Page 30 of Road to Ruin
“No, of course not. If I had, I would have been back here immediately.”
“We made sure it made national papers,” West says, yawning mid-sentence. “We assumed you’d both be looking out for New Orleans related news, but…” He spreads his hands wide, shrugging his shoulders. “You never came. The city re-buried Mama Kendrick, and that idea was put to bed.”
“You’re a sick son of a bitch,” David snarls.
“Hey, I had nothing to do with it. I just watched. You should be grateful Vaughn didn’t get his way. It’s a goddamn miracle her body went back into that casket unmolested.”
Forget David. I’m flying at the fucker before I can check myself. I grab West by the collar of his shirt, drag him halfway across the room, and then my clenched fist is connecting with his jawbone. I hit him again, this time to his stomach, as hard as I fucking can, and West starts coughing. My hand is around his throat. I squeeze, and he does absolutely nothing to stop me. His coughing turns into strangled, crazy laughter. I let him go, shoving him to the floor.
“There you go,” he says, his eyes watering. “I told you we were gonna train today.”
“Wait, so you didn’t exhume our dead mother’s body?” David asks.
“Oh no. We totally did.”
I want to kick his fucking ass. By all rights, I should. The Bastiens are sick bastards. I’ve always known this, but digging up a body seems too twisted even for them. I guess I shouldn’t make assumptions about them based on the idea of what a normal, sane person might do in the same situation. All three of them have a screw loose. Vaughn’s screw has just about damn near rattled free from its bolt entirely. My mother was a God fearing Catholic woman until the day she died. I already know what she’d say about her body being exhumed and fucked around with post mortem. She’d be fucking livid.
West’s lip is bleeding. He touches his fingers to his mouth, smirking when they come away red. “Alex is gonna be pleased about this. He’s worried you don’t know how to hit anymore.”
“I can give you a few more bruises to show him if you like?”
West thinks on this for a second. “Okay. Just don’t hit me in the balls. I have a date tonight. The fresh blood and bruises’ll help me get laid. A broken dick won’t.”
He’s being serious. He tilts his head back, giving me another open shot at his jaw, and I stand over him, trying to decide what I want to do more: knock him the fuck out for being so crazy, or pick his ass up and toss him out onto the street for the very same reason. In the end, I do neither. I hold out my hand, helping him up from the floor.
“Tell me the truth. Is he planning on hurting Gen if I don’t fight for him?”
West rolls his shoulders back, stretching like he just got up from a long, relaxing sleep. “Maybe. Maybe not. I might know, one way or another, but I’m hardly likely to tell you, am I? Alex is my brother. He’s my blood. I’ll always protect his best interests. If that means he needs me to watch him fuck your sister on their wedding night, then sign me up. If that means he wants me to hold her down while he saws off one of her fingers, then I’ll do it. And if it means lying and pretending I’ll do that for him, then I’m okay with that, too.”
I close my eyes, holding my breath in my lungs. He really needs to throw down the shovel—an apt term, since it would seem he’s a fan of digging holes. If he keeps on speaking, I’m going to end up putting him in the ground myself, consequences be damned. “Where is he?”
“Who, Alex?”
“Yeah, where is he right now?”
A slow, menacing smile spreads across West’s face. “He’s dealing with a little problem at this precise moment in time. I can always take you to see him if you’re feeling brave, though?”
“No fucking way. Not fucking happening.” David throws his cell phone onto the coffee table, holding his head in his hands. “This whole thing is so fucking messed up,” he says.
West reaches across the coffee table and straightens David’s phone so that it’s in line with the edge of the wood. “A proper face-to-face with my brother, alone, might be taken as a show of good faith. He might decide there’s another way to handle this entire thing if he thinks you’re willing to play ball,” he says.
“Will Genevieve be with him?”
“Tommy, you can’t seriously be considering this?’’ David’s looking at me like I’m insane. Maybe I am. After all the secrecy and the lies, hiding our tracks for years, flying under the radar, doing or saying nothing that might get us into trouble or tip Alex off as to our location, seeking him out seems like the epitome of madness. Still, Alex technically has the upper hand in this situation. David and I are just two guys, and he has our sister under lock and key in that vast mansion of his, surrounded by countless guards and spies. I ignore my brother, pinning West down under a fierce gaze, waiting for him to answer me.
“No, she won’t. The business he’s conducting isn’t the kind you conduct in front of a woman.”
“Fine. Then take me to him. I want this resolved once and for all.”
