*** Big Danni's POV***
I walk around the house towards the garage, her words still ringing in my ears. He was protecting her before I got here! Her revelation pounding through my skull.... saved her from being r***d. The stench of gasoline morphed into blood—Marie’s blood—and suddenly I was back in 2008.
**FLASHBACK—New Orleans, 2008**
The warehouse reeks of fish guts and betrayal. I’d tracked Marie’s scream to a rusted shipping container, its sides spray-painted with a grinning calavera—the cartel’s calling card. Shadows pooled at my feet, thick as the Creole curses I spat into the dark. My boots slip on blood-slick concrete as I kick open the shipping container door. Inside, a single bare bulb swung like a hanged man.
“Marie?!”
Her name echoed back, drowned by a man’s laugh—slic
