“Here you go. Are you certain you’re going to be okay?”
This time when she answered, a slight rebellious tone returned. “I assure you Danny won’t bother me again tonight.”
“Okay. I’ll leave, but lock your doors. If anything happens, you will call me.” I wasn’t asking or offering support.
I was telling her what to do.
“He’s my brother. He’s not going to hurt me.”
“You’re in danger, Fleur. Make no mistake. Men like Danny have danger following them.”
“A reflection of your soul? There you go again trying to terrify me.”
You bet she’d pegged me.
“I’m not trying to terrify you, but I am trying to ensure you’ll stay vigilant.”
“Is this because of you? Did he come here to warn me about you?”
Was she accusing me of steering her brother wrong? “Unless you have something else to tell me, you’ll need to remember tonight is the first night I met your brother. I can tell you my first impression isn’t something you want to hear.”
She didn’t believe or trust me. I’d always been taught that the only people truly trustworthy in life were family members. At least that’s what my mother had said. My father on the other hand had always added the caveat “with a grain of salt”.
“He’s not a bad man. He’s just misguided.”
Her insistence was heartfelt. At this point, I didn’t want to burst her bubble that even good men could do very bad things if influenced by money or required by loyalty.
That was the look I’d seen in his eyes.
There was another missing link I’d need to discover. Her ex-boyfriend or perhaps fiancé. Now that I understood the reason her background was sketchy, something that often occurred when dealing with the foster system, I should be able to discover additional information. At least by using my contacts and thecomputer experts employed by the Prince family. While it might take time, eventually I’d learn every dark secret no matter the lengths she’d gone to hide them.
Did I trust her brother? Not a chance. I’d seen the way he’d reacted to my presence.
He knew exactly who I was.
Now I was going to discover everything there was to learn about Daniel Sebastian.
CHAPTER 18
Fleur
“You’re in danger.”
Danny’s last words before I’d shoved him out the front door of my house. I’d tossed my own brother out. After he’d left, I’d discovered he’d jimmied the lock on the front door, a skill learned at thirteen years old. That was the activity that had gotten him arrested.
Breaking and entering.
The only reason he hadn’t received a harsher sentence was he hadn’t taken anything of value, and the judge had had a soft spot for foster kids.
Now I wasn’t so certain the leniency had been the best idea.
Just exactly who was I supposed to be afraid of? Someone in my brother’s life or had he been referring to Montgomery? Had he known or suspected that the mafia man would come crashing into my life? Should I ask both myself and the handsome manthat even now I continued to crave even if he’d sought me out for nefarious reasons?
“What are you doing?” My angry whispered words placed a punctuation on how disjointed my thoughts had become. Montgomery hadn’t been upfront about who he was when there’d been no reason to be. When confronted, he’d told me the truth without sugarcoating anything.
What about my brother? He’d told me almost nothing about what he was doing with his life. His words of working for a powerful organization had initially seemed as if he’d been trying to dissuade me from any further accusations.
Whatever the case, Danny was different from the last time I’d seen him, older. Wiser. More collected.
