Rose, Charlotte - Bayou Flood [The Shifters of Alligator Bend 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) by Charlotte Rose Page B

the fishing business. She said that she always had other dreams and that when she got the opportunity of a lifetime, the congregation banished her.”
    Virgil sucked in his breath. “It’s true that we banished her. I ain’t gonna lie about that one. But we don’t banish people unless they do somethin’ to seriously harm the congregation. We got rules.”
    Sophie raised an eyebrow. “Rules?”
    “Yeah. We’re not gonna throw family away. They have to do somethin’ horrible for us to cast ’em out. Like the two brothers who knowingly claimed a woman who wasn’t their mate.”
    “Georgina—no, Georgina would never kill anyone. Never .” Sophie was beginning to regret her decision to come out to the bayou, thinking that Georgina must have been right all along. There was no way her friend could do something so awful to deserve banishment.
    “You’re right, she wouldn’t,” Virgil said. “And we ain’t sayin’ she killed someone.”
    “But she did betray us.”
    “Tell me how, then. I need to know the truth.”
    “It’s kind of a long story,” Virgil said. “Armand, the guy you met when we rode in? Well, at one point, he and his mother, Rosaline, got captured when they were in gator form and put in the Aquarium of the Americas.”
    Gabriel jumped in. “Rosaline and Armand are albino gators, so they were a pretty famous display. ’Course, nobody knew they were shifters, and they weren’t about to just take human form. Keepin’ a low profile is in our best interest. We’d been tryin’ to get them back, but we were stuck. And then Ferdinand Villemont decided he wanted to buy ’em from the Aquarium for his private zoo.”
    “Well, that’s illegal, right?” Sophie asked. “You don’t get to keep dangerous predators as pets.”
    “People who have as much money as Villemont generally get to do whatever they want,” Virgil said, taking her hand. “He faced resistance, but he was doin’ his best. Our first big attempt to free ’em, Villemont just so happened to be at the Aquarium, and it fucked up the whole plan.”
    “Turns out he was in cahoots with Georgina the whole time,” Gabriel said, rubbing his eyes, as though the memory gave him a headache. “She’d let him know about our plans. He even pretended to capture her, made us worried sick, thinkin’ she was gonna die bein’ apart from us. But she was plannin’ with him the entire time.”
    Sophie gasped. “I just—she’s such a great friend. Well, I guess she hasn’t been so good to you. But she’s been so good to me since I’ve known her. It’s so difficult to imagine her doing something so conniving, you know?”
    Virgil nodded and squeezed her hand, hoping to comfort her. “I’m sorry to have to break it to you, baby. It’s tough learnin’ that someone you trusted ain’t the person you thought they were.”
    Sophie sighed. “So what happened then?”
    “We got word that Villemont had bribed a museum employee to sell him the gators under the table. Xavier and Oscar managed to pull off the rescue, and Georgina was right there with Villemont. Adele, their mate, was the one to first be suspicious of Georgina. We refused to believe Adele, but when Oscar and Xavier went in for the rescue, Georgina was right there. They managed to pull off the rescue, though it was a pretty sticky situation.”
    Sophie’s face lit up. “Wait. When the Aquarium reported that a couple of gators had disappeared…”
    Gabriel nodded. “But they didn’t disappear. They just got to go home.”
    “So, what? Villemont and Georgina ended up off the hook?”
    “Not right away,” Virgil said. “But like I said, he has more than enough money to get out of whatever trouble he’s in. He’s been causin’ trouble in the bayou ever since. Looks like he bailed Georgina out, too. We didn’t realize she was still workin’ for him. Guess he really took a likin’ to her.”
    Sophie sighed and rubbed her temples.
    “You okay, baby?” Gabriel asked.