The Frenchman (Crime Royalty Romance Book 1) (17 page)

I hit the giant orange button, and quickly texted Louis.

Parfait
. See you then.

Glancing up, my heart dropped as the tiny garage door finished opening.

Them again
. It was the dirty white van, and—yup, same license plate—it was the guy who smelled really bad. I swear he never took a shower. His hair hung in long greasy clumps, and he wore the same plaid work jacket, and possibly the same ratty T-shirt every time I saw him. The partner seemed to vary.

Today, as the two got out of either side, I saw it was the short, fat partner. I shuddered, recalling how the smelly one practically screamed at me to “mind my own fucking business” in French on my second day. Since then I’d never spoken a word to him, which may have been a mistake, because he seemed to enjoy intimidating me. Last week, he horked up a big loogie and spat right in front of me after I signed his forms. I couldn’t be sure about the cultural significance of that, but the way he sneered at me, and said, “bye-bye” in an exaggerated American accent, I got the impression he didn’t like where I came from.

He shot me a look, before opening up the van’s back doors.

But . . . the vehicle was empty.

They were
taking
an order this time?

The two hoofed it up the ramp, the hefty one with a dolly, and I stepped back closer to the office entrance, relieved I’d brought my cell with me. For safety. Yeah, because it turns into a lightsaber when I channel my inner Jedi.

Actually . . . I quickly texted Sylvie upstairs telling her there was a problem and that she needed to come down. I didn’t want to interrupt her dressing, but I also didn’t want to be on the hook for missing fabric or an order. These men had never taken a crate before. Though they smoothly maneuvered one onto the dolly like they did it all the time. The short, fat one took it down the ramp, toward the van. The smelly one ambled toward me.

In his hand was the handheld machine that always contained a vague work order. He was focused on my legs. I was wearing a pencil skirt. Nothing much to see, buddy. His droopy eyes moved up to my blouse, which was loose and not provocative enough to warrant that kind of yellow-toothed sneer.

“
Américaine
.” He stated, rather like an accusation, stepping toward me.

Alarm bells went off in my mind. And yet still, I reassured myself, “No, no, he just wants me to sign the electronic receipt like all of the other times.” I mean, I didn’t understand the point: it never said what I was signing for, specifically. So I just stood there, as he stepped right into my space, my stomach somersaulting double time.

He held out the device, smiling, smug.

Why was he smiling like that?

I examined the screen, which contained the usual: today’s date, time and a signature pad.

His buddy had loaded the crate, and the dolly, and was lingering down at the bottom of the ramp, observing avidly.

I cleared my throat. “I just checked with Sylvie,” I croaked out in poor French. “She’s on her way.”

“
Non!
” he barked, glancing back at his pal, as though to make sure he had an audience. “
Signe, salope!
”

My eyes flapped wide. He’d called me a bitch.

What was his problem? A terrible sense of wrongness flooded my reason; that, and the sour fetid foot odor coming off of him.

I didn’t want to sign his dumb-ass device. More important, I wanted shelter. I stepped back, but he grabbed my arm.

I didn’t see it coming, just remember clasping at my cheek where there was a sudden new burning pain, near my eye.

Astonished, it registered:
He slapped me
.

But . . . why?

And here’s the worst part, I was so stunned I didn’t do what they always say you should do, like scream, for example. I stared at him, clasping my face, as if to say, “Did you just hit me?”

He was energized with terrible amusement and violence.

Yes, he did just hit me. And it wasn’t personal. This was
fun
for him.

Rage, the likes of which I didn’t know existed in me, tore out me. I swung out wildly with my free arm at the smelly animal. Perhaps not expecting me to react, I made hard, sudden contact with flesh, hurting my hand. He released me. I didn’t waste a second fleeing through the warehouse door and into the back room, shouting for Sylvie—

I went down so hard, so fast, so heavy I couldn’t breathe. He was on top of me! He’d tackled me to the ground?! My stomach squeezed in pain, my lungs gaped for air, and the fear and confusion rendered me useless. He lifted up and flipped me over.

Air was just finally making its way into my body. He’d wrapped his hand around my throat, dug his fingers in, and he pulled back his other hand. I winced, preparing for God knows what, but—

He was staring down at my chest. Open-mouthed.

The pain left my throat.

He’d released it.

I felt a breeze, and glancing down, realized my blouse had been torn open. My bra was on display. What . . .

“
Merde!
” He hissed.
“C’est une Messette!
” he said, astonished, glancing into my eyes, blanching.

Oh. Wait—he’d seen Louis’s necklace?

“
Zut! Je suis navré
,” he said, fumbling with my blouse, trying to close it.

Sense returned. “Get away!” I screamed, batting his hands away. He gave up just as I heard Sylvie screeching for him to stop. She ran the rest of the way down the stairs from her apartment, only half of her hair curled, wielding a baseball bat. Her four-foot-nine frame—donned in a chartreuse silk bathrobe—didn’t pose much of a threat. But I’d take what I could get. The man had already scrambled back.

I lay sprawled on the floor, unable to get up, shaking. I watched as my attacker backed out of the room, joining the fat one who had been watching from the door. Sylvie followed them with her bat raised, and as soon as they were gone, she locked the door and rushed over to my side.

I shook all over. Sylvie grabbed my arm and helped me to stand. She kept asking me if I was okay.

No. No, I was not okay. I was seeing bright orange fire. Everywhere. I had never been so angry in my life.

Sylvie grabbed my cell phone out of my hand.

“Sylvie! Give me my phone,” I choked out, anxiety oozing out of me. They assaulted me!

Instead, she hugged me quickly, repeating over and over
je suis désolée
. I tried to find comfort until I realized: I wanted my mom. My biological mom. The one who knows how to kill a man.

“Sylvie.” I tugged away from her, realizing she still held my phone. “Give me my phone.”

She pulled it close into her body protectively.

“No,” she shook her head, her own eyes full of tears.

WTF?

She dropped to her knees. “Please,” she begged my feet in French, “don’t call your mother. Please. Please.” I was stunned. I stepped back aghast. She was making herself physically ill with her wailing. “Noooooo!” she kept saying.

“Sylvie. Sylvie!” I shouted, bending over to grab her shoulders. I was beyond pissed off. I mean I was the one who had just been assaulted here. Her brown eyes could barely focus on me, but at least she’d stopped wailing. “Sylvie! Marie won’t blame you. But I have to tell her.”

“She will! She will blame me! You don’t understand,” she shouted wide-eyed in French. “Those men . . .” She clenched my forearms so tight I thought she might bruise them.

“Those men, what?”

“I need them. I depend on them.”

“What? What are you talking about! You can get a different delivery service, Sylvie.” I shouted in French, appalled, struggling to free my arms.

She shook her head at me, twisting away on the floor. “No. No I can’t. Zhose men work for a very bad man. I owe money!” she gasped in English, wiping her face, finally letting go of my arms, watching me stand there, as though I might shout “timber” and fall on her.

Bad men? Owe money? I tilted over her as it kind of sunk in.

The picture was getting clearer. The strange boxes in the back. Never knowing what I was signing for. How I’d always thought the smelly man looked like a criminal.

Jesus. But Sylvie? How could she be involved with something like this?

“Please,” she begged me, looking so tiny and hopeless on the floor.

Jesus.

I had to sit down. I moved my office chair upright from where it had been knocked over. Sylvie kept on crying. I crumpled into it. Everything just ran in circles in my brain until something jumped out. Sylvie’s sobbing had turned into a gentle mewl.

“What’s in them?”

“
Pardon
?”

“The boxes, Sylvie! What’s in the boxes!”

“
Je ne sais pas
! I’m sorry they hurt you, but please don’t tell your mother.”

Wait a minute: the connection . . .

“Why did Marie get you to give me a job?”

Sylvie glared me.

“She . . .” I could see her searching for an excuse.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“She found shipments. Come to my studio, in one of her investigations,” she railed. Catching herself, she stared down at her hands, one resting on top of the other in her lap, and blurted out a bunch of rapid French.

I told her to slow down, and to start from the beginning.

“I begged your mother not to press charges.” I nodded after every sentence both to encourage and let her know I had understood this time, and the gist was this: Sylvie’s husband had died, apparently owing a lot of money to one of the port’s gangs. Sylvie had been forced to smuggle shipments through her business as a result. When she got caught, by my mother, she promised Marie she wouldn’t take shipments anymore, and Marie let her go. Giving me a job was payback.

“Please, if she finds out I continue, that you are hurt, she will lock me up and throw away the key. They call her Marie the Mercenary. She is blood thirsty for vengeance on all crime. She has no mercy. She will show me no mercy this time!” Sylvie sobbed in French, openly rocking on the floor.

“But I did only what I could!” she added, shrill, and I jumped right out of my skin. “I tried to stop it but they threatened me with my life. I have no choice. No choice!”

“Sylvie!” I shouted at her. A girl could only take so much. “Stop it. Give me a minute,” I asked in cobbled English and French.

I let my head droop. This was horrible. No, beyond horrible. I didn’t know what to do.

Marie the Mercenary?

Is that what the underworld called my mom?

Good. They should.

I took some deep breaths and decided I couldn’t decide anything, not with Sylvie whimpering. I called a cab. I needed to get away from her fear. I told her I wouldn’t make any promises but that I would think about not saying anything. I tore my arm free and slammed the cab door shut.

But I swore to myself, if Marie was home, I was going to tell her
everything
.

I stood outside Louis’s apartment door, hesitating.

Marie had not been home after all. And maybe that was a good thing.

Sitting in Sylvie’s back office, my cheek stinging, I was still nowhere near the position that Sylvie was in. Real danger. I couldn’t let her go on like she was, but I also knew Marie well enough to suspect that she would have no mercy on poor Sylvie this time. She wouldn’t care that Sylvie faced threats from all sides. Only that she had placed her daughter in danger.

Staring at Louis’s door, what I really wanted was to lose myself in him and forget what had happened. That’s why instead of canceling, I’d iced my cheek (it was still pink and slightly raised), and with trembling finger, applied makeup under my eye where the faint hint of a blue mark was appearing, and where dark fingerprints had appeared on my neck: a thumb mark on the left side, three fingers on the right. I didn’t think the bruises would get much worse.

Fury scorched my insides. I’d never felt so helpless in my life—and it sickened me, and bewildered me, how that’s exactly what turned my attacker on. I never wanted to be in that situation again. I would take a self-defense class.

Maybe I would also wise up and quit looking at the world through rainbow sunglasses, I fumed. I mean, I’d just stood there, stared at him with disbelief like I didn’t know there were really bad people in the universe.

I’d bathed, taken another ibuprofen, and, unable to rest without thinking about it, watched TV. I couldn’t tell you what show was on. Around nine thirty p.m. I dressed in a matching lavender lingerie set, slipped on gray leggings and a snug, fitted long-sleeved tunic sweater in white. I left my hair down, maybe so I could use it to hide my cheek and neck from Louis. I put his necklace on, and it glimmered beautifully against the white.

Determined to be equally as sparkly, I made my way upstairs. And there I stood, hesitating outside his door, trying to gather myself. I was not going to let what had happened ruin my night. Why shouldn’t I have this?

Finally, I raised my hand to knock on the door and . . . hit thin air. Louis had opened the door and was staring at me with concern.

“Uh” was my expression.

Casual looked good on Louis. He was wearing a snug shirt and jeans. Barefoot. A smile spread on my face, and I winced from the pain.

“You are early, why?” he demanded, his eyes narrowed on me.

Uh, I was on time.

“Were you watching me through the peep hole?”

“My man heard the elevator.”

He grabbed my hand to bring me to him and I flinched—my palms were bruised badly from taking the brunt of my forward fall. I stepped inside on my own. He closed the door behind me.

Anxiety had gone super nova: nerves were shooting around wildly. Maybe I was more traumatized than I realized.

“
Salut
,” I said facetiously, hoping to cover my weirdness. “And I’m on time, not late.”

His two bodyguards appeared in the hall. “
Ma petite
Fleur, no one in France arrives at the time requested. You should arrive at least fifteen minutes late always.”

“Oh.” I watched his guards step outside with chairs and take positions in the foyer.

I raised my eyebrows at Louis after he closed the door. His thick brows remained tightly knotted, even as his arm slid around my body, his hand on my butt, pulling me close into him. I bent back so he could curl down and kiss me.