Because unlike last night...
Zacharie knew she was not watching him go this time.
And it pissed him off that he even noticed this.
****
THREE HOURS LATER,Zacharie found himself back outside her door.
This was the fourth time he had passed by. The first time, he had told himself he was simply walking to his study. The second, checking on the security detail he had posted at the end of the hall. The third, he had given up on excuses entirely and simply stood there like a fool, listening for any sound from within.
Four times.
He had faced down cartels, survived interrogations, built an empire from nothing. And here he was, pacing past a guest room like a lovesick schoolboy.
Pathetic.
He knew she was likely asleep at this time, but he still found himself pushing the door open. He wasn’t sure what he thought he would see...but it was certainly not this.
She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the breakfast tray pushed aside and barely touched, and completely unaware that he had entered, with her attention fixed on the television mounted on the wall opposite. A legal drama played across the screen, some courtroom thriller with a silver-haired prosecutor delivering what was clearly meant to be a devastating closing argument.
“Luc Infernalis would never make that mistake,” she mumbled to herself, so quietly he almost missed it. “Luc would have caught the inconsistency in the witness testimony three scenes ago.”
Zacharie froze in the doorway.
Who the heck wasLuc?
“And his suit is all wrong,” she continued, shaking her head, her voice still that soft murmur like she was talking to someone only she could see. “Luc would never wear pinstripes to a jury trial. Too aggressive. He knows juries respond better to approachability. He’d wear charcoal. Maybe navy.”
She hugged a pillow to her chest, chin resting on top of it.
“And the way he’s standing? Too stiff. Luc moves like he owns the courtroom, but he never makes the jury feel small. He makes them feel like they’re the smartest people in the room, like of course they’ll see what he sees, because they’re not idiots...”
Her voice was soft. Almost tender even. And the sound of it made his jaw clench as he slipped out of the room.
Zacharie walked back to his study with measured steps, his face perfectly blank, his mind anything but.
Luc.
She had spoken of him like he was someone she knew intimately. Someone whose preferences and mannerisms she had memorized. Someone she compared every other man to and found them wanting.
He opened his laptop and initiated the search.
Luc Infernalis.
The name alone had him bristling. It just rubbed him off the wrong way for no reason. He was not a man who was easily annoyed, but whoever this Luc was...
That man grated on his nerves simply by existing, and thirty minutes later, the fact that his search failed to yield a single result pissed him off even more.
The database Zacharie used had backdoor connections to Interpol, FBI, MI6, and half a dozen other agencies that would deny his access if asked directly. But none of it had anything about Infernalis.
Zacharie reached out to his contacts in the legal world. Prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys who owed him favors. Did they know of a Luc Infernalis? A former prosecutor? Anyone matching that description, charcoal suits, commanding courtroom presence, the kind of man who made juries feel intelligent?
The responses trickled in over the next two hours.
Never heard of him.
No one by that name in any bar association I can access.
