by Jessie Cooke
It was his turn to be shocked. It felt like she’d slapped him in the face and for several seconds he couldn’t even find the words to respond. When he did, he tried hard to choose his words wisely. “I’m sorry you feel that way about us,” he said, with a lump in his throat. “But this isn’t about our relationship, or how you feel about the club. Sally, I think this man is the one who has been trying to bring down the club...he’s trying to send me to prison, or worse.”
“Why, Evan? Why on earth would Lucien want you in prison? I’ve never even told him anything about our relationship, or my relationship with the club. He’s a successful businessman. He was a US Marine, for Christ’s sake!”
“Have you ever seen his house, Sally?”
She put her hand to her forehead and sat down in the recliner, leaning forward to put her face in her hands. In a muffled voice she said, “God help us...you broke into his home, didn’t you?”
“I’m trying to protect you, Sal, and my club. You know I protect what’s mine...” She jumped back up to her feet then and he tried not to notice how sexy she looked with her hair all disheveled and that little robe falling open in the front. Even with her teeth gritted together and flames in her brown eyes, she looked hot.
“I am not yours, Evan! You do not own me! I want you to leave now.” As if she hadn’t just screamed in his face he said:
“He has nothing personal in that house, Sal. Not one photograph, medal, memento...fucking nothing at all. You don’t think that’s weird? His parents died in a fire, did he tell you that?” She didn’t answer, but he went on, “Wouldn’t you have a picture or two of your dead parents around the house, Sal?” Sally winced, and he felt bad. Sally never knew who her father was, but her mother had only been fifteen when she gave birth to her and just a few years later she’d taken her own life. Sally’s Paw Paw had pictures of her mother, but Sally hadn’t ever wanted any of them. She’d felt betrayed and abandoned by her mother most of her life and Blackheart knew it was why she worked so hard to teach the young girls in the bayou how to be responsible and take care of their babies. “I’m sorry, Sal, that was a bad example, but...”
“Do I have to call the police, Evan?” He tried not to laugh at that. He’d done a hell of a lot of things over the years that Sally could have reported to the police, but she hadn’t...and he didn’t believe for a second she would this time. She might never speak to him again, but he never doubted her loyalty...to him, or his “rag-tag” club.
“I just need you to listen,” he said, again...and then he asked the question whose answer from her just might kill him, “Are you in love with this guy?”
She stared at him for a long time and then she said, “You know, Evan...there was a time when I thought your jealousy meant you loved me. But not anymore. I know you inside and out, and I know that you just can’t stand for anyone else to touch anything you consider ‘yours.’ But I’m not yours, Evan, and I haven’t been for a very long time. Now, I’m going back to bed. You can stay or go, I don’t care...but I’m finished with this conversation, for good.” She turned her back to him and he thought about trying to stop her, but he knew her as well as she did him. He wasn’t going to get anywhere this way. He let her go and locked the front door on his way out.
Before he got on his bike he called Booger,
“Mornin’, boss.” Booger sounded hung over, or still drunk. He probably hadn’t been in bed for over an hour, if that. Still, Blackheart knew that wouldn’t stop any of them from doing their job.
“I need you to put a tail on someone...do not let him out of your sight, but also make sure he doesn’t see you, understand?”
“You got it, boss.” Blackheart gave him Lucien’s name and address, a description of him and his car and the plate number. He hoped the fucker would be home sleeping things off for a few hours. He’d searched the house, but now he wanted a look at the office too. Before ending the call he said:
“Give me a heads up when he’s on the move.”
14
By all rights, Lucien should have been exhausted, but instead he felt like he was on top of the world. He’d left Sally’s around 1 a.m. He hadn’t wanted to, but she didn’t seem ready for him to stay the entire night. He was doing his best not to rush her, especially now that she was practically his. He smiled at that thought...maybe “practically” was an understatement after the night they’d had together. He finally got to make love to her...and it was every bit as magical as he knew it would be. He could tell by her responses, and the way she kissed him goodbye, that she felt the same. Evan Babineaux would be the furthest thing from her mind now, at least until Lucien finally rid the world of him. Of course since Sally had known him for so long, and she had such a good heart, Lucien expected her to mourn him. He knew he’d be tempted to tell her what he’d done, and that he’d done it for her...but he wouldn’t. People’s emotions were too fickle sometimes. Lucien never let emotions get in the way of what he had to do; sometimes he wasn’t sure he had any...but then he’d think about Sally and everything inside of him reacted. If that wasn’t emotion, pure fucking love, he didn’t know what it was. But Sally was sensitive and he knew she’d find fault in what he did, even if it was for her own good. Maybe someday he’d be able to tell her and she’d understand just how much better off she was in a world without a man who called himself Blackheart…Lucien’s world.
Lucien showered, and then lay down in his bed and thought about the night before all over again. He and Sally had eaten dinner, the dinner she’d made for him...with love, if the taste was any indication. On top of everything else good about her, she was an excellent cook. After dinner was finished, he’d helped her wash the dishes. He could feel how badly she wanted him as they stood side by side at the sink, and when they finished cleaning the kitchen, she’d poured them each a glass of wine and suggested they watch their movie. Once they were on the couch, she’d kicked off her sandals and pulled her feet up underneath her sexy butt. Her toes were painted a dark red color and his mouth watered at the sight of them. But he remained a perfect gentleman and he didn’t make a move until she’d leaned forward to set her glass down on the coffee table, and then settled back into the couch, just a little closer to him than before. He did the same with his glass and when he settled back, he stretched his arm out behind her on the couch. Sally was the first to snuggle in deep, the first to look up at him with lust in her eyes. He was so crazy with desire by that time that he wanted to ravage her. He wanted to rip off her clothes and throw her down on the floor and claim every part of her as his own.
But he didn’t. He was sensitive, and gentle, and patient...and finally Sally had stood up and held out her hand and she’d led him to her bedroom. How many times had he sat outside her window and dreamed of that moment? It was an infinite number, and the moment he was actually there was surreal. Just thinking about it was exciting him...not so much the sex, although that was good...it was the thinking about how many times he’d already seen her body and she didn’t know it. It was remembering the nights he’d actually watched her pleasure herself, and pretending she was thinking about him as she did. It was those little secrets that had made his cock as hard as a rock and those little secrets that had tempted him to take her as roughly as he’d always imagined he would. But he was patient...he’d already been patient for so many years, it wasn’t hard for him to convince himself that the time would come. He’d come this far, and one day he was sure she would beg him to rip into her sweet flesh with his teeth and taste her blood. One day she would scream with ecstasy when his whip cut into her satiny skin and he painted the blood across the rest of her body with his fingers. He knew he’d have to ease her into it...but he also knew the day would come when she’d love it, crave it even, the way he did. Lucien always found a way to get what he wanted, and he had wanted Sally for an eternity.
Lucien was fourteen the first time he ever saw her. Sally was about eighteen at the time and the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on. Lucien
thought he was looking at an angel, and she had even spoken to him that day. He’d actually been hurt at first when he realized she didn’t remember him, but the truth was that he he’d changed a lot over the years, and there had been a lot of years since that first meeting. He worked out religiously every day since he was seventeen years old. Back when he met Sally, he had been a skinny, spindly boy, all arms and legs with acne and shaggy dishwater-blond hair. These days Lucien paid a small fortune to have his hair cut and styled monthly, and blond highlights put in it. He’d just been a boy, all arms and legs...and she’d been a goddess, so he really couldn’t hold it against her.
Lucien’s family rented a cabin out near the Atchafalaya Basin every summer for a few weeks. They’d been going there since he was ten years old, and he hated it. He hated them. His father worked for the city in a Podunk town in Mississippi, picking up other people’s trash. His mother ran a daycare out of their home, and he hated the sticky, loud, germ-infested kids that invaded his space every day. His sister was nothing short of an idiot, and to make matters worse she became a whore as she got older. Now she was married and had a couple of kids. She tried to act respectable, but Lucien wouldn’t be surprised to know she was fucking all of her husband’s friends behind the man’s back, that is if he cared to find out. He went home once a month since his parents “tragically” died in a fire, and had a Sunday dinner with her family playing his part as the dutiful brother...but even that, he did for Sally. When the time was right he’d take her to meet them and she’d see it was just one more thing about him that was “perfect,” his love for his family. Then, maybe the family would die in a tragic fire, or a car accident...he hadn’t decided which just yet, but when they did, after his mourning period of course, he’d cash in their life insurance policies the way he had his parents, and finally get something out of all the years he had to put up with them.
So that day he’d been walking along the water when he spotted the angel in a bikini top and cutoff shorts. Sally’s legs were long and tan and nothing about what she was wearing left much to his fourteen-year-old imagination. She was swimming in a little cove that the big basin fed into. She was all alone and if Lucien had been the impulsive sort, he might have taken her that day. He was already at that age, practiced in the art of getting whatever he wanted. If he asked and was told no, then he just took. In his parents’ eyes he could do no wrong and his idiot father had defended him a thousand times, over things he’d actually done that Lucien adamantly denied. But as he watched Sally that day, something told him she was special. It was more than that she was so much prettier than any other girl he’d ever laid eyes on. There was more to it and he couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but he’d known it was important that he wait.
He’d planned on leaving that day without her seeing him, but she was in tune with the swamp and as soon as he took a step away from the tree that had been hiding him she said, “Who’s there?”
He’d stepped out into her view, and he’d pretended to be lost. She was so kind, and she’d offered to walk him home and when she stood close to him, he thought that he’d never smelled anything as good as her in his life. He hadn’t wanted to say goodbye to her that day, but he had, knowing already that he’d see her again. He knew she was his destiny. He followed her for the rest of the two weeks he was there, finding out where she lived and what her daily routine was like. It was about a week after he first saw her when he witnessed something that made him homicidal for the first time. He’d caught her and Evan Babineaux having sex, under the stars, along the edges of the swamp. He imagined a hundred different ways to kill him. He imagined feeding his body parts to the gators. But Lucien was anything but stupid, and he knew the other boy was much bigger than him. He was talking himself out of doing something stupid just about the time he heard Sally tell Evan she was pregnant. He’d lost his mind then. He’d gone back to his family’s cabin and locked himself away in his room for almost two days, sick as a dog. He couldn’t think about anything else, other than how badly he wanted to kill Evan. Then one night his parents and his sister went to town for dinner, and he had his chance. He took his Paw’s shotgun and he made his way through the swamp to the house where Babineaux lived with his father. Back in those days, no one in the swamp locked their doors. He let himself in through the front door...and when he saw the drunk sleeping on the couch in the living room, one of the most brilliant plans he’d ever had began to take shape.
Lucien had easily found the Babineaux shotgun and he’d snuck down the hallway, checking each room and finding them empty, until he came to the closed door at the end of it. Pushing it open slowly, he saw the big shape of the man asleep in the bed. He didn’t know if it was Evan, or his father, but at that point he was so out of his mind with rage that he didn’t care. He fired the shotgun, twice, and watched as the man’s head exploded. Then quickly, he ran back into the living room, thinking he’d have to kill the drunk too. But the man had slept through it all. Evan had spent some time dousing the sleeping man with fluids from the dead one and when he finished, he wiped all of his prints off the shotgun and set it down next to the couch, taking his with him as he left. Unfortunately, that man upstairs had turned out to be Jean Luc Babineaux, and not Evan...but once Lucien came to terms with that he realized that he’d have a better chance with Sally when he was older. He knew then at least, that if it came down to having to kill Evan to get him out of her life, he’d be able to do it, without hesitation.
When he came back the next summer and found out Sally was gone, he had been crushed at first. But still not ready to give up, he’d befriended her crazy old “Paw Paw” and he’d found out she was away at college. Ultimately her Paw Paw gave him the run of the house, placing way too much faith in the boy...but Lucien had learned by the age of fifteen that the average person was stupid, and most of them so starved for human connection that manipulating them was almost too easy. Sally’s Paw Paw had been the one to tell him about Sally losing her baby, and Evan becoming the president of an MC. The old man seemed disappointed that the two hadn’t ended up together, but Lucien took it as another sign that Sally was meant for him, and he wasn’t going to give up until that happened.
Over the next two summers, he spent hours in Sally’s room, and he’d even taken some of her things, wondering for years if she ever noticed. And as the old man got more feeble, Lucien made one last discovery...the tunnels in the basement underneath the house, and the room he would forever dedicate to his Sally. One day soon, she’d be the queen of his dungeon and they’d live happily ever after...and if Lucien got his way, on into the afterlife as well.
Andre’s passing had been difficult for the then seventeen-year-old Lucien. Not because he really cared for the old man, but he worried he’d lose sight of Sally. But things had worked out and she’d come home to sell the house and buy one of her own in the French Quarter. Watching the State take over “his” house had nearly killed him, but still, he didn’t give up.
He’d joined the Marines just as Sally was settling into her career and her own life. He knew she wasn’t ready for him yet, but while he waited he intended to do all he could do to better himself, and best that bastard Evan in the end. In the Marines he’d become a sniper and he’d also earned himself a bachelor’s degree. He’d saved or invested every penny he made and after a four-year tour of duty, part of it in Special Ops, he was ready to return to New Orleans and start his business and buy his own home. Of course his parents’ timely deaths just a few months after he returned home helped as well, especially since he was the primary beneficiary of both of their life insurance policies.
Lucien didn’t buy the home he “lived” in. That one was just for show. He’d come home in time to find out that the State hadn’t been able to do what they intended with the Guidry house and they planned on tearing it down. It took him a few years of paperwork and court hearings, but he finally got them to agree to sell it to him...or to one of his shell corporations, anyway. He’d been smart en
ough not to buy it in his own name just in case Sally ever got curious about who owned the old place. Tracing it back to him would be next to impossible. Someday soon he’d tell her that he owned it and he was sure she’d love him even more because of it. The house was meant for them and they’d spend the rest of their days there, alone, together no matter who he had to kill in order to make that happen.
Lucien finally drifted off that morning with a smile on his face and his hand on the hard-on that just wouldn’t go away when he thought about his life with Sally. Little did he know that a man on a Harley Davidson sat down at the end of the street and he’d lived his last day of anonymity. He was firmly on the Jokers’ radar and if Blackheart was right and he was trying to hurt the club, and most especially Sally, he was as dead as Christoff ever thought about being.
15
Blackheart had spent over an hour searching Lucien’s office before he finally decided it was the computer he really needed to search. After he had searched the man’s “home” the day before, it had dawned on him that there hadn’t been a single computer, laptop, notebook, or even an iPad in the place. No electronics at all in 2020 was practically surreal, and definitely suspicious. Even out in the boondocks, the Jokers had computers, and it made Blackheart wonder if maybe Lucien kept everything he didn’t want anyone else to see on the one in his office where he seemed to be the only employee.
He sat down in the chair in front of the PC with his gloves on and turned it on. While it booted up, he wondered about a password. Sally was the first thing that came to mind, and even before the home screen was up, he was primed to try it. He was just about to press in the “S” when he thought about their own system at the club. Ty was their computer guy and he’d set up their systems so that access to it required the password be typed in perfectly the first time, or the entire network would shut down. It had been a huge pain in the ass at first, but once everyone got used to it, Blackheart felt more confident that their files were secure. He wondered about Lucien...would he be the kind of guy who was so protective of his files that he’d protect it that closely? With a curse he pulled his phone out and called Ty.