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I squeeze gently. “Do you have someone to call? Someone who can be with you?”
She nods.
I hand her my card. “You call me. For anything. Any time. Night or day.”
She shuts the door.
I leave her to her grieving. There’s not much else I can do. Nothing to make it better. Not even time erases this pain.
I get back into the car and make sure I’m not tailed. Driving like a maniac, I head toward Cassis. I only realize how cold I am when I park at the house. I’m eager to go inside, to see Zoe, but I check in with the guards and schedule a shift to make sure everyone remains vigilant before checking the perimeter alarms. Only then do I allow myself to enter and face the fact that I could’ve lost her tonight. That I most certainly—gladly—would’ve taken the bullets meant for her if Gautier hadn’t.
I shut the door softly. If she’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake her. I shrug out of my jacket and dump it on the chair in the entrance. I’m halfway across the foyer when she comes down the stairs. Stopping in my tracks, I drink her in as she approaches. She’s showered and clean, dressed in a loose T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and I’m pathetically grateful. I don’t know how wild my emotions would’ve run if I’d seen her in her tattered dress and dirt-streaked face.
“You all right?” I ask when she stops in front of me. My vocal cords are tight. They feel unused.
She places her hands on my chest. “You?”
I cup her palms, let her warmth sink into my cold skin. “Yes.”
“What happened?” she whispers.
I want to kiss her. I want to fuck her. I want to just hold her. Instead, I let her go. If I touch her in any way, I’ll go overboard. I may say things, things I can’t mean. Instead, I walk to the library and sink down in the chair behind the desk.
She follows quietly, her bare feet not making a sound on the Turkish carpets. At the liquor tray, she pours a whiskey the way I like and carries the glass to me. Our fingers brush when I take it.
“Thank you,” I say, my words laced with surprise at the act of kindness when I deserve nothing of the kind.
She stands in front of the desk, her pretty face so pale I can count every freckle on her nose. “Is he…?” She swallows. “Gautier. Is he—?”
“Dead.”
She flinches. Tears blur the blue of her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Maxime.”
I take a swallow of the drink. The burn is good. It loosens up my voice, making it easier to speak. “So am I, but not as much as his poor mother.”
“Where were you?”
“You shouldn’t have waited up. It’s late.”
“You think I can sleep?”
I hand her the glass.
She turns it and places her lips on the exact spot where the glass touched mine before drinking, then puts it back in my hand. It’s become our game. “Were you at the police station, giving a statement?”
I look at her. She says it flatly, her back straight. She doesn’t believe it. I bet her question is just one of a long list she’s rehearsed to flush out the truth.
“No,” I say.
“I heard what you told Benoit about following that car. Did you go after him, the man who killed Gautier?”
“Yes.”
Her chest rises with a breath. Her posture is brave, but her hands are shaking. She can’t hide the turmoil in her eyes. “Did you kill him?”
I look straight into those pretty baby blues. “Them. I killed them.”
If at all possible, she goes even whiter. “What are you, Maxime?”
My smile is wry. “A man.”
I’ve never been more of a man since the day I met her. She made me a man who reacts to a woman in the most primal of ways. She made me a man with a weakness, a man with chest full of fear. Most of all, I’m just a man of flesh and blood, a man who wants to live to protect the person he cares about the most in the world.
Zoe plants her palms on the desk, facing me with all forty-six kilos of her feistiness. Her words are measured, each one articulated. “What are you, Maxime? Mafia?” She spits out the word like it’s poison.
“You know what I am.”
She slams a palm down in front of me. “Say it.”
Her anger only makes me smile broader. It’s the irony of being caught in a trap I designed for her. It’s the knowledge that this little flower has slain me. “Yes, I’m mafia, but you knew that all along.”
Fire dances along the tears in her brilliant eyes. “I did not.”
This changes anything? She thinks I’ll let her go? Pretending to be ignorant makes fucking me easier for her?
