Jolie Blonde (Vigilare Book 3) (33 page)

“Mmhh,” Lon groans with her subtle massage. “Don’t even try it,” he comments, the corners of his mouth perking shrewdly, “you’re not going to change my mind about him.”

He shifts their position on the dance floor so that Brianna is now facing his parents’ direction—in Winona’s arms rests an ecstatic Braydon who claps at the sight of his mommy and daddy dancing together. Brianna’s eyes light up over Lon’s shoulder as she waves to her firstborn.

“You and that little boy are my entire world. The two of you make my heart beat.” Lon pulls her right hand wrapped in his left in from its proper position and places it over his heart.
Ga gung…ga gung…ga gung,
he waits momentarily while she palpates the significance of his declaration. “It’s you, Braydon and me forever, Brie. It’s my responsibility to keep you all safe.”

“Even from Johnny?” She rolls her eyes, disbelieving. “At one time, you and him were best of friends, Lon. I don’t see why it still can’t be that way?”

Lon upraises his brow, the action enough to let his beloved know that it will never be
that way
again. Evading a thorough explanation of his skepticism of his collegiate frat brother, knowing it is pointless where Brianna is concerned, he plays it off as if he is merely bothered by Johnny’s incessant work conversation. “You don’t come to a man’s wedding and talk shop. It’s uncouth.”

“Uncouth?” Brianna giggles. “Since when did you become so uptight over social graces,” her question not a question at all, simply a lighthearted jab at her proudly uncultivated mate fresh off the bayou. Her mind recalls a place and time where a sun-kissed seventeen-year-old took her upstream in that very bayou on a paddleboarding adventure.

As the band comes to the end of
Jolie Blonde,
the surrounding crowd encourages, “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” with no regard for
social graces.

“Dip her, Lon!” one of his work colleagues and friends dares.

Brianna looks at him provokingly for old time’s sake. “What’s the matter? Chicken?” She flaps her arms lightly. “Balk…balk…baaaallll,” she whispers through a smile, reminiscing of that adolescent paddleboarding adventure many moons ago.

Lon laughs, eagerly joining her in a trip down memory lane. “Cackle away, hen. There’s only room for one rooster in this henhouse,” he, too, whispers seductively into her ear before boldly tipping his head back, releasing a macho, “Cock-a-doodle-dooooo!”

As the last of the
ooooo
echoes through the spacious backyard, he dips his bride in ostentatious fashion, planting a passionate kiss on her upturned lips.

The guests go wild, hooting and hollering—
yeehaws,
audible tongue-rolls and the like reverberate around—before joining the couple on the dance floor for a faster-paced follow-up to
Jolie Blonde.

The only guest resistant to joining in the fun is Johnny Vito, who leers at the happy couple from under a faraway oak tree impatiently biding his time until opportunity presents itself.

Yet another three years passes, Brianna finishes up a long week at Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. The red heels she wears at the bottom of her black and white pinstriped pantsuit click off the floor at the same heady pace that her mind works on her latest assignment. Almost a decade since her parents’ death, their murderer(s) still unpunished, serves as fuel for each and every case she takes on as a prosecutor in a city with a rich history of corruption, having garnered such an unattractive handle as
The Big Sleazy.

A completely different woman than the carefree girl she used to be, her life’s experience has led her to be bold, calculating and just. The affluent life she and Lon have attained bleeds into her work—if she wants something, she goes after it, no holds barred. Motherhood has provoked her protective nature in and out of the home—safeguarding the innocent, a prevalent theme in her position. She is not for sale; nobody
buys
her. A fact well known throughout her circles, and a fact most disturbing to her equally protective husband.

Brianna’s red heels make a detour on the way to her office, exiting into the nearest ladies’ room. She locks the door behind her, hurrying to the sink, where she leans over the white porcelain basin, cupping cool water with her hands. Splashing it up around her perspiring face as she gauges her ashen complexion, “Oh, not now,” she says, looking at herself in the mirror.

“We’ve got work to do, baby,” she continues, patting the yet to be fully formed
bun
in her lower abdomen. “We don’t have time for morning sickness.”

Clearing her throat, she gently pats dry her face, the thought of another child exciting yet slightly daunting in her line of work, especially now that she is determined to go after the Gambinis—
The Big Easy’s
most notorious mafia.

Her mind recalls a conversation she and Lon had about the dangers of her position and her responsibility to her family not too long ago.

“I don’t like it, Brie,” Lon’s words surface in her memory. “This case. These men. It’s dangerous. Can’t you give the case to someone else? Not to sound like a chauvinist, but I would feel much better if you would step down and let your partner handle it.”

“By my partner, you mean Dean. Dean Benjamin. Give it to him because he is a man,” she concludes agitatedly, walking from the kitchen stove to the table, placing upon it the evening’s dinner casserole.

Lon follows her, plates in hand, setting the table. “Exactly, because he is a man, and
only
because he is a man. Not because he can do a better job.” He folds linen napkins, laying one neatly beside each plating. “These men you’re prosecuting, they’re not to be messed with, Brie. They’re on trial for brutally raping three women…”

“That we know of,” she interrupts. “Three women who are willing to come forward and testify. That’s not even a dent in the lives they have tortured and ruined.” She returns her potholders to the drawer beside the stove.

“A credit to my point,” he clarifies. “Women are not coming forward to testify because they’re scared. These men have ties to the most notorious gang in New Orleans. Why would you put yourself in this position?” He leans over the table, both hands firmly planted, his expression somewhere between authoritative and pleading. “I’ve never asked you to defer a case. But I am asking you to step down from this one. I don’t like it, baby. It scares me. It should scare you, too.”

“It does scare me.” She leans up against the counter, forcefully exhaling, tears on hold in her eyes, her emotion surfacing.

Lon walks to her, to comfort her. She holds him at bay with her arm. He leans against the kitchen sink across from her, his concern palpable.

“But I can’t quit. Those women…the three who came forward. They trust me, Lon. I told them if they testify those men will go away for a long time. Dean…he’s great. But he likes to make deals. He’ll agree to three years. They’ll do half of that with probation.” She busies herself wiping off the stovetop. “That’s not good enough. I can get ten…ten years for each one…I know I can.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” he affirms, pride in his inflection. “I just want you to consider the position you’re putting yourself in.”

From their viewpoint out the kitchen window, a school bus drives off in the distance as Braydon runs up the long driveway toward the house toting his backpack. His trusty companion Boudreaux (Bou Bou for short) meets him halfway, barking jovially, his tail jousting from side to side with fervid excitement.

“The position you’re putting your family in,” Lon continues solemnly.

Brianna smiles at the exuberant joy radiating from her son’s face. “Another reason I can’t quit.” She turns around, facing her protectively paternal mate. “Isn’t that what we do? As parents? We model for our children…hoping to instill in them pride, integrity, a sense of right and wrong. We tell him not to be afraid of the dark. We tell him school is not scary. We tell him to be brave and always stand up for what is right.” She runs her hand down the side of Lon’s handsome face. “I never fancied myself a hypocrite.”

A knock on the bathroom door pulls her back to the present. One more slurp of cool water from the palm of her hand and she has regrouped, her mind ripe with the pursuit of justice.

Her red heels, once again, clicking off the marble floor, she meets her colleague and friend, Johnny Vito, in her office.

“You don’t look so good,” Johnny remarks, sitting in the chair across from her desk, his knee bounding up and down anxiously, as usual.

“Thanks.” Brianna flexes her brow and rolls her eyes as if to say
Just what every woman wants to hear.
“So…” She wastes no time further discussing her appearance, but gets down to business, expectant of a reply from Johnny.

He shakes his head at odds with her request. “I got what you wanted. Your evidence. Tying Vinny Gambini to those two punks we put away a few years back.”

“Manuel ‘Manny’ Briggs and Angelo ‘G-Lo’ Tulane,” she makes a point of stating their names aloud, letting Johnny know she has not forgotten about them, not even their nicknames. “Rapists…that’s what they are. Not punks…rapists. There is a difference.”

Johnny waves the white flag—the palm of his hand, fittingly. “I get it. They’re scum. The lowest of the low.” His pale blue eyes meet hers sharply. “Don’t forget, I was there through all of that. I know what that case meant to you.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she acknowledges his crucial
dirt-digging
skills, in large part responsible for their win. “Just making sure you plan on being here through the rest of it.” Brianna looks him over skeptically.

He lets out a frustrated puff of air. “You know I’m pretty much game for anything. But I don’t know why you have to go after the Gambinis. There’s plenty of other cases. Can’t you get a hard-on for one of them?”

“Now you sound like my boss. And Lon. And, well, basically, everyone.” With her irritation, she picks up a napkin from the day’s lunch off her desk and swipes it around her forehead and the back of her neck, feeling a fit of nausea coming on.

“First time in a long time
Loverboy
and I have agreed on anything.” Johnny presses his elbows into his thighs, leaning forward in his chair, still bothered by his and Lon’s falling out.

“Why, Johnny Vito, have you gone soft?” Brianna patronizes her daredevil friend, never figuring him one to back down from any case. Scooting the trash can at the corner of her desk a bit closer to her chair, she continues, sincerely this time, “Does that mean I’m on my own with this one?”

He shakes his head, halfway perturbed at himself for his gluttony. “You know I can’t help myself. I’m in. We pull this off, we’ll own the freakin’ city.” He grins with the powerful thought.

“It’s not about owning the city, Johnny.” She holds her next thought for fear that her lunch will come up with her words, her hand cupping her mouth.

“I know. It’s about right and wrong.” He rolls his eyes, even though a part of him admires such integrity. “Are you okay?” He notices the sweat beads glistening off her face and neck.

“I…” Her words are stifled by a pressing urge to retch. Grabbing up the trash can, she humps over it, a once-coveted lunch rejected.

Johnny jumps up out of his chair, closing the door to her office in an attempt to provide her some privacy. He paces in front of the window, quite uncomfortable with his own vomit, let alone witnessing another’s. The water cooler in the corner begs of him as he pours her a cool paper cup full.

Setting it on the edge of her desk, he proffers, restlessly, “Here. Take a swig. Rinse your mouth out. Something.” Pacing in front of the window, once again, he continues filling the awkward silence that follows her fowl spewing, “Goddamn germ factory…this place. Always something going around.”

“Thank you.” She swigs the water, clearing her mouth. “Don’t worry, what I’ve got, you can’t catch.” She chuckles, her hand coming to rest affectionately over her lower abdomen.