The Bourbon Thief(105)

“The barons are dead,” she said. “Long live the baroness.”

If and when she told this story to Cooper McQueen someday, she would tell him that she laughed when she stood on their graves. A better story than the truth, that she didn’t laugh. Instead, she cried. Only a little and only for Tamara and Levi and Veritas and herself, too. She cried for herself because she’d been carrying this burden a long time and it hurt to let it down even more than it hurt carrying it.

As Paris walked away, she tied the red ribbon from the Red Thread bottle around her finger.

It was done. It was finished.

Love what they destroyed.

Destroy what they loved.

And with that, Tamara’s vengeance was complete.

But Paris’s was only beginning.

And it began with a million-dollar bottle of bourbon seeping into the ground. Paris shook her head, finally laughing like she wanted to. Hard to believe she’d conned that bottle out of Cooper McQueen with nothing more than a few fucks and a dirty story. Paris owned him last night and perhaps she owned him still.

Like Tamara always said, you can’t sell people.

Oh, but you can buy them.

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