Chapter 4: Blood in the Streets
The knock wasn’t a knock. It was a battering ram of flesh on wood, urgent, frantic, a sound that shattered the fragile quiet of the room before the door even burst open.
Armani was on her feet in an instant, the thin sheet wrapped around her, her hand diving beneath the pillow for the small, silver-mounted derringer she kept there. Lucian moved just as fast, rolling sideways off the narrow bed, landing in a crouch, his body a tense line of readiness.
Jean-Baptiste filled the doorway, his chest heaving, his eyes wide with a fear Armani had only seen once before, the night the old place on Decatur Street had been raided. His gaze swept over her, the sheet, the naked man on her floor, and for a fraction of a second, sheer disbelief warred with the panic.
“Déjà la?” Armani snapped, the Creole sharp.
“Not the law,” Jean-Baptiste gasped, switching to English as his eyes locked on Lucian. “Worse. Beaumont’s men. His plantation overseers. Three of them. Big Red Mick is with them. They’re at the end of the alley, arguing with the watchman. They’re asking for him.” He jerked his chin toward Lucian. “Say they know he’s here. Say they’re taking him back.”
Lucian straightened slowly. The protective, almost vulnerable man of minutes before was gone, sanded away. In his place was the heir, his face hardening into a mask of cold authority. “Mick O’Shea,” he said, the name a flat statement. “My father’s mastiff.”
“They’re armed for a hunt, Monsieur,” Jean-Baptiste said, the title laced with venom. “And they’re drunk enough to kick in every door between here and the river.”
The air turned to ice in Armani’s lungs. Overseers. Here. In her sanctuary. They weren’t city guards to be bribed or reasoned with. They were brutes from the sugar fields, men for whom violence was a language, and a place like hers was a den of sin to be purified with torch and fist. And they were here for Lucian.
Her mind, usually a whirlwind of contingency plans, seized for a terrifying second. Then it clicked into a terrible, clear logic. They knew he was here. Someone had followed him. Someone had talked.
She threw a cotton shift at Lucian and began yanking on her own clothes, a simple dress of dark indigo. “The tunnel. Now.”
Lucian caught the shift but didn’t put it on. “If it’s Mick, he won’t be swayed. And he won’t care about your… establishment. He’ll burn it to the ground looking for me.” He looked at Jean-Baptiste. “You have a back way?”
“We have a sewer,” Jean-Baptiste corrected, moving to a section of the worn wallpaper beside the hearth. He pressed, and a panel slid back with a groan, revealing a yawn of darkness that smelled of wet brick and decay. “It goes to a drain culvert under the old market.”
“You go,” Lucian said to Armani, finally pulling the shift over his head. It was comically small on him, straining at the shoulders. “Get your people out. I’ll go meet Mick.”
“Are you insane?” Armani hissed, shoving her feet into boots. “They’ll drag you back to your father like a runaway hound. Or they’ll make a show of it right here in the street.”
“Exactly,” Lucian said, his voice chillingly calm. He walked to his discarded coat, pulled his pistol from the pocket, and checked the load. The metallic click-clack was obscenely loud. “A show. My father wants me back? He sends dogs to fetch me from a brothel? I’ll give him a scene he’ll never live down.” He looked at her, and the blue of his eyes was like the heart of a flame. “But they can’t find you. They can’t connect this place to me, not for certain. Or you’re finished.”
It was a reckless, arrogant, stupidly noble plan. And it contained a bitter truth: his presence was the poison. Her escape was to get away from him.
Jean-Baptiste had lit a small oil lamp from the room’s main light. The flame guttered as he held it into the tunnel’s mouth. “Armani, viens ici. Now. The girls are already moving. Let the white man fight his own battles.”
A shout echoed up from the courtyard below, raw and coarse. “Master Lucian! Your papa’s waitin’! Don’t make us come up there and spoil your fun!”
Lucian’s jaw tightened. He stepped toward the door.
Armani moved. She crossed the room in three strides and caught his arm. The muscle beneath her fingers was corded steel. “You don’t get to be the martyr here. You brought this to my door.” She shoved him toward the open panel, her strength fueled by a fury that burned away fear. “You want to atone? You get in the damn hole. Jean, go. Lead him to the culvert, make sure he doesn’t get lost. I’ll follow.”
“Armani—” Jean-Baptiste’s protest was cut off by the sound of splintering wood from two floors below.
Lucian resisted, his body a rooted oak. “They will tear this place apart.”
“They’ll try.” She met his gaze, the shared darkness of the rooftop a new pact between them. “This is my house. I know how to vanish in it. Now go.”
For a suspended second, he searched her face. Then he gave a single, sharp nod. He ducked into the tunnel, the ridiculous shift tearing at the seams. Jean-Baptiste shot her a look of pure betrayal before following, taking the lamp.
The shadows swallowed them.
Armani slammed the panel shut just as the thunder of boots began pounding up her main staircase, mingled with the alarmed cries of her women. She smoothed the wallpaper, adjusted a small painting of a riverboat to cover the seam, and turned.
The room held the echo of him: the rumpled sheets, the scent of their sweat and the storm. The bite on her shoulder throbbed. She took her derringer, tucked it into her dress pocket, and poured a glass of bourbon from a decanter on the table. She sat on the edge of the bed, back straight, and took a slow sip.
The door to her room exploded inward.
Big Red Mick filled the frame, his face a map of broken veins and sun-coarsened skin, his fists like cured hams. Two other men, similarly brutal in aspect, crowded behind him, leering.
Mick’s small, piggish eyes took in the room, the single woman sipping liquor on a rumpled bed. A slow, ugly grin spread across his face. “Well, now. Looks like we missed the party.” His gaze fell on Lucian’s discarded trousers and coat on the floor. The grin vanished. “Where is he?”
Armani took another sip, letting the burn steady her nerves. She let her eyes go wide, a little unfocused, playing the part of the addled madam. “A gentleman? Earlier, yes. But he left, cher. Said he had business on the river. You just missed him.” She gestured lazily with her glass toward the open window, where the rain had softened to a drizzle.
Mick wasn’t stupid. He strode into the room, his boots muddying her rug. He picked up Lucian’s coat, felt the quality of the wool, saw the Beaumont crest discreetly embroidered inside the collar. His face darkened.
He dropped the coat and backhanded her.
The blow was casual, practiced. It snapped her head to the side, filled her mouth with the coppery taste of blood. The glass flew from her hand and shattered against the wall.
“I ain’t askin’ again, whore,” he breathed, leaning in so she could smell the rum and tobacco on him. “That boy is worth more than this whole stinkin’ block. You tell me where he went, or I start breaking things. Startin’ with you.”
Armani touched her split lip, looked at the blood on her fingers. Then she looked past Mick, to the open door, where Claudette, one of her younger girls, peeked in with terror in her eyes before disappearing.
Armani smiled, a thin, red smear. “He went out the window,” she said softly. “You know how young men are. Always looking for an adventure.”
She was buying seconds. Heartbeats. Hoping the tunnel’s darkness had swallowed Lucian and Jean-Baptiste whole. The overseer’s fist clenched, and she braced for the next blow, her own hand curling around the derringer in her pocket.
Somewhere deep in the walls of the old building, in the damp, forgotten veins of the city, she imagined she could hear the sound of running water. And footsteps, fading away.