“I need you two to look into Gustav Hubert. Everything. He’s now a person of interest to the Valois,” he paused and waited for them to nod their approval before dismissing them.
There were no explanations. The Valois were told only what they needed to know and what they needed to find out. There was never a question that the information was critical to the welfare of the state or its citizens.
“Mérde,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose in consternation.
“How is Notre Dame?”
I cleared my throat.
After Méchant put a price on my head… after I’d come to my father, my face still wrapped in bandages, to inform him that my mother had been murdered protecting me… protecting him… I’d been given an apartment by the Valois. Several, as the location was changed every six months for protection.
Safe and secure housing was always critical for all agents—especially those hunted by the Méchant mafia.
There was still an apartment for me somewhere in Paris, but I’d stopped visiting it over a year ago, finding the silence, sanctuary, and solitude of the Gothic cathedral more fitting for my life that was also worth so much and yet crumbling at the seams.
“Crowded,” I replied, as I stood to leave. He cared about my safety as much as any father who had to completely disown his son for his own safety.
Too late I realized that my tongue-in-cheek response roused suspicion in his determined stare.
“I thought you avoided the crowds?”
I cleared my throat as I tugged my arms into my jacket sleeves. “I do.”
I shouldn’t have asked. I should’ve walked out and waited for him to contact me with any information.
But those golden eyes taunted me.
“You haven’t heard anything about restorations planned for the cathedral, have you?”
“No, I have not,” he replied without hesitation. “Why?”
Without turning, my eyes flicked to his briefly as I replied, “There’s a woman who says she’s there to take 3D scans of the building for research and renovation.”
In silence, he regarded me.
I disliked being the subject of his silence.
“Doesn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to have happen,” he finally mused and shrugged. “Has she done something worthy of suspicion?”
Looked at me like she wanted me.
Stared my scars in the face and licked her lips like she wanted to see them buried between her thighs.
“Ahh,” he hummed and nodded. “I see.”
“See what?”
“Whether or not she is true, Quinton, that is your truth.” He pointed to the plaque that hung above his door—the motto of the Valois.
Valor. Veracity. Victory.
“There is no room for love in this life, Quinton. I’d thought you’d learned that more cruelly than most.”
I winced at the reminder.
The reminder of my father. My fiancée. My mother.
“I said I didn’t trust her,” I bit out in denial. “I never said anything about love.”
My glare clashed with his.
“My apologies,” he muttered with a slight bow of his head. “Just remember that desire can lead to unexpected things, things that have no place in this life.”
I let out a harsh laugh at the irony.
“Let me know what you find about Hubert,” I growled and yanked open the reinforced oak door.
“I will have something for you tomorrow,” he returned confidently.
My chin clipped down. “Méchant is mine.”
Unexpected things have no place in this life.
For Henri, I was the unexpected thing—the unexpected son—that didn’t belong in this life of danger and lies.
And yet, here I was, immersed in his world.
And Esme St. Claire… she was an unexpected obstacle and a deadly attraction who’d immersed herself in my world whether she’d planned on it or not.
I caught my reflection in a window of a passing shop and jerked my head away with a growl, my need for her more jolting than the appearance of my face.
She wanted me, and whether desire was her weapon or her weakness, it might be the only way I’d get to her truth.
Giving into her would be the equivalent of walking into a burning building and expecting to come out unharmed.
But if that’s what it took, I would bear the risk.
Veracity.
I would let her close so that I could see through her lies.
Not because I wanted her.
Definitely not that.
For her truth, I would brave the flames knowing my own: I was accustomed to the burn of betrayal, and my scars couldn’t get any worse.
Quinton
A garrote was simple, silent and subtle, but, most importantly, it was sufficient.
Jacques Moreau tensed against me, air siphoning through his lips as I pulled the wire taut around the girth of his neck, making the threat on his life abundantly clear. I knew the moment the fine thread of steel broke through the outer layer of his skin, blood slickening the almost invisible weapon.
“Je n’ai rien fait!” I didn’t do anything! The low-level spineless dealer wheezed. “Aie pitié de moi.” Have mercy.
My fists tightened.
He was a liar.
I’d spent the day outside of the cathedral in order to keep my phone on, waiting for the information Henri promised. And he hadn’t let me down—at least not in this manner.
Messaging me a secure link, I opened it to find an image and profile of Moreau, a low-level dealer who weaseled his way through the Milieu, a messenger of drugs and secrets in equal measures. I could only surmise that it was his level of spinelessness, giving him the ability to slink around all corners of the city without drawing too much attention, that continued to make him useful to the lord of the Milieu.
For whatever reason, Henri believed this man could help me—could lead me to Hubert or Méchant or the connection between the two.
“It’s not what you did,” I rasped with a low tone, the scent of blood reaching my nostrils. “It’s what you know, Moreau.”
“I-I know nothing,” he insisted, squirming in spite of the damage he was causing himself.
I’d cornered him in an unlit alley of the twelfth arrondissement, his wiry frame slinking about, counting the stack of bills he’d just been given in exchange for a package. I wasn’t surprised to find him here. There was a small parish church I’d suspected of being part of Méchant’s network a while ago.
“I know nothing, I swear,” he pleaded. “Here, take the money. It’s all I have.”
I chuckled; he had to know losing Méchant’s money would end in the same fate.
“I don’t think Monsieur Marcel would be too pleased to hear you offer up his money so easily.” I pushed him forward, forcing him to carefully stumble deeper into the alley’s cloaked shadows, the movement causing some of his blood to run along the wire and slicken my hands.
He gasped, causing him to choke. “Who are—What do you want?”
“I want to know what Méchant has over Gustav Hubert,” I demanded through tight teeth. “I want to know what their connection is.”
He went still as though I’d shot him.
“You do not know what you’re asking,” he wheezed. “And even if I could answer you, it would be safer to die.”
“That can be arranged,” I growled, letting the wire dig deeper for a second until he cried out before relaxing it slightly. “Now, tell me.”
“I am a messenger! What makes you think I’m important enough to know something like that?” he snarled.
I wasn’t expecting his weak and weaselly façade to fall or for his bony elbow to jam back into my stomach, my lurch forward giving him just enough slack to slide from my hold. He half spun, landing one solid punch on the side of my face.
He wasn’t a messenger or an assassin.
He was a fool.
With a fierce growl,
I lunged toward his fleeing form, fisting the collar of his coat and swung him into the side of the nearest building, his face landing with a crack against the jagged stone.
Grabbing his wrist, I wrenched his arm up behind his back, pinning him in place.
With his head pinned to the side, I could see the impact had broken his nose, the contorted bones a spigot for the flow of blood running from his nostrils and down the wall like a red river over a rock bed.
“Vous êtes un fou.” You are a fool.
I spun him to face me, ramming my forearm against his bloodied throat.
His eyes widened in horror. “Mon Dieu… and what are you?”
“Un monstre.” My lip curled. “Now, tell me what you know, and I will kill you quickly. Or I will let you go and let Méchant… deal with you the way he dealt with me.”
This time, his scraggly eyebrows shot up so high, I thought his eyeballs might fall from their sockets.
“I told you,” he spat. “I’m not important. I’m just—”
“The man who goes everywhere, handling his business in the background without being seen,” I finished for him, scoffing. “You can’t fool me, Moreau. A rat doesn’t sit at the table, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t know what was served for dinner.”
His lip twitched.
“If you are so familiar with Méchant, Monsieur Monstre, then you will know whatever secret binds them is not the kind served for dinner or talked about over drinks. It is the kind burned into the air from a lit match—there for an instant before gone forever.”
I leaned in, starting to feel the wet of his blood through my coat. “Then tell me, Moreau, who is close enough to smell the smoke?”
He tried to sniff, causing more blood to run from his nose.
“All I know is that sometimes I deliver things. Messages—encoded and undecipherable even if I dared to look—to a woman—a prostitute named Estelle,” he said with a cracked voice.
“A woman?” Méchant typically reserved those for only the most intimate of targets.
“Beauty is the most welcome distraction,” he replied.
I hissed, refusing to tug on the string of my thoughts that led me back to the woman working out of my safe sanctuary.
“And how is this message delivery different from your normal?” I bit out, unable to eradicate the new film of tension on my muscles.
He strained to chuckle. “Every ecosystem has a food chain, Monsieur Monstre.” I felt blood and spit spray from how he addressed me. “In most occasions, there are many like me at the bottom, feeding on the scraps of work thrown our way.”
“And in this occasion…”
“There is only me. Only one chain.”
My brow creased. “More precarious.” Consolidation of information was always riskier than diffusing it and dispersing it through a web of connections.
“More precise,” he returned. “And definitive when a break in the chain occurs.”
My head tipped slightly.
Whatever the secret was, it was too great for Méchant’s usual mode of operation. It required enough distance to keep him and Hubert separated, but not too much that too many people were involved—not too much that if someone betrayed him, it would be difficult to determine who.
“And who is this Estelle to them?” I’d never come across an Estelle in regards to Hubert or Méchant.
“No one,” he replied cryptically, so I dug my arm tighter. “But she is someone to her doudou—the man she passes the information to.” He attempted to snicker and then began to choke. I was fairly certain in his attempt to escape me, he’d caused the garrote to nick his carotid. “The man she likes to boast will soon take her from this underworld into a life of grandeur.”
“Soon like when?”
His eyes darkened. “Like when his boss becomes le president.”
He used my moment of surprise to unleash a burst of energy. Not that it would stop me—not that it would save him. But the minions of the Milieu were trained like suicide zombies—they would continue to fight until their head was cut off.
I stepped back, allowing the force he’d shoved himself forward with to send him tripping and stumbling to the ground. It only took a second to rewind the garrote around my fists and wrap it in front of his neck once more.
“He will kill you,” Moreau hissed.
I bent down, putting my face right next to his ear. “He’s already tried.”
One swift tug erupted the arterial spray of blood against the cobblestone road and side of the building like graffitied gore. The dead man slumped against the wire until I released it, letting him fall to the ground.
This wasn’t a safe neighborhood. A dead man in a dark alley wouldn’t be all too surprising to wake up to.
But for Méchant, the message would be clear—his chain of secrets was broken.
Quinton
Beauty is the most welcome distraction.
The words haunted me long after Moreau’s broken and bloodied, lifeless face faded from my mind. The information he provided—the woman named Estelle—returned back to my father like an ingredient in this calculated cocktail.
And while I waited to know who this woman was and where I could find her, I tangled deeper into the web of my own distracting beauty.
I watched Esme knowing I had to. Because she was a threat.
Because she could be part of Méchant’s plan—she could be here to finish what he started.
But the way I watched her had nothing to do with any of those things. I watched her like a beast watches his chosen prey that’s too far out of his reach.
So, I lured her closer. I left offerings of peace—baguettes, fruits, cheeses—small snacks to hold her while she worked and hoped it, in combination with her curiosity, would lower whatever defenses still held her secrets from me.
After the night of her performance, I noticed how music infused her every move. She didn’t need to be playing for the lift in her step or the sway of her hip to show how she walked to a beat that was born inside her.
“Have you always lived here?”
I huffed from where I stood, leaning against one of the columns just outside another secret passage door on the south walk.
“No, Madame St. Claire, I was not born in this church,” I replied roughly, even as the corners of my lips fought to tip up at the thought. “I was born in a hospital just north of the city like a normal child.”
“So, you just walked by one day and thought it would be an adventure to live in the towers of the world’s most famous cathedral?” she pressed. “Or”—she raised a finger as though struck by a thought—“maybe you’re a criminal, and you’re using the church as a sanctuary from the law.”
I bristled. “I’m not a criminal.” Though my methods for catching them sometimes fell outside of the law. “And I don’t think that’s how the church works any longer.”
She hummed, glancing in my general direction with a devious glint in her eyes. “Looking to kidnap a nun, then? Or perhaps the pope?”
“Mon Dieu.” My god. I swore under my breath. “No,” I growled.
Every day since I’d opened that conversational door had been like this—questions to provoke answers, statements to incite argument. Just as clearly as I could look back and see what she was doing, I was powerless to stop it.
And if I wanted to know more about her, I had to let it continue.
In spite of the strange dynamic we wove… In spite of the strange situation we found ourselves in… there was a comfort, a familiarity. There was something about being able to open up to someone who didn’t even know my name.
Or if she did, she hid it well.
“Then why do you live here?” Her hesitant question came, and the energy between us paused and spun in the air—little molecules of truth and lie, teasing and temptation, desire and deceit, all waiting to see which choice I would pluck from the array of atoms.
If I was smart, I’d let all the options fall like pearls from a broken stra
nd onto the floor and scatter away from me as I faded into the silence.
Instead, my teeth clenched together, trying to stop the words I knew I shouldn’t admit but found myself wanting to speak.
But even speaking could lead to unexpected things—things that had no place in my life.
Still, I heard the coarse threads of my voice resound through the space, echoing the lonely depths of my soul.
“Because I don’t belong in the world.”
My fist tightened at her sharp inhale of breath. Pity. My gaze dropped, willing my hand to remain at my side rather than plowing it into the column in front of me.
I hated pity. And I didn’t need the world. Not anymore.
“Because of your face?”
My eyes flew up. I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear her respond. Hell, I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear her mention the things people only ever whispered about when they thought I couldn’t hear.
“Because of many things.”
And she didn’t stop there. “How did it happen?”
There was no reason to tell her. There was no reason not to tell her. There was nothing of value left to my past.
“One of the very worst of men decided to teach me a lesson about lying by painting acid over my face.”
The image of Méchant’s smile and the sound of my mother’s screams invaded my mind for a moment before I pushed them aside. They had no place in my life except to fuel the fire of revenge inside me.
She looked at me with a strangled gasp, the tanned brown of her cheeks warming with her blush. I always wondered what it would be like to tell someone who had no idea about Méchant, no idea about the man I was before, or the man the Valois made me.
And though I anticipated pity, I found none of it in the gold galaxies starring her green eyes. Maybe that was how I knew I could tell her—because Esme St. Claire was nothing of what you would expect.
She turned away and made herself look busy so I wouldn’t see just how eager she was to know more. “Why did you lie?”
Every question, every answer was like walking over dunes of sand. Each step was uncharted, unsure how it would land or how it would change the footing underneath me.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 11