“Adrien, Gaëlle, and Cadence all know what’s on the Kelouenn. And technically, so do you. I explained what we’ve managed to gather from the translation the night you showed up wearing the ring.”
“Mind if I take a look at the translation?”
“Why? Do you think I’m lying?”
I cross my arms. “No. Just curious.”
“Trust isn’t your forte, Monsieur Roland.”
“Because you’ve given me so many reasons to trust you, de Morel?”
His mouth puckers as though he’s chomped on a sour cherry. “The translation’s in the library. In the archival room.”
“Monsieur de Morel?” Bastian looks up from the file. “I have a question for you about Slate’s assets?”
“You do, do you?”
Bastian pays his haughtiness no mind. “Can you explain the two payments that were made from Slate’s inheritance four years ago for the amount of 50,000 euros to a Marianne Shafir?”
Little bro would make a fucking great lawyer.
Rainier’s fists have loosened but not his fingers. All ten of them are gripping his armrests as though they were some whore’s thighs. “Marianne was an elderly professor at the university, who had health problems, costly ones. Eugenia and Oscar were very fond of her. They would have wanted to help her.” De Morel adds the last part as though to hammer in his donation’s legitimacy.
“Hmm.” Bastian slides his bottom lip between his slightly crooked teeth. I’ve offered him a full-ride to the orthodontist, but he insists it gives him character. “The state covers health care.”
“Not every kind of cancer treatment.”
“And you couldn’t pitch in?” Bastian sweeps a hand around the room. “With all due respect, you don’t seem to be strapped for cash, Monsieur de Morel.”
De Morel rolls himself out from behind the desk. “Assets and cash are two very different things.”
“So, you’re saying you have no liquidities?” Bastian’s eyebrows ruffle behind his glasses.
“Yes.”
“So, you won’t mind gifting some of those assets to Slate to compensate for the money transferred out of his account?”
“Compensate?” Rainier’s eyes bulge. “He still has forty-two million euros in his name. And a house! Not to mention that once he has magic—”
“Slate?” Bastian turns to me. “Care to weigh in?”
I’m reeling from the number, but my priority remains ripping Rainier a new one. The vein on the side of his throat bloats and deflates, bloats and deflates. He may be a good father but he’s a shitty human.
I narrow my eyes. “Tell your daughter the truth, that you lied about me sleeping with women and screwing them over, toss in the Gauguin graphite sketch in the foyer, and I won’t press charges.” Cadence may one day see the light on her own, but for now, she’s still under his yoke.
“It’s not mine to give. It belongs to my daughter. Everything belongs to my daughter.”
I sense a bitterness there. As though he’d have preferred his wife to make him beneficiary. I have a serious itch to jab my finger on this sore spot—not to annoy the man, even though Dieu sait how much I enjoy doing so—but to understand what sort of woman Cadence’s mother was. Did she transfer her estate to Cadence for tax reasons or because she didn’t trust her husband?
“Why don’t you ask her for the drawing?” There’s a gloating quality to that question, a smugness, a challenge.
He knows I won’t. “Just fucking fill her in on your jackassness, and I’ll drop the subject of your 100K loan.”
“Jackassness isn’t a word, Slate,” I hear Cadence say.
When I turn around, she’s standing right there, leaning against the doorjamb, lips pressed so tightly together microscopic lines bracket her mouth.
“You may not be an unscrupulous libertine, but you are a blackmailing ass.” A cyclone brews behind her lidded eyes. “Take the sketch. Draw up the papers, and I’ll sign them. But after that, you leave my father alone.”
Delight gusts off Rainier like smoke from the dragon. “Merci, ma chérie.”
She shoots her dad a glare that makes his shoulders twitch. “Slate may be a thief, but at least he isn’t a liar.”
De Morel goes whiter than his cozy sweater. “A . . . liar . . .?”
“You spread rumors about him. False rumors.”
Slowly, his bleached cheeks fill back with color, as though relieved, which is strange.
“Please apologize, Papa.”
De Morel sighs, but it sounds theatrical, like he’s putting on a show for his beloved daughter. “I apologize, Roland. I wasn’t aware the rumors I shared with Cadence were fabricated.”
She pushes off the doorframe. “I’m going back to the dorms with Alma tonight, and I’ll stay there for the foreseeable future.” The sharpness of her voice stuns everyone into silence.
“Why?” de Morel stutters.
“Because I don’t want to be here.” The words with you hang in the air. Or maybe they’re just suspended inside my mind.
Even though I don’t want to ruin Cadence’s relationship with her father, I do think it’s important for her to see the man behind the expensive cashmere and neat smiles.
“Ma chérie . . . it’s dangerous.”
Who should appear behind her at that very moment, who should put his hand on her shoulder other than Prickhead, with his buzz-cut and blistered forehead. The cropped hair and burn marks change him, make him appear harder, more military officer than hoity-toity professor.
I study Cadence’s reaction to his touch, hope to spot discomfort, but her muscles don’t bunch. Is she unbothered or unaware?
“It’s not the dorms that are dangerous, Papa; it’s this whole damn town.” She steps to the side, and Adrien’s friendly hand slides down her arm and off her body. Little does she know that she’s just spared Prof’s fingers some accidental phalanx dislocations.
And Bastian thinks I’m a good guy . . .
I snort, which garners her attention.
Our eyes lock, stay locked, as her father says, “What if your piece shows up while you’re alone?”
“I won’t be alone. I’ll be with Alma. And if my piece shows up, I’ll do what the others did. I’ll call everyone. Get the squad together.” Her ponytail swishes as she flips around.
“Hey, Cadence?” I call out.
She stops next to Adrien, glances over her shoulder.
“Your father mentioned the translation of this scroll thing was in the basement of the library. Can I see it?”
It takes her a moment to answer.
Was she expecting a reminder about the Gauguin? I don’t give a shit about it now that I have forty-two million dollars. I’d brought it up mostly to annoy de Morel, and because it’s a fine piece of art that’d go extremely well on the black marble wall in front of my Toto toilet back home, but if it’s Cadence’s inheritance, I’m not touching it.
Finally, she nods. “I’ll go pack a bag and meet you in the foyer in ten.” And then she’s out of sight. A minute later, a door slams somewhere in the gigantic house.
Rainier rolls himself toward the door. “See what you’ve done!”
“What I’ve done? All I did was ask you not to lie, de Morel.”
He swings his chair around. “If anything happens to her, it’s on you. Now, get out of my house.”
“Is it your house?” I polish the Bloodstone on my sweatpants.
A cruel smile lights up his aristocratic features. “Oh, Slate . . .”
The way he says my name coupled with that smile gives me an actual chill. I swear my spine tingles. I knew this man had skeletons in his closet but now wonder if there are a couple non-metaphorical ones in there.
“These challenges have heightened both of your emotions, given you and Cadence shared experiences you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Once this is over, my daughter will realize you two have nothing in common. And she’ll finally see you for the man you really are.”
<
br /> I square my shoulders. “Who I really am?”
“You may carry the Roland name on your birth certificate, but you’re still a nobody, Slate.”
He’s targeted the one wound I have that won’t heal and pressed his dirty finger into it. It burns like hell.
“Somebody woke up on the wrong side of his wheelchair.”
Adrien stares after de Morel as he rolls down the hall. In a quiet voice, he says, “You shouldn’t goad him, Slate.”
Is he warning me because he feels it, too? The old man’s desire to do away with me?
Bastian tucks the folder under his arm.
“Did you think I had manners, Prof? Unlike you, I wasn’t brought up with a silver spoon in my mouth.”
Adrien shakes his head. “Now that you’re rich, you no longer have to be a . . . thug.”
“Now that I’m rich?” I scoff. “I already was.” Thanks to my salvaged Renoir.
“I’m guessing this is a whole new level of rich.”
Yeah. It’s a whole new level.
The Bloodstone casts a prick of red light on the manila folder as though it were aiming to shoot. The dot reminds me that the ring can and will destroy me if Cadence doesn’t defeat the final curse. I have complete confidence in her, though.
“So, you wanted to see the translation of the Kelouenn?” Adrien nods to the framed scroll.
“Yep.” I pluck my phone from my sweatpants’ pocket and snap a few pics of the aged parchment. How the phone survived last night’s arson show is beyond me, but I’m grateful it did. “Want to come with us, Prof?”
Adrien shrugs. “Why not? It beats combing through the rubble of my house.”
A twinge of sympathy flickers in me. The same way I sense Rainier is rotten, I sense that Adrien isn’t. If only he could get back with Charlotte. Or any other girl for that matter. I really don’t give a rat’s ass whom he beds as long as it isn’t Cadence de Morel.
40
Cadence
Before a summer storm, the lake smooths to glass and every insect quiets. This is how I feel as I head downstairs, my overstuffed bag bouncing against my bruised ribs. Like a stillness has settled inside me, over me. A stillness that heralds something violent. One that sets my teeth on edge and makes swell after swell of chills dash themselves against my skin.
Alma’s been darting worried glances my way. When I asked if I could stay with her in the dorms, she caught on that something was wrong. I suppose she guessed it had to do with Papa since I wanted out of my house.
When we reach the foyer, Slate, Bastian, and Adrien are already there, charred, ash-covered coats on. Adrien’s the worse for wear with his blistered forehead, neck, hands, and back. Last night, I applied a soothing aloe gel to his burns while trying not to dwell on what Charlotte said, but her words wheeled around in my mind. Instead of filling my stomach with butterflies, they filled it with dread and confusion. I love Adrien but no longer romantically.
I’ve been realizing this a little every day since Slate smacked into me on New Year’s Eve, but last night, after Charlotte said what she said, regardless of whether it was true, it hit me that my heart didn’t quicken, my palms didn’t moisten.
I felt nothing.
Well, nothing besides surprise. The only person who gets my body thrumming these days is the infuriating boy with the chaotic black curls, the patchwork of bruises in various states of healing, and the scrim of stubble I long to feel scrape against my skin. The one standing so close to the Gauguin drawing that his breath’s fogging up the protective glass.
I hate what Papa did to him. To us.
The thought of my father sours my mouth. I’m furious that he wrongfully slandered Slate, furious that I believed him, that I didn’t even give Slate the benefit of the doubt, but there’s something else bothering me. Something that has to do with Marianne Shafir.
Why didn’t Papa tell me she had cancer? That she needed money for her treatment? Why take it out of Slate’s account? I know Maman left everything in my name for tax purposes, but I would’ve given Papa access to any amount he needed. He must’ve known this. Sure, I was thirteen at the time, but I would’ve understood.
After I grab a jacket from the coat closet, an old red peacoat I haven’t worn in a while because my silver puffer was my favorite, I walk over to where Slate stands, appreciating the Gauguin. “Admiring your new acquisition?”
He turns those dark, probing eyes of his on me. “No, Cadence. It’s yours.”
I put my bag down between my feet in order to pull on my coat. “Not anymore.”
“I’m not taking it from you.”
I frown. “My brain’s a little sluggish, but didn’t we go over this a few minutes ago? Papa borrowed money from you; I’m paying it back.”
“When I thought it belonged to your father, I wanted it. I’m petty like that. I like to punish people for their regrettable decisions. You, however, have nothing to do with this and shouldn’t be penalized for someone else’s bad choices.”
My fingers slide off the last button. “I’m sorry, Slate.” I study the camber of his eyes, the downturned corners of his mouth, the roughness of his jaw. “I’m sorry I believed him.”
Those words send a ripple of emotion across his face, softening all of his harsh angles and lighting up his dusky eyes.
I bend over to grab my bag, but Slate swipes it from between my legs and hooks it over his shoulder, dangling it from a single crooked finger.
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.”
We’re standing so close I can count each and every curled lash, can spot the faintest flutter of his pulse at his temple, can smell the warm soap on his skin beneath the scent of smoke that clings to him as doggedly as it clings to me. He leans in infinitesimally closer, and my lips unseal over a shallow breath.
I am outrageously and irrevocably attracted to this boy. So much so that I truly wonder if magic isn’t involved. Yes, I’m young, but there’s something about Slate that makes every nerve ending in my body clang, every inch of my skin heat, every muscle clench.
Before he can move any closer, I jerk my palm up and slap it against his warm T-shirt and the heart thundering beneath.
Easing him back, I whisper, a tad huskily, “I’m not done sorting through my jumbled feelings, Slate.”
The fingers not holding my bag rise to my face and tuck back a lock of hair that’s escaped my ponytail. “Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re not?”
He runs his fingertips along the side of my throat, down my arm, over my knuckles. “I’m not.”
“I’d really like to believe you.”
“Then do.”
I stare into the conduits to his soul. “I don’t know you well enough for that.” I run the tip of my index over his knuckles, then down one finger, back up, down another. “But I’m willing to get to know you. You’re just going to have to give me a little time.”
His pupils bloat, and he swallows. Audibly.
“I want to hear about your past, Slate. All of it. The ugly parts too. But later. And in private.” I tip my head toward our three-person audience.
When I pivot, they all avert their gazes. All except Adrien. He no longer has eyebrows, but the space where they used to be seems puffed up a little. I want so much for that look to mean nothing more than curiosity, but I’m so finetuned to his micro-expressions that I sense his perplexity. I don’t know if it’s because he feels protective of me or if it runs deeper. I don’t care to dig, though.
I start to walk toward them when I hear the squeak of tires against marble. I tilt my head up, find Papa peering over the wrought-iron balustrade at me. My throat tightens because I love him. And I know he loves me. But I’m still angry at how he handled things with Slate.
Slate’s hand drifts to my lower back. Papa’s face becomes so distorted with rage that I have to look away because he’s frightening. I shiver, which earns me a slow stroke of thumb against the base
of my spine. Comforting heat trickles through the thick red wool and soothes the blaring tension locking up my vertebrae. Not bearing to look upon Papa’s face any longer, I let Slate guide me away from him. Once the blue door clicks shut behind us, I drink in a breath and then another, the cold moisture sticking to my lungs, numbing the lining of my throat, scorching my palate.
“Get ready to be murdered, Slate,” Alma singsongs.
“That’s not funny, Alma.” Papa lied to protect me from Slate. Murdering reputations is vastly different from cold-blooded killing.
Her smile fades in increments, like grime melting beneath pressurized water. “Um . . . it was a joke. I’m sorry.”
Slate strums the base of my spine again as we walk. “Cadence, your dad can’t hurt me.”
“He has a lot of influence.”
“In this town maybe, but—”
“As long as you’re here, he can and will make your life hell.”
He smiles at me as though it were the silliest thing he’s ever heard.
I shake my head. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I do.” His smile doesn’t decrease in intensity, though.
“Then why are you grinning?”
“Because I know Hell. Lived in that dimension for many, many years. Right, little bro?”
Bastian wrinkles his nose, which makes his glasses slide down. He presses them back up.
“Your papa can do his worst, Cadence. I guarantee I’ve already been there. Had it done to me. And survived.”
Slate’s confidence tempers my fear.
“Foster care was really that bad?” Adrien asks as we start up the stone stairs to Second Kelc’h.
Bastian joggles his head from side to side. “Our foster families were . . . not good. But I know there are some kind families out there. We just didn’t land in the right spots.”
As all three start discussing the system, I hang back with Slate. “Why do you want to see the translation of the Kelouenn?”
His gaze shifts off the back of Bastian’s head and settles on me. “I noticed something when I was staring at it in your dad’s office.”
Of Wicked Blood: A Slow Burn Romantic Urban Fantasy (The Quatrefoil Chronicles Book 1) Page 34