The Gargoyle and the Gypsy (The Sacred Duet, Book 1)
Published by Dr. Rebecca Sharp
Copyright © 2020 Dr. Rebecca Sharp
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, photocopying, or recording, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales or events is entirely coincidental.
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Title Page
Copyright
A Note to the Reader
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Preview of The Heartbreak of Notre Dame
Other Works by Dr. Rebecca Sharp
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This is a warning.
This romance contains darker themes. Quinton and Esme’s story features violence, sex, and sensitive topics of religion and terrorism.
If you believe any of these topics might bother you, I encourage you to please stop reading here.
Please.
To the heart of Paris.
And to Victor Hugo.
“Every man is two men; one is awake in the darkness,
the other asleep in the light.”
—Kahlil Gibran
Quinton
We need to talk.
Ominous words from a woman I hadn’t seen in a very long time.
I turned down the side alley that was even more dimly lit than the previous. Ancient-looking streetlights reached out like wrought-iron skeletons from the buildings lining the road, the older streets too narrow to support traditional freestanding lampposts. The light from them flickered like fading specters of a history that would never be fully remembered again.
I spotted the small stone church in the center of the block, tucked back between larger buildings, its façade wrinkled with age-ridden fractures.
I’d always hated history. Not real history. I hated the synthetic fabric that names and dates were woven into because it told the story from one side of a coin.
And on the other lived the forgotten man. Not the oppressed or downtrodden. No, those men found their place in the story if for no other reason than to contrast their oppressor. The forgotten man was the one who lived in the in-between. The one who fought for the oppressed but was not remembered, who gave and suffered to help the abused—to help those whom history eagerly celebrated in their triumph over injustice. But the forgotten man was not celebrated. He was part of the transaction not the triumph over wrong.
In the case of a church, history would tell of both powerful priests who brought hope to their flock and of the ill-fated poor who were blessed by the miraculous institution. History would not tell of the forgotten man who built the church.
Time would not remember the men and women who gave so the church could exist, so noble priests could preach and so those in need could be attended.
History was the beam that teetered between the persecuted and the powerful. And it seesawed its full weight on the fulcrum of the forgotten man.
Men like my father and the people he worked for. The Valois. Unseen and unrecognized, they tipped the balance of power whichever way the government saw fit. In the shadows. With means and methods not meant to be seen.
I took a deep breath, the musky air thickening with a kind of dust that could never be filtered—the kind of dust that collects from past choices… and the prospect of seeing the woman who used to be my mother for the first time in half a decade.
Maria Bossé had never married my father, Henri Lautrec, even after I entered the picture. My father’s life and work for the Valois had been too closed off—too secretive—and even more dangerous for what she’d been willing to shackle her life to.
I could’ve understood it except that she’d gone and married Marcel Méchant—an event that ended our relationship. It had been five years since their marriage, and I hadn’t heard anything from her from that moment until now. Until her urgent and unexpected note.
Perhaps she hadn’t known he ruled the Milieu—the Parisian underworld. Perhaps she’d only seen him as a wealthy, charismatic businessman who gave her the attention she craved, not noticing the shadows of deceit and death that followed in his wake.
People were always drawn to the light and all its foolish falseness.
It was always the light that blinded to the truth.
And the truth was that Méchant was the very worst of men who abused, tricked, blackmailed, threatened, extorted, and killed the very best of men to get what he wanted.
My mother had loved two men in her life—the good man in the shadows and the bad man in the light.
And I wanted nothing to do with either.
To be fair, I hadn’t known Méchant was a crime lord then. Not until my father made me aware and offered me his protection—in exchange for a role in the Valois.
I’d turned him down. That first time. I wanted my own life, and apparently that meant having nothing to do with either of my parents.
In the last five years, I’d forged my own future away from her but also away from the Valois and my father. Five years pursuing my studies in medieval architecture at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Five years during which I’d met a girl I planned on proposing to.
Five years during which a lot of life had happened, and I wasn’t sure I wanted my mother—and the man she came with—to be a part of it.
Assuming that was what her note was leading to.
I was a few steps from the church when the skies opened up, rain bursting through the strained se
ams and drenching me in the last seconds it took to reach the shelter of the portico.
Brushing the collected raindrops off my shoulders, I noticed the door was unlocked and cracked open.
Hesitantly, I placed my palm on the rotted wood and pushed it open, revealing the dimly lit cavern inside.
The church was of a newer, Neo-Classical style, but even the fresh rain couldn’t eliminate the scent of decay from its walls. It clearly hadn’t been used for its intended purpose for some years.
For a brief moment, I wondered what it was being used for, because if my mother had access to it, so did Méchant.
I stepped into the sanctuary that was poorly lit by only the collection of votive candles in the far corner, some of them flickering, fighting for life at the ends of their wicks.
I moved through the space with heavy silence, like a loud breath could awaken ghosts that hadn’t been laid to rest in peace.
The stains on the old wooden slats of the floor grew more prominent toward the altar, the question blood or wine tipping the scale to the unexpected side.
My head whipped back to the front corner, the candles flickering like sparking snitches as a figure moved from behind the nearest pillar.
Maria Méchant.
My mother.
The years apart had not been kind to her. Laugh lines had caved into wrinkles. Her shoulders sank low under her black cowl and the weight of the sins she must’ve witnessed. But it was her eyes that struck me. Once a color that likened to warm honey, they were now hued like coarse tar—pitched darker with the poison of knowledge. She’d been tempted and eaten from the tree of evil, and her visage bespoke the consequences of a fall from grace.
Holding her asphalt gaze, I made my way swiftly to the front of the church, finally coming to face the woman I hadn’t expected to see again.
“Quinton.” My name was a pained rush of regret—a prayer for pity from her lips as she clasped her hands to her chest, stopping them from reaching for me, knowing I would pull away.
“Maria.” My head bobbed in greeting.
“You’ve grown so much… so handsome since I last…” She swiped a tear from her face, the water breaking through the sticky tar and giving a glimpse of the woman she’d sacrificed. “Oh, the mistakes I’ve made, Quinton… even the holiest of places doesn’t house enough forgiveness.”
My jaw tensed.
I didn’t know how to respond.
It didn’t seem like the method or locale for the kind of reconciliation her tone suggested she wanted.
“Still,” she pressed on, “I’m sorry, Quinton. I’m so sorry…”
I shifted my weight. “Is this what your note was about, Maria? Why am I here?”
I caught her wince just before she looked away, eyes cast down at my feet. I’d come here because there was an urgency—a danger shadowed in the script. I wasn’t prepared to forgive. Not without some answers.
“No.” She shook her head and wiped away more tears. “No, it wasn’t. I just saw you… and I couldn’t stop myself—” she broke off raising her elbow in front of her mouth and coughed.
Even in the dim lighting, I could see through the sheer black of her sleeve to where her forearm was covered in bruises, centered around her wrist.
Grabbing her hand, I pulled the sleeve up to reveal the topography of black and purple creating an unnatural geography on her arm.
“What happened?” I demanded. “Did he do this to you?”
She yanked her arm back.
“It doesn’t matter. There is no helping me now,” she croaked, waving my deductions away. “I sent you that note because I had to warn you.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “About what?”
“Marcel. He’s obsessed with power. And he’s obsessed with overtaking the Valois—with overtaking everything.”
I seethed. “Of course, he is. You married him—”
“I didn’t know,” she snapped, her eyes darting around like we might not be the only two people in the crumbling church. “I didn’t know who he was then.” She shuddered. “My past doesn’t matter, Quinton, and neither does my future,” she asserted, her cold disregard for her own life igniting the first spark of sincere concern for why she’d summoned me. “There is only now. There is only what I’ve learned—what I’ve collected. I don’t have much time, but I had to tell you.”
“Why now—” I shook my head. “Why me?” I demanded low, my head tipping down to her smaller frame. “I’m an architect—I’m not my father. You should’ve contacted him.” The last came out as a hiss.
“I can’t contact your father,” she insisted. “I had to warn you.”
I tensed. Warn me of what? I wasn’t a part of this.
I was only vaguely familiar with this life. My father had introduced me to the secret society of the Valois and some of its men charged with protecting the heritage and national interests of France using any means—even those outside the law—when necessary.
When police couldn’t eradicate a criminal, nor politicians able to right a wrong, the information somehow made it to the Valois to be handled.
They were the men of last resort. The men called in to sacrifice in order to right wrongs.
They were the forgotten men.
And he’d wanted me to be a part of it—especially right after he realized my mother had married the lord of the underworld—but I’d turned him down. My parents had lost each other because of the Valois, and in turn, I’d lost both of them.
I’d become a different kind of forgotten man. And I didn’t want anything to legitimize that unfortunate title.
“Warn me of what?” My voice was no louder than the waver of the candle flames next to us.
“When I realized…who…Marcel was, I thought he’d picked me because of my family.” She folded her arms, snapping her eyes from one side of the church to another as she spoke.
Maria Bossé was distantly related to the former president of France, her family always maintaining a steady presence in the court of political power.
She’d never been involved in that world, but that didn’t mean the name didn’t hold weight in the highest circles of French society and intelligence.
“And maybe he did.” Her head dipped. “Until he realized who else I was connected to.”
I couldn’t even find the words to ask, somehow already knowing the answer before it echoed in the decrepit dust.
“You,” she murmured. “When he realized who your father is, Marcel was convinced Henri would want you in the Valois, and he was convinced you would agree. Marcel wanted me to persuade you to spy for him, convince you to betray your father, your country.”
“But I didn’t join the Valois,” I seethed, the choices of my parents—the choices I tried to steer in the opposite direction from—still led me back into the same web of lies. “Is that why you’re—”
She cut me off, her hand gripping my shoulder with surprising strength. “No, Quinton. I told him no.”
I watched her face contort with pain, bearing the weight of her circumstances and choices.
“But that didn’t stop him. It won’t stop him.”
And yet, she was still trying.
I felt an odd sense of pride in her bravery—and her concern for me, though none of it would’ve been necessary if she hadn’t been so foolish.
There was a creak and crunch from the other end of the church and we both looked, searching the darkness for signs of life.
“Quinton, I came to warn you about your girlfriend.” She spoke quicker now, words scurrying out like hungry mice, her eyes zipping back and forth like a fly around a light. “She works for Marcel. She was planted in your life to coerce you to do what he wants—to threaten you to do what he wants.”
The noise happened again and the burning pit in my stomach told me we were no longer alone.
“Quinton, listen to me—please believe me, Q.” I winced at a nickname no longer used. “All the things he’s done, I have proof.
Safe. Protected—”
“Maria!”
She gasped, the sound nothing short of pure terror, the likes of which I never thought to hear in this day and age.
She reached for my arm, her fingers digging into my flesh as she muttered frantically, “Beyond Heaven’s gate, I’ve laid the proof in the forest between earth and sky.”
I grimaced, but before I could say anything else, men, like an army of ants, appeared from every corner of the church.
“Forgive me,” she whispered before our gazes tore apart to see the man who appeared through the crowd.
“Maria.” Marcel Méchant, clothed in an obsidian black suit and matching dark arrogance approached us.
I’d never met him in person—few people had—but it was easy to see how one could fall under his spell.
He was a silver fox with a slick tongue and pure poison running through his veins.
“Maria.” He sighed, and then accused with a tone so nonchalant it could only be lethal, “How could you betray me like this, ma femme?”
When her chin rose in silent defiance, he shook his head and turned his attention to me. “I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances, Quinton. I’d hoped to find a more… amicable way to present you with this opportunity, however, your mother hasn’t left me much choice.”
My fists tightened at my side, feeling the men on either side of me close in.
“What did she tell you?” he asked, examining his nails as though he’d wondered about the weather. Or wanted to make sure they were impeccably clean before getting them dirty.
“Nothing.” I stood paralyzed, but steady in the truth.
Lethal black eyes snapped to mine.
“I see that you’ve inherited your mother’s unfortunate fondness for fallacy,” he sneered, the cancerous acid of his soul finally leeching out through his well-spoken shell. “And I don’t tolerate liars.”
With a quick tip of his head, I found my arms held by two giant men, and even though I was in shape and knew how to fight, there was no way I could take down the two of them—and the dozen others of his small army—on my own.
“No, Marcel. Please.” My mother stepped forward and begged, the layers of her obedience disintegrating now that her son was in danger.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 1