He snarled, and without even flinching, spun and slapped her across the face.
“If you had done what I asked you to. If you had brought him to my side, none of this would’ve happened,” he explained, calmly wiping the blood of her split lip from his ring.
Even if I hadn’t known who he was, that moment made it apparent how dangerous he was—a man whose personality was like a double-edged sword. Savagely merciless, yet refined.
Marcel had only to glance at his men who held me for them to shove me forward to sit in the front pew.
Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out a small vile and a little black brush.
“I know that your mother hasn’t been a part of your life for some time now, probably, in her mind, to protect you from me and the empire I’m building.”
He unscrewed the small cap to the bottle all the while my mother cried and pleaded in the background, but it was as though she were already dead to him and couldn’t be heard.
“I don’t need protecting,” I bit out. “I’m not a part of anything. I don’t know anything.”
“But you could be.” His pewter eyes narrowed into severe slits. “But that isn’t the lesson to learn today, Quinton.” His vile smirk grew as he swirled the brush in the clear liquid. “Today, you’re going to learn that liars are two-faced.” He chuckled to himself. “That’s it. So simple, but so important.”
I tensed, instantly feeling the vise-like grips on my arm tighten. “I’m not lying.” The declaration skated through my clenched teeth. “I haven’t seen her in five fucking years. I. Don’t. Know. Anything.”
He went on, disregarding me like I hadn’t spoken at all. “And I think it’s important that those who lie to me understand the gravity of what they’ve done. That they understand that once the trust is broken, it can never be completely fixed or forgotten.”
I bit into my tongue, wanting to snap that my mother hadn’t really told me anything—nothing that I could understand at least.
“So, as your stepfather, it’s my duty to not let you forget,” he informed me, enjoying the sudden familial relationship he claimed.
Looking to the men holding me, Méchant commanded, “Hold him still.”
Suddenly, my head was yanked back so I was looking up at the ceiling and a moment later, Marcel’s face was above mine.
“From this moment forward, every day you look yourself in the mirror, you will know what lying has cost you.” He bent down until I could feel his bitter breath in my ear. “Your mother, more than anyone, will tell you that no one can love a liar.”
That was it.
I opened my mouth to say something—to tell this fucker to let go of me and insist she hadn’t said anything—but then I felt it.
The first stroke happened in slow motion. The soft touch of the bristles on my cheek turned into an intense cold followed by the most excruciating hot I’d ever felt.
More than a burn.
More than a flame.
And, as my mother screamed in the background, I realized what was happening.
Marcel Méchant was painting my face with acid.
Blinding pain ripped through my cells, destroying them as I roared and strained against the men imprisoning me. But it didn’t stop him.
He painted on my face like he was fucking Monet, humming while he worked.
Right down the center, I felt the skin melt and bubble and peel away. I felt as though part of my body was dying while the rest of me remained alive—and unable to stop it.
“Don’t worry,” he assured me soothingly, “I’ll be sure to leave your eye intact, son. I wouldn’t want you to not be able to see clearly the liar you are.”
At some point, the pain made me drift from consciousness—drift into the blackness that surrounded this man and everything he touched, and I wondered if he might just end up killing me here and now.
Eventually, when the entire right side of my face felt like someone held a blowtorch to it, I was jerked upright again, faintly able to make out my mother, on her knees and sobbing into her hands.
I couldn’t hear her.
I could see her lips moving in an apology. A plea. Anything to spare me.
Vaguely, I knew Méchant was speaking again, but not to me.
Dazed with pain, I saw the men grab ahold of my mother.
I wasn’t aware I had control over my limbs, but I saw myself struggling to try to get to her—to try to help her as they dragged her toward the stacked shelves of candles.
Another man came forward and doused her in liquid. Several of the other men dumped the same liquid everywhere over the church.
Later, I would know it was only the scent of my own burned flesh that stopped the smell of gasoline from pervading my nostrils.
I yelled for him to stop. Even though I couldn’t hear myself, I felt the burn in my lungs and the agonizing pain leeching across my face with each movement and every breath.
Held back, there was nothing I could do but watch—watch as they pulled my mother, a woman I would’ve forgiven if it would have changed her fate, across the stacks of burning candles until she was lit ablaze by tens of tiny flames—of flames meant to bring peace, not be transformed into a pyre.
I roared, wrenching until I thought my shoulders would pull from my sockets and I’d choke on my own blood.
I roared until she ceased to move, and I could hardly make out anything but fire and charred flesh, falling like black leaves to the ground.
I roared until the world went black and the next thing I knew, I was out on the street a block away, watching the smoke billow up.
“You have two choices, Quinton Bossé,” Méchant’s voice resounded from somewhere behind me.
I didn’t have the strength to move or face him.
“You can come join my side and help where your mother fell short.”
In spite of the pain ricocheting through my face like electrified shrapnel, swallowing down his demand was even more unbearable.
I waited for the second choice. I waited because I refused to ask.
A few minutes later, wondering why he hadn’t finished, I finally craned my neck around, tearing it from the sight of smoke and ash billowing into the skies.
And I realized he was gone.
He was gone because the second option was right in front of me.
Death.
Destruction.
That was his second option. To end up like my mother.
Join him or die.
As consciousness began to give way to the pain, I swore I would choose neither.
Vaguely, I heard a passerby call an ambulance, his voice adequately reflecting the state of my condition, and it wasn’t long before I felt the assessing and caring hands of the paramedics.
But my thoughts were well beyond the present moment. They’d forged ahead without my weakened and scarred body, already plotting the ways I would make Méchant pay for what he’d done.
Because I wasn’t the only one who was a liar.
But instead of burning half of his face, I swore I would raze his entire fucking empire to the ground.
I’d never wanted to be the forgotten man.
But with an unforgettable face—and an unforgettable thirst for vengeance—he’d given me no choice.
The snail takes on the form of its shell.
And at that moment, Victor Hugo’s caution planted a mantra in my mind—growing through my burns and searing through my scars—and rooted itself in my rage.
Someday soon, Méchant would learn that this forgotten man would take on the monster of his face.
Quinton
Three years later
Springtime in Paris was an idea romanticized by everyone in the world—everyone except me.
Spring meant one more reason—one more season—that left my work and my vengeance unfinished. And left Méchant still a free man.
Fresh rain washed the streets of the dying winter. Wind blew the dust of lifelessness from the elaborate stoops and sill
s of centuries passed. It cleansed the world of the sins of the season of darkness.
Except this corner. My corner.
Harsh rays of sun beamed through the stained glass, shattering shadows into sharp sacrilegious pieces.
If there was one thing I’d learned over the last three years it was that lies, like light, were blinding.
Their luminance glinted off of all the neighboring truths surrounding them and concealing their own deceit.
Take this church. This cathedral. Notre-Dame de Paris.
It was the heart of Paris. The very beat of the city stemmed from the Isle de Paris, thumping with the treacheries and triumphs of its colorful past, and flowed out through the veins of the Seine.
The holy house was exalted. Revered. The building itself worshipped more than the god it represented.
But what it stood for was nothing of what it was.
It was fortified with truths of centuries long gone. The centuries it took for each stone to be laid by those who knew it would never be finished in their lifetime. The centuries during which it saw fire and destruction, and finally, war. The holiest truths glinted off its rainbowed rose windows, statues, and edifices.
But the venerable Cathedral of Notre Dame was nothing more than a lie.
And that was why I lived my life in her shadows.
Because only in darkness could the truth be seen.
My shoes moved silently over the cracking stone floor, decades upon decades of penitents and tourists wearing down the strength of Our Lady—the only woman to whom my life would belong.
The only woman I hadn’t failed. Yet.
The sins that were washed away in this sanctuary seeped into the floors and the walls, the pillars and chandeliers. They made the stones crack and the wood splinter under their lofty weight.
Here, sins weren’t shed, but stored, waiting for the right moment to bring them to light—like any smart woman would.
Notre Dame. Our Lady.
Our Lady who clutched our wrongs, payment for our repentance, until our pleas became profitable.
Dust hung heavily in the musty atmosphere. Particles of past pretenses, of kings and queens, courtiers and vagabonds, all who used this church like I did… for everything except what its appearance advertised.
Working my way through the nave, I wove as silently and swiftly as a raindrop down glass, shooting off into one of the smaller alcoves just before the transept—the two cross-like extensions that protruded from the center aisle of the enormous church.
I could smell the difference in the air. The scent of secrets suspended like an alluring musk as I walked up to the far panel and my fingers deftly found the small metal latch.
Just as I began to press, I heard it—the softest chime in the distance.
My brow furrowed and my head snapped ever so slightly to the side.
Had I imagined it?
I shook my head, chastising myself. The product of too many long nights fueled by only adrenaline and revenge, and too many sleepless mornings, my lack of progress tormenting me as soon as my eyes grew heavy.
About to push the hidden latch again, I heard the faint, angelic-like chime waft once more through the vast empty cavern.
It was after hours. No one should be in here. No one should be in my church.
Notre-Dame existed in a unique situation. While still a Catholic cathedral, it hadn’t belonged to the Roman Catholic Church since the French Revolution when it was nationalized by the state. Since then, Our Lady lived in the shadows between the two venerable institutions—the church and the state—like a child torn between divorced parents, each taking responsibility for parts of her but neither willing to do what was necessary to protect her, the heart of Paris, for generations to come.
While the church continued to pay for the religious and tourist activities, the state held the responsibility for its maintenance. And somewhere in between those two things, the Valois—the people I now worked for—had laid claim to her security.
I moved swiftly back toward the nave, scanning with narrow precision the interior of the building I’d come to know like the back of my own hand. If someone were trespassing, there would be hell to pay.
Pausing at the edge of the shadows, I waited for the subtle chime to sound again and sure enough, a moment later, my head whipped to the right, catching the twinkle of sound from the far end of the church.
Stalking down the south aisle toward the transept, I naturally clung along the wall where the shadows were the greatest, passing through the rose window framed transept and halting again when the noise changed directions.
The altar.
It couldn’t be one of Méchant’s men. They couldn’t have found out about me—about this place. I’d been so careful for so long, waging this war from the silence of the shadows.
Pulling my blade from my pocket, the metal click of it opening echoed through the entire church.
My pulse stayed steady and my breath calm.
The right half of my face tightened.
I’d already faced death once. There was no longer any fear left for it, only the anticipation for restitution.
A life for a life.
My fingers gripped the knife and even the dust that had seen centuries of wars seemed to freeze in the air around me, eager for one more tale to add to its tomes.
Invisible.
My breath. My steps. My presence blended with the stone columns until I rounded the final one, the chiming growing louder.
Maybe this was the moment when I finally could kill Méchant, revenge for everything he’d done to me and destruction of everything his organization had created. Everything it stood for.
Bribery. Extortion. Lawlessness.
Murder.
Stepping from the shadows to face the intruder, my clenched jaw pulled my scars tight over the muscles of my face.
I’d been prepared to find a cold-blooded gangster.
Instead, I faced a warm-blooded gypsy.
Thick locks of black hair cascaded like a waterfall of night down her back from under a bright blue and green scarf that wrapped completely around her head—wearing hijab in one of the most sacred Catholic places.
No, not hijabi, I realized an instant later. Too much hair. Too much skin.
Rich black locks draped over bare shoulders of sun-kissed olive skin. What I could see of her white top showed small sleeves that clung to her upper arms, the elastic of the back holding up the crocheted creation.
But that was where the black and white ended.
Her skirt was an array of vibrant colors the likes of which I felt like I hadn’t seen in ages.
For years I’d trained myself to see only darkness or light. Evil or good.
For years I’d trained myself to ignore the color of life.
But I couldn’t ignore this.
I couldn’t ignore her.
She was both the dark cloud of the tempest and the rainbow of temperance. She held the promise of beautiful peace, but only if you could survive her storm.
I saw the moment the soft slopes of her bare shoulders pulled tight, sensing my presence.
Her arm dropped to her side, and that was when I saw the source of the chiming. Like a shackle made of the finest gold strands, her wrist and a good part of her forearm were covered in metal bracelets littered with the gems and charms that slid and tapped and clinked against each other. When she turned, I noticed similar adornments on her ankles, softly jingling as she moved.
She was the opposite of the subtleness and silence I was conditioned to, moving with melodic vibrancy that announced her presence as one would an angel.
The hard jolt in my chest provided me a rare reminder that the deformed organ inside it still beat. So, I slunk back into the shadows, knowing full well it wouldn’t be beyond Méchant to send a woman to do his dirty work.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Large emerald eyes searched for me. Rimmed with the same gold that decorated her wrist, they held a
wild peace. And her lips… Blood pooled in my lower half, noticing their fullness and shade of burnt red, parting to let air in through their soft seas. Set amongst aristocratic cheeks and a small nose, all framed by her headscarf, I had no words for her beauty.
Like the metal on her wrists and her ankles had done, the glint of the setting sun caught on her right ear, an aural armor made of various hoops and chains stringing down the soft shell. I followed the shine as it faded onto her skin, a last twinkle of light flickering off with the small gold hoop piercing her nose.
I’d lived in the house of God for many years and never, until this moment, had I felt so close to a deity.
She was a gilded goddess, doused in gold and color and light.
A gypsy goddess.
The kind that didn’t belong in the stark, stringent space of my cathedral.
“Is someone there?” The American lilt of her voice rang out and broke my momentary fascination—my momentary folly.
She folded her arms over her chest and turned in my direction, finally giving me an unobstructed view. Her top buttoned up the front, but the ties on the scooped neckline were left only partially tied—as though she wanted to make clear she had neither forgotten them nor felt the need to tie them. The result left the material gaping at the center in defiance to reveal the lush, golden swells of her breasts.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I growled, remaining steady in the shadows.
Not in this city.
Not in this cathedral.
And not near me.
Her hips tipped to one side, baring a slash of toned skin between her top and skirt, and the inquisitive look on her face steeled slightly at the confirmation there was someone in the shadows watching her.
“Says who?” she countered, her head tilting.
My patience began to fray.
“Me.”
“And who might you be?” Her arms fell and the way the setting sun filtered only its most penetrating light through the space made the dark outline of her nipples perfectly clear through her white shirt.
Mon Dieu.
“The man in charge of this place,” I grunted and shifted against the column, adjusting myself in my pants.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 2