Chapter 18
Fleur
“You’re in danger.”
Danny’s last words before I’d shoved him out the front door of my house. I’d tossed my own brother out. After he’d left, I’d discovered he’d jimmied the lock on the front door, a skill learned at thirteen years old. That was the activity that had gotten him arrested.
Breaking and entering.
The only reason he hadn’t received a harsher sentence was he hadn’t taken anything of value, and the judge had had a soft spot for foster kids.
Now I wasn’t so certain the leniency had been the best idea.
Just exactly who was I supposed to be afraid of?
Someone in my brother’s life or had he been referring to Montgomery?
Had he known or suspected that the mafia man would come crashing into my life?
Should I ask both myself and the handsome man that even now I continued to crave even if he’d sought me out for nefarious reasons?
“What are you doing?” My angry whispered words placed a punctuation on how disjointed my thoughts had become. Montgomery hadn’t been upfront about who he was when there’d been no reason to be. When confronted, he’d told me the truth without sugarcoating anything.
What about my brother? He’d told me almost nothing about what he was doing with his life. His words of working for a powerful organization had initially seemed as if he’d been trying to dissuade me from any further accusations.
Whatever the case, Danny was different from the last time I’d seen him, older. Wiser. More collected.
And much more dangerous.
Not only because he’d brought a weapon into my house with every intention of using it, but also because of the darkness in his eyes. As if he’d sold his soul to some devil.
The words he’d tossed out at me and the malice in them had repeated in soft whispers on an endless loop since he’d left.
And I’d had a sleepless night.
I’d tossed and turned, finally leaving my bedroom somewhere around four in the morning.
Now, as I stood staring outside the kitchen window at my little studio, a coffee mug in hand, I couldn’t stop shaking.
Clouds blanketed the sky in an ominous nod to the anxiety forming knots in my stomach.
With limbs crashing against the back of the house from gusts of wind, every savage crack sent shivers down my spine.
The gray day was perfect for my mood.
Because men will come.
What men? Who was determined to ruin my life? What if the spirits were correct?
I went over the terse two-minute conversation I’d allowed with Danny for the tenth time. I’d sensed whatever he’d needed to tell me was weighing heavily on his mind. It was the reason he’d left New York, hunting me down when I’d forbidden him to. Now what was I supposed to do?
What if I heard him out? Could I then either convince or force Danny to leave and not look back? More important, was that what I wanted?
And why the hell had Montgomery acted as if I was the one in danger? Not merely because some jerk had tried to run me down in the middle of the road, but because of Danny’s appearance. Did the powerful mafia man know something I didn’t know?
Another shudder tore at my pulse and the thoughts lingering in my mind.
I’d mentioned karma, but what if some act of black magic had driven Montgomery and me together? Was I being a little crazy? Maybe, but I doubted the French Cajun showing up when he had was a pure coincidence. The timing was too perfect.
I glanced at the note Danny had slipped into my hand just before he’d left. He was staying at the Mountain Motel in room two fifteen. Maybe the debate on whether I should honor his request to come see him weighed as heavily on my mind as the time spent with Montgomery.
All the order in my life was screaming a sense of charred chaos.
What I hadn’t wanted to face since the incident in the road the day before was the possibility my that ex had made good on his threat.
Yet for all Zane’s huffing and puffing that he’d done in the months leading up to the wedding and the few weeks after my escape, I’d never taken him seriously.
At least not to the point of being physically afraid of him.
Maybe I’d been fooling myself.
Zane was powerful in business, influential in several circles in New York City. Would he consider making another attempt at destroying my life out of the blue? Maybe. But why?
What I needed more than anything was to take control. The only way of doing that was to get my ass in the shower and head to the motel to hear my brother out. That was the logical thing to do. I could decide then if I should allow him back into my life.
As far as Montgomery, a simple reminder that he lived a couple thousand miles away should be comfort enough. He’d be returning home within a few weeks, maybe even a few days, and commuting was a nonstarter.
Yet every thought regarding the night before and the one before that presented an array of desires to choose from.
Ones where every command was a dark and filthy sin.
Where every touch was a forbidden taste of the very darkness surrounding him.
And every punishment was an awakening of my soul.
Why was the hunger so pronounced this morning?
Even with the sky devoid of sunlight, I could easily see my reflection in the glass. Wide green eyes stared back at me.
Sharp. Focused.
Or at least that’s what I usually noticed. This morning, they were clouded by exhaustion and fear, the same anxiety I’d felt for far too long after leaving New York.
Delicious visions outweighed the suffocating concern as I headed for the shower.
The Ouija board caught my eye. In the scuffle the night before, it had been kicked partially under the couch.
Feeling deflated once again, I dropped to my knees, grabbing the board while searching for the planchette. Where in the hell had it gone?
Reaching under the couch, my fingers managed to snag it. I could almost hear my brother’s voice chastising me for believing in such voodoo, as he’d called it.
But the board had never failed me, including the night before my wedding. The spirits had been angrier then, upset that I hadn’t listened to them earlier.
What would they say right now? There was only one way of finding out.
As I’d done the night before, I sat with my legs crossed, hunkering over the board. My palms began to sweat. I rubbed them against my pajama bottoms, even blowing on my clammy palms. I sensed my hesitation was because I was fearful of facing the truth.
But I did so anyway before I lost my nerve.
“Spirits. I can already feel you. Is someone trying to kill me?”
My fingers were heavy this morning and already, I could feel dampness on the back of my neck. However, I wasn’t using any pressure when the planchette finally moved.
Y-E-S
“My brother?”
N-O
“Montgomery?” The single word was whispered.
Another hesitance. N-O
Relief flowed. One more question.
“Then who?”
When the board spelled out bad men, for a split second I almost screamed obscenities. The spirits were supposed to know. Weren’t they? Maybe that was the problem. They were uncertain who was hunting me and who’d make the final catch.
“Is this about Montgomery?”
With no hesitation: Y-E-S
For all the nights I’d longed to live in a fantasy, real life was far more adventurous. At least I had my answer and some confidence paying a visit to my brother was the right thing to do.
It was the only thing that would put the cracked pieces of my soul back together before they were lost in an oblivion of guilt.
Before I walked from the room, I tilted my head to stare at the board one last time.
Why did I have a terrible feeling another much longer conversation, or maybe I should call it a séance, should be held?
Montgomery
I shoved the laptop away and threw my head back, twisting my neck before rubbing my eyes. I’d been at the desk since returning to the house. Still trying to finish paperwork for Indulgence while waiting for my Capo to find out everything he could on Danny and my French flower.
The wait was arduous, especially because I loathed not having full control over a situation. If this were a typical day in New Orleans, I could spend the time waiting for a piece of information by combing the streets and talking to informants. I was a fish out of water while stuck here.
I’d gone as far with the research as I could with the company’s secure access to worldwide information. I’d also delved into the dark web but had assigned Gio to continue working with our computer experts on discovering every scrap of information.
What I had discovered had been through a connection in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Since the children hadn’t been adopted, the information provided hadn’t been considered confidential.
They’d entered foster care in Maryland, but they’d moved several times, including to Pittsburgh and New York.
By all accounts, the foster parents had been decent, but their records would never provide the absolute truth. I’d also found Danny’s arrest record. The kid had been lucky.
What nagged at my instincts was that both the arrest and guardianship had occurred in New York. Additional questions were occupying my mind.
They were both hiding details about their past. They’d come from a difficult situation. I could only imagine what my life would have been like had I lost my parents at such a young age. The deaths had shifted Fleur toward the light and the brother toward the dark.
It was understandable, but when the two collided, the explosive result was often not something either one could recover from.
With my eyes closed, my full concentration shifted to Fleur. She’d remained vigilant about her brother yet there’d been more of a question in her voice regarding his appearance. What could possibly be so urgent that he’d felt the need not only to track her down but also to break into her house?
Warning her of impending danger?