Wolves of Paris

by Tori Knightwood

  She threw herself onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. She had let everyone down and she didn’t know how to make it better.

  If only she could call her mom. Mom always made everything better. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t admit what she’d done; it was too terrible. And she didn’t want Mom to worry about Gavin, too. She’d call her when this was over.

  In the meantime, she sent her daily message to let Mom know she was alive. Ryenne would have to wallow in her guilt all alone.

  A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door.

  Ryenne sprang up from the bed.

  Dany, her left arm in a sling, stood in the doorway. “It’s going to be okay, you know.”

  “No, it’s not okay. Everyone’s mad at me and they have every right to be.”

  “Yeah, so what?” Dany came in and sat on the side of the bed. “They’re mad. They’ll get over it. They’re mad at me, too, but they’re my family and they love me so they’ll get over it. They love you, too, you know.”

  The Malraux loved her? No way. She had seen the faces of Emma and Françoise earlier, and a few days ago when they blamed her for the attention of the Fangs. Maybe Lucien had loved her, but not anymore.

  “Come on,” Dany said, reaching out with her good hand. “Come downstairs with me. I promise you it will be all right. You can’t hide up here forever.”

  Ryenne would consider hiding. At least until she’d figured out her next move.

  “You can’t get Gavin back by wallowing in misery up here,” Dany said. “Come with me.”

  She had a point. Ryenne took Dany’s outstretched hand and walked downstairs with her. She had to face Lucien and his family eventually.

  Her brash demeanor usually got her through every uncomfortable situation she’d ever experienced. Usually. This time, she was broken. If Dany hadn’t been holding her hand, she would have run back upstairs.

  Dany practically dragged her out to the patio, where everyone had gathered for drinks. Mathieu had joined them and he stood to hug Ryenne.

  “I’m so sorry about your friend,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to get him back.”

  Tears pricked her eyes again. “Thank you.”

  Dany gave her a reassuring smile.

  “Yes,” Françoise said from her seat at the table. “Gavin is one of ours, he’s an innocent, and we will get him back. The Fangs will just keep coming after us and we can’t let them. We will hit back. Hard.” She gestured to the empty seat next to her. “Come. You probably know the Fangs better than any of us. Help us formulate a plan.”

  Surprised by Françoise’s change in attitude, Ryenne walked like a zombie to the empty seat and dropped into it.

  “Right then,” Françoise said. “The compound in the eighth arrondissement has good security. It makes it hard to penetrate but it also makes it likely the Fangs are holding Gavin there.”

  There were several nods around the table. Ryenne, too, couldn’t fault her logic.

  “Any ideas on how to get in?” Françoise asked.

  Mathieu began to rise from his seat, his mouth opening, but the doorbell interrupted whatever he was about to say.

  Françoise frowned. “We’re not expecting anyone.”

  “I’ll go,” Guy said. He was the largest and most intimidating of them all.

  Lucien accompanied him, and Ryenne, not ready to be alone with the Malraux after the events of the day, followed. Guy got to the front door before Ryenne had made it out of the kitchen. He was fast for such a big guy. His body language slackened but there was wariness on his face.

  Ryenne caught up to Lucien in time to see his facial expression go blank. She glanced to the door as Guy opened it wider.

  Chantal stood there, darting nervous glances over her shoulder. “Can I come in? Please?”

  Guy looked to Lucien, who nodded.

  Chantal practically fell over her own feet trying to get inside before Guy changed his mind or before some unknown assailant grabbed her from outside. Once in the hall, she pushed the door closed and leaned against it.

  “What are you doing here?” Lucien asked.

  Chantal looked at Ryenne. “You said you would help me if I told you the truth.”

  Both men looked at Ryenne. “When was this?” Lucien asked.

  “Yesterday. With Gavin.” His name stuck in her throat.

  He turned back to his ex. “What truth?”

  Chantal swallowed. “The Fangs kidnapped my fiancé.”

  “You have a fiancé?” Lucien asked.

  Ryenne ignored him and the feelings his question stirred in her. Her own hurt was too raw to contemplate why he might still care what Chantal did and with whom. Instead, she offered her hand to Chantal. “Come outside and tell us what happened.”

  Chantal nodded, took Ryenne’s hand, and walked with her to the patio where the Malraux family gave her a cool and curious reception. Emma’s face darkened and Dany lowered her eyebrows. Françoise stood and gestured to a chair, ever the gracious hostess. She said something in French to Dany, who filled two glasses with red wine and set them in front of Ryenne and Chantal.

  Ryenne wondered which young woman Françoise preferred to date her son. Had she mourned the end of Lucien’s relationship with Chantal? Would she mourn the end of Lucien’s relationship with Ryenne?

  She pushed the painful thoughts aside. They wouldn’t help Gavin. She told the others about the man who had been with Chantal at the restaurant when they met Renardin, and again at the club when Lucien was stabbed.

  “I didn’t know he was planning to do that,” Chantal rushed to say. “But I didn’t have a choice. He drove me to the club that night. He’s been watching me, which is why I didn’t want to talk to you at work yesterday.”

  “Who is he?” Dany asked.

  Chantal stared at her hands, clenching and unclenching on the table. “His name is Patrick Grieux.”

  A gasp went around the table.

  “Grieux?” Françoise asked.

  Lucien pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen. “Jean’s son. He works for Lord Enterprises, too.”

  “He’s a Fang,” Chantal whispered.

  “But how did you get involved with him?” Lucien asked.

  “First, he started watching me,” she said, still not looking at anyone. “I’d see him across from my job, at the café where I stop for a coffee during breaks, in the metro station, at the grocery store on the corner near my apartment. Axel noticed him, too, and confronted him outside our apartment one night.”

  “Axel is your fiancé?” Lucien asked.

  Ryenne glanced at him. Did he still care?

  Chantal nodded and stared at her hands.

  Ryenne leaned toward her. “What happened? What happened to Axel?”

  Chantal looked up and met Ryenne’s gaze. “Patrick grabbed Axel, twisted his arm up behind him, and dragged him to a car waiting down the street. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Chantal’s voice broke and Ryenne felt a twinge of pain on Chantal’s behalf. If she were a touchy-feely kind of person, she’d put her arm around Chantal or hold her hand. Or something. But she wasn’t. It had already been out of character for her to offer her hand to Chantal in the entryway, which she’d done so they could get the full story. Now, Chantal’s story was spilling out.

  The Malraux exchanged glances and waited for Chantal to compose herself enough to continue her story.

  “The next day, they called me and said if I wanted to see Axel again, I would do them a favor. They wanted me to seduce Lucien.”

  Horror coursed through Ryenne but she nodded to hide her true feelings from the others. She’d begun to suspect something like this when she saw how scared Chantal was the other day, but hearing it aloud was worse than anything Ryenne had been thinking. Chantal clearly hadn’t been trying to get Lucien back for herself. Glancing at Lucien, she was both amused and sad to see him blush.

  “I didn’t want to do it,” Chantal continued, now looking
at Lucien. “I had hurt you enough already, but Patrick called last week and told me to wear something sexy. He didn’t tell me why or where we were going. He picked me up and brought me to the restaurant where you were meeting with those two men.”

  “Did you know the other men?” Ryenne asked.

  Chantal shook her head. “Patrick made me sit there and pretend to eat dinner until you started to leave and then he told me to get up and talk to you.” She let out a long sigh. “I hadn’t seen you in years. I’m glad you’ve found happiness with someone else.”

  Ryenne swallowed and kept her facial expression neutral.

  “I’m so sorry for my part in all of this, but now that you know the truth, will you help me?” Chantal asked. “They haven’t let me talk to Axel for days. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. Help me get him back.”

  Ryenne looked around at all of the Malraux and nodded. Emma and Dany seemed less pissed off than they had, and Dany melted further into Guy, maybe moved by Chantal’s story.

  “How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Emma asked. “This could be a ruse.”

  Chantal’s lower lip trembled and she scrambled for her phone. “Here are photos of me and Axel together. He’s real and we really are in love. We were planning to get married in the fall at a chateau near Chartres. His family is in Brittany and mine in Tours, so it made sense.” She shoved the phone toward Emma who took it and swiped through several pictures.

  “Okay, he exists,” Emma conceded. “He could be a rogue or not really kidnapped.”

  Chantal’s pretty face fell and tears leaked out of her eyes.

  “You said Patrick called you,” Ryenne said. “Did you record any of the calls?”

  Chantal shook her head and then her face suddenly brightened. “Wait. There was one time when he called during work and I couldn’t answer. He left a message and I saved it.” She reached for her phone and spent several seconds looking for what she wanted. “Here it is.”

  A man’s voice came out of her phone. Ryenne couldn’t understand the words but the tone was brusque and the voice sounded young.

  “What did he say?” she asked when the message ended.

  “He said if Chantal didn’t try harder to distract me, they would send her one of Axel’s fingers as motivation,” Lucien said.

  A silence followed his words. Ryenne felt bad for Chantal, but a small nugget of jealousy had taken root in her belly from the moment she had first seen Lucien’s reaction to his ex’s arrival.

  Getting Axel back for her would solve one half of the problem, but she didn’t know how to solve the other half. Lucien had to decide for himself which woman he wanted and whether he could forgive Ryenne for her actions this afternoon.

  Mathieu eventually broke the silence. “Now we have two people to rescue.”

  “So, how do we get into Lord Enterprises?” Guy asked. “Brute force?” He cracked his knuckles as if for emphasis.

  “There aren’t enough of us,” Françoise said. “We’ll have to use stealth.”

  “Actually, I don’t think Gavin and Axel are being kept at Lord,” Mathieu said. “Chantal, please play the message again.”

  She did.

  Ryenne shook her head. She didn’t know what to listen for. She didn’t understand the words.

  Comprehension dawned on Lucien’s face. “There are sounds behind the words,” he said. “But not the sounds you’d expect from the city.”

  “Especially not from the area around Lord Enterprises,” Mathieu said. “They’re near the St. Lazare train station, but I don’t hear train sounds or traffic in the recording.”

  “But he could be inside the building, on an upper floor,” Dany said.

  “True, but there are noises,” Lucien said. “Bird song and wind through leaves.”

  They listened again and all the shifters then heard it, the sound of the countryside, or at least the suburbs.

  “So where are they?” Ryenne asked.

  “That’s what we’ll have to find out.” Mathieu’s face shone with excitement.

  SEVENTEEN

  As soon as Chantal left, Lucien excused himself to go to bed. Ryenne’s heart sank. How could they get through this if he wouldn’t talk to her? She’d never been much of a talker but even she knew you could only solve so much through action.

  Dany gave her a reassuring smile as she moved to the chair next to Ryenne, vacated by Chantal. “Don’t worry. He’ll come around. He just needs some time to get over his annoyance.”

  “But what if he doesn’t ever forgive me?” she asked.

  Dany put her good arm around Ryenne’s shoulders. “He will. I know my brother. He loves you, which is why he’s so angry. We scared him. And now he’s focused on the next step: saving Gavin.”

  Ryenne should be more focused on saving Gavin, too. She’d never before cared as much about what any other man thought. Gavin had been the only man in her life since she lost her father fifteen years ago.

  She smiled at Dany. “Thank you.”

  “Go to bed. In the morning, everything will look brighter, and we will find Gavin and figure out how to get him out of the Fangs’ clutches.”

  Ryenne listened to Dany and went up to the room she shared with Lucien. He was already asleep, or at least pretending to be, facing the wall and away from her side of the bed.

  She slept poorly, always expecting his arms to come around her at some point in the night. But they never did.

  When she woke up, he was gone, and she could hear voices from downstairs. She quickly showered and dressed and joined the family in the kitchen.

  Françoise smiled and handed her a cup of coffee.

  A smile from Françoise was new. Ryenne didn’t know what to make of it. On the other side of the spectrum, Lucien ignored her and remained deep in conversation with Guy and Emma while poring over a map.

  Dany came in, her arm free of the sling. “Okay, the only listings for either Grieux are in Paris. Any other ideas?”

  Françoise and Mathieu shared a look.

  “What?” Dany asked.

  “Well, we grew up with Jean in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Maybe he still has a house there,” Françoise said.

  “I’ll go check.” Dany spun on her heel and went to the office, and Ryenne followed. No point in standing around being ignored.

  When Ryenne entered the office, Dany glanced up from the computer on her mother’s wooden desk and gave her a wry smile. “We’ll find them.”

  Ryenne nodded and dropped into one of the delicate antique chairs. “Anything?”

  Dany focused on the screen in front of her and frowned. “No current listings for any Grieux.” She thought for a moment. “Maman!”

  “J’arrive,” Françoise called out from the kitchen, followed by the clacking of her low heels on the parquet floor of the hall.

  As soon as she stepped across the threshold of the office, Dany was already talking. “Do you remember the address of Grieux’s house when you were kids?”

  Françoise stared at her daughter for several minutes, eyes narrowed, then told her an address. “He lived behind me.”

  Dany typed in the address. “Looks like it belongs to someone else now. And looking at the map, there’s no longer enough open space around it to make it practical for a shifter.”

  “Probably why he didn’t hold onto it,” Françoise muttered.

  Mathieu joined them then. “I have a... friend... in the town records office. I’ll give her a call and see if she can find anything.”

  “Maybe Grieux isn’t using his real name,” Ryenne suggested.

  “I’ll have my friend check public records.” Pacing the tiny office, Mathieu tapped his chin. “Patrick must have a mother. Maybe there’s property in her name.”

  Things were coming together. She just hoped Gavin could hold on until she reached him. Hopefully, they weren’t torturing him and hadn’t turned or killed him. Such thoughts churned her stomach. Gavin deserved so much better than any treatment the Fa
ngs might put him through. He deserved better than to be stuck with those monsters for even a minute.

  She looked around the kitchen. Lucien continued to ignore her, still deep in contemplation of a map with Guy. Emma and Pascal were outside with the girls, so Ryenne exited the kitchen and joined them.

  At Emma’s questioning look, Ryenne filled her in on what they’d learned so far and what was happening.

  “So Mathieu has a lady friend,” Emma said with a grin. “Good for him. It’s about time. He lost his wife years ago and he deserves to be happy.” Emma glanced through the kitchen window. “So do you and Lucien.”

  Ryenne was surprised. She didn’t think Emma liked her, and Emma blamed Ryenne for some of the things that had happened in the past week. “He’s angry and hurt and scared right now, but he’ll get over it. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.”

  Ryenne’s mouth dropped open and Emma laughed.

  “You get him,” Emma continued. “You accept him. And you make him happy.”

  Ryenne hoped Lucien would come to realize all the things his sisters had told her. She didn’t want to lose him, after everything else she’d lost in her life. All the things Emma had said about her applied to Lucien, too. He got her. He accepted her.

  Or he used to.

  Ryenne excused herself and asked to speak to Pascal.

  “Only if you play with us later,” Sophie said.

  Ryenne smiled. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

  Pascal translated and Sophie and Aurélie gave Ryenne huge smiles. They ran toward their mother.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said on a sigh.

  “Yes,” Pascal agreed. “Do you want kids?”

  Ryenne whipped her head away from the girls, toward him, and stammered. Pascal laughed. “No rush.”

  “I’ve just never thought about it before. My life and career aren’t conducive to raising children.” Her own childhood had been mostly happy. Until it wasn’t. Until she’d lost half of her family. She’d fought to create a productive life for herself after the tragedies and never thought there was room for anyone else. But she’d made room for Lucien. Maybe there would be room someday for children, too.