Chapter 6
Alizé – thirty / Cillian – thirty-five
Months later
Year Seven of Marriage
Warm yellow light glimmered through the arched windows and off the interior mirrors behind the bar of the gastropub across the street.
Through the car window, I scanned the one-way street for hidden guards or personnel before focusing back on the bar.
During previous visits to Boston, I often dined out in this area of the North End with investors, clients, or friends.
The area was charming and inviting, just like the business my husband dearest established across the street, with its clean exterior, smooth angles, and the greenery of hanging plants offsetting the red brick accents and black edges around the windows.
Fire flickered invitingly in the fireplace against an exposed brick wall.
I could imagine the smells to go with it: a smoky, woody aroma combined with the savory grill of burgers on freshly baked buns, a splash of vinaigrette to add a hint of tart, some buttery melted cheese, and the spicy tang of cloves overhanging the resinous whiffs of tap beer.
Americans definitely knew how to do cozy and alluring.
Meanwhile, my sister-in-law, Erel, and I sat in a car, the air thick with the reek of synthetic pine air freshener. A slight drizzle sailed sideways across the car on whistling winds, and humidity crept around the corners of the windows, adding a slightly blurred glow to the streetlights.
“You sure he’s in there?” I asked Erel.
He lowered his binoculars.
“Oui.” He said yes with enough venom, I half expected the binoculars to crack in his punishing grip.
I rolled my eyes and tugged the sun visor down to make the last touches to my lipstick. I dabbed my lips and inspected my eyes for any blotches. None. Perfect.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” he added in French.
Erel had made his position on this impromptu trip to Boston quite clear with his let-the-big-tough-men-handle-it bullshit, but I was done waiting and watching my life pass me by.
I’d served Cillian O’Leary enough divorce papers by courier to erect a mausoleum in memorial of our faux marriage. It was time to deliver them in person today, on our seventh anniversary. It was just a formality at this point. I certainly hadn’t ever felt married.
Up until now, I’d been too focused on my career and building my businesses to really put in the effort to deal with my sham marriage, so I left it to my brother to handle for the last two years, ever since we discussed my desire to end it.
Yet I was still married. Still bound to someone who’d never be able to give me what I needed.
“I say it’s about time.” Tessa, my sister-in-law, gripped my headrest from the back seat. “So how do you want to play this?”
“Go in. Serve him the papers. Use my business acumen to convince him this is advantageous to us both.” I put on my black-rimmed reading glasses for a touch of foxy sophistication that said “I’m brilliant in and out of the bedroom.
” “Deal out some pain with my fists and knife if I have to. Threaten war between his clan, the Chicago and Californian Cosa Nostra, and the French gangs if it comes to it. I’ll play this by ear. ”
Tessa snorted. “As expected from you.”
Since my younger sister married the heir of the Chicago Cosa Nostra and Tessa’s brother headed the Californian Cosa Nostra, the De Villier family no longer needed the O’Leary clan’s clout.
However, the contract stated the De Villiers owed the O’Learys ten years of monthly payments of one hundred fifty thousand euros during a mandated fifteen years of marriage.
If, in those fifteen years, a show of force from the O’Leary clan was never requested by the De Villiers and delivered, the contract would be void, and the O’Learys had to repay every euro.
With Cillian’s hardheadedness, it wouldn’t surprise me if they devised some plan to try to force our hand before the fifteen years were up.
If we divorced before the end of the fifteen years, the O’Learys were also liable to reimburse all of the De Villiers’ financial contributions.
My late father’s business shrewdness was legendary but a headache for me.
I tried to bribe husband dearest by offering to pay for the repayment.
His lawyers refused on his behalf. I then proposed to not only take care of the refund but also to fund him the remaining monthly amounts in one lump sum. That got another rejection.
I wasn’t willing to put my life on hold for another eight years.
“I don’t like this,” Erel grumbled.
“Naturally. You didn’t plan this down to the smallest nut and bolt. Must be driving you crazy.” I tied up my thick ash-brown hair in a sleek twist and pinned it with a clip. Tugging down a few bangs to frame my face completed the look. I flipped the visor up.
“Making you a widow would be simpler and quicker.”
I scoffed. “He’d already have a hole burning through his skull if that were true.”
“There’s still time.” His phone chirped, and he groaned as he glanced down at it. “I’m already getting an earful from your brother.”
I grinned with a shrug.
“You shouldn’t have told him.”
Tessa laughed. “That would have gone so well.”
The trip my brother had approved for his wife was a visit to see her incarcerated brother in California—Don Renzo Iannelli, head of the Californian Cosa Nostra—not this pitstop in Boston.
He hadn’t known I planned to tag along. Not that I was close to Tessa’s brother—quite the opposite, actually—but I’d wanted to know whether he had any extra insight into the man Cillian O’Leary was and any suggestions on how to handle him.
In the end, I decided I’d rather get my own take on husband dearest first and gauge how accurate the compiled reports from my three private investigators were.
Adrien never would have agreed to this. Not that Tessa and I gave him much of a choice.
It’d been a last-minute change in the flight itinerary, with my sister-in-law’s full support.
Erel zonked out from the sedative I slipped into his drink before we took off from the airstrip back in France, and Adrien was none the wiser until after we landed and disembarked.
Erel groaned. “You should give Adrien more time.”
“I’m done with patience. All his posturing has gotten me nowhere. So now it’s time for a female touch.”
“This is going to cause us all problems.”
“Go on. Tell me how you really feel.”
He groaned a sigh and laid his head back. “That’s not how I meant it.”
“Isn’t it? Just because I recused myself from the family business and chose to make something for myself doesn’t mean I’m incompetent.”
“Alizé…”
“This is probably where you zip it, Erel,” Tessa suggested sweetly.
“You and my brother have no problem asking me to schmooze business partners and the elite. You love it when I work donors and whales and bring in new legitimate business. You take and use the explosives and chemical agents I make without issue. So what exactly is the problem?”
He banged his head against the headrest with a growl. He never did like to lose.
I dipped my glasses down my nose and poked his shoulder. “All you underworld men are the same. Stubborn as rocks and your moods as mercurial as the weather. Maybe the reason this hasn’t moved forward is that this situation needs the finesse of someone with metaphorical balls instead of real ones.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“No dick-swaying, that’s for sure.”
Tessa squeezed my shoulder, her silent support worth more than a thousand words.
Hyped up on that touch, I tugged the door handle, shoved the door open, threw the tote over my shoulder, and snapped the umbrella open.
The air was redolent of salt-laced wet stone with undertones of malt and coffee beans.
It wasn’t a bad mix. With a few tweaks, it could even make a halfway decent cologne.
Nose in the air, I splashed through a puddle in my high-heeled ankle boots.
Dirty water splattered against my stockings.
My toes squelched inside, and the boots no longer shone.
My body locked up, and I swallowed down a deep breath to shove down my sudden discomfort.
It was just some water. It didn’t look that bad.
Just a new fashion statement, like watered-down polka dots. It wasn’t a setback.
I forced one foot in front of the other, each one loosening the tension cramping my legs. My phone buzzed, and I took it out, swiping aside the rain droplets.
Maeve
Break a leg, babe. Show him who’s the man!
That was exactly what I planned to do.
I needed to take the good with the bad and move forward, one step at a time, with calm and poise, no vulnerability.
It took me years to accept I didn’t need to please anyone but myself to be happy.
The more I believed in myself, the more others did too.
That was always the case, whether it was convincing tycoons to invest, promoting my perfumes to an oversaturated market, or dealing with my estranged husband.
I tugged the lapels of my wool coat straight, tightened its belt, smoothed my skirt down, and focused on the pattering of rain instead of my heart rate.
I lived for the power trip each board meeting gave me, the way those men in suits looked up to me, respected me, envied me, and probably even cursed me under their breath.
This was just like any other meeting. Nothing emotional, just pure business and an iron-binding signature on divorce papers.
War armor on and ready to attack, I strode across the street and weaved around the parallel-parked cars, like this was my town, not his.
Onto the brick-paved sidewalk, around a streetlight, and headed directly into my husband’s territory.
Except my heel caught on a crack and stopped me short before I could reach the door.
Talk about cramping my style. I tugged my leg up, but my foot didn’t budge.
I wiggled my ankle and hissed from the twinge it caused.
The rain tapped harder on the umbrella, and the wind chilled me through my sheer stockings. I tried gathering momentum and thrusting my leg up, but the shoe refused to wiggle free.
I was just two meters from the door. Could he see me through the window? Did he think me a klutz? Had I lost my advantage? How was I going to come back from this and take charge of the situation? God, I was making a mess of this before I’d already gone in.
My breath shook, and I locked my limbs as my skin began to crawl. I scratched my index fingernail between my eyebrows as my heart pounded in my chest, the sidewalk blurred, and the umbrella shook in my grip.
Stop it! This was not the time for panic to hit. I wasn’t the type of person to get this riled up over something so inconsequential. Not anymore. Not this easily.
Over the years, my therapist helped me identify ways to cope with the panic attacks.
Different techniques worked for different people.
For me, it was always about control and pain.
If I worked to control situations ahead of time, the fear and panic hit me like a dull tap instead of a roaring tsunami.
It was why I always wore a tracker in my belly-button ring, always had a small knife hidden in a fake tube of lipstick stored in the lining of my bra between my breasts, several sharp hairpins in my hair, and vials of poison stored in the heels of all of my shoes.
When that failed me, I used pain. Pinching, slaps, or digging my heel into the other foot.
Whatever it took to ground me back into reality.
I dug my nails into my temples under my hairline, the bite of pain driving away most of my inner noise.
I locked onto five different things I could see: a silver coupé, a pink brick among the red, a puddle of water, a rust stain on the base of the streetlight, and a strand of my hair dangling in front of my face.
Next, I identified four things I could feel: raindrops, the wet wool of my coat, the plastic of the handle, and the texture of my fingertips.
My inhales and exhales smoothed out. The edges of my vision lightened.
My heart rate lowered. Only a slight lightheadedness remained.
Nothing I wasn’t used to pushing through.
Get it together, Alizé. The wind swept away the thin layer of sweat coating my face, chilling me to the bone.
As a shiver racked my body, I peeked over my shoulder.
Thankfully, a car hid me from Erel’s view.
This was nothing he or my brother needed to know about, not after this many years of dealing with it myself.
The problem was that my heel was still stuck.
I twisted my boot, but there was no give.
With a huff, I tossed the umbrella to the ground.
Rain immediately pattered against my face.
A soft bell trilled in front of me, but I ignored it as I wrapped my hands under my knee and jerked my leg up.
Finally, the heel popped free. Unfortunately, my balance went with it too.