Covenant (Paris Mob Book 1) (18 page)

I
t took
her a moment to take it all in.

The mess, furniture overturned, bookshelves emptied, broken glass and ceramic on every surface.

The two familiar men standing at the edges of the room, guns drawn.

The other man, even more familiar than the others because he’d once held a knife to her throat, standing at the center of the room.

Christophe’s defensive posture. His use of the name Bruno.

His brother.

She could barely breathe as she tried to assemble the pieces into something that made sense. These were the men who had broken into her father’s store. The men who had threatened her for the ring. Probably the men who had chased them through Vienna.

And at their center was Bruno, Christophe’s brother. Had Christophe known?

"Entrez,” Bruno said expansively. “Asseyez-vous. Je crois que nous avons du rattrapage à faire.”

Come in. Sit down. I believe we have some catching up to do.

“I’ll stand,” Christophe said.

Bruno’s face hardened, and Charlotte tried to reconcile his similarity to Christophe against their differences. There was Bruno’s face, reminiscent of Christophe’s but rounder and softer, an eerie juxtaposition with the eyes, brown like Christophe’s but with none of their depth. None of their inquisitiveness.

That he was slightly shorter than Christophe gave her little comfort; Christophe was a big man. The two inches he had on Bruno didn’t make his brother less of a threat, and where Christophe’s muscle was lean and sculpted, she had the sense of raw power in Bruno, of meaty bulk that might have a momentum all its own.

“Doivent toujours être le patron, ne vous?” Bruno asked.

Always have to be the boss, don’t you?

Christophe shrugged. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

“Speak fucking French!” Bruno screamed, his face transformed by rage, spittle flying from his mouth.

Charlotte startled, forced herself not to look at Christophe, not to ask the question on the tip of her tongue.

Why are you baiting him?

She saw their history in the way they studied each other, their eyes probing for weakness. She was an only child. She didn’t know anything about siblings. But she knew that familiarity could be more dangerous than any mystery.

“We’ll speak English or not at all,” Christophe said, voice hard as granite.

Bruno began to pace, touching his finger to the blade of the knife in his hands. The broken glass on the ground crunched beneath his boots.

“Did you think you would take this from me, too?” he asked in accented English.

Christophe shrugged. “I’m simply here to talk to Ayers. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bruno pointed the knife at Christophe. “You know, brother. You know.”

“Why don’t you enlighten me?” Christophe asked.

“The cross!” Bruno raged. “Where. Is. It?”

“I thought it was here.”

She was shocked by the calm in Christophe’s voice. She was trying to hold very still, to keep her body from shaking with fear. To avoid looking at the men still pointing guns at them. At the knife in Bruno’s hand. A knife that had once dug into the flesh of her neck.

“Well, it’s not.” Bruno paced. “Not that we can find.”

“I take it the upstairs looks like this room?” Christophe asked.

Bruno narrowed his eyes. “We’ve looked there, yes.”

“And Ayers?”

Charlotte held her breath.

“He’s alive. For now.”

Banging started from behind the door where one of the men had shoved the housekeeper. It sounded like feet slamming against the wood, and in the background, muffled moans like someone with a gag in their mouth or with tape over it.

The taller of Bruno’s men pointed his gun at the door and fired. The sound was quieter than she expected, a dull thud into the wood, which splintered on impact. The banging from inside the room stopped, and Charlotte said a silent prayer that the bullets hadn’t hit Ayers or his housekeeper. That they’d opted to keep quiet out of self-preservation.

“Then I don’t understand.” Now Christophe was pacing, too. He stayed near her, crossing in front of her body every few seconds, but she saw it for the distraction it was. The men with guns had to follow his movements, and that meant taking their eyes off Charlotte, or taking their eyes off Christophe to keep watch over her. “An artifact like the cross will be very difficult to fence. There are easier ways to make money. Help me understand what you’re doing here, brother.”

“Oh, now I’m your brother.” Bruno’s laugh was harsh.

“You’ve always been my brother, Bruno.” Charlotte was surprised by the softness that had crept into Christophe’s voice. “You know that.”

“What I know is that you’ve always thought you were in charge. And Papa let you think it. Let you have your way.”

Christophe shook his head. “I’ve never had my way. Not really.”

“What do you call it?” Bruno spat. “Deciding what to do with Corsica, taking over the house in Paris, making decisions for both Papa and me.”

“The house in Paris was crumbling when I took it over,” Christophe said. “As was the property in Corsica. Everything I have done, I have done for the family. For the Marchand name. You know this, Bruno.”

He sounded tired. Like it was an argument he’d had with Bruno before. Charlotte wanted to help, to find a way to get them out of the mess, but she had the sense that Christophe was working some kind of plan. She understood suddenly that this was what he did best. She was in his world now. It was only right that he would lead.

“That’s just what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night,” Bruno said, eyes flashing. “But it doesn’t matter. Everything will be different soon. You’ll see.”

Christophe stopped pacing. “What does that mean?”

“That’s my business,” Bruno said.

Christophe seemed to hesitate, weighing his brother’s words before he spoke again. “Be that as it may, it seems we’re at an impasse. What do you suggest?”

Bruno shook his head. “I don’t need to
suggest
anything. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m the one with the men. With the guns.” His eyes skipped to Charlotte. “Although it seems you’ve brought a little something of your own.”

Christophe stopped in front of her, momentarily blocking her view. There was a moment of suspended silence. A moment when the whole world seemed to pause.

Then Christophe reached into his jacket and everything happened in a blur.

H
e'd known
as soon as Bruno turned his attention on Charlotte that he would have to take control of the situation. There were many things he would tolerate from his brother.

Hurting Charlotte — even thinking about hurting her — wasn't one of them.

He saw the look of surprise on Felix’s face when he pulled the gun from the holster at his side. It only lasted a moment — long enough for Christophe to get off a couple of rounds that hit the other man square in the chest.

He toppled backwards, crashing against one of the bookcases against the wall, and Christophe quickly turned his gun on the other man standing across the room. Christophe couldn’t remember his name, but he was still lifting his weapon when Christophe put a bullet between his eyes. He slumped to the floor like an imploding building.

Christophe was turning toward Bruno when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. It was Felix, stretching for the gun that had fallen out of his hand when Christophe had shot him.

* * *

C
harlotte was still
in shock when the second man hit the floor. It had all happened so fast: the deafening noise of Christophe’s gun exploding into the room, the crash of the man against the bookcase before he toppled to the floor, more gunfire that she could only assume came from Christophe since he was still blocking her view.

There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch and expand, like someone had pushed Pause on a recording for what might have been five seconds or thirty. When everything started moving again, Christophe was rushing across the room toward one of the men on the floor, reaching for his gun. She wanted to help, but she was frozen in place, her limbs weighted with lead, her mind crowded with static that made it impossible to think.

She watched Christophe approach the man on the floor as if in a dream, watched him put his foot on the man’s arm as he reached for the gun, watched in slow motion as he fired into the man’s back until he was finally still.

She forgot all about Bruno until she felt the edge of his knife against her neck.

* * *

H
e realized
his mistake as soon as Felix went still.

But it was too late.

He turned in the silence to find his brother behind Charlotte, the blade of his knife pressed against the flesh of her neck.

He hadn’t been worried about Bruno. The other men had guns. They would be able to cut Charlotte down in an instant. His brother would use his knife if he would use anything, and it would take time for him to cross the room. Until Felix had reached for the gun, Christophe had been standing in front of her. Bruno would only have gotten to her over Christophe’s dead body.

And there was something else in the back of his mind. A kind of certainty that was probably naive. A belief that whatever their differences, Bruno wouldn’t kill him. Wouldn’t kill Charlotte if she meant something to him.

They were brothers. It meant something.

But he’d been wrong, and he shouldn’t have left her. Not even to stop Felix.

“Drop the gun,” Bruno said.

Christophe held his gaze. He didn’t dare glance at Charlotte, not even for a minute. If he did, the rage simmering in his bloodstream would turn into a full-fledged boil. He might do something stupid then, and she couldn’t afford for him to be stupid.

He focused on Bruno instead.

* * *

S
he held still
, not wanting to take any chances with the knife biting into her skin. She felt her weakness acutely. She was only flesh and bone. One quick movement by Bruno Marchand and she’d be dead.

She watched Christophe turn toward his brother and understood when he avoided her eyes. Their feelings for each other were a distraction. Setting them aside was the wisest course of action, and rather than being offended, it gave her a kind of peace. If she had to put her life in someone’s hand, she would put it in his a million times over.

She tried to distance herself from her body by thinking about her mother. She hadn’t said she loved her the last time they’d talked in Boston. She’d been too annoyed by her intrusive questions, by her neediness. Now she regretted it, and she wondered if her mother knew that she was loved by her daughter.

Charlotte hoped so. She saw her mother with more clarity all of a sudden. Saw that she’d been a victim of beauty, too.

* * *

“
Y
ou don’t want
to do this.” Christophe couldn’t help the steel in his voice. There was no way to speak to his brother without wanting to tear him apart. Not while he manhandled Charlotte, one arm around her stomach, the other hand holding the knife at her throat.

“You don't know what I want,” his brother said.

“Maybe not. But I know what I want; I want us both to walk out of here alive. I want us both to live another day. To work out whatever this is between us.”

“It’s too late for that,” Bruno said. “I don’t care what you want anymore.”

Christophe heard the note of certainty in his brother’s voice and finally understood something: his brother was speaking the truth. Whatever love he’d had for Christophe had long ago morphed into something mean and ugly. Something that only wanted to destroy him — even if that meant hurting the one person he cared for most.

* * *

“
I
don’t care
what you want anymore.”

As soon as Bruno said it she knew what Christophe would do. She saw it in his eyes, in the flicker of fear she recognized from that moment on the beach when he’d told her he wanted to be with her. From the moment she’d stood before him when he’d seemed stricken as he took in her naked body. He’d known then what she hadn’t.

There would be no going back for either of them.

Ducunt volentem fata.

The fates lead the willing.

It was okay. She trusted him.

He met her gaze. She closed her eyes.

* * *

H
e saw
her close her eyes and knew that she was giving herself over to his care in the most fundamental of ways. He registered it all with something like awe.

And then he raised the gun and fired.

His brother screamed, falling to the floor, blood seeping through the fabric of his pants near the knee.

Charlotte’s eyes fluttered open, like she was waking from a long sleep.

Like she was surprised to be alive.

He stalked toward her, noting the trickle of blood at her neck with a roar that temporarily blocked out all other thought. She moved quickly out of the way, and he dropped to the floor over his brother’s body. The knife had fallen out of his reach, and he grabbed his knee with both hands, rocking in agony as it bled.

Christophe didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything except the woman Bruno had almost taken from him. He lifted his fists and punched over and over again, his hands meeting the flesh and bone of Bruno’s face with a satisfying crunch that didn’t begin to assuage his need for blood.

He forced himself to stop while his brother was still conscious — not for himself and not for Bruno, but for the old man on the terrace in Corsica who had already lost too much.

He hoisted Bruno to his feet. He could barely stand, and he slumped to one side in the moment before Christophe shoved him toward the terrace door.

“You have five minutes before I call the police,” he said. “Better start moving.”