Chapter Five #2
The database Zacharie used had backdoor connections to Interpol, FBI, MI6, and half a dozen other agencies that would deny his access if asked directly. But none of it had anything about Infernalis.
Zacharie reached out to his contacts in the legal world.
Prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys who owed him favors.
Did they know of a Luc Infernalis? A former prosecutor?
Anyone matching that description, charcoal suits, commanding courtroom presence, the kind of man who made juries feel intelligent?
The responses trickled in over the next two hours.
Never heard of him.
No one by that name in any bar association I can access.
Are you sure about the spelling?
Zacharie’s jaw tightened with each reply.
He expanded his search. Business registries. Real estate records. Tax filings. Social media, though he despised it. Obituaries, in case the man was dead. University alumni databases, law school records, courtroom transcripts going back twenty years.
Nothing.
Not a single trace of anyone named Luc Infernalis existing anywhere in the world.
By the fourth hour, Zacharie had exhausted every resource at his disposal.
His network, the same network that could locate a fugitive in forty-eight hours, that had tracked down Mira’s auction location from fragmentary intelligence, that had never once failed him in fifteen years of operation, had come up completely empty.
He sat back in his chair, staring at his laptop screen.
There was one last thing he could do, but it was also the least desirable option.
Zacharie reached for his phone, and his call was answered on the second ring.
“Twice in one week, mon ami? I’m flattered.”
“I need your help locating someone.”
When Calixte spoke again, the amusement in his voice had sharpened into curiosity. “That’s not a request you make lightly. Who is this someone?”
“Luc Infernalis.”
“Should I know this name?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve done what I can, and I haven’t found anything.”
“Context?”
A slight pause, and one Calixte immediately noticed.
“Your silence speaks volumes, mon ami. Does it have to do with your young guest?”
Zacharie gritted his teeth. This. This was why he hated having to ask for his friend’s help, with Calixte’s extraordinary ability to read a situation with just the slightest of clues.
“Anything else she said about him that I might find helpful?”
“She compared him to a prosecutor on television. In detail. His fashion preferences. His courtroom strategy. The way he moves.”
“The way he moves,” Calixte echoed. “My, my.”
“Can you locate him or not?”
“I can certainly try. Though I confess myself curious. You have resources that rival my own. If your network has already come up empty, what makes you think mine will fare differently?”
“You have contacts I don’t.”
“True. But that’s not why you called.”
Zacharie’s grip tightened on the phone. “So you know my thoughts better than I do?”
“I know when my friend is lying to himself, oui. Because what you are, mon ami, is jea—”
“Disturbed,” Zacharie said at the same time. “That’s all there is to this,” he said forcefully. “I’m disturbed.”
And that was the truth.
Calixte might be a legend in the world of secret service and espionage, but that did not mean the other man was perpetually correct, and his.
..his situation was proof of it. His friend had completely misread things.
He was simply disturbed, and not...that.
Because to feel what Calixte believed he was feeling?
Absurdly impossible.
Zacharie had known the girl for less than twenty-four hours. He had no claim on her, wanted no claim on her, and he would eventually be able to prove that, if it became clear that marrying her off to someone suitable would be the best way to keep her safe.
“If that’s how you wish to put it, then ‘disturbed’ it shall be,” Calixte drawled. “Tomato, to-mah-to, right? No matter what we call it, what it is remains the same.”
Zacharie frowned. “That’s not—”
“I’ll give you a call if I find anything. à bient?t.”
Zacharie’s lips pressed together as the line went dead. Why did he have a feeling...that his call had him playing right into his friend’s hands?
****
CALIXTE’S EFFORTS NOT to wake his wife when he returned to their bedroom were all for naught, with Eden already sitting up and waiting for him when he slipped in.
“I woke up,” she said sleepily, “and you were gone.”
“I’m sorry, mon ange.” He slipped back under the covers, and his chest tightened as his wife immediately snuggled up to his side.
They had been married for over a year, but it still felt like it was just yesterday when he had first met her.
The kindest and bravest girl he had ever known.
And one who had saved his life in every way there was.
“I had to take a call from Calixte.”
“And?”
“He’s disturbed.”
Eden had to push herself up on her elbows and take a closer look at her husband’s gorgeous face—oh, so she was right. He had been smiling when he said that.
“Zacharie is disturbed, and you’re, er, happy about it?”
“How long have you known Zacharie?”
“Almost a year.”
“And if I were to ask you what kind of person is he, how would you describe him?”
Eden tried to recall everything she remembered about Calixte’s friend.
“He’s...extremely skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and his goal is to always finish quickly.
He has unnerving accuracy with firearms, especially with a sniper.
It’s almost as if he can read his target’s mind, and he knows—” Eden stopped talking when she saw the way her husband’s smile had turned into a smirk, and her own lips formed a rueful smile.
“I wasn’t describing him as a person, was I? ”
“You were describing him as a killing machine.”
Eden winced, and Calixte laughed.
“It’s alright, mon ange. That is how he is. Because it’s all he knows.”
“And that’s why you think Zacharie being ‘disturbed’ is a good thing?”
“It’s the first real emotion he has shown,” Calixte said simply.
“So you’re saying he’s like a blank slate this whole time—”
Calixte shook his head. “No, not a blank slate. Zacharie would be more like a painting sealed in black lacquer. And the girl is the only one who can pare it back, layer by layer, for both of them.” Because another thing he suspected was that Zacharie himself did not know who he was, if all the violence in his life was taken away.
In the meantime, Eden was biting her lip in a mixture of embarrassment and adoration. She just loved it so, so much whenever she was granted a rare glimpse of this side of her husband, and he would go all dark and poetic—
A startled gasp escaped her lips when Calixte suddenly rolled her to her back.
“Something on your mind, Mrs. Romano?”
Uh oh.
Eden’s cheeks warmed under her husband’s gleaming gaze. “I—I—”
“Want your husband so very bad?” Calixte’s tone was wicked and teasing. He fully expected his wife to also deny this with stammers and blushes—
“Oui?”
But when she admitted it in the cutest and shyest way there was—
Comme je l’aime. How I love her.
No words were spoken for the next hour, no sound emerging except for the whimpers of a woman who was very well loved by her husband.