Pushing and shoving, using sheer force, I made my way to her, picking her up in my arms, keeping her small body tight against my chest.
People had started to converge, numerous hands reaching out to touch her hair, her body, her mask. Violet and Mick stood close together, him pulling her along, keeping stride with me, but I was lost—lost to this fucking tomb.
“Mick,” I said. “Knife.”
He nodded, giving my leg a serious look. I kept a knife strapped to my ankle.
Nemours stepped in front of me. “Ah,” he said, the side of his face lifting in a crooked smile. His mask was the black twin to my white. “I understand now. You are the gun to her ammunition. You pull the trigger for her.”
“Tell me what you want with her.” I shifted my arms, tucking her even closer to my chest. Her hands and arms came up to wrap around my neck, tight and relentless.
The demand was not lost on a man like him. He knew what I was about, like I knew him. Neither of us had time for games.
“Business,” he said. “Among other things.”
“I’ll spill blood in this place if any of these people touch her again. One fucking finger. You know who I am.” He must’ve known since the night at the ballet, when our eyes had met. Just as I knew him for what he was, a rat with an expensive scarf. “La mia parola è buona quanto il mio sangue.”If he knew my blood, he knew the meaning of those words.My word is as good as my blood. “If you don’t want your business tainted, I suggest you direct us out. Now.”
“Ah.” He raised a hand and snapped his fingers in the air. “Not surprising. You have the Fausti temper. Idle threats are nothing but a theory to your people.”
A man appeared in the next second and we followed him out.
Chapter Thirteen
Brando
Violet and Mick stared at Scarlett as the car drove us through the streets of Paris. I had kept her against me, even in the car, and I pulled her closer then, hiding her face from them. My jacket covered her lower half, the tear in her dress up to her naval now.
Noticing my maneuver, Violet nudged Mick and they both averted their eyes. Violet gazed out of the window, seemingly lost to her thoughts.
“Scarlett once told me that if you were trained in classical dancing, any other dance was wide open to you. It takes skill, and a lot of training, to be able to overcome the many hurdles classical training presents. But it would be extremely hard for a dancer who was not trained in classical to become just that—a classical dancer.”
“She wasn’t lying.” Mick’s eyes flicked to Scarlett’s sleeping form once again. She hummed like a honeybee. He saw a new version of the girl he thought he knew. “The core of—” he hesitated, searching for words “—whatever that was that she was doing…might have been based in her usual dance, but it was not classical, by any means of the word.”
The conversation turned to the underground club, Sous Rosa, before the driver delivered Violet and Mick to their apartment in Scarlett’s parents’ building. The drive to the apartment Scarlett shared with Colette and Emilia, although not far, did nothing to settle me.
Given the situation, the separation, I had given her what constituted seconds in my world, but she was now in the negative. She owed me.
By default, I was a selfish creature by nature, though I never wanted much.
Simple. What I wanted, I took. She was mine. Beginning, middle, end. All I’ve ever wanted. And if not given to me, there was no doubt that this man, this animal, would become a danger to society.
The good man, or the man with common sense, the one who demanded that moment on the stage for her, had been killed by the beast the second the curtain came down on the show. Neither of us missed him. For the first time in years, my skin settled onto my bones, knowing that self-sacrifice for a greater ending was a thing of the fucking past.
Scarlett held on to me tighter as the driver let us out and the cold air hit her.
“S'il te plaît, ne me laisse pas,” she whispered.
The driver was French. From the look I gave him, he caught on quick. He cleared his throat.
“Please, do not leave me, she says to you.” There was no mistaking the emphasis on you, meaning me.
Colette opened the door for me after I carried Scarlett up the stairs to the apartment. A knowing look passed between us as she locked up.Déjà vu, her expression clearly stated.I figured as much when she led us straight to the tomb. I got the feeling she had more to add to the conversation, but given my current state of mind, she righteously let me be.
Scarlett didn’t protest when I put her to bed, and instead of removing the dress, ripped the fabric from her body. No logs burned in the fireplace, and the temperature inside felt colder than it had outside.
She made a soft noise in her sleep. Her body was covered in the moody blue of cold and the faint outside light. Her exposed skin, everything but her bra and the space between garter belt and the stockings, was stark white, too pale from the chill.
Removing the thin blanket she had thrown at me the night before, I covered her; I had attempted to get her under the thicker cover, but she had refused with a kick of her leg.
