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When she didn’t call out, I pushed open the door.
No matter where you go, I will hunt you down. You will pay for your sins.
The words skittered in the back of my mind, starting and stopping several times as if a broken record skipping and repeating. My stomach lurched and I slapped my hand over my mouth and nose, the bottle of water slipping from my fingers. I watched as it tumbled to the floor, water splashing everywhere.
Everything was suddenly in slow motion.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
Mortal Sins Must Be Paid in Like Kind
The horrible words were written across the wall in red ink. No, blood. Strings of it oozed from the letters.
There was no way to describe the scene of horror. She was dead. Dead. Her body lying in the middle of the bed, blood… Oh, no. No!
I stumbled backward, hitting the hallway wall. There was blood everywhere, strings of it on the walls and the floor.
Her head was turned, her lifeless eyes depicting the horror she’d been through.
He’d gotten the wrong person. Because of me. I killed her. Me. Oh, God. Oh…
“Ginny. Ginny!” I slid to the floor and wailed.
CHAPTER 2
New Orleans
Francois
“You’re out of your mind. You do know that. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
As if death bothered me in the least. I was used to bloodshed and violence, dead bodies, and twisted limbs. However, not today.
Grinning, I grabbed the helmet from one of the pit crew. “So what? You only live once.” I couldn’t help grinning at my buddy of two decades before buckling the strap under my chin, taking long strides toward the specially designed Corvette I’d had a hand in designing. Racecars weren’t my forte, simply a love I’d had since my father had taken me to the Daytona 500 when I was eight or nine. After that, I’d been addicted to speed.
Owning not only a racetrack outside of New Orleans but also a racing team had been a dream come true. My buddy and I were business partners in the venture, utilizing not only combined capital but our powerful influences to ensure the project didn’trun into any hiccups. I held extreme power not just in New Orleans but all of Louisiana, as well as several other states. Politicians were terrified of what my family and I could do, the influence we could wield. Elections were won and lost on who we supported.
And those we destroyed for crossing us.
Brandon Baxter had taken the high road where I’d been forced on more than one occasion to use more… down and dirty methods of achieving our goals. Weeding through the red tape had been eye-opening. Getting the project to this point hadn’t been without significant hurdles or threats. At least I’d kept the bloodshed down to a minimum. I grinned at the thought.
The first race was in a few days, but I was testing out the track and the racecar Brandon and I had commissioned almost eight months before. We’d had a hand in every detail, right down to the perfect paint color. Fire Engine Red. We’d built our pit crew and secured the driver of our choice through providing top of the line pay scale and benefits. However, I wasn’t in this as a hobby. I had no intentions of us losing. Period.
Nothing I touched had ever lost, both naysayers and admirers admitting I had a Midas touch. I was fortunate in that I was wealthy and brutal enough to demand and get what I wanted.
With no exceptions.
“Incidentally, I won’t be able to make the race,” he said far too casually.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I wish I were.”
“What’s happening, hot date?” I was shocked but could tell by the look on his face he wasn’t happy about missing something we’d planned for almost a year.
“Just a business meeting with some clients flying into Germany, which isn’t by choice. I’ll hate missing it.”
I knew he was struggling with certain clients, many of them international. He was building his wealth, branching out, the man substituting money and power for a relationship, something I knew far too well.
