16. Chapter 16
Chapter 16
Duncan
" A re you out of your fucking mind?" Dominic Delacour thundered as he came into my office.
I sighed. Damn, that wedding announcement from Moreau! I should've known Dom would be all kinds of upset when he heard I'd just acquired the head of the French mob as a father-in-law.
Merdé!
"Hi, Dom. What are you doing in Paris?" I drawled.
Dominic worked for…I actually had no idea who he worked for. I suspected a government agency—but I wasn't sure which country.
"Jean-Luc Moreau is a very bad man." He was in all black, as in a suit. Very Men in Black ! I could see tattoos snaking up his neck, very not staid government agency. He was half Creole and full grit. He'd helped me out in a tight spot or two, and we were friends of sorts, but I wasn't always sure I liked him. Right now, I definitely did not like him because he had no business making statements about my personal life.
"Tell me something I don't know."
"And you married his daughter without giving me a head's up?"
Dom was not bigger than me. He wasn't stronger than me. But he was wilier than me and had more experience with hand-to-hand combat, so if I fought him, I'd get my ass handed to me. I sparred in a gym, he brawled with really bad men where there was no gym mat or pesky things like rules. More fight-to-the-death scenarios.
"Give you a head's up? Yeah, no! Mind your own fucking business, Dom."
We became unwilling situational partners when I was chasing a Chagall painting, only to discover it was a fake sold by a Russian arms dealer. The next thing I knew, Dom Delacour was all over me, coercing me to work undercover so he could catch the dealer. Since then, we'd become friends, bonding over uncovering counterfeit art being sold to fund the Russian war machine.
" Duncan ," he growled.
I waved a hand at a client's chair. "She's pregnant."
"Yours?"
"No, someone else's, but I decided to do the honorable thing," I said sarcastically. "Yeah, it's mine. She's a good girl." My dick stood up when I remember how good a girl Elsa could be; and had been this morning when I'd woken early with her. Her shower was small but surprisingly had enough room for my wife to go on her knees in front of me.
Dom sat down, shaking his head. He ran a hand through his dark hair. "I need to know where your loyalties lie, Archer."
I cocked an eyebrow.
"With your new family or your…."
"Country?" I suggested, amused.
He rolled his eyes. "Humanity."
"That's a tall order." I pursed my lips. "My loyalties lie with my family. Elsa is my family. Moreau can go fuck himself for all I care. Does that help?"
"No," Dom said pithily. "She's a liability. She's his daughter."
I restrained a growl. She was my wife, I wanted to scream at him, and good or bad, I'd protect her. She was mine .
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"She's his daughter," he repeated, "Do you know anything about her?"
Yeah. She has beautiful golden skin. A smile that lights up a room. Sexy fucking eyes that you could drown in. A mouth that is sensuous and curious. A body that fits against mine like she was made for me. Did I mention her smile?
"I know enough."
"Besides her pussy, Archer," he ground out.
"You talk about her like that; you'll make an enemy out of me, and you don't want that." I kept my tone light, but I knew he could hear the steel in it.
" Putain! I hate this fucking relationship drama."
He leaned back and put his boots on my antique Louis XIV desk. Fucker!
"No drama. She's my wife, and that's that." And I have no idea what to do with her. I don't know what it means to be a husband.
Dom glared at me. "Moreau is working with the Russians, funneling arms to them from Iran despite the sanctions and embargoes. He's going to be taken out."
"Why haven't you done it yet?"
"The devil you know." Dom shrugged. "He goes, he'll be replaced by Pascal Fournier."
I'd been hearing this asshole's name a lot lately. "That guy is a psychopath."
"Your wife was supposed to marry him ." Dom watched me after what he thought was a bomb.
"I know," I said, evidently surprising him. "Why do you think Moreau wants to announce that his daughter, the one he was hiding, is married to me? He's trying to tell every mother fucker in his organization who wants to replace him that he's aligned with the Archers."
"Pascal is getting ready to organize a coup against your daddy-in-law."
I shrugged. "It's not my circus, and definitely not my monkeys. Elsa has nothing to do with her father."
Dom's jaw tightened. "Have you thought that maybe she was sent to reel you in?"
" Dom ," I warned him. Elsa didn't have a deceptive bone in her body. The woman I knew was gold. Pure fucking gold and I didn't deserve her; I knew that, but mercifully, she didn't.
"I'm just saying, Moreau steals art and arms, and now he seems to have found the perfect way to launder both through Archer Arts they were working together. "Dom, what the fuck is Dean doing for you?"
"If I tell you, I'll have to kill you," Dom said casually, pulling the invitation card from its envelope. Most people would be joking with that cliché, but Dom meant it—he really would kill me if he told me. Which meant Dean wouldn't say a word either.
"Dom, you want to know my business; you got to come clean about my baby brother."
Dom set the invitation down. "I'll be attending your wedding reception."
I waited.
"Dean is meeting some people here, and then he'll be on his way to another place to track down an artifact for a client of yours."
I frowned. "That tells me fuck all."
He grinned. "I know, and hence I don't have to kill you."
"Is he safe?"
"As safe as you were two years ago when you were tracking down The Concert by Johannes Vermeer."
I hadn't been safe at all. I'd almost gotten shot that time. Dom was reminding me that I'd almost died, but hadn't because of him. He, in his own strange way, was telling me that Dean was safe.
"Anything happens to him, you're going to have Archers all over your fine ass," I warned him, "Especially Mom."
He winced. Marcella Archer was a legend and known to be a complete badass. If she set her sights on you, she'd crush you like a bug. When Emilia once suggested to her that, " When they go low, we go high, Marcella ," Mom had replied, " When they go low, I squish them under my Louboutins, darling ."
"He's going to be kept safe," Dom assured me.
"My wife is not to be touched," I informed him because I knew he was thinking that Elsa somehow would be a way to get to her father. "And no one follows her around, invades her privacy, and takes photographs of her either."
"It's not my call to make, Duncan," he said softly. "Your father-in-law is on the radar of law-enforcement and covert agencies around the world. By announcing your wedding to the world, he's just put your wife on a silver platter because not only are his enemies going to go after her, but your enemies are as well. And you have more than a few."
He was right, but that was the price you paid to be an Archer. I didn't have a problem with it. I wasn't worried about my family's enemies, but I did worry about her father's. That was a world that was all the way on the wrong side of sensibility or morality.
"Moreau needs to let the world know she's an Archer to protect her," I told Dom.
"Or, he's announcing that he has the Archers under his thumb, and his daughter delivered you with a fucking pink bow. I hear you're having a daughter. Congratulations."
On that note, Dom picked up the invitation and walked out of my office.
I kept standing, wondering if there was any truth to what Dom was saying. Could Elsa have planned all this with her father? I couldn't imagine that. But it was possible.
My heart felt just a tad heavy. Even though my investigator had been clear that Elsa had nothing to do with her father's shady business dealings, these things could be hidden. After all, no one knew that the Archers were not always working above the law, did they?
I rubbed my chest, feeling an ache bloom at the thought that all my time with Elsa, which had been absolutely perfect, had not been real.