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I hoped.
The iron gate swung open. “No interference,” I hissed. “If you can’t promise that, then tell me now. Or I’ll leave you out here.”
A muscle in his jaw worked, but he gave a curt nod. “You have my promise. I’m just here for my brother.”
“If he’s here,” I muttered.
“He is. Or he was.” Rafe eyed the three-story mansion. “I can feel it.”
My heart sank. “You can’t know that.”
He shrugged.
I took a deep breath. “Okay.” I turned up the brick walk.
Rafe touched my lower back, quick and light. “You’ve got this.”
And I tumbled a little deeper.
Because he was doing thiswithme.
Because he trusted my judgment, had worked with me to hash out a plan, and then agreed I should take the lead because it made more sense.
And because he’d somehow seen beneath my emotionless exterior to the real woman, the one who needed warm touches, encouragement. Love.
Philippe’s dhampir butler opened the blue door. “Mademoiselle Zoe.” Aubin inclined his head stiffly as if he hadn’t known me since I was in diapers. “It’s good to see you. And you, Jean-Michel.”
Rafe nodded without speaking.
I smiled at the butler. Beneath the formal manners, he had a soft spot for me. “Comment ça va?”
Aubin unbent enough to give me a small smile in return. “I’m well, thank you,” he replied in French. “And you?”
“Good, thanks.”
“Come in. M’sieur is expecting you.”
“Merci.”
We followed him into the foyer and down the stairs. The mansion’s three aboveground floors were for human business and Philippe’s famous parties. His private quarters were safely underground; he was old enough to recall when humans had hunted vampires with fire and stakes.
The first level held Philippe’s apartment, the one below that was for Syndicate business, and the lowest held five cells, which I only knew about because as a ghoulish ten-year-old, I’d begged Aubin to show them to me.
If Zaquiel Kral was here, he’d be on the lowest level.
Aubin stopped on the first level and ushered me through tall doors into the salon.
Rafe remained in the hall. A bodyguard wouldn’t be invited into Philippe’s inner sanctum.
The salon could’ve been lifted straight out of an 1800s French chateau. The walls were papered in dark red silk dotted with gold fleurs-de-lis, and the polished oak floor was covered by a hand-knotted Persian rug. The furniture was early nineteenth-century antiques that Philippe had probably bought new—curved settees, gilded wood chairs, a carved buffet and matching side tables.
“Would you like a drink?” Aubin crossed to the buffet, where an open bottle of my favorite blood-wine waited.
“S'il vous plaît,” I said, and the butler handed me a glass and faded back against the wall.
On the opposite side of the salon, Philippe appeared in the doorway, dressed for the evening in an elegant suit. His jet hair was touched with silver at the temples and a narrow mustache adorned his upper lip. If you ignored his cold brown eyes, you might mistake him for the maître d’ at a posh Saint Germain café instead of one of Paris’s top enforcers—which was exactly how he wanted it.
“Zoe.” He came toward me, hands outstretched. “How lovely to see you.”
