Chapter 25 Paris #2
Céline stood. Buttoned her jacket. Looked at Maeve one last time. The look lasted longer than business required.
"Prenez soin de vous, Mademoiselle Brennan," she said. Take care of yourself. "Les hommes comme Viktor ne savent pas comment le faire. Ils protègent. Ce n'est pas la même chose." Men like Viktor don't know how to do that. They protect. It's not the same thing.
"Je sais," Maeve said. I know.
"Bien. Alors vous êtes plus intelligente que je ne l'étais à votre age.
" Good. Then you're smarter than I was at your age.
She kissed both Maeve's cheeks. Held her face.
A gesture that meant something between women who survived men like me.
Something I wasn't invited to understand. "Au revoir." Goodbye.
Céline left. Renaud followed. The door closed. The suite went quiet. Just the sound of Paris outside the window. Traffic on the Rue de Rivoli. A siren somewhere. The hum of a city that has been beautiful for centuries and is tired of being told.
I stood at the window. Looking out. The Tuileries grey in the winter light. A city I'd visited a dozen times for deals, for meetings, for the kind of business that gets conducted in expensive hotels between men who never use their real names.
This was the first time I'd been here with someone I wanted standing beside me.
Maeve came to the window. Stood next to me. Close. Her shoulder an inch from my arm. She was still guarding her left side. The ribs. The pain she refused to acknowledge out loud, which I tracked in the way she moved, the way she breathed, the way she favored her right when she reached for things.
"C'est fait," she said. It's done.
"The empire expands west."
She looked out at the city. The grey rooftops. The zinc and the chimney pots. Paris in winter. A city that wears its cold like couture.
"Il n'y a pas de caméras ici," she said. There are no cameras here.
"Non."
"Pas de Pavelpour me suivre à deux rues de distance." No Pavel following me two blocks back.
"Non."
"Pas de GPS. Pas de moniteurs. Pas de périmètre." No GPS. No monitors. No perimeter.
"Non."
She turned to me. The green eye and the half-closed one. The healed lip with its scar. The concealer that was starting to wear thin, the yellow bruise showing through at the edges. She looked at me the way she'd looked at the Council table. Calculating. The queen's look.
"Alors pourquoi est-ce que je suis toujours là?" So why am I still here?
The question. The real one. Underneath every other question she'd ever asked.
Underneath the pourquoi in my office on the first day.
Underneath the what do you want in the penthouse.
Underneath the why are you doing this that I'd refused to answer when her mascara was threatening and her orientation packet was on the floor.
Why am I still here. In a city with no leash. In a hotel with no cameras. In a country where I could walk out the door and disappear into a language that feels like home and never look back at the man who put cameras in my apartment and tracked my phone and stood in my dark and watched me breathe.
Why am I still here.
"Tu le sais déjà," I said. You already know.
"Je veux te l'entendre dire." I want to hear you say it.
"Parce que le leash n'a jamais été ce qui te retenait." Because the leash was never what kept you.
She held my gaze. Five seconds. Six. Seven. Blowing through every window I'd ever taught her. Past Gennady's. Past Mikhail's. Past the safety zone into the territory where holding eye contact means either a fight or a fuck, and with us the difference had always been cosmetic.
"Non," she said. "Ce ne l'était pas." No. It wasn't.
She turned back to the window. Paris in the grey light.
The pull that lived between us, the gravity that had existed since the first morning she walked through a lobby and looked up at a ceiling that was me, still there.
Still operating. Still dragging us toward each other with the quiet, relentless insistence of a force that doesn't care about consent.
We stood at the window. Shoulder to shoulder. An inch of Ritz air between us. The deal signed. The empire expanding. The Irish channel locked. Four days left on a deadline that was starting to feel survivable.
She leaned. A fraction. Her shoulder touching my arm. The contact small. Deliberate. The smallest possible declaration of a woman who had cameras and GPS and a perimeter and a cage stripped away in a Paris hotel room and was choosing, without any of those things, to close the distance.
I didn't reach for her. Didn't put my hand on her back. Didn't claim the contact with a grip or a pull or any of the gestures I'd been making since the first night my palm found the silk of a red dress in a lobby I owned.
I let her lean.
They say possession is a man's game. The acquiring, the claiming, the branding of territory with hands that were built to grip.
Maybe. But the most powerful thing a woman can do to a man who grips is lean toward him when she doesn't have to.
When the locks are off. When the cage is open.
When the door to the hotel room is unlocked, the passport is in her bag, and the city outside speaks her language better than he ever will.
That night we walked. Along the Seine. The water black and slow. The bridges lit. The November cold sharper here than in New York, cleaner, the cold of a city that has been cold for a thousand years and wears it without complaint.
We walked close. Her arm through mine. Her body favoring the left side. My pace adjusted to hers without her asking.
We didn't talk about the Bratva. The Council.
Mikhail. Dmitri. The warehouse. The week.
We talked about the restaurant on the corner that smelled like duck fat.
About the bridge where the light hit the water in a way that turned it amber.
About a man selling roasted chestnuts from a cart who reminded her of someone in Galway.
Small things. The smallest things. The things that have nothing to do with empires and thrones and fractured ribs, the things that two people talk about when they are walking beside each other in a city that isn't theirs, without cameras, without GPS, without anyone knowing where they are or caring.
For one night. One walk. One stretch of river. We were just two people.
I wanted her more in that hour than I'd wanted her in the penthouse, in the office, in the shower with cold water turning her lips blue. More than the McQueen. More than the Council table. More than the night I went to my knees on marble and spoke Russian into her skin.
I wanted her more when she was free. When the cage was open. When the leash was off. When the only thing keeping her beside me was the choice to be there, renewed step by step, bridge by bridge, in a city that would have taken her in and loved her and kept her forever if she'd asked.
She didn't ask.
She walked beside me. Her arm in mine. Her body close. Her breathing careful around the ribs. The pull doing what the perimeter used to do. Holding us together. Drawing us toward each other with a force that had no name in Russian, no name in French, no name in the Gaeilge I couldn't speak.
I wanted her more when she was powerful.
That was the sickness.
That was the love.
Same animal. Same teeth. Same hunger that gets worse the more you feed it.
She looked up at me. The bridge lights painting her face in amber. The bruise invisible in this light. The scar on her lip invisible. Just her. Just the green eyes. Just the woman who bridged two criminal empires in two languages with fractured ribs and drugstore concealer.
"Viktor."
"Maeve."
"Je suis contente d'être restée." I'm glad I stayed.
Four words. The quietest grenade she'd ever thrown.
Landing in the November air between us, detonating without sound, the blast radius covering every bridge, every river, every chestnut cart, every inch of a city that was watching two people discover that the pull was stronger than the cage had ever been.
I put my arm around her. Carefully. The ribs. My hand on her waist. My fingers light.
"Moi aussi," I said. Me too.