“Thank you for bringing the girl,” the loud, booming voice says over the speakers. “And the talisman. Now release your brother and make a choice.”
A frigid chill skates down my spine. I don’t like being at a disadvantage. I imagine Thayer prowling behind me, determined not to leave me alone to handle this.
“Now. It’s time for you to make a choice, Monsieur Gerard. Just like you made me choose.”
What?
I run through the catalog of possibilities in my mind. Who is this? What are they referring to?
How dare they threaten me?
Rats.
Politicians.
Choice…
It dawns on me with a clarity that chills me to my bones.
“Who are you?” I demand. “And what choice? I brought you what you wanted. I’m taking my brother and I’m—”
Nicolette screams. I look sharply to where she stands, my weapon drawn. Two masked men have hold of her.
“Your brother or the girl. One of them leaves here alive.”
I. Will. Kill. Them.
Without missing a beat, I shake my head with a forced laugh. “Is that supposed to be a hard choice? Take her.”
I expect Nicolette to look furious, but she doesn’t. Instead, her teeth chatter and her body jerks as if I’ve slapped her. And maybe I have. Words can cut more than weapons.
I tap my earpiece that communicates directly to Thayer.
“Now.”
I toss Lyam my gun and grab the second I have in a holster. The man holding Nicolette draws his weapon, but he’s too late. My bullet pierces skin and bone when I hit him straight between the eyes. Nicolette screams and falls to her knees as three armed men swarm us. But my men are faster. My men are prepared.
Lyam never misses, and Thayer has no conscience. Our adversaries drop like flies. A stray bullet hits the talisman. It falls like a star struck from heaven, and splashes into the pool.
I stare at it for a split second. I could get it. I could get it and run but I’d have to leave Nicolette.
I lift her off the ground, sling her over my shoulder, and run.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nicolette
“You saw nothing?”
Fabien’s brother Lyam, the spitting image of his mother harshened with masculine features, sits nursing some kind of drink with ice I can smell from halfway across the room. It’s ten o’clock in the morning, but something tells me the Gerard brothers don’t care for things like societal norms.
Lovely.
Fabien paces the room. He’s barely looked my way since we got back, though he held me as if I’d fall to pieces if he let me go.
I can’t let that mean anything to me.
It doesn’t.
Thayer sits next to Lyam, scowling at his brothers as he pieces things together. None of them have looked at me since we got back.
I stare into my own mug of black tea gone cold. It feels oddly symbolic, as if my own heated expectations have chilled, left to be discarded.
I put the cup down.
“I didn’t say that,” Lyam replies tersely. “I said I didn’t see faces. I don’t know names. I saw uniforms of the gendarmerie without question.”
Someone knocks on the door.
“Who is it?” If Fabien could punch someone in the throat with his voice, he just did it.
Jesus, these men run hot.
“It’s me, Gwen!”
I give her credit for not withering.
“Come in,” he snaps.
I stand, my cold tea forgotten, as my friends enter the room — Gwen, accompanied by Cosette.
“Nicolette!” We meet each other halfway and I give Cosette a huge hug.
Fabien walks over to us. It’s hard to believe that only minutes ago, he was about to commit murder with his bare hands. “Cosette. How are you?” He reaches for her arm and touches her so gently my throat gets all tight.
He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t care for you. You’re nothing but a hire to him.
“I’m good, Monsieur,” she says quietly. “Thank you so much for all you did.”
Gwen clears her throat. “Monsieur, I need to talk with you.”
“Privately?”
“I… believe so?” She looks to Thayer and Lyam as if she doesn’t know who they are.
Fabien nods, brushes Cosette’s arm as he passes, then joins Gwen for a whispered conversation. I look to Thayer, who only stares back in stony silence, and Lyam, who cocks his head to the side.
“And who are you?”
How do I introduce myself? Who am I?
“Nicolette.” It’s all I tell him.
“Pleased to meet you, Nicolette,” Lyam says. Ah, so he’s the family charmer. “And you… work here?”
“She’s with Fabien,” Thayer snaps.
Lyam rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”
Yeah, I’m not getting in the middle of this testosterone war.
“Not for long,” I tell them, at the exact moment Fabien joins us with Gwen. He pretends as if I’m not even here as he looks at his brothers. If he heard what I just said, he has no reaction at all.
“Gwen, to her credit, did some research,” he begins. “Lyam, we have to catch you up, but it’s pertinent to what’s happened. You met Nicolette?”