Chapter Two
For a Monday it was actually boring, which was good for her frame of mind.
She wasn’t really up to the challenge of sorting out problems or dealing with clients.
As much as she loved art, artists could be pains to deal with.
Around lunchtime Max came out of his office. He had been there all morning.
She gave him an overly bright smile.
He frowned. “You should get some lunch.”
Her smile slipped a bit. “I’m not very hungry.”
He looked at her desk. “It would do you good to eat something, go outside.”
“I’m just not up to it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. The prick wasn’t worth it,” he snapped at her. He stopped and half turned away, running a tanned hand through his dark hair. “Sorry, that came out a bit too harsh.”
She gazed at him, anger slowly building.
“You’re right. He isn’t worth it. I know that and I’ll get past it, but right now I don’t feel like doing anything.
Being rejected is cruel, no matter how I felt about him.
But I bet you’ve no idea what it feels like to be spurned, to be belittled.
I bet no woman has ever turned you down. ”
His brow furrowed. “Wait a minute—”
“Excuse me,” she jumped to her feet. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Her breaking point had just hit. The pent-up tears she had repressed all day suddenly decided they needed to fall.
She ran to the bathroom and locked the door behind her.
Once she was safely behind it, tucked securely away where Max couldn’t see her, all happy fabrication died.
Sobs took over and she slid down the wall, her arms hugging around her body as she came to sit on the tiled floor.
She was so angry she could barely control the flood of tears.
She was angry over Bryan’s words, angry at the inadequacy he made her feel, and angry that she wasn’t angrier at his breaking up with her.
Because it had become crystal clear that even though his words had hurt, her heart remained unbroken.
In fact, it was almost a relief to realize she never loved Bryan.
She had only loved that she wasn’t alone.
When the storm subsided, she felt immensely better.
Relieved, and actually lighter, as if years had been erased from her mind and all the baggage gone.
Although her reflection in the mirror above the sink made her wish she could crawl under a rock and hide for the next hundred years.
Even the waterproof mascara couldn’t hold up to the rubbing that she had given her eyes.
All her eyeshadow was gone and black eyeliner streaks ran down her cheeks to mimic a clown’s face.
Quinn used the hand soap to wash her face as best as possible.
The hot water against her puffy skin felt like heaven.
When she was done, she dried her face with hand towels and studied herself in the brightly-lit mirror. Her short black hair was damp around the edges, but overall, she thought she looked okay. Well, okay enough to face the rest of the day.
She unlocked the bathroom door, shut off the light and made her way back to her desk. Max was nowhere to be seen, and she figured he probably went out for his lunch. Her stomach took the moment to growl. Great. Now she regretted turning down his offer.
An hour later she still wondered where he was.
Rising, she stretched and heard a noise downstairs.
She waited. Maybe she misheard? Then, another noise that sounded like crates being moved.
She stepped to the balcony rail where she could see the entire gallery, but no one was visible.
French drifted to her. Perhaps Max hadn’t gone to lunch.
Curious, she made it halfway down the stairs before she heard a harsh bang and raised voices.
It startled her so much she decided not to investigate any further.
If Max was accepting a shipment, why didn’t she know about it?
She’d have to go back and look at her inventory list. She was pretty sure whatever these paintings were, they weren’t in the book.
****
Pushing Quinn to the back of his mind, Max concentrated on moving the arriving product.
He handled business two ways. First, the paintings that arrived had already been acquired.
All he had to do was resell to certain individuals and then record them at a higher price than what it “sold” for.
The second way lay in the sealed canvas itself, where the new drug named Red Dust was bricked up.
The gallery was the middleman for the dope coming in to the dealer they worked with, Hades Sinclair.
His assistant paid for the painting in cash, which was recorded in the legal books to make it all nice and neat.
“We’ve gotten word that Savage might be in LA,” reported one of the men, speaking in their native language.
“Might be?” Max asked.
“We don’t know anything definite. It could be a just a scare tactic.”
Max snapped his hand out and grabbed the man by his throat, pulling him close. “The Lemaire clan fears nothing. Comprendre?”
“Oui!”
Two prominent mafia families had grown and evolved in Paris.
The Lemaire and The Voclain clans. The man named “Savage” had earned the moniker from the blood and gore left behind after one of his attacks.
Didn’t matter if it were women or children, or elderly or innocent.
One day, there would be a showdown, and he vowed to kill the son-of-a-bitch.
He took the crowbar he held and brought it down sharply on one of the crates.
“I don’t care how you find out the information,” he seethed. If Savage was in his city, he damn well would fucking find out. “I want to know as soon as possible.”
“Oui, Boss.”