Chapter 16
Chapter sixteen
Thiago
Luca and I had only been home fifteen minutes when Dominic came in through the back door, his jacket already off one arm. He crossed directly to the cabinet beside the refrigerator, found the Armagnac, and poured a glass.
Eamon followed him, working his tie loose. Dominic drank half a glass before saying anything.
“One of tonight’s donors announced an endowment,” he said. “A new chair in the orchestra library. In memory of a musician who died in 2004.” He swirled the Armagnac. “A genuinely generous act.”
“But,” Luca prompted.
“The man’s name was Armand Robinson. The donor called him Arnold.” Dominic sipped from his glass. “Twice. I corrected him both times.”
Eamon leaned against the counter. “The third time he got it wrong, Celeste stepped in.”
“Loudly,” Dominic added. “Every table heard her.”
“Did it work?”
“He said Arnold a fourth time and had the decency to look embarrassed about it.” Dominic finished the Armagnac. “Some corrections require more energy than they’re worth. Celeste has never accepted that rule.”
Eamon smiled and reached for the refrigerator door. Luca stood near the stove with his arms loosely crossed, taking inventory of Dominic’s mood.
Dominic set the glass in the sink. He looked at the two of us and didn’t comment.
“Goodnight,” he said.
Eamon pushed away from the counter. “Morning briefing after coffee.” He said it to me, then nodded once to Luca, and both of them went upstairs.
The kitchen was quiet. I heard the click of the ceiling fan’s pull chain as it turned overhead. A car passed slowly along the avenue outside.
Luca rinsed Dominic’s glass and set it on the rack. I filled two glasses of water and set one beside him.
Neither of us spoke immediately. I swallowed a mouthful of water.
“How long did it take,” I asked, “before it felt like your job? Not the logistical part. I mean managing all of it.”
He looked down into the water glass. “About a year. They say that’s how long it takes to learn a new job. After a few months, I was competent, but the job didn’t become mine until I understood the reason I was here.”
“Which was.”
“Making sure the music gets made.” He glanced toward the courtyard. “Everything else—the donors and the board—it all exists for that one reason. Once I understood that, I was never confused about my priorities.”
Luca had admirable clarity about his purpose.
“How long do your assignments usually run?” he asked.
“Depends on the threat level. I’ve been with The Guardians for two years, and most resolve within a month.”
“And what happens after?”
“I go back to New York and wait for the next one.”
He’d led me into a statement twice as weighty as what I intended when it formed in my head. I imagined what it sounded like from his point of view and didn’t look up.
From upstairs, we heard a familiar creak. Luca looked up. “He just climbed into bed.”
Luca set his water glass down with a small, decisive click and crossed the room to me. He reached out for my shirt, curling two fingers inside, between the top two buttons. I gazed into his eyes at close range. The hazel color looked distinctly green in the kitchen light.
“You still want this?” I asked.
“I’ve wanted it since we bought you that suit on Magazine Street. Nothing has changed that.”
“I—“
“It’s a risk. I understand,” he said.
Luca kissed me. His free hand reached out for the back of my neck and held on. His mouth tasted of Odette’s wine, and the kitchen smelled of the jasmine drifting in from the courtyard wall.
He unbuttoned the first two buttons of my shirt and pulled the tails free of my black dress pants. “You clean up well,” he said, grinning against my mouth.
“You picked the shirt.”
“I have good instincts.”
“You’re humble about it, too.”
Luca flashed a full, devastating smile. “It’s one of my finest qualities.” He unbuttoned another of my buttons. “I have several.”
The stairs were narrow, and with the wine still working through both of us, we stumbled on them. He found it funnier than I did, though by the time we reached the top, I’d conceded his point.
Reaching for my hand, he led me into his room, and he sat on the edge of his bed. He stared at me like we were in an art museum, and I was a Grecian statue on display, shirt half undone.
“Join me,” he said.
I sat beside him. He turned my face toward his with one hand and kissed me, tongue sliding between my lips. He smelled of citrus, lime specifically, a cologne he’d worn once before when we went shopping for clothes.
Luca finished unbuttoning my shirt and pushed it off my shoulders. His hand moved across my chest, thumb rubbing a nipple, before it settled at my waist.
“Sometimes you act like you’ve forgotten you have a body,” he said.
“Occupational habit.”
He pressed his lips to my shoulder, collarbone, and then the curve of my neck. “We’ll work on that.”
I pulled his shirt over his head. With his torso bare, I looked at him in the amber light, gazing at the warm honey color of his skin and the long line of his lean muscles. He wore a silver chain at his throat.
I pressed my thumb against a scar on his left shoulder, healed enough that only a faint discoloration remained.
“Bar fight,” he said. “Tulane. Second year.”
“You were in a bar fight?”
“I was adjacent to a bar fight. That distinction mattered less to the broken glass.”
I kissed it. His breath caught.
Turning him slightly, I kissed his back and the ladder of his upper spine. He turned back around and pushed me down onto the bed. I pushed myself back until my head lay on his pillow.
He planted kisses down my chest while he began unbuckling my belt. When I reached for his head, he grabbed my wrist and kissed the inside. My stomach fluttered, and I must have made a sound because he kissed it again.
“File it,” I said.
“Already have.”
He continued to work his way down my body, and my thoughts fractured. When I rose on my elbows, Luca pushed me back down, asserting his authority over the moment.
He pulled my cock free of my boxers and wrapped his fingers around it. I exhaled sharply through my teeth. He stroked once, slowly, measuring something. I watched him. He ran his thumb across the head and I—the thought I was forming dissolved before it finished.
Then his mouth was on me. Wet heat, the flat of his tongue moving from base to tip. “Lu—“ I couldn’t complete his name, holding my hands over my face as his mouth moved in a slow rhythm.
His hand wrapped around the base and moved in time with his mouth. I stared at the ceiling with my jaw set, knowing that if I watched him, I would come embarrassingly fast.
He did something with pressure and suction simultaneously that made my hips lift completely off the mattress.
“Luca—“ The following words disappeared in my throat.
He made a low sound of acknowledgment and did it again.
He pulled off for two seconds, long enough to whisper “Santiago” and grin.
I curled my fingers into fists, gripping the bedspread. “Fff—“
Grasping at a moment of clarity, I pulled him up toward me and kissed him. He moved willingly, his body covering mine. He was hard against my hip and quickly shed his pants. I reached into his boxer briefs, finding the silky skin of his cock.
Mentally taking notes, I stroked.
His head dropped to my shoulder, breathing short and shallow. He tried my name again but couldn’t make it past “Sant—“ Instead, he bit down lightly on the curve of my neck.
He gripped my hand and whispered, “I have something to finish.”
He curled at my side and took me in his mouth again. This time he didn’t hold back. He worked his hand and his mouth together, and my stomach tightened immediately, pulling inward. I raked my fingers into his hair and held on .
He pressed his free hand flat against my stomach. Not restraining. Present.
I exhaled a long, unsteady breath. His mouth moved faster, and I hissed, tried his name, and nothing came out. White light flashed at the corners of my vision as I came, arching my hips high with involuntary spasms gripping my entire body.
He stayed with me through it, his hand slowing until he stretched out again, kissing me gently.
He settled at my side, head against my shoulder, breath deepening.
I lay in the low light, panting slightly.
The overnight security checks surfaced as I regained coherent thought. Doors, gates, and courtyard walls. I ran through them without fighting because the threat against Dominic had not resolved, and I was not confused about where I was or what I was doing here.
My priorities were clear, too—so far.
I lay in Luca Moreau’s bed on St. Charles Avenue in August with four days to the concert. When I raised up on my elbows, whispering “It’s your turn,” Luca pressed a hand against my chest.
“Save it for the morning, when you’ve recovered.”
I closed my eyes.
***
I woke up before Luca. I got up carefully and moved through the house. Ground floor first. The French doors were latched. The courtyard gate held when I tested the latch with both hands.
Nothing out of place.
I came back to the kitchen and stood at the counter, listening to the house breathe. The fountain ran in the courtyard while a streetcar rattled along St. Charles Avenue.
I started the coffee.
Dominic appeared on the back stairs at five fifty, wearing dark trousers and a cream linen shirt, his silver hair already in order. He looked at the coffeemaker, pulled two cups from the cabinet, and settled into his chair with a slim book.
When Luca came downstairs, he was dressed but not yet assembled. His shirt remained untucked, and he had a head of disheveled hair.
Dominic stood, retrieved a third cup, and filled all of them with fresh coffee. Returning to his seat, still reading, he said, “The lemon trees will want water. The heat has still not broken.”
Luca reached for a mug. I took the last one. We stood at the counter while Dominic read, slowly waking.
Ten minutes later, Eamon arrived, fully dressed with nothing out of place. His shoulder was bothering him, visible in the asymmetrical tension of his body. He’d sustained an injury playing football in college, and it never fully healed. The New Orleans heat caused it to flare.
He looked at the four of us arranged around the kitchen, poured coffee, and sat across from Dominic.
“Michael called at six,” he said. “The payment chain. Eight hundred dollars, thirty-day intervals, eight months running. He’s been working the shell entities.” Eamon wrapped both hands around the cup. “What he has is the origin account. Traces directly to Henri.”
“Henri never hid that he was paying,” I said.
“That’s true. He doesn’t care who knows he’s paying. He wants to stop anyone from finding out who’s receiving the payments.”
“Devereaux,” I said.
“Michael’s investigating that angle. Micah is a possibility, too.”
“Henri’s secret payroll,” Luca said from the counter.
I reported on my morning checks. The gate was secure. No doors or windows were disturbed.
Eamon listened, writing nothing down. He leaned back. “I want to commend you and Dominic on getting the podium moved, and the sightline disrupted. Good work. Unfortunately, it may not be enough.”
“I know.”
“If the plans you expect are in place and show Dominic at the original position, whoever holds the weapon will have to correct when the positions don’t match. That gives us a fraction of a second.” He looked directly at me.
“I know that, too.”
He nodded once.
Dominic closed his book. “Mr. Price, the Armagnac from last night is still on the counter. Luca will find you something appropriate to pour it into.”
Eamon looked at the counter. Then at Luca.
“It’s six-thirty in the morning,” he said.
“He’s not suggesting you drink it now,” Luca said. “He’s suggesting you give it a proper glass and let it breathe.”
Eamon considered the comment. “We don’t do that in Seattle,” he said.
“No,” Luca said. “I suspect you don’t.”
Luca headed out to the courtyard, and I followed him. He picked up the watering can, filled it at the fountain, and began attending to the lemon trees.
The courtyard held heat even at an early hour. Luca tipped the can over the second tree. Water darkened the soil and spread to the pot’s terracotta edge before the ground absorbed it.
He set the can down and pinched a dead leaf from a low branch. He turned it once between his fingers before releasing it.
I listened to a car moving down the avenue. The engine sound was ordinary, but the speed was slow. It was crawling. Luca heard it too.
The engine note was ordinary at this hour. But the speed was slightly off—not stopped or crawling, just slower than someone moving through with a destination. Luca heard it the same moment I did.
He set the watering can down. We both looked toward the avenue.
It was a dark sedan with two occupants visible. They passed the gate and nearly stopped before continuing to the end of the block and turning.
I looked at Luca. “Fontenot’s address is twelve blocks from here,” he said quietly. “Bridget is on Prytania.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not saying it was either of them.”
“No, you’re saying someone still finds this address interesting.”
He picked up the watering can and finished the last tree. Three days until the concert.
Whatever Henri Fontenot had been building across eight months of careful payments wouldn’t announce itself early. It would arrive on schedule when the final chorus of “Saints” lifted the hearts of eight hundred people. The only variable we’d changed was the podium mark.
I looked at the courtyard wall. The worn mortar between the bricks. The tallest lemon tree rooted in the ground, high enough to put a person’s hands on the second-floor balcony rail.
Beyond the wall, everything was quiet.
For now.