Disavow

by Halle, Karina

  The truth is, my father did the same to me. He was frustrated that Blaise wasn’t like me, so he took it out on him. When it came to me, however, he was angry that I wasn’t like himself, so he took that out on me. I’ve been smacked around, punched—even kicked, once. It all stopped when I became a teenager, became taller, stronger, bigger than him.

  But the shit he did I still carry with me. It’s no wonder that Blaise went on to study martial arts. As for me, I just put up a shield, and I’ve never set it down. I let that shield deflect the things my father did and the horrible things I’ve done. I don’t think I could have survived without it.

  “Here’s to you, Blaise,” I say, spilling some whiskey onto the gazebo floor before I sit down in the corner. “Sorry I couldn’t have been a better brother.”

  “He’s not dead, you know.”

  I look up to see Gabrielle standing at the edge of the gazebo, covered by shadows. Something in my chest tightens in a way I can’t explain.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks.

  I raise the bottle. “Feeling sorry for myself. It’s a new thing I’m trying out. Not sure I like it.”

  “Am I intruding?” She gestures back to her quarters. “I saw you walk past with the bottle, and I figured this can’t be good.”

  “It’s better now that you’re here,” I tell her. I pat the floor next to me. “Here, sit.”

  She walks into the gazebo and takes a tepid look around. “It’s dirty. And you’re still wearing a suit.”

  “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I have an endless supply of suits. Now, sit. As your boss, that’s an order.”

  “Technically I’m off duty.” She puts her hips to the side in a ta-da moment. “See, no uniform.”

  “What are you wearing?” I peer at her, trying to see through the shadows. I can’t remember what I saw when I looked through her window. “If you don’t spend your leisure time lounging around in a braless T-shirt and booty shorts, I’m going to be very, very disappointed.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” she says and then sits next to me, leaning back against the gazebo wall. She’s in leggings and a T-shirt, which somehow aren’t that disappointing. Then she holds her hand out for the bottle.

  I pass it to her. “Rough day?”

  “Yeah,” she says, having a sip straight from the bottle. She doesn’t even wince. “My boss likes to work me really hard.”

  My cock twitches, heat building slowly. “Tell me more about how hard he works you.”

  She gives me a wry sidelong glance and hands me back the bottle. “Why, so you can have fodder to jack off to tonight?”

  I can’t help but grin. Just the fact that she said that gives me a full-on erection. “I don’t need any help in that. Unless you wanted to help me. I could always use an extra hand.”

  She stares at me for a moment, and I can’t quite read her eyes with the way the shadows are falling on them. I swear to God I see something like lust glinting in them, but I always see what I want to see.

  Then, to my complete surprise, she leans over and places her hand between my legs on my cock that’s tenting up in my pants. She gives it a firm squeeze, which elicits a low, unguarded moan from my mouth.

  “Are you always this hard when you’re around me?” she asks, leaning in closer, her tone more curious than anything else.

  I’m so taken aback, I don’t know what to say. I can only press my cock up into the palm of her hand, letting heat wash over me like a fevered man.

  “I take that as a yes,” she says.

  Then she removes her hand and resumes leaning against the wall.

  “What the fuck was that?” I ask, bewildered and breathless.

  It’s a trap. It’s got to be a trap.

  “Should I not have done that?” she asks. Her tone is mock innocence. I have no idea what’s going on with her.

  I swallow, the pleasure in my cock now turning to pain without her to relieve me. “You can do that all you want, but—”

  “I was just curious,” she says mildly. “I wanted to see if you had a reason to have the ego that you do.”

  “And?” I prompt.

  She shrugs.

  Wow. Talk about automatic deflation.

  “You sure know how to talk up a man.”

  “You’re a man who needs to be taken down a few pegs.”

  “Well, believe me, I have been,” I tell her, taking a larger gulp of whiskey this time. I shake the bottle at her. “Why do you think I’m drinking in the gazebo?”

  “You called Olivier?” she asks.

  “I did,” I tell her as I hand her the bottle and bring out a pack of cigarettes. I’m really trying to cut down to just a few a day. In France, that’s pretty much the same as quitting.

  I light it and then inhale, hoping the cigarette takes the weight off my shoulders.

  “And so . . . ?” she prods.

  I blow the smoke away from her. “Well, nothing. He didn’t send them. I never thought it was him anyway. That’s not his style. He’s too good for that.”

  “So then that leaves Marine.”

  “She does seem to have every reason to do this. We also haven’t talked in many years. Last I heard, she married a rich man and has a few kids. She has the means for revenge, but I’m not sure if money is something she needs.”

  “The letters never mentioned money. They also never mentioned you. So, since your list of enemies is accounted for, I think we should concentrate on your father. The likelihood of the threats being for him is high.”

  “Too high. Where do you begin?”

  “Figure out who would want him dead.”

  “Whoa,” I tell her, coughing. “Dead? Who said they wanted him dead? So far it’s just idle threats.”

  She shrugs, seeming uneasy. “I don’t take idle threats lightly, and neither should you.”

  “But extortion and murder are very different things. Why would anyone want my father dead?”

  “Maybe he hurt them,” she says quietly, looking away. Then she glances at me. “You said that he was going to kill your cousin and has a hit man working for him. You can’t pretend that she was the first person he had that done to. Nor can you pretend that your uncle was the first person he murdered. If he were able to do that to his own brother, he’d be able to do it to anyone. And if that’s the case, perhaps someone wants revenge for something he did. It could be someone who was close to Ludovic, someone we’re missing, or it could be someone else from years ago. The fact is, your father has done things, horrible things, and now someone is going to make him pay.”

  I run my hand over my face, trying to ease the tension that’s building inside me.

  My father really is this horrible.

  I’ve been complicit this whole time.

  His lackey. His minion.

  All his.

  I’m nothing of mine.

  “Anyway,” Gabrielle says, getting to her feet. “I’ll let you think about it.”

  “Where are you going?” I reach out for her, but she steps back out of the way. “You’re just going to grab my crotch, drink my whiskey, and leave?”

  Even with shadows on her face, I know she’s smiling. “You did call me a tease, didn’t you? Good night, Pascal Dumont.”

  “Good night,” I call after her, my voice disappearing in the darkness.

  I stare at the bottle in my hands for a moment before I have another drink. I wish she’d stayed out here longer with me. I wish I’d found the balls to kiss her earlier when she was touching me, touching me in ways I’d only dreamed of. I wish a lot of things. It’s very unlike me to be caught off guard, and it’s even more unlike me to hesitate in taking what I want.

  But the only way out of this wishing and wanting is at the bottom of the bottle.

  I drink most of it sitting alone in the dark in that gazebo, trying so damn hard to drown the turmoil inside me. There’s a shift happening, deep within whatever blackened soul I have, and I don’t know what the sh
ift means.

  I just know that it scares me.

  And I hate to be scared.

  When I’m good and drunk, I stumble back across the lawn and up to my room, where I collapse onto my bed, swept away into the din.

  I dream about Gabrielle.

  In my dreams, we are back in the gazebo.

  This time she’s completely naked, and though it’s dark, she shines bright, like diamonds are lighting her from within.

  She unzips my pants, takes my cock out, stiffer and harder than it’s ever been, like she’s grasping hot steel in her hands. Her legs spread as she straddles me and slowly lowers herself until it feels like my world is blown right open, until whatever pixie dust is lighting her up is taking over me.

  I run my hands up the soft skin of her sides, staring at her bright and shining, lost in her beauty, in her power, the power I feel running through my veins like I’ve been poured with radioactive dye.

  It feels like I have redemption in my hands, slowly grinding herself on me, squeezing my cock until I can’t breathe, until I can’t think.

  In my dream, she drives my demons out.

  Two days later, I’m standing bleary-eyed in the kitchen, getting my morning coffee when I feel a poke in my side.

  I flinch and look to see Gabrielle has sidled up next to me, staring at me with something on her mind.

  “Good morning,” I tell her, surprised. “You’re up early. And stealthy.”

  She’s not even in her maid uniform yet; instead she’s wearing a loose flannel shirt and black leggings, no doubt some H&M stuff again, but she wears it so well, it could almost be high-end. Maybe it’s because she seems completely comfortable in this, and it feels like I’m seeing a magical creature in her element. Doesn’t hurt that she doesn’t have a lick of makeup on her face, her freckles are popping through, and her platinum hair is long and loose and messy around her shoulders, the faint glow from the sky lighting her up.

  She looks so beautiful, it’s catching me off guard as much as the fact that she’s here at this hour. The sun rose only twenty minutes ago.

  “I wanted to give you something,” she whispers and then opens my suit jacket, sliding a letter into my inside pocket. I have to fight the impulse to put my hand around her lower back and keep her close to me. Then I have to fight an even greater impulse to not lean down and kiss her. For some reason, it feels like the right thing to do, the only thing to do.

  After the dream I had the other night, she’s all I can think about.

  I’m becoming a man obsessed.

  “Aren’t you curious?” she says softly.

  I can barely move my lips, I’m so fixated on hers. “About what?” My words come out thick, and my cock is getting hard.

  “About the letter?” she says. “It was under the pile in the hallway. I went through it last night because no one else did. You’re lucky I found it.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Yeah, I . . .” She trails off and looks up when she hears footsteps coming from upstairs. “I have to go,” she says, and then she very quickly, very silently scurries away across the kitchen to the back door and then runs to the servants’ house.

  Moments later, my father steps into the kitchen and looks around. “Is Jolie here?”

  I shrug and take a sip of my coffee. “I haven’t seen her.”

  “Hmph. I thought I heard you talking to someone.”

  “I often talk to myself. Nothing to be ashamed of.” I shrug again, my face giving him nothing. “You’re up early. Trying to beat me to the office?”

  “I have a meeting in Lyon, have to make the train,” he says. “Give me a ride into the city.”

  I stare at him. No manners at all. A please would be nice.

  “All right,” I tell him. You would have thought we would have made a habit of carpooling from the start, but the one time I suggested it (mind you, this was years ago), he told me that it went against what we stood for. We weren’t about saving anything, we were about spending. The excess was what drove us. Besides, the both of us go to and from the office at different hours, and he definitely isn’t putting in the hours I am.

  Also, there’s the fact that these days I can’t stand to be around him, even for a little bit.

  I also doubt that this is a business meeting for him.

  I wonder if he ever thinks he’ll get caught. Even though my mother knows he’s stepping out, and even though it’s expected of men with power and money, if the tabloids got wind of it, it could be pretty embarrassing for us.

  Most likely he thinks he’s above it. Above the law, as the letters said.

  Am I a bad son for now wishing he would get caught?

  Probably.

  But he raised me that way.

  I go to my car, and while I’m sitting there, waiting for my father to join me, I take the envelope out of my jacket pocket. In some ways it feels like a clandestine love letter from Gabrielle, a secret only the two of us keep.

  The envelope itself looks the same as always, the same stamp, same markings. Except this time the letter is no longer addressed to The Dumonts.

  It says Gautier Dumont on the front.

  Relief floods through me like a raging river. Not only am I relieved that the letter and the blackmailing aren’t addressed to me, but that Gabrielle was quick enough to retrieve it from the mail last night. It’s hard to say what would have happened if my father had gotten it. There’s a chance he would have confided in me, and there’s a bigger chance he wouldn’t have, depending on what he’s done.

  And what hasn’t he done?

  My gaze goes to the door, making sure my father isn’t there, and then I deftly open the envelope, taking out the letter.

  There’s no place to hide. Soon the letters will end and I’ll be coming for you.

  A little more of a threat this time. Something tangible. Someone will come for him, in what way I don’t know.

  There’s something else different about this one. I’m not sure what. The ink looks the same, but the way it sits on the paper is somehow different, maybe because the paper is different. I flip it over a few times, but I can’t glean anything else from it.

  It doesn’t really matter anyway.

  There will be another letter.

  CHAPTER NINE

  GABRIELLE

  “Pack your bags, little sprite. We’re out of here.”

  I look up from Pascal’s desk in his home office, where I was entering some things on his spreadsheet, to see him standing in the doorway, a large leather duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

  I glance at the time and date on the computer. It’s Tuesday, July 16. I’ve been working for Pascal for two weeks now and have been really getting into the swing of his schedule. There’s nothing on his agenda about going anywhere this week, let alone with me. Plus, he should be at work right now.

  “When did you get home?” I ask. “And what are you talking about?”

  He puts his bag down by the door and strides on over to me, his eyes dancing mischievously. “We’re getting the fuck out of here, darling.”

  “I gathered that,” I say, glancing once more at the calendar. “And how long have you been planning this?”

  “Since lunchtime, when I almost punched my father in the face at the office.”

  I want more details on that, but I don’t press him. I’ve done such a good job of avoiding Gautier ever since I saw him last, and so far he’s not sought me out. Helps he’s been traveling on “business” as well. The less I hear about him, the better it is.

  “Bad day?”

  “Bad few months, more like it.” He sits on the edge of the desk and reaches over, shutting the screen of the laptop. I barely get my fingers out of the way. “I need a break. I need a vacation. Fuck it, I deserve a vacation. And you’re coming with me.”

  A vacation? A chance to get away from this place? I mean, I would be going with Pascal, so that’s obviously a con, but damn it if I don’t feel a bit of weight lift for t
he first time since I got here. Still . . .

  “You’re not worried about any letters?”

  “All taken care of. I told my mother to put them aside in my office until we return. She’ll keep an eye out for them.”

  “And you trust her?”

  He shrugs. “The letters are addressed to him, so if the worst-case scenario happens, then fine. But no. My mother is not a fan of my father.”

  “What exactly did you tell her?”

  “I said that there might be a letter addressed to him that he shouldn’t see, and that I’ll deal with it when I get home.”

  I watch him carefully. He seems to believe this. “You’re not worried she’ll open it out of curiosity?”

  “She might. But she’ll come to me first, not him. Look, my mother and I aren’t close, but the older she gets, the more she leans on me. My father has become her enemy of sorts.” He runs his hand over his jaw, appraising me. “You’re awfully worried about those letters.”

  “I’m not,” I say, maybe a little defensively. I pull it back. Smile reassuringly. “I’m not. I was just thinking about you.”

  “Thinking about me for once? How sweet.”

  “Pascal, it’s my job to think of you.”

  “That very well may be, but you don’t need to burst my bubble. Anyway, are you interested in getting away? Don’t pretend you don’t want to go,” he says. “I can read you like a book.”

  Don’t be so sure about that.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “Have you been to Mallorca?” he asks, and then he catches himself. “Sorry, I forgot. Poor-girl childhood. But you did say you were all over Europe after you left here.”

  “No, I haven’t been.”

  “Well, we have a place there, and I haven’t been in a long time. It’s on the beach. For a week we’ll have nothing to do but laze around and drink and get tan lines.” He bites his lip as he stares at me with raised brows. “Or no tan lines, if you’re into tanning naked. I am. Just so you know.”