Maëlle
“Let me get my coat,” I said.
Rémy nodded and headed for the doors.
“Two minutes,” Dagger said through the comms.
A neighbor caught me on my way to ask after my mother. I let her take her time.
Rémy was in the yard, with his hands in his pockets, when I came out.
“You walk like an old woman,” he said.
“I’m wearing shoes that cost more than your car, and there’s ice on these stones.” I took his arm, which slowed him further. “Which alarm is it?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose not.”
When we reached the fermentation area, Rémy opened the door and I went in ahead of him.
A man stood between two of the tanks, with his hands at his sides. He wasn’t dressed for a party. He wore a dark jacket, a buttoned collar with no tie, work trousers, and boots.
I approached him. “Monsieur Géraud,” I said. “You’re here. I was looking forward to meeting you.”
He didn’t move. “Mademoiselle, you have me at a disadvantage.” He looked past me. “Rémy. Please introduce us.”
“This is my cousin, Maelle,” Rémy told him.
I held my hand out. He didn’t take it.
“Well,” he said. “This is a convenient surprise.”
His own hand came out of his coat with a gun in it.
He stood too far away for me to take it off him and close enough that he wouldn’t miss if he fired.
“Get over to that door.” He tipped the barrel toward the low one at the end of the row. “Both of you.”
The tanks behind that door were fermenting, and the first rule I was taught on this estate was that a person never went into one of those rooms without someone making sure they didn’t get trapped inside.
“What the fuck, Aristide?” Rémy shouted at him.
If I turned on him, he would fire before I covered half the distance, so I kept my hands where he could see them and waited for something to take his eyes off me.
Just as Géraud shouted at Rémy to get the door open. Dagger stepped out from behind a tank.
“Drop your fucking gun, Géraud. Now!”
In the split second Géraud looked up at him, Rémy lunged.
“No!” I screamed.
The first and second shots went off simultaneously. Rémy slunk to the floor, and Géraud folded where he stood.
Dagger’s weapon was still raised as he came toward us. Preacher and Cassidy were right behind him. I dropped to my knees beside my cousin while they made sure Géraud’s weapon was secure.
Preacher looked over at me. “He’s gone.”
“Rémy,” I said, cupping his cheek. “Please look at me.”
His eyes found mine. “Maelle?”
“I’m here.”
He drew me closer. “Rh?ne.” He gasped.
“I don’t understand.”
“Rh?ne.” He said the word, then his eyes turned unfocused. Like Géraud, my cousin was gone.
Killian was already next to me and wrapped me into his arms.
“Go,” said Preacher. “Get her out of here. We’ve got this.”
He helped me to my feet, like I was a child, and held me close to him. Neither of us spoke as we crossed the yard together.
I stood next to him as he opened the side door into the chateau.
I took a step inside, and the noise from the party washed over me, bringing me out of the trance I’d fallen under.
Between the band and two hundred voices shouting over each other, no one in that room had heard a damn thing that had happened across the yard.
Maman found us before we entered the throng. “There you are! Where is Rémy? He promised me the first dance of the year.”
“There was an alarm in the vat house. He’s seeing to it,” I told her. The smile I wore was as false as the lie I told without giving it a single thought.
She clicked her tongue. “The boy does nothing but work.” Her warm hand wrapped around my cold one as she pulled me into the crowd that had begun the countdown.
“Dix! Neuf! Huit!”
We reached the middle of the floor as the numbers ran out, and when two hundred voices shouted, “Bonne année!” I kissed my fiancé and smiled through the tears I couldn’t stop from falling.
Over Killian’s shoulder, I found my father. His eyes went from us to the doors he’d watched all night, then to us again. The man he’d waited for hadn’t come, and now, Rémy was gone from the room as well, and somehow, he already knew why.