Page 73 of Cognac Secrets

The one cop whose jaw was working overtime to bite down on his words, lost the battle to keep his fucking mouth shut. The motherfucker smirked and said, “After the autopsy you’ll get any pieces of him back that aren’t kept for evidence.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” I told him as Chainsaw and Axeman stepped in to hold Cypress back. I walked calmly past him when inside I practicallyvibratedwith an incandescentrageand a desire to hit the motherfucker. I wanted to pop him right in his bitch mouth.

“And the fuckin’ citizens callusthe savages,” Collier muttered going past me to his own bike.

“Yeah,” I said watching Cypress jerk out of the hold our two other brothers had on him as he resolutely marched to his own bike.

“My place,” LaCroix reiterated and we all fell in behind him, revving our engines in a display of power and petty knowing it would set the average citizen cop’s teeth on edge inside the clubhouse and compound.

The ride with my brothers out to LaCroix’s daddy’s old property at the edge of the swamp was almost enough. A balm to the soul, but with how fresh the raw open wound of what’d happened barely a few hours ago was – I didn’t feel like it was near enough toget right, so to speak. Truth be told, I didn’t know if there ever would be any getting right with this… this was bound to hurt for a long fucking time. I was still, and was arguably going to be, in that state of wondering if it’d even really happened at all for a minute. I was in that dream state, post combat haze of disassociation that I sometimes got after a spate of violence and to be perfectly honest? I preferred it here. I didn’t feel much of anything like this and I didn’twantto feel it.

I knew the crash would come. That the reality that Louie was gone would hit me like a wrecking ball plowing through the center of my chest at some point. I wasn’t ready for it. You never could be ready for something like that… All I could think about though, was how much I wanted it to be Sandrine there for me when it happened, though.

I wanted to lay with her in the coziness of my bed, and put my ear over her heart and have her tangle her fingers in my hair and scratch my scalp while I turned into a puddle of goo and slept for like a fuckingweekafter this round was all over.

The Bayou Brethren had gotten one of us. I’m sure they were proud of themselves. I’m sure they were back at whatever hole-in-the-wall clubhouse they crawled out of and were partying hard, drinking it up, and reveling in their victory.

I wanted that victory to be short-lived. I wanted them to pay, and I would bring hell with me to make sure it fuckin’ happened.

We parked up in the grass off to the side of LaCroix’s shitty childhood home and got off our bikes. LaCroix didn’t come here except to pass by on his way out to his place deep in the swamps. I wasn’t even sure he’d gone inside since his daddy had died.

Alina kept talking about making this house a home, but I think LaCroix would much rather burn the fuckin’ thing to the ground. He stood after dismounting his bike, staring at the ramshackle house on the edge of the swamp and even though I couldn’t see his face, I could just see the set of his shoulders, the Baron Samedi eyeing me through his monocle off the back of his cut.

I stepped up next to him and looked up at his profile. His face was made of stone, the only light in those glittering dark obsidian tattooed eyes of his was the catch lights they were throwing back from the porch light on the house and what was coming up from the light over the dock.

“Sometimes I wonder if you really can teach these old dogs some new tricks,” he said and I tipped my head and waited him out.

When he didn’t say anything, I cleared my throat and said, “Gonna have to give me something more than that. I ain’t a mind reader, Pres.”

“We all just wanted a better life. Looked at them Kraken boys and saw a better way…” he turned to look at me and his face was solid stone. “Much as we want a better life, you think there’s one to be had for men like us?” he asked.

I was quiet a minute, thinking of Sandrine, thinking about the way he was with his little Alina.

“I think so,” I said. “I also think we have to fight for it.”

“They ain’t left us any choice on that,” he said and he spit on the ground before lumbering toward the dock like some cyborg, set to its kill function.

I turned and looked just behind me to catch Hex looking at me. He threw me some chin and I nodded back.

I think all of us were on the same fuckin’ page with this.

We wanted to build something, we didn’t want to be those guys anymore… but at the end of the fuckin’ day, wewerethose guys and it was time for more than a little more show and a little less tell on that.

We took two boats out into the swamp, out into the dark and stinking waterways with the musty smell of alligator and unsettling splashing in the dark. The humid air heavy with the scent of green growing things and heavier with the scent of decay

It felt like we were right at fuckin’ home. That we were all borne of the bayou and that she welcomed her wayward sons home, no matter where any of us had originally come from.

We glided through the brackish waters toward her heart and it was like it was Louie’s first funeral march. Like we bore his spirit with us to lay him to rest comfortable in the quiet dark among the insect and frog song where the club’s mother could draw him down, warm and safe to her breast and he would never have to hurt again, forever more.

Louie deserved that. Looking at the solemn faces in my boat, at Cypress, Axe, and Chainsaw… thinking about Sandy and her warm smile and infectious laugh; it’s what I wanted for all of us.

Maybe LaCroix was right, maybe you couldn’t teach a pack of old, mangey dogs like us any new tricks… but then again, this situation really did seem to call for the good ol’ tried-and-true ones, now, didn’t it?

CHAPTERTWENTY

Sandrine…

I felt better after showering, but at the same time, it was like a twenty-thousand-pound mantle rested on my shoulders weighting me down and it felt like every single step up the stairs to my room took maximum effort.

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