Defied (Blood Duet Book 2)

by Maria Luis

  Her shoulders sagged. “Friends?”

  I nodded into her armpit. “Always.”

  She released me, and I spent a solid five seconds inhaling fresh air before I stepped into the apartment and fisted my hands on my hips. There was no easy way to phrase what I needed to say, and it didn’t escape my notice that for the first time in my life . . . I was asking for help.

  Katie sat on the armrest of the sofa, hands folding in her lap as she stared up at me. “What’s the matter? You’ve got a look on your face that I really don’t like.”

  I swallowed. Pushed the nerves so far down that I wouldn’t choke on them as I spoke. “I need your help.” I dove a hand through my hair, still somewhat tangled from sex with Lincoln. “I need . . . I need you to create a distraction.”

  Katie blinked. “A distraction? Where?”

  Here goes nothing. Straightening my spine, I went for broke. “At Ambideaux’s party that he invited me to. I need to go, and I need you to go with me.”

  I couldn’t be in multiple places at once, but my gut told me that Lincoln would inevitably show up there. It would either begin with the Basement or with Ambideaux, and I was going for the latter for no other reason than it was a scene I could prepare for. While Katie created a distraction for the guests, I could . . .

  Eyes squeezing shut, I tried not to think about what I’d do if needed.

  Take a life in order to save Lincoln’s.

  Sacrifice my own freedom to see that he kept his.

  It wasn’t what I wanted, and if I had the opportunity to talk some sense into his stubborn head, I would. But if I we showed up too late . . . if he’d gone to Ambideaux’s first, instead of to the Basement, where I imagined he would go to begin his reign of death, then we were all fucked.

  Think positive.

  It was hard to do so when the man you were in love with was determined to ruin his life just to prove he was not someone who should be crossed.

  Spinning on my heel, I went into the kitchen and climbed up onto the countertop. Resting one hand on the roof of the fridge, I pulled open the cabinet and took out the gun I’d never used.

  “Ave? You’re freaking me out.”

  I glanced down at Katie, who’d trailed me into the kitchen. Turning the gun around, I handed her the butt. “Hold this so I can climb down.” When her brows arched high, I added, “Please don’t shoot me.”

  “Trust me, of the two of us, I’m pretty sure we’re better off with me holding this thing.”

  I hopped back down to the kitchen tile. “You know how to shoot?” I asked, bewildered at the familiar way she handled the firearm.

  The grin she gave me could have lit up a room. “Bonding with my dad meant going to the range. He’s an enthusiast.”

  An . . . enthusiast?

  And then I was grinning, too. “You think you can teach me how to use it by the time we make it to the cocktail party?”

  Katie didn’t even blink. “Hell no. We’re going to need more than fifteen minutes.”

  Refusing to let my confidence waver, I dropped my eyes to the firearm. “You think you can at least help me look like I know what the hell I’m doing?”

  “Slightly more realistic but if you keep looking at it as though it’s a snake, we’re going to have some problems.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or to feel grateful for having Katie at my side, as we’d always been since meeting a few years back.

  In the end, I offered her a shaky smile and muttered, “I really need to get a new taser.”

  27

  Lincoln

  My finger hovered over the trigger, the palm of my hand slick with sweat against the polymer frame.

  “You’re lying.” Feet rooted to the tile floor, I jerked my gaze from Foley to Nat. “You’ve seen her,” I said, “for years you’ve seen her.”

  For fuck’s sake, my mother lived with Ambideaux. Sure, she had her own wing in the home, but she wasn’t a ghost. She wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. Nat had seen her countless times over the years, though my mother hadn’t moved out of the hospital and into the house with Jason until some time after he and Nat had divorced.

  My throat closed up, and I swear to God my heart iced over as I stood there, waiting for someone to fucking say something that wasn’t cryptic. Waited, even longer, for the sensation of being run over by a truck to ease off my worn body and steamroll someone else for a change.

  With a nod to his detail, Foley took one of the empty seats and sat down. Like he was preparing himself for a conversation over tea and baked goods.

  Fingers tightening around the gun, I tracked his every movement. “Stop with the bullshit.” One step to the left set my back against the wall, giving me the chance to note everyone in the room—as well as the empty doorway. “I know my mother’s alive, so if you’re hoping to fuck with my head, you’re going to need a new intimidation tactic—”

  “Jason always was obsessed with your mother.” Foley flicked a stray piece of lint off his suit pants. “They were childhood friends. All of us were next-door neighbors. But they were each other’s firsts in every capacity of the word.”

  Nat’s expression tightened, and I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything that might encourage Quinn or the security detail to put a bullet through my temple.

  He hiked on his pants, pinching the fabric at the knees, and resettled himself in. Foley continued, then, arms loose on the chair as he pinned me in place with an unwavering stare. “And then she had you, her precious boy. You lit up her world. Stole her heart, and there was nothing she wouldn’t have done for you.”

  I couldn’t hear my heart pounding—it was buried beneath the blood roaring in my head.

  And yet I stood there, back to the wall, hands locked around the gun’s grip, my goddamn soul bellowing out for it all to stop.

  “She’d died whereas you lived,” my father went on, his face completely impassive as he watched me. “But, of course, no one dwelled too long on a death of a girl like Victoria Meriden. Her family were nobodies, but unlike myself or Jason, she never went on to make something of herself. Sweet, beautiful, but a stripper on Bourbon. She was a nobody. No one cared.”

  I cared.

  I cared that Foley was fucking with my head, just to get past my defenses. I cared that he was making shit up—shit that I knew was untrue. I cared so much that I shot forward and, with a hand to the back of his chair, I shoved the frame backward. Foley was big, but I was stronger, and the chair teetered on its hind legs for two interminably long seconds before I gave it another push, and my father and the chair went tumbling down with a crash.

  “Is he fucking insane?” spat either Quinn or the detail, and I did nothing but glance up, aim my weapon, and shoot at their feet.

  Not close enough to get them, but too close for comfort.

  “Stay in your lane,” I growled, “this shit has nothing to do with you, and the only place I’d ever send your fucking boss is to jail.” I shoved my face into Jay’s, and his dark eyes stared back, wide but cool. Not even a hint of panic.

  Apparently, I’d inherited at least one thing from the bastard: remaining unattached, no matter the situation.

  Like Big Hampton had done to me on that damn ride out to the middle of nowhere, I shoved the muzzle up against Jay’s jawline. “We’re going to try this again.” I canted his head, angling the firearm at a sharper slant. Then moved my free hand to my pant leg, where I removed my weapon and positioned that one to face Quinn and the lackey. “You want me to believe that my mother died thirty years ago? Fine, let’s play pretend.” Breathing heavily, I leaned in. “Jason’s version of Victoria, who I’ve always known . . . who is she?”

  A dark chuckle greeted my ears. “Victoria’s sister. Your aunt.”

  I would have gone stumbling if I wasn’t so determined to maintain the upper hand.

  Only, Jay’s revelation rocked me. My ears popped and my vision turned red at the periphery, and my weight tipped forward. No. �
�I don’t believe you. It’s been over thirty years since the accident. She can’t walk. The tests, the hospital visits. There’s no way he would be able to keep all that going for—”

  “You know Jason.” My father’s mouth twisted angrily, and even though he was flat on his back, his tone remained calm like the politician he was. “You know him better than almost anyone. Do you think he’d risk it all just to get caught? He’s a monster. Always has been, even when we were kids.”

  It was a struggle to pull air into my lungs. If what he said was true . . . “She can’t walk,” I repeated again, voice fainter than the first go ‘round. “The car accident—”

  Dark eyes bounced from my hand holding the gun and then to my face, and for the first time, Foley’s face turned wary. Nervous. He licked his lips, then grunted when I amped up the pressure of the gun to his jaw. “He gave you those scars on your face, didn’t he?” he said at last. “Jason was the kid in the neighborhood popping the heads off of animals. The one our parents never let us spend any time with alone because he wasn’t quite right in the head, they said. He did that with her—Samantha—crushed her legs so she couldn’t walk. So she fit the part. I knew it. Nat knew it, too.”

  Behind me, Nat let out a keening sound that rang in my ears and pierced my soul. It was a cry of a wounded animal, and I wasn’t sure if she were making fun of the story, adding to the dramatics, or if her own memories were so traumatizing that even the mention of her ex-husband was enough to send her into hysterics.

  I thought of my mother—the woman Jason had always claimed to be my mother—and my heart sank, fracturing into a thousand little shards. Just like the antique vase I’d broken at Ambideaux’s house. I felt shattered, balanced on the lip of no return, the pieces of my mind unable to fit together what Foley told me now.

  It made no sense.

  And still it made more sense than anything else ever had.

  The way she refused to look at me.

  How she’d always rejected me as her son.

  He crushed her legs.

  The words registered, horrific and horrible, and I fell back onto my ass. “Why?” I demanded, my throat raw. “Why would he do that?”

  It wasn’t Foley who spoke up, but Nat, and the words she said sent a chill down my spine.

  “With her under his care, you couldn’t strike back. He manipulated you, Asher, his son—the baby boy I could never give him.”

  28

  Lincoln

  I heard nothing at all.

  Not the voices around me.

  Not the music echoing from down the hall in the main area of the Basement.

  Not the beating of my heart erupting in my chest into a wild staccato that could not be tamed.

  Nothing.

  If I’d already visited each circle of Dante’s hell, I must be in a new one now. Purgatory, maybe. More likely an undiscovered one that was meant only for me—designed and constructed to drown me until the fight left my body and there was nothing left but grief.

  This wasn’t how it was all supposed to go down.

  Foley was meant to be in jail for everything he’d done over the years.

  Nat was meant to be so frightened, she’d leave New Orleans for good.

  Hampton . . . fuck, I couldn’t even think that far right now.

  Everything had been a lie. I should have seen it coming, I should have been able to narrow down why Jason had a hard-on for everyone around him.

  “Why?” I rasped to no one and everyone all at once. I blinked, focusing on Foley, the man who’d come to me and said he was my father. “Why would you assume that you were my dad?”

  What kind of fucked-up, Jerry-Springer shit did I just land myself into?

  The mayor of New Orleans rolled over onto his knees from where I’d practically tackled him to the floor. “Jason told me so a few years ago. Who the fuck ever knows why with him?”

  The numbness faded, replaced by the familiar sting of fury. Rising onto my feet, I whirled around to face Nat. She’d known. All these years, she’d known and had said nothing. I neared her, closing in, both guns clasped in my hands.

  She didn’t cower. Like Avery, Natalie Lauren never shrank back in fear. Her chin tipped up and she met my gaze as she stared at me over the bridge of her nose. “Furious?” she hissed. “Imagine what it’s been like for me. Married to a man who became so obsessed with another that when she died, even after cheating on me, he got himself the next best thing—her sister. I’ve hated you. I have hated you for years, and the fact that you will not die . . .”

  I should have expected it.

  The band of arms that wrapped around my chest and yanked me back. Rough hands that ripped the Glocks from my grip. My heels dragged along the tile as I tightened my core and tried to slow the momentum of being taken off to God-knows-where.

  “Stop struggling, asshole,” said a deep voice in my ear.

  Screw that.

  My hands went to his forearms, latching on, holding tight, preparing to send him to Timbuktu when he tightened his grip and grunted, “You want to live? Shut the fuck up and let me do this.”

  Eyes drifting to the right, I caught sight of Foley yanking on the sleeves of his suit as he traded an inscrutable glance with Nat. Behind him, his detail watched me, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched, gun trained on my face.

  The man behind me had to be Quinn. Nat’s right-hand man.

  And now he was promising to drag me to safety?

  I grit my teeth. It was against my innate nature to let him take the wheel. I didn’t know him worth a damn—had never seen him before tonight—but there were times when you had to rely on fate.

  I let him drag my ass out of that room.

  Away from the man who wasn’t my father.

  Away from the woman who’d wanted me dead for as long as I’d drawn air to breathe.

  I struggled in Quinn’s hold for the sake of appearances. Spat out vile words and elbowed him in the gut. Let out a quintessential, “Let me go, you fucker!” just before my feet crossed over the threshold of the room.

  By the time the door shut, Quinn was heaving like a newbie sprinter. He released me. Then, hand to my back, he corralled me down the hall.

  “You need to get out of here,” he muttered, giving me no other option than to keep walking forward. “Nat might be playing nice, but she wants your head on a platter.”

  That stopped me.

  Ducking under his arm, I twisted around to face him. He was even in height with me. Older, maybe mid-forties. Gray peppered his dark hair, and he walked with a distinct limp that made me wonder if he’d been shot before.

  “I’ve been in this world too long to know that you aren’t just going to let me go because you feel bad.” I got in his face, careful to keep enough of a distance that if he held a knife, I was still out of direct reach. “If you’re Nat’s bitch, then—”

  My back slammed against the wall. His fingers grasped my shirt, fisting the fabric as he jerked me in. “I’m nobody’s bitch, Sergeant.”

  I danced my fingers to my back, skimming my waistband to circle the butt of my trench knife. “No?”

  “No.” His dark eyes narrowed. “No,” he repeated, voice low, “I’m the man who kept your girlfriend alive when her stepfather wanted her dead. The one who opened the window downstairs for her to escape and locked her bedroom door so she had the chance to run. That was me.”

  The trench knife dropped to the floor, my grip going loose.

  “Yeah, not expecting that, were you?” Quinn’s mouth drew up in a dark, sadistic grin. “I let her go, and it cost me my right leg.”

  “You killed her mother.”

  His hold on my shirt tightened. “She knew it was coming and refused to leave. That was her choice, her decision, and I did what I could. I made sure her daughter got out alive.”

  Where I’d been sent to kill her.

  Because of Ambideaux.

  Because of my father.

  Because Jay Foley had done some
thing so awful that Jason sought nothing but retribution.

  “Why did he want her dead?” My gaze cut over to the left. The hall was empty. Quiet aside from our hushed voices. “Why the hell did Jay want—”

  “Because she’d inherited money—her father’s living will left everything he owned to her when he was diagnosed with cancer, and he owned most of the city.” Quinn squeezed his eyes shut, color cresting on his cheeks. “I wanted her to leave. I begged her to leave. She refused, and Jay would have killed her no matter what. He’d so much as told her so.”

  I’d spent years reading expressions, diagnosing liars, and Quinn . . . Jesus Christ, but he was worse than them all. “You didn’t kill her, did you.”

  Not a question.

  He answered anyway, his voice raw, cracking, as the past swarmed over him—looking at his face, it was clear that he might be standing in this hallway, but he wasn’t here with me now. Not really.

  “She wouldn’t leave—her house, her family, the life she knew.” Adam’s apple dipping, the man swallowed, hard. “I couldn’t do it. I’d loved her for years, and I couldn’t fucking do it. She pulled the trigger. Ended it all. Wasn’t in her right mind and wouldn’t listen no matter what I told her. When it came to Laurel . . . she didn’t know me, but I knew her from Catherine. I let her go. I don’t regret it.”

  I let her go. I don’t regret it.

  I’d thought the same thing when I’d left Avery on that front lawn. I couldn’t kill her—couldn’t do what it was that Ambideaux had asked of me.

  Realization hit me square in the gut.

  And the words fell from my lips as though they’d been pushed up from my heart: “He was pissed. Holy fuck, Jason was pissed that Foley was about to walk away with the entire city in his pocket.”