Page 3 of His Mafia Queen

Chapter2

Knight

I stared at the phone resting on the table. It was new like the other parts of my life. There weren’t many numbers saved in contacts. One in particular I had made sure not to add. It was better this way. She was better off not hearing from me. False hope was a dangerous poison. I’d done enough to her.

A month after landing in France and everything still felt as if life was happening around me. I’d hastily chosen a flat that overlooked a park. Did it matter where I lived? My baby grand was delivered last week. I hadn’t had the stomach to open the keyboard yet. Every time I looked at it, I thought of her and nothing else. How was I supposed to play the fucking thing with that kind of memory haunting it? Her legs. Her whimpers. Her lips. I’d almost torched it the first night it arrived. I sat on one side of the room with a bottle of bourbon, the piano on the other. Even if I burned the instrument into a pile of ash, I wouldn’t be able to erase the memories of what I had done to Kennedy—how I had treated her when she followed me to my apartment. Those images were seared in my mind permanently.

A woman pranced past my table in red high heels speaking impeccable French. She smiled casually as she ducked into the café. Her lipstick matched the shoes.

I lit another cigarette. I didn’t give a shit anymore that I had quit. Nothing about my decisions in New Orleans made a difference now. This was Paris. I should have enjoyed the freedom. Instead, it felt as if I was imprisoned in someone else’s life. A life I didn’t sign up for.

I checked the time on my phone. I had thirty minutes before the train left for Epernay. I paid my server and stepped away from the café. There were fifty more just like it on the way to the station. I dodged waiters straightening chairs back into long rows. I decided to walk around the block to kill time.

As soon as I turned the corner, I saw a flower cart. It happened before I could stop the onslaught in my head. I knew which ones to buy Kennedy. The ones that would make the corners of her lips turn upward. Make her eyes sparkle. She could carry them while we walked the crooked streets and ate croissants, drank red wine, and talked about where to make ten o’clock dinner reservations. I’d look for a hole in the wall. She’d want something elegant. I saw the entire scene play out in less than a second. It happened that fleetingly.

Fuck. I glowered at the flower cart worker while I snuffed out the cigarette only a few feet from the wheels. I quickly moved on, trying to forget that in an instant I had fallen off the wagon again.

When would she move out of my head? Maybe I needed to burn the piano after all. It was the only way to save myself from the constant torture.

I jogged down the steps to the train platform. A gust blew through the tunnel with the arrival of another train. I hopped onboard and found a seat near the window. It wasn’t long before I was headed to Epernay. The city walls whizzed past, transforming into the French countryside. There was something restorative about seeing the vineyards, the abundance of grapes, the green and brown vines twisted together in long chains. During my first trip through the champagne fields, all I thought about was how to move more bottles. How to maximize production. How to prove to my father I could handle the French arm of the business.

But now? I looked forward to the train and the drive. I fell into an easy pace with the landscape that had nothing to do with grape quality, and everything to do with rebuilding something inside me.

Within an hour I arrived at the small station. There were occasionally a few women selling postcards outside. Sometimes, a man asked to shine my shoes. But it wasn’t busy. It was quiet, almost eerie. The Corban vineyard was ten minutes beyond the village. I paid a cab to take me to the main entrance, asking to be dropped off at the front gate. I needed the walk to the offices.

The sun blazed overhead as I swung my jacket over my shoulder and rolled up my sleeves for the walk. I didn’t mind the dust or the heat. Maybe I was numb to my surroundings. I existed, that was it.

The first swirl looked like a wisp of clouds, hanging too low to the barn. I lifted the sunglasses to the top of my head to study the odd formation. Shit. It wasn’t a cloud. It was smoke. Plumes of gray. Thickening by the second. Covering the horizon and the roofline of the cottage up ahead.

I dropped my jacket and began to sprint. I passed the second gate to the side path that circled the north vineyard. I choked as I ran into a low cloud. Where was it coming from?

“Monsieur Corban!”

Peter waved his arms wildly. I changed course and met him on the path. He was as out of breath as I was. He gasped several times before I could get him to focus.

“What the hell is happening?” I screamed. “Where did it start? Did you call the fire department?” I tried to intersperse French with my English, but I couldn’t catch up to the words.

His face was covered in black streaks of ash.

“Peter.” I shook his shoulders.

“Oui. Pompiers.” The firefighters. That was something, but I didn’t hear the engines. The only thing I heard was the roaring fire.

I dropped my grip on him and turned toward the building that was now engulfed in flames.

“The champagne, Peter! The grapes!” I rushed forward but was immediately shoved backward. I hit the gravel drive roughly. “What the fuck,” I snarled. “That’s my office. This is my vineyard.”

It wasn’t Peter standing over me, it was a man in a dark blue uniform. The baton in his fists explained how he had knocked me on my back. I spotted a motorbike leaning on its side. He was the first to arrive on the scene from the local emergency dispatch.

“Stay.” He eyed me.

I dusted myself off as the truck pulled into view and the pompiers dismounted and started pulling the hoses over their shoulders. The man barked orders at the team. They began to surround the stone cottage.

Peter and I watched from a distance while they began to line up.

“What happened?” I asked the vineyard manager. “How did the fire start?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I was in the cellars and when I came back up, there was smoke. I grabbed my phone and ran outside.”

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