Dark Facade (Book Three) (Dark Facade Series)

by Hubbard, Sylvia

  “Dammit, Onyx, this is my investigation; A murder investigation.”

  Onyx feigned shock. “Oh no, another one bites the dust in the City of Detroit. Maxine didn’t do it. Nor did her Philippe.” Sarcasm dripped from her voice as if she were mocking Maxine.

  Maxine clearly didn’t like the dark young woman in the least bit, but Onyx had that dangerous aura about her, which Maxine was instinctually afraid of.

  Sheriff angrily growled, “If she has information-”

  Onyx cut him off with a deadly forbidding look. “You’re an investigator dammit, investigate. What she knows isn’t going to get you closer to the truth than a few more hours of your time just watching the true suspect. She’s told you enough, now leave her the hell alone, or I’ll shove my foot so far up your ass the water on my knee will quench your damn thirst.”

  Sheriff started to protest, but then Onyx cracked her knuckles to enforce her point.

  “I got just enough room to lay you low big fella. And it will hurt a hell of a lot more than what Penny did to your heart. Wanna see?” Onyx threatened as if she was going to get some sort of pleasure taking him out.

  Maxine was in awe at the way this woman who couldn’t be any taller than Maxine, but talked like she was twenty feet tall.

  When Onyx was gone, Sheriff slammed his fist in the nearest wall making an indent. He curse viciously for a few moments and then walked over to the window to see if the coast was clear.

  “Bitch!” he sneered, turning away from the window and glaring up at Maxine. “I’m going over Lisa’s house tomorrow about three. Meet me over there.” This was more of a demand than a request.

  Maxine nodded, but asked, “Why would you need me?”

  “It seems you’re the only one that knew her closer than anyone else, so if her life was out of place, then you’ll be able to see that better than I.” He looked down at his feet and picked up the expensive bag that Maxine had gotten over the weekend. “That’s a two thousand dollar bag,” he noted out loud.

  “It was a gift,” Maxine said.

  “From Philippe?” Sheriff asked suspiciously.

  She didn’t respond as he put the bag down. Sheriff gave her his most intense glare before leaving out of the door. Quickly locking the door once he was gone, Maxine sighed in relief elated over his departure.

  Would all this really end well for her? And how does she want it to end? Now that she had solved Lisa’s disappearance, what real loyalty did she have to this organization?

  Touching the necklace unconsciously, she went to her room deep in thought.

  Tomorrow was a new day. Tomorrow, she would have to find a way to finish this project and take her mind off of Philippe. She could not return to the compound. She could not return to Philippe.

  CHAPTER 26

  Sweet sweet kisses to her face and lips. She responded back in earnest reeling in the hot desire that stirred in her groin. Despite it all, she had missed his lips, his touch... him. He was holding her tight making her feel safe, wanted, needed.

  “I’m sorry, petite amie” he murmured through kisses. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stay, forever” she begged, staring into his beautiful blue eyes. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t sweetie. I won’t.” He promised, kissing her some more.

  Suddenly she was transported back to that day where she was a little girl. Her chest hurt and it was so difficult to stay awake, but the stranger’s arms holding her tight kept her safe.

  “I’m here, sweetheart,” he had said.

  He promised. He promised, but….

  Wrenching awake, she practically fell out the bed, crying. Tears had soaked her pillow and she let out a loud sob as she came to reality.

  Composing herself, Maxine didn’t bother to get back on the bed since it had been her third time that night and her rump couldn’t take it anymore. Pulling the covers off the bed along with a dry pillow, she hugged the pillow to her body in security forcing herself to try to go back to sleep without dreaming.

  When that didn’t work, she checked the clock to see it was five in the morning. After growling and stuffing her fist into the pillow, she got up and went over to her computer.

  The software she needed for her presentation had been uploaded into her work computer and with the presentation being tomorrow, she decided to get to work. If she was going to fail, she wanted to make sure that she did her best.

  Before getting to work, she went to an online translator and typed in the pet name she remembered Philippe calling her. “Petite Amie.”

  The translator returned, “Sweetheart.”

  Was it a coincidence the man who had rescued her called her the same name? Yes, only a coincidence.

  Pulling up the screen to get into her computer at work, she pushed everything out of her mind, yet occasionally doodled the name, “Petite Amie” aimlessly on the paper.

  Why had Philippe called his slave his sweetheart? Why was Philippe looking for her outside of the compound? Was he fearful she would tell?

  Too many questions.

  Too much work to do on the project.

  Too much thinking.

  Her head started to hurt.

  * * ***

  Philippe looked at the time and wondered who could be calling him at six in the morning.

  Picking up his cell phone, he didn’t get a chance to greet the caller before he heard in the phone’s receiver, “Open the door now, Philippe.”

  Onyx Heart was leaning against the doorway looking as if she had been standing there for hours. She wore a different full body leather outfit with thigh high black four inch stiletto heeled boots and a long ankle length black Mackintosh. As always her hair was drawn back and she wore a little make up this time. Dark eyeliner and mascara graced her long thick black lashes and she wore gloss on her lips. Simple, sensual and amazingly elegant, yet he had a feeling this woman knew not only her physical power, but she was very aware of her sexual allure as well.

  “Couldn’t this wait until a decent hour?” he questioned. “And how did you get past security?”

  He lived in a gated community fifteen minutes outside of Detroit and was usually alerted before guest arrived right at his doorstep.

  Onyx brushed past him shoving a folder in his bare chest. He’d wrapped the sheet around his waist in his rush to get down to the door.

  “You didn’t tell me the truth, Philippe,” she accused immediately.

  “I never lied,” he said, knowing that if she was as good as she was, she got information that hardly no one knew about him.

  A hard glare told him that he was full of shit even if he didn’t say it. “So why’d you take a stupid utility company job when your father was a billionaire?”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to be like my father? What does this have to do with what I paid you for?” he asked, closing the door and following her into the front room, which she made herself at home sitting on the couch and propping her feet up on a twelve thousand dollar coffee table.

  “So you thought you could make it out in the world on your own working for the gas company?” she asked amused. “What were you? Twenty?”

  “Eighteen,” he corrected her proudly. “I got the job right out of high school; Wanted to defy the system. I wanted to shun the norms of what everyone expected of me. I wanted to see if I could make it just like the working man without my father paying someone to get me where I wanted to go.”

  “Is that where you met William Stone?”

  He smirked seeing she had dug very deep and detailed. “It’s where I met contacts that led me to William Stone.”

  “And did you prove anything to your old man for your stubbornness or did he just think you were still acting like a child?””

  He could feel this was a dig at the relationship Philippe had with Ewan, but he didn’t take the bait to become riled up about the matter. “I proved that I could make it on my own, but I don’t see what this has to do with finding who I paid you to find.”
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br />   “I don’t just research what my clients want me to. I find the information they don’t expect me to find. You could pay anyone to go to the Internet and find out what you wanted, Philippe. You paid me to find out what you didn’t know was there.”

  Damn if she wasn’t right. “So will I get my monies worth?” he questioned waving the folder up and sitting across from her.

  Onyx smirked, “Would you like me to just tell you, or would you like to read the report?”

  “Tell me, Onyx, what do you know about Maxine Moore?”

  “I should let you know the reason your other investigators had difficulty finding her is because she had a different name from birth, which I’m sure your father never told you when he supposedly helped you. Her parents were manic depressive way before they had a child and never should have been allowed to raise anything that would depend on them. They committed suicide together and was trying to take their daughter with them, but with your assistance she managed to escape that fate, didn’t she?”

  Philippe didn’t answer her question and waited for her to continue.

  “What I can’t figure out, Philippe,” Onyx said inquisitively. “Was what it that prompted the state to allow the Gallaghers' to raise her? They had been refused foster care licensing for four years.”

  He was confused by the question, but he also didn’t want to admit that he had no idea about the state’s refusal or about the Gallaghers. He had put all that into his father’s hands thinking his father would take care of the details.

  Onyx continued. “So I looked further and a small donation of twenty-five thousand greased the hands of a judge who granted their petition just in time to award foster care of Maxine.”

  He frowned. “Gallagher? As in Horace Gallagher?”

  “Ah you know him?”

  A chill went down his spine as he remembered this name.

  “A man your father fired who was constantly being accused of inappropriate touching to female employees and everybody wondered why a year later Ewan gave the man the money to buy a hotel?” Onyx questioned.

  Terrified to even ask, but desperate to know, Philippe questioned, “And who greased the judge’s palm?”

  “Ewan Darkore.”

  His chest felt like a sledgehammer had slammed into it. “My father? Why?”

  “Maybe because the only way to get his son back was to promise him that he would make sure that the girl was taken care of, but in truth he put her in the house of a known pedophile, who was married to a sadist. A child who, for eight years took the brunt of this couple’s punishment in silence and shame. Why didn’t you check on her? Why didn’t you know?”

  Philippe put his hands over his face briefly not believing what he was hearing. “I-I thought I was doing the right thing for Maxine by staying away from her. That same day I saved her, I ran from one hospital to another because my mother was on her deathbed. She made me promise to make a truce with my father and to make up for all the things I had done. The stress of my leaving had strained her already weak heart.” He looked thoroughly torn. “But I had made that little girl who had stolen my heart from the first time I laid eyes on her a promise as well. A promise never to leave her, so I thought…” Guilt weighed heavy on his voice. “I thought if I told my father I would honor all his wishes for my life per my promise on my mother’s deathbed, he would take care of Maxine. I was young and she was just a child. I thought all she needed was a good family and I was white. My feelings for her… I didn’t understand them. She was… and I was older, fourteen years her elder, dammit! I thought I was the sick bastard because I cared more than I should have. He…my father convinced me it was something wrong with me.”

  He could see Onyx’s eyes look doubtful and internally he felt stupid because he was naïve enough to believe Ewan would honor Philippe’s wishes to take “good” care of Maxine, knowing his father could care two cents about her because of the color of her skin.

  Philippe knew then and he should have realized now Ewan only made promises for the greater good for himself.

  Still, he finished explaining to Onyx. “My father convinced me that if I let it go… let her go and never see her again… he would take care of the matter. He swore he could get a good family for her and if I was so inclined to find her when she was a legitimate age, I could let her know I was the mysterious benefactor and take it from there, but when the time came I was still married with children and… I still felt strongly about her…” He was lost for words.

  Her misery in life was his entire fault. His entire fault. Death would have been better than to go through what she had experienced and now she was involved in the organization.

  “And your marriage?” Onyx questioned.

  “Arranged a week after my mother’s funeral. We married six months later. Pierre was born before I started college and the other two came right after I graduated. She wanted children. I didn’t love her and she didn’t love me. It was all a business arrangement.”

  Onyx clicked her tongue in disgust. “While Maxine suffered and struggled, right?”

  How the hell was he ever going to make things right when all he ever did was cause Maxine agony?

  “Sweet Jesus, Onyx, maybe I was never meant to have her. Maybe my father was right. People like me can’t be with someone like her.” He huffed in frustration. “When I saw her application to the society, I thought… I thought maybe fate was bringing her to me again, but…” He cursed vehemently again.

  “If you’re going to sit here and feel pity about this whole shit, I’ll take my ass home.” Onyx stood up and straightened her coat. “Does your father know who she is now?”

  “No, he doesn’t know her. He saw her recently and didn’t know who she was,” Philippe said with relief.

  Onyx frowned slightly in deep thought for a quick second and then asked, “Do you love her, Philippe?”

  “I always have. From the moment I saved her life,” he admitted. “And now that I’ve been with her, I know I love her even more.” He’d never revealed this information to anyone, but he had a feeling Onyx would most likely be the only person he could say the truth to.

  “So you left the care of her youth in your father’s hands all this time without trying to check on her even once?”

  As if someone had stabbed him in the stomach, he confessed, “I was stupid to trust my father, Onyx. I thought once I agreed to be the faithful son, then he would live up to his side of the promise and take care of her as if…” He stopped and cursed internally. Of course his father could care less what Philippe wanted.

  Ewan was a selfish bastard and he wanted Maxine to hate Philippe. The man hadn’t even bothered to check on her to see how she was fairing because Ewan would have known this was the woman Philippe had cared so much about since she was a child.

  “I knew if I saw her while I was married, I wouldn’t be able to go back to the promises I made my mother. I knew I would want to be with Maxine, no matter if it was wrong or right.” Quietly, Philippe revealed out loud. “All my life, I’ve felt as if I was missing something in my life. As if there was a part of me that wasn’t complete, but being with her whether I’m making love to her, or just enjoying her company, I find myself whole, perfect.” He stood up and looked at Onyx. “But Maxine will never forgive me once she knows the truth.”

  “And that’s what Ewan wants you to think.” Onyx headed for the door, but stopped midway and turned around as if she had just experienced this great epiphany. “I heard once that within the sacred circle of your lover’s arm, you can find healing, wholeness and redemption, but since I’ve never been in love, I don’t know if that crap is true. Will you let me know?”

  He couldn’t believe the insightfulness of Onyx Heart and although she would deny having any compassion he could sense she did. “Yes, I will.”

  “Was your money well spent, Mr. Darkore?”

  “Yes, Ms. Heart. Very well spent. You are worth every dime.”

  Onyx smiled a true genuine smil
e and Philippe knew any man who fell in love with this dark minx would never know how to breathe again without her.

  “The rest of her information is in there, but I think you know all you need to know about her. I will caution you not to lose your head and seek her out. People are watching. Good night, Philippe.” Onyx let herself out.

  Philippe opened the folder to see where Maxine lived, but every reference to her address and even employment had been deleted out the information that was given to him. Running to the door to catch Onyx, he didn’t see anyone. Calling the security gate, he told the guard to hold the woman that would be leaving out from his place.

  “There’s been no one in or out all night long, Mr. Darkore,” the guard said.

  “Are you sure? She was just at my door step.”

  “Do you want me to call an alert and have the community searched for an intruder?” the guard asked.

  “No, no, just forget about it.” He hung up and wondered how Onyx had done that. Picking up the folder he had thrown to the ground in his haste, he looked through it more carefully, but found nothing about Maxine’s address or exact place of work.

  Yet there was a note taped to the back of the folder in Onyx’s handwriting.

  No, I did not give you her present location, because I know more than you think I know and you aren’t going to use her to fight your father with. That is a battle you are going to have to fight alone. The truth always hurts more as a weapon than anything else. Try using it and standing up to the man.

  He found himself still staring at the note an hour later when his other son entered his home with a key. Dedric had just graduated from University of Michigan and had gotten an internship with McPherson Architectural in Ohio. Of course Philippe had helped his son get the job, because he was willing to do anything to get his children as far away from his father as necessary. His daughter currently was traveling back and forth to Japan helping his ex-wife and her business.

  Dedric wasn’t due to start in Ohio until the end of the month and was staying with Philippe until that time.