Page 7 of Ruthless Vow
The front door clicks shut behind me and the morning air hits my skin. Humid, heavy, too hot for July even though the sun is up. Ninety-two percent humidity at six in the morning. The air doesn’t move. It sits on your skin and stays.
Sweat prickles along my spine before I’ve taken three steps.
My Honda sits in the driveway. Sensible. Paid off. Like me.
I slide into the driver’s seat. The leather is already warm against my bare thighs, the dress riding up as I settle behind the wheel. Engine turns over on the first try. I pull out before I can change my mind, before the front door opens and Papa comesrunning out with his face white and his mouth full of you can’t, you’re not, she was the one who.
The streets are quiet this early. A garbage truck rumbles somewhere in the distance. Mockingbirds argue in the live oaks that line the road, their calls sharp against the heavy air. Jasmine drifts through my cracked window, mixing with the sweet rot underneath that never leaves this city, no matter how much the tourists pretend it isn’t there.
I love this city. Every humid, beautiful, decaying inch of it. New Orleans is in my bones the way numbers are in my head, and leaving has never been an option.
You left once.
The acceptance letter from Chicago. A forensic accounting firm that decided I was worth something. I kept it hidden for two weeks, reading we are pleased to offer until the words stopped looking like a mistake.
I didn’t take it. Told myself Papa needed me.
Scared to find out what happens when you stop being needed and start being wanted.
The blocks slide past.Four. Seven. Nine.The neighborhood changes as I move deeper into Garden District territory. Bigger houses. Higher walls. Security cameras mounted at every corner, watching, recording, remembering.
Like him. He remembers everything. Names, debts, slights. I’ve seen it. Three years of late nights in that compound, cross-referencing transactions and tracing money through shell corporations while he worked in the next room. I learned his tells through doorways and shadows the way I learn everything. From the margins.
The rolled sleeves that mean he’s either about to work or about to hurt someone. The stillness that settles over him before violence, so complete it thickens the air. The way his teeth grind when someone disappoints him.
Twelve. Thirteen.
One night, I heard him scream.
A nightmare. Raw and broken, echoing through the walls at 2:00 a.m. I was working late, Papa asleep in the car, and I heard it. Heard him stumble to the study. Heard the clink of glass. I stood in the hallway, pressed against the wall, my breath held so tight my lungs ached, and watched through a crack in the door as he poured whiskey with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Breathed through something that looked like drowning.
I should have gone back to the ledgers and pretended I hadn’t seen the most dangerous man in New Orleans fall apart in the dark.
I stayed. Watched. My hand pressed flat against the wall where his shoulder would have been on the other side.
The compound gates appear ahead. Black iron covered in climbing jasmine, tall enough to block the view. Pretty, if you don’t know what it hides.
I pull up to the guard station and kill the engine. The air conditioning dies with a wheeze, and heat floods back into the car. My palms are damp. I wipe them on my thighs, leaving faint streaks on the burgundy fabric.
The guard steps out of the booth. Young, armed, his hand resting on his holster as he approaches. He looks at my car the way people look at something that doesn’t belong.
I’ve driven through these gates a hundred times. Always with Papa. Always the accountant’s quiet daughter, not worth a second glance.
My knuckles go white against the steering wheel.
The guard reaches my window. I roll it down. Hot air floods the car, thick with jasmine and the metallic smell of the iron gate.
“Miss Neri.” He frowns, looking past me to the empty passenger seat. “Your father isn’t with you.”
“No.” My voice holds steady. I’m surprised by that. “I’m here alone. I need to see Don Santoro.”
The guard’s eyes drop to my dress. The deep red. The way it fits. His gaze flickers, then goes blank.
“It’s six in the morning.”
“I know what time it is.”
