Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
“Know how to use it?”
“Yeah.” I checked the safety before I placed it in my purse. “Thank you. For everything. Seriously…” Anyone I’d been close to was dead, and anyone else who had been in my life was off-limits. The second I visited them, they would become targets. I’d been on my own for years, lonely in existence, the city my only companion.
“Need a ride?”
“No, I’m fine.” I wouldn’t ask him for anything else.
He pulled out his phone. “What’s your number?”
I hesitated before I said it out loud.
He typed it into his phone then hit the call button. A vibration was distinct in my purse as the call went through. Then he quickly hung up and shoved his phone into his back pocket. “Call if you get into a jam.”
That was surprisingly nice. He was cold as ice, but he’d given me enough money to survive without employment for a year and given me his own gun. He’d given me a place to stay when I was a stranger. “I’m sorry I called you an asshole.”
After a pause, a slow smirk grew over his lips. “Never apologize for being right. Always double down.”
I felt an inexplicable attachment to him, a sadness at our parting. Or maybe I just didn’t want to leave the safety he provided, the way his world reminded me of mine…before it was taken away.
I felt a surge of nerves when I looked at him, seeing a man I would have pursued across the bar on a late night. A night that would have ended in fireworks, followed by a morning masked in a dreary fog. I would never see him again, so I went for it.
I moved in and gave him an instant to react, a pause in case my advance wasn’t reciprocated.
But it was definitely reciprocated because he smiled.
A full-on smile, a sunrise to his twilight, an antidote to his seriousness.
I closed the distance to plant a quick and simple kiss on his lips, just a touch of our mouths, affectionate rather than sexy.
But his hand quickly cupped the back of my neck, and he turned a simmer to a boil the second the pot was on the stove. I initiated the kiss, but he took over like a pirate that commandeered another’s ship. He tilted my head back where he wanted it and felt my lips with his, searing my mouth with his mark, a kiss so hot that it sizzled with smoke. He felt my bottom lip between his before he turned his head and kissed me again, this time with tongue, like I was his long-term lover rather than some woman he barely knew. Like I was the love of his life, the wife he came home to, the woman he vowed to love forever.
I pulled away first, taken aback by the intensity and the way it affected me so deeply. I’d intended to kiss him, turn on my heel, and strut out of there, but I was frozen in place for a moment, locked in the dark eyes that reminded me of the fresh coffee I had every morning.
He smirked again slightly. “Thanks for the tip.”
3
LUCA
I entered Loup, the restaurant on the corner of Rue Du Louvre and Rue Coquilliere. There was a moose head over the entrance to the bathrooms, and the many tables and booths were vacant at this hour. The place was open until one in the morning, and I walked in fifteen minutes before closing because no doors in Paris ever closed. Not for me, at least.
Baptiste Escoffier Fournier was already seated at the table near the window, having an espresso as if his day had only just begun. He acknowledged my presence with a steely stare. The contact didn’t break as he watched me pull out the chair across from him and take a seat.
The waiter walked straight to our table and asked what I wanted.
“I’ll have the same,” I said without looking at him.
He walked off. Music played overhead in the empty restaurant. A car passed by the window behind him.
Baptiste took a drink of his espresso. “What are you going to do, Luca?”
I gave a sigh because I was already exhausted by the topic we hadn’t even discussed yet. “I don’t fucking know.”
“You need to figure it out—and quickly.”
“Their beef was with Bastien, not me.”
“Well, that inheritance has passed on to you. Oscar’s death hasn’t been forgotten. The violation of the truce hasn’t been forgotten.”
“They were going to violate it themselves.”
“Can’t be proven. You struck first.”
“They quickly forget that all of this started because they took Bastien’s wife.” They’d violated the Fifth Republic when they’d taken an innocent woman and pulled her into the shadows of the underworld. But the bigger mistake was who the woman was.
“Adrien’s wife, technically.” He took another drink of his espresso.