Angel’s Promise by Aleatha Romig

Rett

Johnny coughed.

“Tell me what he said,” I growled.

“Ingalls said she’s a good lay, and he said he wanted her back to teach her a lesson.”

My jaw clenched as my grip on the handle of the pistol tightened. “He said that?”

“Yeah, like they was real close, and he talked about shit, but we didn’t know she was married. God, you gotta believe me. We didn’t know she was your wife.”

The scene around me was covered in a hue of red. My blood had reached its boiling point. I made myself breathe. “How do I know what you’re saying is true?”

“’Cause my kid.”

“You can do better than that.”

The man shook his head until his good eye opened. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ramses. You asked...”

“Go on.”

“Ingalls, he said he never fucked her ass. Said she was real good at blowing and he might pass her around, but he wanted her ass. He said if her ass was as tight as her pussy—”

My fist connected to his torso again. As Johnny coughed and spit, I asked, “Did Ingalls pay you?”

“Half. He paid half.”

My jaw clenched. “When and where do you collect the second half?”

“Desire, tonight. That old Baptist church. It’s boarded up. The one near Pleasure and Metropolitan Streets. There’s a board loose near the back. Inside, he’s got a place he meets with people.”

I knew exactly the place Johnny was describing. Desire, in the Upper Ninth, had a reputation worse than the Lower Ninth. It was a neighborhood that needed cleaning up, and I was ready to light a match to the whole damn thing.

“What time?” I asked.

“He said two. Two in the morning.”

“Why two?”

“Bars still open. Good folks gone home.”

“How much does Ingalls owe you?” I asked.

“Half a G.”

Taking a step back, I spun the pistol in my grip and landed the butt of the handle on his temple. Johnny’s head fell forward and at the point of contact, his flesh sliced and more blood oozed down his cheek. His body went limp and the chain creaked. I spun on my heels, my gaze avoiding my other men, I looked at Leon.

“Five hundred,” Leon said.

I knew what half a G was. My mind was on my wife. “Ingalls offered a measly fucking thousand to get Emma.”

“I’ll off this one for you,” Leon offered.

“No, he’s got a paycheck to collect.” I took one more look at Johnny’s limp body and turned back to Marcus and the other Ramses soldiers. “Get him cleaned up. If he does what we say and brings Ingalls to our trap, I’ll make good on my promise for his kid. Either way, it’s good night, Johnny. He can decide his kid’s fate.”

As more of my men entered the room, I cleaned the blood from my gun and hands and wiped the splatter from the top of my Italian loafers using disinfectant wipes. The soldiers did their job without saying a fucking word.

Walking to the SUV, Leon said, “Boss, Ingalls didn’t leave with Mrs. Ramses.”

My jaw clenched tighter. “He fucking touches her and I’m going to enjoy watching him die.”

Once I was back in the SUV, I pulled up the information from earlier on my phone.

The hackers on my payroll had a network that was invisible to the rest of the world. Logging into it, I took another look at the traffic cam footage from earlier in the day. I started it a few seconds before the collision.

The car carrying more of my men that I had following Emma from the courthouse was cut off at an intersection one block before the point where her SUV was hit. By the time the car with the backup made it to the scene, she was gone.

Even watching the footage for the tenth or more time, curses flew from my lips.

If I wasn’t so fucking furious, I’d be impressed.

The entire maneuver was exceptionally well timed.

Starting with intercepting the backup car, to the SUV’s collision, and the intervention of a black Cadillac sedan, the whole chain of events took less than ninety seconds. It was enough time for my SUV to collide in the perfect way that caused the airbags to deploy.

The black Cadillac swept in and was gone with Emma inside of it in less than forty-five seconds from the time she was removed from the SUV.

That bit of footage, I’d watched more times than I cared to admit.

As fucking upset as I was and as much blood as I wanted to shed, watching Emma forced into the Cadillac without Ingalls gave me something else. It gave me hope. My wife was alive and uninjured in the collision. It was the piece of this puzzle I held onto.

She was alive.

I couldn’t dwell on the thoughts of what Ingalls told others. I had to think straight.

Slowing the footage, I watched as Emma was pulled from the SUV, walked and then screamed as shots were fired. Even as Emma was pushed into the Cadillac and the car took off, I concentrated on the fact she was unhurt and alive.

She is.

Nothing else mattered until I got her back.

My hackers followed the Cadillac on traffic cameras as it sped away across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. The fucking cameras at the Chinchuba exchange weren’t working. And at that point, her trail went cold.

Of course, the Cadillac in question was part of a rental fleet that had been stolen four months ago from a lot in Shreveport. Four of the same models had been taken. One was found parked outside a nightclub in Baton Rouge three days after they were reported stolen. The other three had been MIA until now.

There was no way to link the Cadillac to a person. The license plates were also stolen. Nevertheless, I didn’t have any doubt that Isaiah Boudreau was connected. He and Ingalls had recently been recruiting men in a warehouse in Baton Rouge. A man we had on the inside reported back to Leon the night before last. He said Boudreau seemed more agitated than normal. And then at the last called meeting, he wasn’t there, only Ingalls.

That matched what Johnny said.

While our informant never mentioned Jezebel when Leon questioned him, the mole relayed news that things had been tenser as of late and there was chatter among the ranks that someone else was pulling Boudreau’s strings. They were mumbling about a puppet master.

I’d taken that news well.

Talk was it was Ingalls planning a coup of his own.

My trusted men believed it was Jezebel.

Either way, there was no better way to bring down Boudreau than from the inside. Get his own men to question his authority and watch as the empire he’d tried to build crumbled from within.

“Johnny’s dying tonight,” I said as Leon’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “No pass.”

“Boss, just ’cause Ingalls tells people that stuff about Mrs. Ramses don’t mean it’s true.”

Clenching my teeth, I turned toward the window. As I did, I didn’t see my city outside the windows. It wasn’t the blue evening sky over the skyline. No, I was seeing Emma’s stunning blue gaze and the way her orbs swirled with emotions. I fucking wanted them all. I wanted her passion and excitement, but I’d take her anger and even her fucking disappointment. I’d willingly put up with more displays of the power I’d let her think she had. Hell, she could spend a fucking month on the third floor if she wanted. I’d put up with anything she wanted to give me to have her back, safe and sound.

“Men talk,” Leon said.

I grunted.

He was right. They did.

I didn’t know the extent to the truth in Ingalls’s loud mouth or in Johnny’s rendition, but I knew that what Johnny said had basis. That wasn’t solely because I knew how tight Emma was and how good it felt to be inside her or how she could wrap her lips around me and do this thing with her tongue.

I knew there was some validity, not because she told me, but because during my research, I learned that Emma and William Ingalls had been involved. When I asked her the first day she woke in my house if she’d been in contact with any of her or Kyle’s friends, the day she identified Greyson in the photo, I knew about William.

She didn’t say.

I didn’t push her for answers. My reasoning was that I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life obsessed with her past. Emma’s future was my concern. Even so, I knew.

And if that fucking past wanted to broadcast shit no one needed to hear, if he wanted to put himself on my radar, I had no trouble removing him for good.

If those motherfuckers want a war, they got it.

“Boss, the doctor’s calling you about Knolls.”

Leon’s voice penetrated my thoughts. Looking up, I saw the caller’s name upon the dash of the SUV. I hadn’t even heard the phone ring.

Snapping out of my haze, I lifted my phone. “Ramses here.”