Moonlight Scandals

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “A lot more.”

  Slowly, Dev lifted his gaze to the man who sat across from him. Archie was his age, but life in private military armies had weathered and hardened the man, aging him well beyond thirty-eight. The man was finely tuned death, though, and Dev imagined that some of those deep grooves in the pale skin around Archie’s dark eyes were a result of the deeds he carried out in exchange for monetary gain.

  People lied when they said money couldn’t buy you everything.

  Money could secure anything. Life. Death. Love. Security. Protection. Absolution. Happiness, or at least, a facsimile of joy. It was Dev’s experience that anything could be bought or bartered. Only the naive and the emotional believed otherwise, and Dev had never met a person who couldn’t be bought one way or another.

  “Figured,” Dev repeated.

  Archie studied him a moment and then nodded. “What do you have for me?”

  Using his forefinger, he slid the closed file toward Archie. “Everything you need is in there.”

  The redheaded man took the file and opened it. A harsh, low chuckle sounded from him. “Interesting. Is this related to what’s been all over the news this weekend?”

  Dev said nothing, which was answer enough. Word of Parker Harrington’s murderous intentions and subsequent death had dominated the news. It was only a matter of time before Parker’s sister, his ex-fiancée, was reported missing by her family. Sabrina was out there. Somewhere. And he was going to find her before anyone else did.

  Archie closed the file. “And once I’ve located the subject?”

  “You know the place, over in Bywater.”

  “Same code?”

  He nodded.

  “Meanwhile, you’ve got yourself a gun, right? Just in case that crazy comes back to you,” Archie said.

  “Of course. There’s something else I want you to do for me.”

  “I’m all ears.” Archie tossed his arm along the back of the booth.

  “I want you to look into something that involves my uncle.”

  Archie’s brows lifted, wrinkling his forehead. “The senator.”

  “He’s the only uncle left, isn’t he?” Dev’s fingers curled around his glass. “I want you to find anything you can on that intern of his.”

  Interest sparked in his eyes. “The one who went missing? Andrea Joan?”

  “Yes.”

  He seemed to mull that over. “Do you think she’s dead?”

  Dev didn’t answer for a long moment. “I hope she is. For her sake.”

  “Jesus,” Archie muttered. He was one of the rare people who got what Dev meant, because he knew about one-tenth of what Dev knew, and Dev was guessing that was enough to keep the man awake at night. “On it.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Speaking of the senator. You did get my update about what you suspected?”

  “The Ritz-Carlton while I was out of town?” Dev asked.

  Archie nodded. “And many, many times before that from what my contacts have advised.”

  “Yes.” Taking a drink, he welcomed the burn as the amber-colored liquid coursed down his throat. “I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  Nodding, Archie scooted to the end of the booth and then stopped. He met Dev’s stare. “I’ve seen some shit. Stared evil in the face to know that real evil has a face. And there’ve been times I’ve been terrified by what I’ve seen and who I’ve met. You? Never once seen you break a smile. You scare me a little.”

  Dev lifted a brow.

  Archie grinned. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Watching Archie slide out of the booth and disappear into the shadows, Dev finished off his glass of bourbon as he thought about what Archie had admitted.

  “You scare me a little.”

  Even his brothers were afraid of him. They had no reason to be, but he understood why. After all, he was willing to go there to protect his brothers, do the unthinkable. But they didn’t know what he knew, and it would stay that way.

  He was their shield and that would never change.

  “Another glass?”

  Dev’s gaze shifted to Justin, one of the servers who’d been at the Red Stallion for years. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Bowing, Justin plucked up the glass and disappeared. Dev glanced at his phone and started to reach for it, but stopped. His brother had his hands full at the moment. Both of them, actually. Letting his head rest against the tall booth, he exhaled a long, steady breath and for some damn reason, an image came to him.

  Not just an image.

  A person.

  A person he’d met for the first time on Friday.

  A person who searched him down in a cemetery to bring him flowers. A person who told him that his father’s death would get easier to deal with, and she had said that like she had personal experience in the subject matter. A person who turned out to be connected to that annoying son of a bitch journalist. And she was definitely someone not scared of him. Not even remotely. She had not been feeling fear when she’d been pressed against him.

  And he’d definitely been feeling . . . something.

  Rosie Herpin.

  A Creole last name to match the tawny complexion.

  Another glass of bourbon appeared in front of him, but he didn’t reach for it.

  Beaded curtains?

  The woman had the tackiest beaded curtains in her apartment. What grown adult with even a thumbnail-sized worth of taste would have cheap beaded curtains in their home? It wasn’t the sixties or seventies, and Rosie wasn’t a child amused by things that clanked together and made noise.

  A day after his brother played the white-knight-in-shining-armor routine and retrieved their temporary housekeeper from what Dev was guessing was her best friend’s apartment, this was what was lingering on the edge of his thoughts.

  Beaded fucking curtains.

  Dev had no idea why he was even thinking about the woman.

  Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. If he was going to be honest with himself for once in his life, it was because Rosie . . . intrigued him on several levels. One of the reasons being the fact she had looked at him like his mere presence in her apartment tainted everything in it, including the beaded curtains.

  No one, besides his brothers, looked at him like that or dared to glare at him.

  That . . . interested him. And he needed to spend only a handful of minutes with Rosie to know she was nothing like that conniving—

  He cut those thoughts off. Shut them the hell down.

  Dev thought about where Rosie lived. Not too far from Jackson Square. How in the hell she lived there, with all the noise, was beyond him. His gaze shifted to the glass of bourbon.

  There were two types of New Orleanians. Those who thrived on the sounds, the smells, the sights, and the whole atmosphere of the French Quarter. And there were those who avoided the Quarter at all costs.

  He was guessing Rosie was the former.

  He was the latter.

  Dev didn’t know much about her. He could change that in seconds if he wanted to. One call and he could find out anything he wanted to know. Age. Birthplace. Family. Siblings. Education. Workplace. Anything. He could even find out exactly how this husband of hers had died.

  Damn.

  He’d been an asshole about that, hadn’t he?

  His gaze shifted to his phone again. The strangest thing had happened when he stood in Rosie’s apartment that morning, waiting for his brother and arguing with her over what constituted real wood. He stopped . . . thinking.

  Thinking about everything.

  Dev couldn’t even remember the last time when that had happened, and well, that had been a nice break.

  Devlin didn’t believe in coincidences, so there wasn’t a single doubt in his mind that she knew exactly who he was when she found him in the cemetery. Had Ross been following him and sent her in? Quite possible since it was a favorite pastime of the reporter. Her apparent close relationship to Nikki and her association with Ross made Rosie dangerous.


  So, of course, he’d become hard as a rock arguing with her.

  He didn’t even want to know what that said about him, but he knew the whole time he’d been with Sabrina, and that had been years, never once did he get so turned on, so easily.

  That was why sex, and it hadn’t been often, with Sabrina had been a chore, a means to an end that was never fulfilled. And there was no way Sabrina hadn’t felt his impassivity when it came to her. He was also a means to an end for her.

  Hell, he didn’t want to think about Sabrina. He’d rather think about the woman who glared at him like she wanted to kill him with a single look.

  What had she called him?

  Ah, yes. A dickhead.

  His shoulders lifted in a silent chuckle as he reached for his glass of bourbon. A woman who owned fucking beaded curtains actually interested him. A woman with hazel eyes—eyes that shifted from brown to green depending on how angry she was becoming.

  Damn.

  Hazel eyes.

  It made him think of when he was a young boy. His mother had this friend who’d come visit every Saturday. This was before his brothers and sister were born, when it was just him and his mother and . . . Saturdays. Mrs. Windham would always bring her daughter with her. The girl was Dev’s age, give or take a few months. All he could remember was that she had blond hair and hazel eyes. What was her name?

  Pearl.

  They used to play in the many rooms at the manor, because Lawrence was never home on Saturdays, and Dev could just be. One day, he was rushing from bedroom to bedroom, looking for Pearl. They’d been playing hide-and-seek or some silly game like that. He couldn’t remember that exactly, but he did recall finding Pearl. He’d also found Lawrence with Mrs. Windham in one of those rooms.

  His mother’s friend didn’t come back after that afternoon. Dev never saw Pearl again, and Saturdays changed. Everything began to change that one Saturday afternoon, and it wasn’t until years later, when Dev was older, that he began to understand why.

  When was the last time he’d thought of Pearl? Hell. It had been years.

  His mind shifted back to Lawrence. The man was a virus that infected everything he touched, that much was true. Too many people who had business dealings with Lawrence, from his estate lawyer, Edmond Oakes, to several high-ranking city officials, had become tainted and twisted, either implicated or complicit in what Dev had suspected of Lawrence.

  Hell, Lawrence was more than a virus. He had been a fucking cancer.

  A shadow fell over the table, drawing his gaze. Justin stood there once more, holding a manila envelope. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. de Vincent, but this was left for you at the door.”

  “Was it?” He reached for the envelope, taking it from the man. “By whom?”

  “It appears to have been placed in the mail slot just a few moments ago. No one saw who left it there.”

  Interesting. “Thank you, Justin.”

  The man nodded and then scurried off while Dev looked at the envelope. His name was typed across the center of the envelope. Turning it over, he tore the top, unsealing it. At first he thought there was nothing in it, but as he reached inside, he felt something smooth. Dev pulled out an eight by eleven photograph.

  What the . . . ?

  A photograph of him and Lawrence de Vincent, his father. It was taken at the last charity function Lawrence had attended with Dev before Lawrence’s . . . untimely passing and only a few months after Dev’s suspicions about Lawrence had been confirmed in ways he could’ve never imagined.

  Neither of them was smiling as they stood side by side. Neither of them looked like he wanted to be there. And neither of them was doing a good job hiding their immense dislike and distrust of one another.

  Dev remembered the night of the Ulysses Ball. It was that evening, in the car to the event, the man who’d raised Dev and made him who he was today had scornfully told him that he and Gabriel were not his children. Only Lucian and their sister, Madeline, were.

  Hell, Dev had never felt relief like he had right then. Some might believe that Dev was a monster, but if they knew what he did about Lawrence, they’d know what Archie had said earlier was true.

  Real evil always had a face.

  His brothers hadn’t known that Dev knew the truth before them. His brothers hardly knew anything.

  Not even what Dev had learned before the night of the Ulysses Ball. A secret so fucking life-changing that he still, to this day, had no idea how to tell his brothers.

  How to even deal with it himself.

  If he could spare his brothers the knowledge of how evil, how spiteful the man who raised them was, he would. Damn, if he wasn’t trying to go to the grave with what he knew. It would be . . . better that way.

  But it wasn’t the photograph that caused Dev’s jaw to clench. It wasn’t even what the photograph symbolized. It was the message scratched into the film by what looked to be a needle or some other thin, sharp instrument.

  I know the truth.

  Chapter 6

  Rosie spent the better part of the weekend alternating between replaying the verbal fisticuffs with Dickhead de Vincent, being furious with herself for the momentary lapse of sanity when she’d been pretty damn aroused by the Dickhead and worrying about Nikki.

  Which meant she was antsy and unable to sit still for longer than a minute at a time. This left her with only one option.

  Rage cleaning.

  She attacked every inch of her apartment. The living room and kitchen were practically sparkling and by the time she finished the bathroom adjacent to her bedroom, she felt that an immune-compromised individual could safely eat off the floor in there.

  The bathroom was Rosie’s second favorite place in the apartment, coming in behind the balcony. The balcony only took first place because of its comfortable chairs and the view. After standing all day, either working the register or in the kitchen of her parents’ bakery while her parents, with the best intentions, periodically demanded to know exactly when Rosie was going to put one of her three college degrees to use, it was nice to sit up there and people watch.

  That special scene—the one reserved only for people ready to get married and have babies.

  Rosie already had that, at least the get-married part, and she wasn’t sure she’d have that ever again or if she wanted to.

  By the end of those days when her parents and sister, Bella, were on her, Rosie wanted nothing more than to kick her feet up and drink wine out on the balcony, under the churning fans, doing nothing but people watching and listening.

  The claw-foot tub and the balcony were what sold the apartment. She’d stumbled across it two years ago. Getting into the apartment had taken some patience since the tenant had left a lot of his personal belongings behind.

  But it had been worth the wait.

  Her apartment was rather small, but the bathroom was humongous in comparison. It was like the apartment was built around the bathroom. At least that was what she liked to think. In reality, the bathroom was probably originally a bedroom or something, but it was just amazing.

  A double-sink vanity and long mirror offered more than enough room for all her makeup and hair stuff, which was quite impressive considering she did have a mean makeup addiction. She was constantly on the lookout for the perfect foundation. Her skin tone did not make that easy. Foundation often looked amazing in the soft lights of the bathroom, but once she stepped out under the sun, she either appeared ghastly ill or like she’d baked herself. So the drawers were filled with samples and half-used jars she hadn’t parted with, because maybe one day, magically, the foundation would work. Not only did the bathroom have that amazing vanity with a space underneath for a chair, but it also had a beautiful porcelain tub that had probably been in this apartment since the dawn of time.

  There was also a decent-sized detached shower with classic subway tile. She could lie down in the bathroom, stretch her arms and legs out, and make bathroom angels without touching anything. Perfect. And
if she did that right now, she knew she’d be fresh and clean since she’d scrubbed the tile floor for about an hour.

  Rage cleaning was a lot like depressed cleaning, which was what she did whenever she really allowed herself to sit and think about Ian. It was no big surprise that he was lingering in the back of her mind since it was the anniversary of his death, but there really wasn’t a day that went by in the last ten years that Rosie wasn’t reminded of him.

  Hell, nearly every time she walked into Pradine’s Pralines, the bakery run by her family since its creation, she thought about how Ian used to come here after school and study at one of the small booths at the front of the store.

  Sometimes, when she was at the bakery, behind the register, and if she tried hard enough, she could see him sitting there, nibbling on the cap of his pen as he pored over his homework.

  Those were the memories she held on to.

  And Devlin thought she didn’t know anything about marriage and love? What an asshole.

  Irritated all over again, she stomped out to the kitchen and made a beeline for the bottle of moscato in the fridge. She poured herself a glass and walked over to where her laptop sat open on the coffee table.

  She needed a distraction and she had the perfect one. The video that had been sent to her this morning was paused on her laptop. She’d already watched it about two dozen times and was prepared to watch it two dozen more.

  And it wasn’t even a video of puppies stumbling around and being freaking adorable either. It was better than that.

  Plopping down on her couch, she balanced the laptop on her knees and hit play.

  NOPE had caught something on film.

  It wasn’t a full-bodied apparition, but the shadow darting across the hallway was definitely not a floating dust bunny.

  Setting her wineglass aside, she picked up her red-framed glasses and then brought the screen as close as she could to her face. She hit the play button again on the grainy image. The moment the shadow blob appeared at the end of the hall, across from the baby’s room, she hit pause. Squinting, she tried to make out any sort of definition to the blob.