25. Ryan #2
Henri’s cane clatters loudly as he throws it to the ground. “Now!”
At last, a knife flashes, and the plastic zip ties drop to the floor. Camille rubs his wrists, then pushes to his feet, swaying on unsteady legs. I lurch forward to help, but the guard who’s still holding me yanks me back.
Camille levels with the man. “The inland taipan produces the most toxic venom of any land snake ever measured. Without antivenom, a bite can become fatal in as little of 30 to 45 minutes. Do you truly wish to find out if he’s carrying any more syringes?”
The man holding me goes completely still, then pushes me away from him.
I stumble forward with the sudden absence of resistance and catch myself against the arm of the sofa, my shoulder screaming in protest. Camille moves instinctively toward me, then has to grab the back of a chair when the room tilts beneath him.
“Sit down,” I tell him.
“You do not get to give me instructions right now.”
“You’re bleeding out of your head.”
“And you stole venom from my laboratory.”
“Borrowed.”
“You put it in a syringe.”
“Borrowed that too.”
“How the fuck did you even come up with that? No, never mind that. Did you get any on yourself? Did you at least put gloves on when handling—”
Henri cuts through us with a voice that no longer resembles the smooth, paternal thing he used on me minutes ago. “Enough.”
We both turn.
He stands several paces away, one hand pressed against the place where I jabbed him and the other hanging empty at his side because his cane remains on the floor. His face has gone grey, and although nothing dramatic has happened yet, he looks suddenly aware of his body in a way he wasn’t before.
Every breath.
Every heartbeat.
Every tiny sensation that could mean something or nothing.
Fear has made him hyperaware.
I recognize the feeling.
It is almost exactly what being around Camille’s snakes used to do to me, except I always knew Camille wouldn’t let anything happen.
Henri has no such reassurance.
He looks at Camille. “What do you need?”
Camille stares at him. “A hospital.”
“I asked what you need.”
“There is nothing I can responsibly do for you in this room.”
Henri scowls. “You must have antivenom.”
“I have limited emergency stock for occupational contingencies. I am not running an emergency department out of my home.”
“Then use what you have,” Henri demands.
“No.”
Henri looks genuinely stunned. It might be the first no he has heard tonight that he cannot immediately punish.
His attention snaps toward the mercenaries. “Take him to the laboratory.” Nobody moves. “Did you not hear me?”
The man closest to the doorway slides his weapon back into its holster. “I heard you.”
“Then move.”
“No.”
Henri’s face changes. It isn’t rage immediately. Confusion comes first. “You are being paid to follow instructions.”
“Not these instructions.”
“You work for me.”
“I’m contracted by you.”
Henri stares at him in shock.
One of the other men checks his phone and mutters something in French. Camille’s head turns toward him.
“What?” I ask.
Camille’s gaze moves toward the front of the house. “Emergency response.”
My stomach flips. “They’re coming?”
“If the message he just received is accurate.”
The mercenary gives Camille a suspicious look. Camille shrugs, then winces because apparently shrugging with a head injury is an advanced athletic maneuver. “I triggered a silent emergency call before you restrained me.”
All three men look toward Henri. Henri looks at them. Nobody seems thrilled.
Henri’s nostrils flare. “What? It was obvious there could be police.”
“There is a difference between possible police and police already en route.”
“You knew the risks.”
“We knew the job.”
“The job is not finished.”
“The files you wanted are gone, and this has become far more complicated than the job you hired us for.”
Henri glares. “The originals still remain.”
“Which are now worthless if copies already exist.”
“They are not worthless.” Henri takes a step toward them.
The men all palm their weapons.
Henri stops, and I watch the old bastard realize, in real time, that all of the muscle he brought into this house belongs only to itself.
There is something almost poetic about it.
Alberte spent decades believing Henri had infinite power because people bent around him. Turns out some people bend because the paycheck clears, and when the check stops being worth dying for, they straighten right back up.
Henri turns toward Camille again. “You will treat me.”
Camille wipes another line of blood away from his eye. “No.”
“You will.”
“No.”
Henri’s tone sharpens. “I know where your mother is.”
My heart drops straight through my stomach as Camille freezes, breathing heavily.
Henri sees the reaction, and a weak smile moves across his face, his old confidence beginning to return.
One final card tucked up his sleeve.
“What?” Camille whispers, voice trembling.
Henri’s voice softens. “I know where Nadia is.”
Camille’s good eye goes glassy.
A mother who disappeared when he was eight.
A father who died two years later without ever learning what happened to his wife.
All those newspaper clippings.
Records.
Photographs.
The research.
The obsession.
And Henri knows exactly what one sentence can do to him.
“Where?” Camille asks.
Henri’s smile grows. “Help me.”
I want to kill him again, because obviously once was insufficient.
Camille’s fists clench at his sides, a storm of hope, horror, and hatred roiling behind his gaze.
“I can tell you the location,” Henri purrs.
“Where is she?”
Henri shakes his head. “Treat me.”
“Tell me.”
“First you help me.”
Camille’s expression becomes the most naked I have ever seen it, with a desperate, childish need for his mother that no amount of adulthood or education or bitterness ever managed to erase.
I want to go to him.
I don’t.
This one has to belong to Camille.
Henri takes another breath. “There were arrangements made. She was not simply disposed of somewhere random.”
Camille flinches. “Stop.”
“You want to know.”
“Yes.”
“Then save me.”
The word save sounds obscene coming from him.
Camille closes his eyes. “My mother is not yours.”
Henri frowns. “What?”
“She does not belong to you.” His voice trembles, but only slightly. “You cannot offer her to me.”
Henri bristles. “I am offering you the truth.”
“No. You are trying to sell it.”
Henri’s mouth hardens. “You have spent your entire life looking for her.”
“I know.”
“You may never find her without me.”
Camille swallows. “I know.”
“And you would allow that?”
Camille’s face twists—determination shadowed by pain. “Yes,” he whispers.
This hurts him.
I can see how badly.
Henri watches him closely as he steps closer, standing over the man who has haunted his entire life.
“If you tell me where she is, then I will know. If you refuse, I will continue looking. Perhaps I will find her. Perhaps I never will,” Camille says, forcing his voice to remain steady. “But you do not get to make my mother one more thing I have to purchase from you.”
Henri stares at him. “Camille—”
“No.”
That word is so small, and so powerful.
I think of Alberte writing about staying.
Going back.
Forgiving.
Trying.
Camille stands bleeding in front of the same man and does the one thing my grandfather never learned how to do soon enough.
He says no.
Henri’s face crumples into rage. “You ungrateful little bastard.”
Camille actually smiles. “My mother would be very disappointed to hear you speak to me that way.”
Oh.
Holy shit.
I make a sound that I disguise very poorly as a cough.
Even one of the mercenaries looks away.
Henri points at Camille with a shaking hand. “She trusted me.”
“Not once she discovered what you were.”
“She admired me,” Henri shouts.
“Before she knew the real you.”
“She worked for me.”
“She exposed you.”
“She betrayed me.”
Camille stands tall, and it’s like the ghosts of his youth are holding him up, strengthening him. “And you killed her.”
Henri spits on the floor, then stares up at Camille and says, “She left me no choice.”
Camille’s knees nearly buckle. I grab his arm, helping him.
The next breath Henri takes is ragged and draws my attention. As I look at him more closely, I see that his posture has changed, like he can no longer do anything but slouch.
Fear is in his eyes as he pleads, now to me, “Help me.”
“No,” I answer plainly.
“You can keep me stable, at least,” he tries. “You know where the antivenom is, don’t you? Be a good boy now, Ryan.”
“Oh god, do not call me that.”
Henri looks toward the mercenaries, trying every avenue to survive. “Take me to a hospital.”
One of them answers, “No. We’re leaving.”
Henri’s expression becomes almost comical. “You are what?”
“Leaving.”
“You cannot leave.”
“We can.”
“I paid you.”
The man sighs. “Yes.”
“Then do what I tell you.”
“That isn’t how this works.”
Henri’s face reddens. “That is precisely how it works!”
The mercenary looks toward the front of the estate. “Police will be here soon. The evidence is already out. The retrieval failed. You’re apparently about to die. There is no reason for us to remain.”
Henri points at me. “He attacked me.”
The man glances my way, and I give a little wave. “Hi.”
Camille turns his head slowly toward me.
“What?” I question.
“This is not the time to be charming.”
“I wasn’t being charming.”
“You waved.”
“I panicked?”
The mercenary actually grins. “And with that, we will be leaving.”
Something breaks in Henri’s expression, almost pitifully so. And as the men start toward the door, Henri yells, “Stop!” When they keep going, his voice rises to a shriek. “STOP!”
In under a minute, the corridor falls silent. They’ve vanished as if swallowed by the walls. No thunderous shootout. No last-minute betrayals. Henri Voclain stands alone—abandoned by the men he believed were his to command.
“Well.” My voice sounds flat in the hush.
Camille shifts against me, the faint scrape of his sleeve on my jacket. I tighten my fingers around his arm. “What?” he asks.
“That was anticlimactic.”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “You have very strange expectations of a home invasion.”
“Sorry, it’s my first one.”