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We can finally stop sneaking around. In a few short months, we canbe together.
So it’s okay if she can’t be here today.
I turn back to the coffin, staring numbly at my father’s body as Mrs. Dubois sobs beside it. Chris, my father’s pub friend, shakes my hand solemnly and then turns to pay his last respects to my dad. He lays three feathered darts on my father’s chest, patting them with a soft hand.
The sound of car tires on gravel has my heart jumping into my throat. I turn, and there’s no stopping the grin spreading across my face as I recognize the Margaux family’s black and silver Bentley rolling to a stop on the white stone drive a dozen yards away.
My heart surges. She came.
I pull away from my uncle and walk quickly through the drizzling rain,sansumbrella, towards the girl I’ve loved since I was old enough to understand what that really means. The tinted back windows roll down as I approach, grin on my face—
“Mr. Cross.”
My smile shatters, and my heart falters as the grim, lined, aristocratic and distinctively French face of Jean Margaux, not Celeste, greets me from inside the dark car. I stutter to a stop, at a loss for words.
“Mr. Margaux, I wasn’t expecting—”
“You father was a loyal employee, Mr. Cross,” he says tersely. “He shall be missed.”
I swallow, nodding.
“Thank you, Mr. Marg—”
“I’m fully aware of who youwereexpecting,” he hisses quietly.
I stiffen. His eyes narrow, and his lips curl slightly.
“You were expecting a prettier face, no doubt.”
“Mr. Margaux—”
“I’m going to say this to you one time and one time only, you little asshole,” he snarls.
My eyes drop to his hand that is tightly clasping the diamond hilt of his cane between his knees. I suddenly realize he’s not alone. There’s a burly man in a black suit sitting next to him in the back seat of the car. And instead of a cane, this man’s hands are wrapped around the stock of an enormous, gleaming Glock 17.
“Stay the fuck away from my daughter.”
My eyes snap to his. But I don’t flinch. I don’t quail from this man, or fumble apologies, or beg for his forgiveness. I stare him right back in the eyes.
It’s not something a man like Jean Margaux is used to, and I can see it filling his eyes with anger.
“Sir,” I mutter back. “All due respect—”
“Respect, Adrian,” he snaps, “would have been keeping your filthy hands off of my Celeste in the first place.”
“Respectfully, sir,” I growl back, “I love—”
He barks a cold, brutal laugh.
“Ahh,c’est l’amour, is it?” He smiles cruelly, sneering at me.
“Yes.”
He snorts.
“Sir, you can’t tell me to stay away from—”
“You think this ismyorder? That I am here simply to be cruel to you on this day of mourning?”
