sneak peek. But before you click away, I have another important question—did you
meet Moses before he came back for Magnolia? If not, you need the Legend Trilogy! The first chapter of The Fall of Legend is right after the Ruthless King sneak peek and you won't want to miss that one either. It. Is. Everything! Don't worry, the entire trilogy is out now so you can binge it all.
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Sneak Peek of Ruthless King
ABOUT THIS BOOK
New Orleans belongs to me.
You don’t know my name, but I control everything you see—and all the things you don’t. My reach knows no bounds, and my demands are always met.
I don’t need to lend money to a failing family distillery, but it amuses me to have them in my debt. To have her in my debt.
She doesn’t know she caught my attention.
She should have been more careful.
I’m going to own her. Consume her. Maybe even keep her.
It’s time to collect what I’m owed.
Keira Kilgore, you’re now the property of Lachlan Mount.
* * *
Ruthless King is available for FREE by tapping on the title.
Chapter One
* * *
Keira
Are those footsteps?
I freeze outside the door to my locked office and stare at the handle like it’s tainted with anthrax.
My employees wouldn’t dare. They know my office is off-limits. And my parents are seven hundred miles away in Florida, living it up as retirees on the monthly payments I send them from the dismal profits of the distillery. It’s barely hanging on, even after four generations of clinging to life making Irish whiskey in New Orleans.
This basement isn’t haunted. This basement isn’t haunted.
I repeat that truth like a chant until my heart slows to a semi-normal pace. My dead husband’s ghost better not be inside, or heaven help me, I’ll kill Brett again myself.
Summoning the same iron will it has taken to dig this company out of the trenches, I grasp the handle, yank the door open, and fling myself inside, attempting the element of surprise. Or false courage. Or . . . something.
“Trying to make an entrance?”
The deep voice that comes out of the dark chills me to the very marrow of my bones.
I’ve only heard it once before, through the battered wood of the same locked door I just barged past, but it was delivering threats I didn’t understand, not asking a question in that cool, controlled manner.
There’s no way I want to be in the dark with this voice.
He’s not a ghost. He’s worse.
He’s the frigging boogeyman, whispered about in the shadows but never mentioned in polite company, almost as if saying his name will make him appear. And no one wants that.
I’ve never said it. I don’t even want to think it now, but my brain conjures it anyway.
Lachlan Mount.
I fumble around, slapping the concrete wall to find the light switch, but when I flip it, nothing happens.
Oh, sweet Jesus. I’m going to die and I won’t even see it coming.
My antique desk chair creaks just before the dim glow of my desk lamp clicks on.
I see his massive hands first, then darkly tanned forearms with white cuffs rolled up. The light doesn’t reach his face.
“Shut the door, Ms. Kilgore.”
Swallowing back the saliva pooling in my mouth at the fact that he knows my name, I move my hand as though directly responding to his command. I grope for the handle behind me, when all I really want to do is turn around and run.
To the police.
Maybe they could . . . I don’t know. Save me?
I glance over my shoulder, clutching the knob as the door creaks shut, the urge to flee growing as the dim light of the hallway disappears from sight.
“Take a step in that direction and you’ll lose everything.”
My feet freeze to the cracked cement floor as a bead of sweat rolls down my chest. Normally I would attribute it to the sauna-like conditions produced by the whiskey stills, but not tonight.
“What do you want?” I whisper. “Why are you here?”
The chair groans as he rises to his feet, those wide fingers refastening the button on his suit coat, but his face never comes into the light.
“You owe me a debt, Ms. Kilgore, and I’m here to collect.”
“A debt?”
My mind scrambles to think of how in the hell I could owe him money. I’ve never met him before. Hell, I’ve never seen him before, only heard his voice while I eavesdropped. My kind doesn’t mingle with his—well, at least, most of my kind. A few rumors circulated that he kept Richelle LaFleur, a girl from our church, as a mistress until she went missing a year ago. I shut that path of thinking down completely.
“What are you talking about?” Somehow, I manage to form the question.
Two fingers push a document titled Promissory Note across the scarred wood of my desk into the watery pool of light. My eyes lock on the papers, but I’m too terrified to step any closer.
Oh, sweet Jesus, Brett. What did you do? My heart slams against my ribs.
“Don’t you want to know how much your husband borrowed with this place as collateral?”
“How much?” I ask, inching toward him against my will.
“A half million dollars.”
I suck in a shocked breath. “You’re lying.”
With both hands on the desk, he leans down, exposing his face in the dim light. Hard features carved from granite, piercing dark eyes, and an unrelenting stare contrast with the relative civility of the suit that fits him to perfection.
“I never lie.”
A half million dollars? No way. “I would’ve known if Brett had borrowed that kind of money, and let me tell you—he didn’t.”
He shrugs as if the information means nothing to him. And maybe it doesn’t.
“His signature says that he did, and this debt is overdue.”
My eyes zero in on the papers on the desk. If he really did this . . . The effects would be catastrophic.
Four generations of Kilgores have dedicated their hopes, dreams, and fortunes to keeping this legacy alive. It can’t end with me.
“I don’t have the money.”
“I know.”
His response throws me back on my heels. “Then why—”
He moves out of the light and comes toward me. I shrink back against the wall as he advances, blocking my escape route to the door. There’s nowhere to run. He has me trapped.
“Because there’s something I might be willing to take in trade.”
It takes everything I have to keep my voice steady as my heart threatens to burst from my chest. “What?”
He stops a foot from me, and his full lips form a single word.
“You.”
You don’t want to miss the rest of Keira and Mount’s story. Tap here to download Ruthless King for FREE!
Sneak Peek of The Fall of Legend
ABOUT THIS BOOK
We come from two different worlds.
I’m from the streets. She may as well live in an ivory tower.
I made my living with my fists. I doubt she could even throw a punch.
Our paths never should have crossed. We never should have met.
That doesn’t change the facts.
I would sell my soul to taste those red lips.
Fight the devil himself to hear her laugh.
Burn in hell to have a single night.
Scarlett Priest shouldn’t even know men like me exist, but sometimes temptation is stron
ger than will.
If this is how I go down, it’ll be worth every second of the fall.
The Fall of Legend is available by tapping on the title.
CHAPTER ONE
SCARLETT
My body hits the floor with a thump. When my eyes flick open, darkness greets me.
What the hell?
Wait. No. There’s some gray mixed with the pitch black. Maybe even a glow coming from above my head?
Did I fall asleep? Roll off my bed?
I try to sit up, but I can’t move. Why can’t I move? Fear creeps down my spine because I’m 99.99% sure I didn’t fall asleep. I don’t take naps. I don’t have time.
Plus, if I’d been taking a nap, the sound of the Proclaimers’ “500 Miles” wouldn’t be blasting in my earbuds.
Wait. I was running. Not napping. So, why the hell can’t I move? I wiggle, but something that feels like carpet nap rubs against my bare arms.
What in the actual fuck is going on?
The Proclaimers go quiet for a moment before the song starts again. In that precious beat of silence, puzzle pieces snap together, and the blood chugging through my body slows like icy water in a nearly frozen river.
Oh. No. No. Just . . . no. This isn’t happening. The threats weren’t real. They didn’t get me. Even as I try to deny it, my inner voice pops into my head, contradicting everything I want to believe.
They got me. The threats were real. They’re going to kill me. I should have listened to Ryan and Christine. Why didn’t I listen?
That’s right, because I never take stuff like that seriously. And now . . . I flex my hands with my heart thundering, and my fingertips brush against what feels like . . . a rug?