The Token (#10): Shepard (2 page)

Shepard

Present day

The ink stains his fingertips, giving them a bruised appearance.

A specific pen is used for the express purpose of signing documents of importance in the French courthouse of Paris—this time, a divorce decree.

Juliette is the dove he sets free. His wife, once his premier cherry with the falsified name of Simone Balland, has escaped her gilded cage and flown to America.

Shepard will see her one last time and assure her safety from Roi, a safety procured only through their marriage. Because Roi meant to have her. Do the things he did to the women he set his sights on. Terrible things. Things Shepard himself survived at the hands of men. Those things will not happen to Juliette.

After he's satisfied she is safe, then Shepard will disappear himself. He has accumulated enough wealth to become a void on the map of this earth.

He exits the medieval structure, steeped in the stone of the area. Windows are fitted with glass so thick and obscure, the view captured within is distorted.

Weak sunlight strikes Shepard's face, and he tips his chin up, relishing the late autumn sunlight. He sighs, moving down the steps in a graceful trot.

The slender yellow post receptacle is a bright spot of color along the dull city street.

Shepard approaches. The decree lies inside its neat packaging, and after a heartbeat's pause, he slides the sealed envelope through the slot.

It will go to his post office box in the Americas. Shepard's sources are nearly limitless, and they have located his escaped bride. She has buried herself in the extreme northwest corner of America in a place that is near the sea, Seattle.

It is where Shepard must go.

Juliette will no doubt interpret his presence as a threat. She does not know the gift he gives her.

As he means it to be.

*

Seattle

Shepard's mood is black.

He has found Juliette working at a strip club. The Black Rose is reputable, as these establishments go.

But no wife of his, former or otherwise, will take her clothes off for strangers.

Juliette thinks to hide from him here. Hide from Roi.

The king will find her, as he does all strays. Juliette will be captured in the net of
la famille
once again.

Shepard does not like the manager of the establishment, Thorn. A large, hard man of Haitian descent, Thorn and his French tongue took Shepard by surprise. Americans are known for being too arrogant to learn another language besides English.

Not Shepard's cherries. They must master a minimum of four other tongues.

Roi detests a cherry who looks too obvious in nationality. So none who appear too predominantly of a single ethnicity shall be plucked.

It is not a prejudice, as some within the ranks have wrongly assumed, but a choice made of pragmatism. The cherries must appeal to a broad variety of men. The young women must look mixed enough for anyone.

Juliette is perfection in her role. Shepard made certain of it. His former wife is a multilingual killer, an expert at making men question themselves while well buried in her secret depths.

It was a fact that once caused Shepard to seethe with jealousy, but no more.

Unfortunately, Juliette killed five delegates for raping a cherry. Colette had been under their watch care. Ultimately, Shepard had failed.

In the end, Juliette had done her job too well—permanently.

La famille
had to pay off the morgue attendant. Five men missing their cocks would draw attention.

Shepard manages to snuff out an amused smirk at the memory. His Juliette is fierce.

Though she is not technically
his
anymore.

He holds the divorce decree, which has many folds and exterior abuse that it suffered while going through customs.

Shepard had felt the heat of the document inside his interior breast pocket as they engaged in verbal sparring inside the Black Rose.

Then Thorn had appeared just as Shepard wished to resolve his complicated relationship with Juliette. Make peace between them. Give her the liberty no one ever afforded Shepard.

He will seek out another time to close this circle with her. He has sent his goons ahead to her shabby dwelling in a dark part of the city. They will find more information so Shepard isn't caught unawares again.

Shepard is a believer in timing. And his must be perfect.

For Juliette.

For him.

*

Shepard pads through his hotel suite, a hand towel draped loosely around his neck as he holds the ends. Sweat continues to bead on the surfaces of his body, though his workout is long over.

He is centered.

Ready.

It has been two days since he visited Juliette in her new place of business, which was a sordid establishment and beneath the caliber of who she is.

Though she ran drugs within her, though she fucked delegates and clients alike, Juliette was sold from her family to pay a debt that was not hers. A family she was torn from like common currency.

Shepard's spies have whispered that Roi has entered the country, though the king did not send word to his most trusted advisor.

Me.

Shepard jerks open the cooler that holds everything he could desire and palms a bottle of water entombed in icy glass. He uncaps the top and upends the cold water, working it down his throat as he thinks about what it means that Roi has entered America—Seattle—without telling him.

The lack of communication can mean only one thing—that Shepard has been betrayed.
But by whom?

At the end of the day, as the English say, it does not matter. It only
is.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, sets the empty glass bottle on the slab of quartz countertop inside his penthouse suite, and walks to the expansive floor-to-ceiling windows. They peer out over the raw beauty of Puget Sound. Gray waves erupt into creamy foam, reflecting the dimly lit skyline.

The far-off lights of ferries twinkle like captured fireflies in the shroud of coming night. Shepard presses his forearm against the glass, leaning his head against his chilling flesh.

Thinking.

With a disgusted exhale, he walks to his satchel and paws through the contents. Finally retrieving his cell phone, he taps out Roi's encrypted number. A chime sounds like a droning fly with hiccups.

A voice answers. “
Salut.
”

Roi knows it is Shepard.

The silence has weight. Shepard could almost press his hand against it, as if the night's darkness oppressively huddles against the windows.

Roi breaks it. “I have come to retrieve your wife, Shepard. Our lost fruit.”

Shepard's fist tightens at his side. “As have I.”

Neither speaks a word about Roi's duplicity or Shepard's similar goal. They race against each other. One seeking to discipline her—one to save her.

“Ah, I did not think so. I rather thought you would protect Juliette from her just end.”

He is right, of course.
Shepard's heart is a trapped animal in his chest, attempting to beat its way out of him. “She is no longer my wife,” he says truthfully.

“Really?” Roi drawls.

“Yes.”

“You do not care that I will fuck her until I erase her pussy from this world? That I will cut off her nose? That I will mail the pieces of what remains to her family in Nigeria?”

Not discipline—
murder
.

Shepard's stomach performs a sick somersault. “She has forgotten her loyalties, my Roi.” The pause between them feels like eons.

It's seconds.

“Then if you know she deserves this, for her betrayal, her murder, and for shaming
la famille
, what would you have of me—ask of me?”

Shepard thinks quickly. “I would ask to be there when you end Juliette. She deserves that from me.”

He intuits Roi's thoughts through the phone connection. “That would be excellent. I placed my trust in you. Juliette broke that trust when she took justice in her own hands then fled. You will have to suffer with her as you watch what I must do. I cannot afford for others to think they may do anything against
la famille
and there is no repercussion.”

You'll never get that far.
Out loud, Shepard says, “I accept my part in her deception. Her running—from taking things into her own hands.”

“She cost the organization a lot of money, Shepard. And trust. What man wants to partake in our spoils if their cock will be cut off,
non
?”

“They raped a cherry.” He manages to keep all the defensiveness out of his tone. But the words must be said. The delegates were well aware that Colette was a delicacy for later, not crude pussy plunder.

“On your watch,” Roi says so softly it's a whisper between them.

Shepard will never forget that. The girl required surgery. He does not shoulder all the blame. If Roi's associates were not as horrible as he, the girl would have been safe.

“Fine.”

“You will watch justice meted for Juliette?”

Shepard grits his teeth. “I know what my duty is.”

“I was unsure that you still did, my Shepard.”

Shepard does not reply.

Roi tells him the name of the private airport where they will intercept Juliette. How her new lover is a local law enforcement officer. That bit of information surprises Shepard. He caught no whiff of romance between them and had taken Thorn for a thug.

For him to fool Shepard so thoroughly means this one is practiced in acting.

Shepard will save Juliette one last time. Then he will be free. Free of obligations.

Free of Roi.

Liberté
.

*

False summer has breathed life into the day.

It is autumn in the Pacific Northwest, but heat-like summer warms Shepard's face. The ankle strap of his small handgun chafes, and he shifts the necessary burden once again.

“You seem anxious, Shepard,” Roi remarks in an amused tone.

His hate for the king is a bitter taste on his tongue, and he assumes a more casual stance, shrugging off his custom-made Italian suit coat. He folds it carefully over the back of one of six chairs that line a curved bar.

“I am hot. This place should be full of rain and gray clouds,” Shepard begins, purposefully distracting Roi from the original question, “yet it is a bright and sunny labyrinth of rude Americans and their ilk.”

Roi twirls his finger like a flesh swizzle stick inside a low ball glass filled with fine whiskey and cubed ice. He acts as though he is waiting to meet a friend rather than preparing himself for the torture of a twenty-one-year-old mule of the French mob.

“
You
are American,” Roi comments in a low voice.

Shepard lifts a shoulder, stretching the fitted linen-blend, button-down shirt he wears with the gesture. “I am French first.”

Roi lifts his glass, a drink he fixed himself before noon. “Touché. To the Americans of worth—and those without.” The king chuckles as his bright azure eyes glitter at Shepard.

He feels the warning in that gaze—the threat. Of course, he always has.

Shepard feigns nonchalance, leaning back against the high-backed barstool that rims the beautifully carved and polished bar top. The waiting lounge is for those with enough money to own private jets and who possess sufficient idle time to enjoy such respite.

He and Roi gaze at each other like silent chess pieces on top of a board of their own making.

A guard bursts inside the room, shattering the unspoken standoff.

“She is here.”

Roi sets the glass down, and all coy pretense vanishes. “Tell the old man.”

The guard moves toward the door where he entered.

“Wait,” Roi calls out, and the guard turns.

Shepard's heart seizes.

“I will take a quick leak and be back to enjoy the festivities. She is dangerous, and my presence is required. ” Roi winks.

The guard smirks. “What is one female against all of us?”
His palm sweeps out to encompass another guard in the shadows, Roi, and himself.

Much
, I reply inside my head, but I say nothing.

They chuckle together.

*

When the old man enters the lounge with his hand on Juliette's elbow, Shepard witnesses her animal instincts surface like dark ink in water.

Juliette catches sight of Shepard and reacts instantly, taking measures to extract herself from the old man. He wrenches her elbow as she attempts to twist from his hold.