Page 81 of Cognac Secrets

One of the things Gerard complained he missed the most out on the road was a home cooked meal and so it had become ‘welcome home’ tradition for True and I to get in the kitchen, fish through Gerard’s mother’s and grandmother’s cookbooks before them and find the most spattered and stained recipes to make him some of his childhood favorites.

Very rarely did he request anything, usually leaving it up to us girls to pick and surprise him, but this time he’d asked for his grand-mama’s creole seafood mac and cheese, and boy was it an undertaking!

It put both True and my’s intermediate cooking skills to the absolute test, but judging by the smells emanating from the oven and the unmitigateddisasterof the kitchen at the moment – we were on some sort of path. It was still up in the air if it was the path to success or not.

We were at the sink, True pre-scrubbing and rinsing dishes and me loading the dishwasher, when the knock came at the door.

True and I had been playing with each other, splashing each other with water, calling each other creative names, and just generally laughing and having a good time, so I went to the kitchen side door thinking nothing of it and opened it without looking andbig mistake… huge…

It wasn’t Gerard with his hands full or a pile of luggage. It was my two ugly brothers.

“Took us long enough to find you, little sister,” Gideon, my oldest brother said with what could only be described as a sneer.

“You gotta come with us now,” Jacob, my middle brother and still older than me reached out.

“Sandy?” True asked as I tried to slam the door and all I could manage to shriek at her was“Run! Call Bennie!”because Gideon had wedged himself in the door and was grabbing for me, and he was a hell of a lot stronger than me. Big and brutish, he’d been the worst at tormenting me as a child and had never let me forget it for one minute that I was little more than a stupidgirl.

True snatched my phone off the counter and ran, like I told her to. Disappearing into the house – likely going up stairs as Gideon forced his way through the door and caught me asItried to run away, anywhere. He hauled me back around the middle, his grip a bruising thing and he finally picked me up off my feet and swung me around, shoving me out the door.

I scratched, kicked, and thrashed trying to get away, fighting like a wildcat with anything I could bring.

“Here, hold her!” Gideon shouted and thrust me at Jacob who opened his arms to catch. I put my own arms out andshoved himwith everything that I had and he fell back. I fell on top of his legs and tried to find purchase to get up and run and I almost achievedsomething,but then a hand wrapped my ankle and down I went and after a burst of stars and a sharp pain, it was lights out…

* * *

My head hurt.I was lying on something hard and ridged and my mouth had that funny taste. The one that heralded that you were going to puke. Except I couldn’t puke. Something was in my mouth and if I puked, I would most assuredly choke. I winced and opened my eyes and the dull roar inside my head proved to be emanating fromoutsidemy head. The wind rushing and the canvas cover on the bed of my brother’s truck flapping overhead.

Oh, God.

I was in the bed of a truck, and it was goingfast. Too fast for me to do anything like jump. I closed my eyes and swallowed past a wave of nausea and tried to move my hands, but they were tied, a gag in my mouth, another tie holding my ankles together. I tried to sit up and there was a rattle of chain and I realized that there was something around my neck…

Gideon, you son of a bitch,I thought when I realized I could smell dog, and that what was around my neck was an old leather dog’s collar attached to a lead that was bolted in the bottom of the truck.

What the fuck? They weren’t even trying to hide it… their disdain for me. This was sick.

I closed my eyes and tried not to panic, panic wouldn’t get me anywhere or anything right now. I had to be smart. Smarter than the problem… and hope, and maybe even pray to whatever gods were just and might listen to me… if any really existed at all, that Bennie was aware of the problem and on it already.

Shit.

What were honestly the chances of that? I mean, for real…

Fuck me,I thought with a sinking feeling.

I was on my own here.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

Bennie…

I pulled my phone away from my ear and looked at who was trying to call.

“Yeah, hang on just a minute, would ya? Sandrine is ringing in on the other line.”

Hex grunted and didn’t sound happy about it, being as we were discussing Louie’s wake since the club still hadn’t been released as a crime scene.

“She’s supposed to be with True making dinner or some shit for her landlord coming home, said I wouldn’t hear from her, just hang on, two seconds.” I didn’t wait to get confirmation if it was alright or not because, quite frankly, I didn’t give a fuck – this would literally take two seconds.

“Hey, baby,” I said. “I’m going to have to call you back.”

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