Sympathy For Diablo (Breathless Eternity #1)

by S. E. Chardou

  “That’s some heavy shit. You mean your grandfather is part of the General Directorate for Internal Security?”

  Annalise glared at me with cold blue eyes. “It’s why he married her. If it had been his choice, he would be with a very different woman. Elle est une américaine, tu sais.”

  I glared back at her despite not understanding where her sudden change of attitude had come from. “Actually, no I didn’t know. Adrien isn’t exactly forthcoming about his family to outsiders, and believe me, I understand why.”

  We both faced down one another—her sky blue irises against my hazel-green ones—before the commotion at the front door roused us from our seats. Annalise was the first to jump up and I reluctantly followed her, keeping a certain distance.

  At the front door, Diablo and Zero stood with his parents. His mother embraced him before she did the cheek-to-cheek at least four times with him and mumbled something to him in a language I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t French though.

  “French, please, Maman!” Annalise begged. “Why you’re so attached to a culture you barely were raised in is beyond me. The Basque are almost extinct, you know. Like the Kurds and those strange Asiatic-looking people in Northern Scandinavia—what are they called?—oh yeah, Saami people will never get their own countries. Unfortunately, they didn’t settle in countries like the former Yugoslavia or the former Czechoslovakia. They could just declare their independence and voila!—have a country like how Montenegro separated from Serbia.”

  “Do you always have to be such a smart ass?” her mother asked out loud.

  “Of course,” Annalise replied before she walked over and embraced Zero before wrapping her legs around his waist and kissing him. “I’ve missed you so much you fucking manwhore.”

  “What are you talking about?” he questioned innocently in rapid French.

  “The blonde you’ve been hanging onto like a dog with its favorite bone. La salope américaine—they didn’t mention her name but you better have erased any incriminating photos or videos from your mobile . . .”

  The conversation Annalise carried on with Zero completely lost my attention the moment Diablo looked my way. His gorgeous sky blue eyes opened to the size of saucers. He immediately halted conversation with his father and walked over.

  I had time to look at him, dressed casually in dark rinsed jeans and a black button down that was untucked from his jeans. I could see a glimpse of his tattoos since he had the sleeves rolled up to his forearm. He was perfectly tanned from the time he spent in Nice and he truly looked amazing despite the dark circles under his eyes.

  He wrapped his arms around my waist and swept me off my feet before he turned me around. “You have no idea how crazy I’ve been going since you disappeared. All I could think about is either you decided I wasn’t worth the effort or you went back to the States. Then the texts happened and . . . fuck, I nearly lost my mind.”

  Diablo’s mouth connected to mine and once his tongue met my own, our kiss turned passionate. I ran my hands through his hair as he pulled me as close as humanly possible to his irresistible body and I yelped slightly as my torso met with his hard-on.

  As we pulled apart, he whispered into my ear, “It’s been a stressful time for me. Nothing to use but my hand. Not nearly as adequate as your gorgeous body.”

  Diablo set me down and I wrapped my arms around him. “Well, you better eat up then. Your mother made quite a brunch and we’re gonna need to keep our strength for the night I think you have planned for us.”

  His blue eyes darkened with lust and I smiled in reply.

  “Come on, let’s eat.” We walked hand in hand to the dining room. “I’m going to wear you out, you know.”

  My face heated immediately as I sat down next to him.

  “Oh, look! She can blush! Is that what you fell for, Papa? That fake ass embarrassment American women usually have when sex is mentioned?” Annalise wondered out loud.

  “Vais-tu couper la merde, Annalise.” Zero smacked the side of her thigh as she sat in his lap at the table. “It’s Diablo’s story to tell her—not yours.”

  “Ow! That really did hurt you know.”

  I glanced at Annalise before I looked away. I felt another pair of eyes on me, and it wasn’t Diablo’s or Marie’s but Shady. There was a look of complete sadness and regret in his eyes that chilled me to my bones.

  What the fuck was going on?

  No matter how long it took, I would get down to this fucking mystery that was making me feel like I was as crazy as Sorsha.

  Everything and yet nothing made sense.

  Come on, you’re a smart girl, my inner voice teased me.

  Yeah, I was. I had most of the puzzle pieces but what they were telling me didn’t make a goddamn bit of sense. Not because I was in denial but because I knew the woman in question.

  My mother had never done a spontaneous thing in her life. It was obviously they’d gotten me mixed up with maybe my cousin, Talia, lead singer of the popular rock band, Winter’s Regret.

  Technically, she was my second cousin since my mother was her mother’s cousin. My real grandparents died when Mom was a teenager, and she was adopted by her aunt and uncle, and raised as a sibling to both sisters. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any of their joie de vivre, whether they were all from Louisiana and French Creole or not. She was actually quite cold and hard to read.

  There was no way she’d ever been passionate or took a chance. She cared about her status in life and wealth. It was one of the reasons why she’d married my father. It just wasn’t possible.

  The thought of my mother being in love was as foreign to me as the Icelandic language. It might as well have been in hieroglyphics because my mother was that complete and utterly hard to read as a parent, and as a human being.

  AFTER BREAKFAST ENDED, Diablo and I went for a walk on his parents’ property. It turned out the amount of land his parents owned was much more than I initially estimated. It was roughly seven acres of raw beauty and nature’s gorgeous own poetry. The clubhouse was on the opposite side of the property but all the members had homes of their own.

  He led me past his mother’s farm until we reached a wooded area and we continued our exploration.

  The sun peaked in through the trees every now and then but the dense forestry prevented most of the brightness of the day from penetrating.

  We walked for a while, hand in hand before we stopped and sat on a fallen tree. It looked like a burst of lighting had hit it but I doubted that since it probably would have started a fire.

  “How did this tree fall over?”

  “Out here? Who knows? We’re only seventy-five miles from Paris but it seems so much farther, doesn’t it?”

  I leaned my head against his shoulder. “How did you end up going to school in Versailles?”

  “My grandfather has a two bedroom apartment in the city. His job keeps him away a lot so . . . we used it. Us kids, that is. My mother home schooled us until we became teenagers and thought we needed to go to regular schools. She is highly intelligent and has a PhD in Education from Boston College.” Diablo wrapped an arm around my shoulders while my heart thundered in my chest.

  I sighed quietly. “Is this where she met a mysterious woman or something?”

  He laughed out loud. “No, nothing like that happened. It was a situation very . . . similar to Zero and Annalise. My father knew this was the woman he was going to marry. But then a passionate and completely bohemian American woman showed up and she turned his world completely upside down.”

  My heart beat so intensely in my chest, I was beginning to perspire along my hairline.

  “It had to be one of my aunts—well, a certain one because the other’s a Fed—she has her own division in the FBI. She has a new name and a husband, children. It would sound like something she would have done if she hadn’t done something so reckless that could be documented.” I knew I had said too much but at this point, I was grasping at straws. I couldn’t believe it w
as my proper and emotionally stunted mother.

  “No, it wasn’t Talia’s mother either. And your other aunt would be Eve Kerrigan. Yes, we all know about her. Isn’t her daughter married to Linx Carter, your cousin, if I’m not mistaken?”

  I snickered. “Yeah, it sounds really incestuous but there are a lot of Irish people in the States. I’m a Carter but Trista is a Lennon. The families are pretty . . . well known in Boston but it’s not like I’m close to all my cousins. I know Linx’s family because we all grew up in Boston but . . . Trista grew up with her family in Nevada.” I linked my hand with Diablo’s and squeezed. “My mom isn’t really their sister you know. She’s their cousin. Her parents died before she was an adult. My great aunt and uncle adopted her. The way she was reared was . . . very different from her newly acquired siblings. She thought she was better because my real grandparents never acknowledged their roots. They never told my mom she was French Creole. As far as she was concerned, she was a ‘Heinz 57’ all-American white girl.”

  Diablo smirked. “You Americans and your obsession with skin color. I know what your family looks like. I’ve met Trey Lennon-Cox, Tristan, Trista, Talia and that side of the family, including Eve, your aunt. She certainly doesn’t look black so what difference does it make if she calls herself Heinz 57 mixture or French Creole? There really is no difference. In fact, Eve reminded me of that vile woman you have in the House of Representatives. She’s like ninety years old and still in politics in your country. C’est impossible she’s had no work done. Eve could easily pass for her daughter she had late in life.”

  “Nancy Pelosi? She’s only in her mid-seventies.”

  “Yes, that’s her.” He gazed at me with such intensity before he turned away. “Fine, but you have to admit that seventy-five is a hell of lot closer to ninety than it is fifty. Tell me, is she mixed?”

  “Not that I know of. Her family is Italian-American. She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland.”

  “Okay.” Diablo lit a cigarette and dragged on it. “So let me ask you a question, if you had to cast someone to play your aunt in a movie, who would it be? Let me guess . . . Angela Bassett because of some ridiculous ‘one-drop’ rule that exists in your country?”

  I scoffed at his comments. “Course not. There are certain famous people who have a touch of the tar brush . . . like me . . . but they look like me—like they’re white. Halsey, Pete Wentz, Rebecca Hall, Shailene Woodley . . . and let’s not mention kids of mixed celebrities who come out with blonde hair and blue eyes.” I closed my eyes and sighed. “For your information, I would choose Sandra Bullock to play my aunt in a movie.”

  He dragged on his cigarette before he offered it to me. “I was thinking Angelina Jolie. They could age her a bit. She’s got those hazel-green eyes that change like the weather and Jolie has hazel eyes. Okay, we’re on a roll, let’s continue. What about your mother?”

  I dabbled with marijuana in college so I didn’t think smoking a cigarette would be much different. I dragged on it and held the smoke in my lungs before I exhaled. “Definitely Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

  “Absolutely not! This woman produced you and she is fucking drop-dead beautiful like her daughter. Mylène Farmer in her prime. She’d have to dye her hair brown but she’s a dead-ringer for your mother.”

  I couldn’t fight him on that observation. My mother could be a doppelgänger for the French singer if she ever dyed her head bright auburn. I breathed deeply before I handed the cigarette back to him. “So, this is something my mother definitely did—not a relative or anyone else?”

  “Unfortunately for you, yes.” He dragged on the cigarette before tossing it to the ground and putting it out with one of his shit-kicker boots. We’re not completely backwards here in Western Europe. I know—despite us men here wanting to hang on to our foreskin and not having perfect American teeth that are so white they blind you. We do have DNA testing though, and Pop wouldn’t hear of it until he got the results back. I just hope you know you put your new sibling in a very fucked up position.”

  “What were the results?” I crossed my hands together and gripped them on my lap. There was nothing else I could do to handle the news.

  “Well, you and Damien are half-siblings. Same mother—different fathers. This means that Damien is our half brother because we share the same father and you two are siblings because you share a mother. However, we can continue our very passionate affair because neither you or Annalise or I share any biological aspects in common. In fact, the only link we have is Damien.”

  I stood and began to pace like a crazy woman. “When was this supposed to have happened? You don’t know my mother—she would never do that to my father!”

  Diablo stood and stopped me from pacing by wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “She didn’t do anything to your father, Sierra. You weren’t even thought about. This happened thirty-three years ago. The only people affected were my mother and father and your mother. She refused to take the baby back to the States because she didn’t want your grandparents to know about it. Not that Pops would have given her a choice. Damien was his and there was no way he would give him up.”

  He pulled my face closer to his. “He wanted to marry your mother but she didn’t want anything to do with motorcycle clubs or living on the other side of the law. It was easy for her to come and go. She left exactly six weeks after Damien was born. Her excuse was . . . if she didn’t leave then, she never would and although she loved Damien very much, she couldn’t allow him to ruin her life.”

  I wasn’t completely heartless. The tears welled in my eyes before they fell down my cheeks. “Is that why you never trusted me entirely? The reason Damien hates my guts and wishes I was dead? You think I would do that to you?”

  “Pops almost had a heart attack the first time he saw you. Maman froze up like you reached in, and snatched her heart out of her chest.”

  “My God.” I looked away yet all the while, I wanted to bury my head into Diablo’s protective embrace.

  “My mother raised Damien. He was a happy and very content little boy but he came to his own conclusions the older he became. Both of our parents are fair-haired—Pop is a blond and Maman has strawberry-blonde hair. She dyes it darker than it really is but that is her natural hair color. Then came the questions why he didn’t have a single feature of Maman. Unfortunately, Damien is almost a male version of your mother with the exception of those ice–blue eyes—those he inherited from my father while my sister and I got my mom’s sky blue eyes.”

  Diablo and I reluctantly separated. “What finally set him off? Did he try to contact our mother?”

  He nodded his head. “Yes. He thought it had been long enough and she had nothing to feel guilty about. You and your brother are what—six and eight years younger than him?—it’s not like she committed adultery but he’s her secret, and she’s not willing for anyone to know about it. She vowed to take it to her grave.”

  “What happened with the whole abduction thing? Was that his idea?” I began to pace again.

  He chuckled as he shook his head. “Hell no. In you, he saw the mother you two shared. He wanted to tell you and shatter your whole perfect world. Send you back to the states broken into a million pieces. He knew you would tell everyone if he did that. He never meant to harm you . . . ever. Not when it set in that you were truly his sister. It would be like hurting Annalise. Sierra, you aren’t your fucking mother. You know that, right?”

  The tears came again as I grabbed him by the collar of his button-down. “Do you really want to attempt anything with me? I mean, look who my mother is and what she’s done to your family?”

  Diablo shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “I blame my father more than your mother. She was only seventeen at the time. She was a kid with her whole life in front of her. All she wanted to think about was high school dances and her friends—what college she wanted to go to. She didn’t want to become a mother, change diapers, and live the outlaw lifestyle. It’s not for everyone you know.�
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  He embraced me again and held me against his chest. I loved being in his arms.

  “Come on, let’s go play catch-up. There’s plenty of time for us to discuss them. You’re not going anywhere right now. However, I need to know one thing. We know the two idiots who abducted you weren’t alone. There were plenty of eyewitnesses and anonymous tips Pop received saying a woman was accompanying you. Was she just another helpless victim?”

  This time, I sniggered as I shook my head. “No. Sorsha MacKintosh was very much in charge. She’s got some sick fixation on Damien and . . . half the time she didn’t make sense but when she did, she basically told me she was using you to get closer to Damien.”

  I’d never seen Diablo’s eyes turn as ice cold as they did at that moment. “That crazy fuckin’ cunt was behind all of this? I’m going to fuckin’ find her and kill that sick bitch—”

  “Hold up, Super Fly. What makes you think I would allow you to ruin your career over someone like her?” I ran my hands through his silky blond tresses. “I appreciate the support but she’s all mine. I’m not goin’ to rest until she’s received her comeuppance. Sorsha doped me up with heroin and had me for what—almost a week?—I don’t even know how much time I was taken. She was just tryin’ to mind fuck me but she’s the one who’s going to get the ultimate shock of her life . . . with a goddamned cattle prod.”

  “And that is why my cock is granite hard right now. I need to be inside you because you’re such a badass.” He kissed me passionately. “Don’t worry. You may have your mother’s looks but she never had an inkling of your strength.”

  I kissed his lips again. “Thank you.”