The Scarlet Night
Prequel to the Rose Gold Series
Nicole French
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or rendered fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Copyright 2019 Raglan Publishing.
All rights reserved.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy.
Cover design by Raglan Designs.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Acknowledgments
Also by Nicole French
About the Author
One
“Night, Murph.”
I raised a hand to the security guard at 350 Jay Street, the big building that housed, among other things, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, where I happened to work.
“See ya, Zola.”
Murphy waved me out the doors without even looking up from his phone. Some security. Day in and day out, more than seven hundred attorneys, paralegals, interns, investigators, and other employees worked tirelessly to rid the borough of its worst criminals. The people of Brooklyn had no idea what kind of protection their justice system enjoyed.
I started as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Bureau right out of law school, determined to fulfill my family’s dreams for their rough-and-tumble son from the Bronx. Do better than what I came from. Help people instead of taking from them.
Be one of the good guys.
Well, I was doing my best.
Downtown Brooklyn was dead quiet as I made my way to the train. It was mostly home to daytime businesses and commuters, with buildings that, while they didn’t quite reach the heights of thOSE across the East River, still made a dent in the sky. But when people say New York is the city that never sleeps, they aren’t talking about Brooklyn. Here, all sorts of things happened while the rest of the borough got a little shut-eye.
A mid-January rain was washing away the remainders of the last snow. My stomach growled, and I considered making a detour to Junior’s for a burger and a slice of cheesecake. But I knew I’d only be disappointed. After all, my grandmother’s beat theirs every time.
Instead, I ducked down into the subway toward home. Waited ten minutes on the platform for the F train. Made the twenty-minute slog back to my red brick townhouse just off Van Brunt.
By the time I opened the front door, rain was streaming off my chin and the rim of my hat. I was a walking waterfall.
“Christ, it’s murder out there,” I said as the wind clapped the door shut behind me.
I shook out my trench and wiped my shoes on the welcome mat, then hung my hat atop the coat rack. The gray fedora was one of my favorites, a knockoff of my grandfather’s (which I only brought out for special occasions). I hoped it wouldn’t shrink. My sisters could make fun of me all they wanted, but style was style, and classics never go out. I’d take a pair of wingtips over sneakers any day of the week. And every man looked better in a good hat.
“Shhh.” Frankie—otherwise known as Frances Christina Zola, the closest of my five sisters to me in age—scowled from the couch. “The baby’s finally asleep upstairs. You wake her up, Mattie, and I swear to God, I will wring your neck with that tie you’re wearing.”
I hung up my coat while I hunted down some newspaper to stuff in my shoes. Frankie’s bark was always worse than her bite. I usually came home to some variation of that threat most nights. “The baby” was Sofia, my three-year-old niece, and once she was out, that kid could sleep through a tornado.
“Whatever you say, Fran.” I leaned over the couch to peck her on the head before moving to the kitchen. “What’s the poison of choice tonight?”
“Real Housewives. I think this time there’s going to be a real fight.”
“Isn’t there always?”
Sometimes I was in the mood to hate-watch bad TV with my sister, but this wasn’t one of those nights. I couldn’t really explain it. That feeling was back. The one where everything just felt wrong. Like my skin was a millimeter out of place. Like my clothes were a size too big or small. Jumpy. Irritable. Restless.
“Bill, bill, bill…” I shuffled through the mail on the kitchen counter.
“What are you complaining about over there?”
I looked up. “The constant yoke of capitalism.”
“Big brother, you always got something to say.”
“I think that’s my line, mimma.”
I opened the fridge, hoping for leftovers. Looked like Frankie beat me to the spaghetti. Damn, I was hungry. I shut the door a little too hard, then drummed my fingers on the counter. I wasn’t really interested in cooking again.
“You’re too young for this,” Frankie said as she took a seat on the other side of the Formica.
I snorted. “Too young for what?”
“What do they call it? All this sighing and shit. Ennui?”
“Been playing the crossword again?”
“Go to hell. I know what ennui is, asshole.”
Nothing goaded my sister like being taken for a slouch. Frankie was halfway through her master’s degree in English when she got pregnant. Now she was back teaching third grade.
I smirked. “I’m thirty-six, Frankie, not a teenage girl. And no spring chicken either.”
“You shut your mouth, Mattie. You’re not stuck at home with a kid. You’re single, you got a good job, and now you actually own your own place.”
I snorted. “Barely. I’ll be paying it off until I’m dead.”
She popped over the counter to punch me in the shoulder. “Most people in this city can barely afford to buy their dinner. You should be proud of yourself. Nonno would have been.”
I shrugged, but I didn’t argue. The truth was, buying the townhouse had been one of the crowning achievements of my life. As a kid who grew up in a crowded apartment, having the luxury of three full floors, even if it was originally a dump, was something special. I had a house. That belonged to me. In New York City.
Tonight, though, the thrill of home ownership wasn’t doing much for me.
“You’re a catch, big brother. You should be out sowing your wild oats. Or at least looking for a farmer girl to lock that shit down. Come on, you can’t say no to a challenge.”
Now we both snorted. Making agricultural jokes was pretty ironic for a couple of kids from the Bronx.
“Not tonight,” I said, settling on cereal. “Tell you what, Fran. You change the channel, I’ll pour the wine.”
Ten minutes later, I was really thinking I should have stopped at Junior’s. Maybe found my way over to Park Slope or Green Point. Tried not to come home at all. Instead I was dining on three-day-old Montepulciano and stale granola, growing increasingly annoyed with the inaccuracies of Law and Order reruns, and wishing I could swim across the river just to get as far from this damn house as I could. That feeling, that restlessness, hadn’t abated. It had just gotten worse.
It was Friday night. For once I didn’t have a mountain of briefs to get throug
h. No depositions to bury me. I was a single man in the greatest city in the world. Fuckin’ pathetic if I didn’t get off my ass and at least try to be more interesting than a single mom and her TV shows.
The problem was that once I was “out there,” the guy I was “in here”—the good brother, the nice uncle, the fair prosecutor—disappeared. Out there, I wasn’t a good guy. And the next day, I always felt like shit.
I’d spent too many Sundays shocking priests in the confessional.
Too many dinners dodging my grandmother’s questions.
Too many mornings avoiding my own reflection.
I leaned back in the couch and peered down the hallway, toward my reflection in the mirror at the end. Glum fuckin’ mug. Frankie was right. I really did have the personality of a depressed teenager right now. Well, fuck it. If I was already miserable, who cared if I did a little extra sinning? At least then my shitty mood would be worth it.
I stood suddenly, though Frankie clearly wasn’t surprised. She didn’t even look at me, eyes glued to the screen.
“Going out?”
I nodded, already unbuttoning my shirt as I left the room to change. “Into the city. Don’t wait up.”
Frankie chuckled. “I never do.”
Two
I never wore black to work. My sisters said it made me look like a gangster. The Italian genes in our family made a pretty clear stamp on the six of us. Frankie, Marie, Kate, Lea, Joni, and I all had deep green eyes, olive skin, and dark brown hair that gleamed like a oil slicks under street lamps. After friends in law school started calling me Vito Corleone just to piss me off, I decided I couldn’t have judges thinking the defendants were guilty because their prosecutor looked like a crook. So I saved the pinstripes and undertaker colors for nights like this, when looking a little bit dangerous acted more in my favor than not.
Envy was my favorite bar in Manhattan. Buried under a crumbling brick walkup on the Lower East Side, it was far enough from work that I never ran into colleagues, close enough that I could get home on a single train, and on the polar opposite side of the city from the rest of my nosy family. I Envy may have lived with one sister, but I was as likely to run into one of the other gossip fiends in certain neighborhoods as I was to see a taxi. That alone made it worth spending time in a bar named after one of the seven deadly sins.
Envy also happened to offer the occasional free drink, considering it was owned by someone I had known my entire life: Jamie Quinn, my best friend.
“How you doing, Jamie?” I shook out my trench coat and adjusted my vest before sitting down at the bar. My hair was soaked—I’d had to leave my hat at home to dry.
“Zola.” Jamie accepted my fist bump. “Wasn’t expecting to see you tonight. Not in that fuckin’ hurricane out there.”
The city was a river. I was going to be up until three in the morning polishing my shoes to get these stains out, but what was I going to do? Wear rain boots with vintage Armani? Get the fuck out.
I shrugged. “I needed a change of pace. The rain makes a man feel cooped up, you know?”
“I hear that,” Jamie said. “I opened a Chianti yesterday afternoon. You want?”
I shook my head. Jamie’s house Chianti was decent, but not after more than a day, when it would taste like vinegar. “Don’t think so. Aperitivo tonight.”
Jamie nodded, unsurprised. “Right up.”
He made quick work of my drink—his own twist on a Negroni that he served with a tray of house-marinated olives—then scuttled down to pour PBR for a bunch of NYU kids straying from Third Avenue. I ate an olive and looked around. The bar was unusually quiet for a Friday night. Only the adventurous were out and about. Well, and the lonely.
“Can I join you?”
I turned to find a cute girl with curly brown hair eyeing the stool next to me. She was short and curvy like my sisters, with a button nose and tits that would probably entertain any man for at least a few hours. She licked her lips. Yeah, she was looking for something. A little trouble. A little fun.
Outside, thunder shook the city. In here, I was unmoved.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” I said, trying for friendly, but distant. “I’m waiting for someone.”
She pouted a little, then took off to the other side of the bar to ask another man the same question. And here I thought I was special. I snorted and turned back to my drink, Frankie’s taunts floating back yet again. A little tail was just the thing for this strange mood, and here I was, turning it away. The question was why.
Big brother, you know why.
Good God, I couldn’t escape that know-it-all, even here. But she was right. Dammit, she was right.
I did know why. The problem was them.
It was a case I’d been working on the side for months. The investigation against John Carson was one my boss had refused to take officially, though he had hinted that he wouldn’t stop me or one of the investigators if we wanted to look into it. It was one of those political tightropes. If nothing came of it, or worse, if I got into a bit of hot water, the DA would be able to claim he had nothing to do with it. But if we had a part in nabbing the bastard, it was a damn nice feather in his cap.
Because John Carson was a bad man. One of the worst. A business tycoon who worked in ammunitions of all things, which made him best friends with half the U.S. armed forces and a good percentage of congress and the intelligence community. He owned several labs located around the old Navy Yard and south Brooklyn, which put him right in our jurisdiction.
He was also a psychopath targeting two personal friends.
I had known Jane and Eric de Vries for close to five years. During that time we had been at most friendly acquaintances. But over the last few months, when the two had moved to the city to get married and caught the ire of John Carson—who happened to be Jane’s biological father—they needed all the help they could get from someone they could trust.
Frankie was right about something else. I couldn’t stay away from a challenge.
So, as I’d stepped in to help the de Vrieses, I’d also gotten to know them better. And tonight, I really couldn’t get them out of my head.
It wasn’t like that. Okay, sure, I had a thing for Jane back in the day. But that was a flash in the pan. A momentary crush, long since passed, even if Eric had been a bit threatened by it even just last year. But I’d never really thought much of either of them until I’d gotten involved in their case. When I really started seeing them together.
They were lightning. Pure kinetic energy. It was in the way Eric couldn’t stop looking at his wife, the way she seemed completely drawn right back to him. They were opposites. A marriage of fire and ice. And yet, they also seemed made for each other. I’d never seen anything like it.
Everyone is fine with store-bought pasta until you make it from scratch. I was starting to feel like relationships worked the same way. Like I was really missing out on something I hadn’t even tasted. Some of my best friends had it. Their friends too.
Why couldn’t I?
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” I muttered as Jamie returned.
My friend shrugged. “Beats me. That girl was hot. She would have left with you in five, ten minutes tops. What’s with the brush-off?”
“I don’t know. Something about her.” It was a stupid answer, but the best I could come up with. “No one in New York has any style anymore, do you notice that? Everyone looks homeless.”
Jamie just raised a brow. “You’re in a mood tonight.”
“Those college kids, for example,” I continued, gesturing toward the people he had been serving. “Look at them. Jeans that don’t fit right. Shitty sneakers. Not one high heel. Not a single collared shirt. Where’s the pride, huh?”
“Careful, Zo, you’re starting to sound like my grandfather.”
I shrugged. “If I sound like my nonno, I’m better for it. I refuse to sink to the bottom of the barrel. His generation had standards, and so do I.”
“Well, Shirley Temple b
ack there didn’t look like she jumped out of a dumpster.” Jamie started polishing a glass. “You know what the problem is, Zo. And it ain’t her shoes.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
Jamie held up his left hand. “Pretty sure she needs a ring on that finger.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t start with that, man.”
“You asked,” my friend retorted. “Tell me, when was the last time you picked up a broad who wasn’t married, engaged, or in a serious relationship, hmm? And we’re not just talking one-night stands to get your rocks off. I’m talking about a woman you were really interested in.”
I opened my mouth, but found I had no comeback. Fuck. He had me there.
“See? What’d I say?”
“I’m not that bad,” I finally protested. “What about Sherry?”
Jamie made a face. “You mean she who banged half the neighborhood while you were in Iraq? Zola, why in the fuck would you want to bring her up?”
“Because she wasn’t involved with anyone when we met,” I said, though he was right. I didn’t particularly enjoy remembering how my college girlfriend stepped out for years while I was serving in the Middle East to earn my future law degree. I shrugged. “She’s proof I don’t need it.”
“That ain’t much better.”
“I’m not that bad,” I said again. But even I couldn’t believe it this time.
“How about your neighbor? The one who had to move before her husband caught you?”
I rolled my eyes. “She wasn’t really a neighbor. Renee lived two blocks away.”
“And Allison Spinetti, your neighbor’s babysitter? Her boyfriend was pretty pissed off.”
“Stop.”
“And then, of course, there was Mrs. Fiore,” Jamie continued.
“All right,” I said sharply. “We do not need to revisit that.”
The Scarlet Night (Rose Gold Book 0) Page 1
