Disarm

by Halle, Karina

  “Luckily I know how you can make it up to me,” I tell him.

  He nods, his expression open and interested. “I’ll do whatever it is, as long as you know that you can trust me. That’s all I ask.”

  “How did you know I still don’t?”

  He shrugs, licking his lips. Beautiful lips. “Since I don’t think you’ve ever trusted me before, I guess I’ll know it when I see it.”

  I manage a wry smile and lower my voice. “I need forty thousand euros tonight. In cash.”

  He doesn’t flinch. Instead he calmly opens up his coat to me and sticks his hand in an inner pocket, pulling out a very thick wad of bills. “I have fifty.”

  I stare at him and the cash open mouthed. “How did you know?”

  “I knew how much you owed him, and I knew when you owed him. You were at work all day. I’m not sure when you would have gone to the bank, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t have money lying around your apartment.”

  I swallow hard. “I have some cash. And I took my mother’s jewelry.” I gesture to the bag hanging off the end of the chair. I’m not about to tell him about the gun.

  “You’re not selling your mother’s jewelry,” he says sternly. “I promise you that. I’ll take care of it.”

  “But how did you know he wanted cash?” I pause, trying to not let the ever-present suspicions get the best of me. “Did you talk to your father about it?”

  He lets out a caustic laugh. “My father? Honestly, you’re going to have to push that fucking nonsense out of your head right now. My loyalty is with you. This money is for you. I know someone like Jones would only accept cash because that’s how these things work. You’re essentially paying off a hit man who never got to take a shot. And that’s good. Keep it that way.”

  I look around the café to see if anyone is listening, but everyone is chatting loudly, not paying us any attention.

  “I’ll give it to you on one condition,” he says, sliding the bills back inside his coat.

  I raise my brows. “Please don’t tell me I have to sleep with you.”

  “It wasn’t part of the plan, but I can always make an adjustment,” he says smoothly, heat flashing behind his eyes.

  I try to ignore that, but the tightness building in my core won’t let me. “You’re being inappropriate again.”

  “Guess I can’t help it around you.”

  I fight the urge to roll my eyes. “So what’s the problem? What’s the condition?”

  “That I go with you. I don’t want you doing this alone.”

  My stomach flutters with relief before I have a chance to rein it in. I have to think about this. Yes, I want him there, and I am beyond terrified that I have to do this alone, and the gun in my purse doesn’t help either. But . . . what if he . . .

  No. Either you trust him or you don’t.

  I have to make this decision right now and stick to it.

  And judging by the look on Blaise’s face, that’s exactly what he’s thinking too.

  “Okay,” I tell him, and even though I’m sure I only hesitated for a second, it feels like a million years have passed. “But you have to stay in the background. Like, hidden.”

  “I know. He can’t see me. He won’t see me. I’ll just be there in case something goes wrong.”

  I take in a deep, shaking breath. “Do you think something is going to go wrong?” I’d pick up my wine and have a drink, only I know my hands are trembling so much the wine would go spilling everywhere.

  “I’ve never been an optimist, Seraphine,” he says gravely.

  “Except when it comes to me, that is,” I add, testing him.

  “In that case, one might confuse an optimist for a fool.” He pauses, his eyes resting on my lips. “Don’t you?”

  If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was blushing. It’s definitely a lot hotter inside the café than I expected. I clear my throat and give him a leveling look. “Back to business. What did your note mean this morning?”

  If there was any lightness in Blaise’s features, it fades into something grim. “I ran into Pascal this morning. Before work. He wanted to speak to me alone.”

  That’s never good. I quickly slam back the rest of my red wine before my hands start to shake again.

  He goes on, leaning in and lowering his voice to raspy levels. “He wanted me to stop following you.” That should be a relief, but I know it’s not. “More than that, he was following me this whole time.”

  “You? Why?” What a psycho Pascal is.

  “He doesn’t trust me for the same reasons you don’t trust me. You think my loyalty lies with him. He thinks my loyalty lies with you.”

  “But why?”

  “Because of what I told you the other night. In Mallorca. He told me he did see us.”

  I blink hard. “He’s known all this time?” Oh, bloody hell. That must mean the rest of the world knows.

  My heart sinks to new lows.

  “He knew. But he said he never told anyone.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I say, scrunching my face.

  “I can’t be but . . . think about it. He definitely didn’t tell my father or your father or anyone else. We would have known by now. He just kept it to himself because he didn’t think it was his business.”

  “That’s awfully mature of him,” I say slowly, and I don’t care what Blaise says, but I’ll never trust Pascal.

  “I’m not taking his word on it, I’m just taking in the evidence that supports what he’s saying is true. I don’t think anyone knows. But he does. And that’s why he wanted me to follow you to begin with. To see if . . .”

  “What?”

  “If I’d interfere with whatever they have planned.”

  If I was a pile of nerves earlier, then this is something else entirely. Every single part of me is at attention and frozen with fear.

  It’s like I can barely breathe. “What do you mean?”

  He stares at me for a moment, trying to think. “I don’t know,” he eventually says. “I really don’t. All I do know is that it’s in your best interest to pay Jones and forget everything, and before you start getting worked up as you usually do and say you owe your father, why don’t you ask yourself what your father would tell you right now? He would tell you to value your life over the truth. He’d agree with me in wanting you to drop this.”

  “It’s so easy for you to say that,” I say softly. God, I’m trying so hard not to lose it right now on him, especially with all that he’s agreed to help me with, all he’s said, but it’s so damn hard. “Do you know what it’s like, to know that my uncle is a murderer? That he murdered his own brother?”

  “I can imagine.” A line forms between his brows as he studies me. “I can imagine because . . . you’re talking about my father. And do you know what it’s like to know that the man who raised you is a murderer? The man you’re supposed to idolize and love, the man for whom you tried to do both things and he never gave anything back? Do you know what that’s like? Spending your whole fucking life asking for someone like that to love you?”

  I exhale slowly, realizing that, perhaps for the first time, Blaise doesn’t have it much easier than I do. I’m convinced his father murdered my father. He’s becoming convinced of the same.

  “So now what?” I ask, wanting to get the subject away from what’s making Blaise go to a dark place. I can see it in his eyes, the change. I don’t want him to go there. I saw him go there the other night when he beat the shit out of that guy. Tonight I need him by my side and focused and levelheaded in ways that I can’t be, just in case something goes wrong.

  “So now we go pay Jones and be done with this.”

  “But what if I can’t do that? What if I can’t be done with it? Then what are you going to do? Leave me? Turn on me?”

  “I’m going to be by your side for all of it.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “That’s fine with me. I’m used to my patience being tested, especia
lly with you.”

  I don’t have anything clever to say to that. I’m starting to think I might not ever.

  I finish my wine and then, to Blaise’s amusement, I finish my coffee, and then we’re out of the café and out to the blustery streets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The snow and cold rain have stopped, but the wind is blowing something fierce and the sidewalks are slippery. Before I can stop myself, I’m leaning into Blaise, and he’s putting his arm around me as we walk down the street to the Uber pick-up point.

  Is this wrong? I think, and for once it’s not so much about whether I can trust Blaise or not, because I know now that I have to. But it’s about the fact that he is my cousin, even if not in an icky way, and being this close to each other in public is something new.

  But I don’t let those thoughts stay in my head for very long. In a way it’s refreshing to worry about that, because it feels like such a simple and mundane problem to have: the world might not approve of our relationship. The reality is, I might fucking die tonight, and I’m not sure having Blaise there is enough to save me.

  Also, you don’t have a relationship for people to approve of, I remind myself. So stay fucking focused like your life depends on it, because it does.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BLAISE

  The car ride seems to last forever.

  Seraphine sits beside me, her purse clutched to her chest like a child. She stares out the window at the passing lights of the city and the occasional hit of wet snow on the windowpanes that turns Paris into a distorted mess, mirroring how I feel inside.

  I wasn’t sure she’d contact me tonight. Her pride is a mountain that can’t be summited, and I feared she would go to Jones trying to strike a bargain. I thought that she would rather appear meek and unprepared and naive to a bona fide thug than to ask me for help. Not to say I couldn’t blame her, but it gnawed at me all the same.

  Still, I was ready. I lied when I said optimism wasn’t my forte. When it comes to Seraphine, it’s all I’ve got. I figure the consequences of being wrong aren’t enough to cancel out the chance that I’m right.

  And now we’re beside each other in this car, in the darkness of the back seat, and I am so fucking torn that it’s rendering me useless.

  There’s fear on one hand. I don’t know Jones; I just know that if my father, who has connections with every Mafia group across the globe, trusts him to do shit, then this asshole is the real deal, and he is to be feared. I have no shame in admitting that I’m afraid of what will happen when we get out of this car. Will Seraphine’s life be in jeopardy? Will mine, when I step in to try to protect her? Pascal brought up all that training I did in Thailand, and though I can take most normal people on and leave relatively unscathed, I have never fought one of my father’s henchmen before. Probably because no one fights his henchmen. You either kill or be killed. There is no fighting.

  There’s lust on the other hand. But it’s not just the lust that I’ve learned to deal with over the years. The physical lust that turns you inside out, that reduces you to nothing more than an animal. It’s not that, which is so much easier to compartmentalize. It’s the lust of the heart. It’s the yearning, the pining, wanting someone to feel the same way about you that you do about them.

  Maybe it just comes down to hunting. I am forever the predator when it comes to Seraphine, not just in body but in spirit. I want to possess her heart and her thoughts and her soul the same way that she’s taken ownership of mine. I want to seek out what I want and need for survival and call it my own. That’s the kind of lust I’m talking about on a larger scale. The lust of craving someone’s very being, of needing every single molecule that created them at some point.

  Maybe I beat around the bush for too long when I was younger, maybe because I didn’t know what I wanted.

  But now I do know.

  I know very well.

  She’s right beside me.

  And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure she stays there.

  This part of the 18th arrondissement isn’t the best neighborhood, so it’s no wonder that the Uber is pulling over outside a park as per Seraphine’s instructions.

  At this point, I’m lying low in the back seat, and she’s given me but one glance as she gets out of the vehicle.

  The glance said Stay out of trouble.

  Wish I could say the same to her.

  It’s too late for both of us.

  Somehow the Uber driver is used to weird nonsense and doesn’t so much as blink when I tell him to circle around and then drop me off on the street on the other side, nearest the train tracks that lead into the Gare de l’Est.

  A park beside train tracks—great location for late-night dealings.

  I keep low and run quickly through the darkness until I can see Seraphine, standing around the entrance to the community garden. There is only one light above her, illuminating her and the gravel beneath her feet a faint orange color.

  Smart, Seraphine. Stay where you are. Don’t step out of the light.

  I’m about fifteen meters away, far enough to stay hidden behind the tree line but close enough to get involved in case something goes wrong. She’s looking around, up at the apartment buildings across the street, which should be a comfort, but they also look dilapidated and abandoned. If anyone lives in them, I bet they’re the type to turn a blind eye to anything happening in the park across the street.

  She’s nervous, tapping her boots against the ground, clutching her purse, which holds the money I gave her. I wish I could trade places with her and do the deal that way, but I know that if I show my face, there will be hell to pay.

  I’d venture to guess that a lot of the thugs, hit men, criminals, and dealers in this town all have connections to my father. Growing up, there always seemed to be an “acquaintance” of my father’s, as he would always explain it, and they’d disappear into his study. Sometimes they would be there for a few minutes, others a few hours. Even when I was young I knew there was something off about these meetings. The men were rarely charming; they all had hard, scarred-up faces that didn’t know how to smile. They looked at me like I was a cockroach and they were the shoe; all they needed was a signal from my father and it would all be over.

  As I got older, as I became more privy to the goings-on in my father’s life, I realized that he was involved in something far reaching. He had power beyond just being Gautier Dumont. His whole life, he’d been in his brother’s shadow—the brother who had it all, was beloved by all, had the brains and the drive for the business. My father had some brains, but more than that, he had the drive for dominance and a distinct lack of morals. He couldn’t compete with his brother on the business scale, but he could grow his own power through every legal and illegal channel known to him. He was born with money, and he used that money to amass more money, blood money, and then created an underground empire to rival anyone else’s.

  I keep out of my family’s business. I always have. I know that a variety of terrible things have probably been done by my father, and perhaps Pascal too, but I’ve turned a blind eye. Even when I joined the company, looking and hoping for a chance to feel like I belong, I still kept out of the darkness, and they willingly kept me out.

  They see me as an outsider, just as they see Seraphine as one. They don’t trust me, and I don’t trust them. But that willful ignorance can only go on for so long.

  I know now, as I stay crouched behind these bushes, the bare branches of a maple tree above me, that I’ve drawn a line in the sand. I won’t stand by and let my father frighten Seraphine to death, or whatever it is he planned to do through Jones. I won’t pretend anymore that he’s a man not capable of murder, because I know he is. Life is pretty good at throwing things you instinctually want to ignore, just to preserve yourself, preserve the life you’ve carved out for yourself, your way of seeing the world. Change is scary, and when it’s time to confront something big, most of us pretend it doesn’t exist.

  I can’t do that anymore.


  And if I can’t help Seraphine prove that my own father murdered his own brother, then I want nothing to do with this family anymore. I don’t want to be a Dumont. I don’t want to add to the legacy. I want to throw my name away, quit my job, start again.

  I want to do that with her.

  Somewhere far, far from here.

  In fact, the longer that I’m watching her waiting in this darkened park, the more I know what our next steps are. She has to pay Jones, there is no question about that. If she doesn’t, there will be consequences that I can’t help her with. But after this, my life in Paris is over. And with any luck, I’ll convince her of the same.

  Jones approaches her from the left. His footsteps on the gravel are so silent that Seraphine doesn’t hear him coming.

  She spins around at the last moment, and I can tell it takes all of her not to scream.

  “Do you have the money?” he asks, holding out one hand.

  Seraphine nods anxiously and reaches into her purse, pulling out the wad of bills and quickly placing it in his hand. “It’s all there.”

  He glances at it. “If these turn out to be counterfeit . . .”

  “Surely you can tell right now from glancing at them whether they are or not.”

  She’s getting attitude in her voice.

  Not a smart move, Seraphine. Keep it meek.

  “Hmmphf,” Jones says, tucking the bills into his jacket pocket.

  Then he continues to stare at her, legs in a wide stance, hands clasped at his stomach.

  “What?” she asks. “Do we have some other business?”

  “I want to know what you have planned next.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Just then a cry rings through the air, enough to give me a heart attack. But it’s just some drunken bum on the sidewalk between them and the road, pushing a cart down the street and yelling at no one.

  Jones jerks his head toward the trees, in the direction I came from. “Let’s step away for a moment.”

  She stiffens, doesn’t move. “We’re done.”

  “We aren’t,” he says calmly, but the intensity in his eyes says something else. “We aren’t done until I say we are, you understand? Now come here, away from the road. You want people to know that you just paid me fifty thousand euros to try to off your uncle?”