A swamp siren, maybe? Nanan Cherise insisted they existed just the same as gators and used to warn him to look out for both when he built rafts to take out on the river. Maybe she was from the Creole and Black side of the swamp he’d never visited.
But what would a Creole swamp siren be doing at a house as fine as the Perreaults? Also, she had a screwdriver in one hand and something metal he couldn’t quite make out in the other one.
He only had a moment to wonder what it was before she gracefully dived into the deep end, barely making a splash as she disappeared underneath the surface.
So not a swamp siren, then. Only two-parent kids who went places like summer camps and swim classes ever dove off things like that.
By the time Galen reached the side of the pool, he’d figured out this vision was the spoiled princess. The one he’d always imagined looking like a brown version of Veruca Salt from that Johnny Depp movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
But she didn’t come up right away. She stayed in the water so long he was taking off his shoes with a plan to dive in there after her when she finally emerged with a huge gulp of air. No, not a siren. But she put Galen in mind of a mermaid. Her hair was slicked back and dripping with water.
Later, he’d find out she’d correctly figured out the bottom drain cover needed to be replaced, and she’d been trying to fix the problem herself. She hadn’t finished the job, and maybe she would’ve done another deep dive right after her gulp of air.
If she hadn’t seen Galen.
She blinked at him. Then swam to the stairs at the side of the pool.
And maybe there was some realm where he didn’t go hard as concrete as he watched her climb up those metal steps like Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But this wasn’t that universe.
She stood, dripping water on to the concrete. She was so much smaller than him. He towered over her. She was a teenage girl, and he was a grown, Army-trained man.
But she held him completely entranced.
“Swamp Boy?” she whispered.
Two words. That was all she ever said to him.
Just two weeks before her people turned him into the monster he became.
CHAPTER 7
HADES
Galen was dead. Buried in the same grave he’d found his mother in when he and Waylon dug up her body.
Hades.
That was what everyone called him now. Not Galen. Not Swamp Boy.
He’d picked the name when he returned to Louisiana a few months ago. This time as the leader of a powerful biker gang. One who could and had gotten away with several counts of murder.
Yet, the spoiled virgin had called him Swamp Boy. Like he was still just a story his mother had told her. Not the man who now owned her, body and soul.
Disrespect.
He could not stomach it.
Perhaps that was why he deviated from the plan, even though the camera was rolling and Ellie was waiting for him to do exactly as they’d talked about.
Kill her in cold blood on camera, then leave her body deep in the woods behind the Perreault house, just as Antoine Perreault and his cronies had done to their mother.
The virgin sacrifice had only been a piece of patient teasing. He’d wanted Antoine to suffer and sacrifice before watching his spoiled bitch of a daughter get snuffed out.
Death wasn’t good enough for that bastard. Hades wanted him to lose everything, bit by bit. Including his precious blood daughter.
But she’d called him Swamp Boy.
And another idea occurred to him as he regarded her, trembling before him on the floor. An idea his dick liked.
