So, I’d learned Lou led a double life. My kids reported Louise Lafayette was a good girl who did her homework and hung with those religious “angel” bitches I’d once told her to charm. My boys told me different. They told me about Loulou Fox who wore next to nothin’ and worked at the shitty titty bar off Highway 99.
The temptation was too fuckin’ great. It seemed that the sweet kid in the frilly white church dress with the bows in her hair had grown into a rebel, a woman not content unless she was livin’ hard and livin’ free.
I couldn’t say I was surprised. I couldn’t say I didn’t have a hand in nurturin’ that in her but now I could see it’d always been there, just waitin’ to take over.
With or without me, Loulou Lafayette was going over to the dark side.
And I’d decided I’d be the welcoming committee.
So there I was sittin’ in a booth in The Lotus, makin’ out with one of the dancers so when Lou finally got her head outta her ass and realized I was there, she’d know I wasn’t there for romance or fuckin’ flowers.
I was there to teach her right and proper how to live the kind life she was barrelin’ toward without gettin’ herself pimped up, drugged down or washed out. She was givin’ in to the devil on her shoulder and I was bound and fuckin’ determined to be the voice of Satan.
There would be no hearts, not even any fucking.
Louise was a seventeen-year-old daughter of the bastard who’d been makin’ my life a livin’ hell for years.
She was the definition of off-fuckin’-limits even for a man like me who didn’t go in for rules.
As solid as I was on the point, it still rocked me like a sucker punch to the gut when she finally turned those massive blue eyes to mine, our gaze connecting like two mechanical parts meant to work in sync.
Fuck me, she was a wet dream come to life.
Then the hurt came.
It washed over her features like acid, contorting her features until she was as close to ugly as she could ever become.
I felt that pain in my chest. Had to fight the instinct to punch myself in the face ’cause that’s what I woulda done to any other motherfucker that put that look on her face.
Instead, I hammered that final nail in the coffin of her childish dreams with a ruthless bang.
I winked at her.
Just like I had when she’d come to visit me that first time in the hospital.
I fuckin’ winked at her and her acid washed face crumpled into ash, skin pale, features lax.
Fuck me but I ruined her with that wink.
Remorse burned through me and I nearly gagged into the bitch whose mouth I was eatin’ at.
“You okay, baby?” she purred into my ear.
I didn’t take my eyes off Lou even as she jerked outta her misery and turned away from me to talk to the old-timers sitting at her bar. She said somethin’ real quick then hustled out of sight.
“Done with you, sugar. Go wax a pole or somethin’,” I told the dancer, gently but firmly shoving ’er off my lap.
She blinked at me but she was a dancer, she knew how it was, and she strolled off without givin’ me lip.
I was grateful. It was hard to tell if I wanted to rage at someone, beat ’em senseless to get rid of all the guilt under my skin or burst into fuckin’ tears like a twelve-year-old chick.
“Z,” my brother Bat called out as he rounded the booth. “Let’s roll out, brother. Nova’s got a party goin’ with those biker models back at the compound.”
I nodded at my now-warm glass of bourbon and tipped it back. The burn settled me some so I could look up at Bat without lookin’ like a pussy.
“Wow, what the hell’s up with you?” Bat asked.
Damn the perceptive bastard.
“Nothin’,” I said as I made to get up from the booth.
“Nothin’ my pasty white ass,” Bat snorted as he sat down, blocking my exit. “Tell me what’s got you lookin’ so fucked. Last time, it was Farrah O.D.ing again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t fuckin’ mention that bitch’s name. Haven’t seen her in three years an’ another fifty wouldn’t be long enough.”
“Z, brother, you know I won’t push if you gotta keep it down but there are some serious ghosts in your eyes and fuck knows, I gotta sense what that looks like.”
My mouth twisted in a grimaced smirk because if anyone knew pain, it was Bat. He’d served in the military for fifteen years before being honourably discharged after the rest of his battalion was killed in action durin’ an air raid in Iraq. He’d been my best friend before he’d been my brother and I knew better than to keep shit from him ’cause he was a fuckin’ hound dog at sniffin’ it out. I’d kept ’im outta Lou-surveillance duties for exactly that fuckin’ reason.