“Sometimes.” He was honest about it, right in front of his wife. “But you can’t have it all, at least not at the same time.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Well, there’s a lot of shit that comes with?—”
Luca gave him a hard stare.
Bastien quickly redirected his words mid-sentence. “With working nights and long hours, it’s not ideal for our relationship. It’s not easy being married to a vampire who’s awake all night and sleeps all day.”
I knew something had transpired between the men, but I couldn’t guess what it was. I just knew it was something Luca didn’t want me to know about.
“Luca said the Oath was after you?” Bastien asked.
“Yeah.” I still wasn’t used to the freedom that blessed me. To be able to go anywhere at any time and not be scared was a godsend. A gift that only someone like Luca could grant me. “It’s still hard to believe that this is real. That I got my life back.”
“Then it sounds like you’re acquainted with our world.”
“Distantly, I suppose,” I said. “I’m honestly not sure what happened. I was eighteen when everything went down, blissfully ignorant to the real world and the consequences of poor decisions. I still don’t know exactly what my father did, but he crossed the wrong person.”
“Who was your father?”
“Claude Badeaux.”
It didn’t seem to be instantly familiar to either of them. Because that legacy was long gone now. Everyone I’d ever been related to had been killed. I was the sole survivor of my line.
Bastien sat in silence for a while. “That rings a bell.” He stared at Luca.
Luca stared back and didn’t blink.
Then it seemed to click for Bastien. “Your family made their fortune in the Loire Valley, right? Wine?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised he’d figured that out. “My family is distantly related to Marie Antoinette, which is how we had so much land that had been passed down through the generations. My father was also involved in luxury textile production and other things. I don’t know the full extent of his businesses because my sisters and I were never a part of that. But he crossed someone, and that was the end.”
Luca didn’t seem angry anymore. He stared at me instead of Bastien, absorbed in the tale. “This was before the Fifth Republic. During what we call the modern dark ages, where crime was rampant and out of control, fueled by wars between the various gangs, the attacks on innocents, executing people in broad daylight like it was the French Revolution. It was borderline anarchy.”
“It was a different time,” Bastien said. “Expected someone to pull out the guillotine again. Godric was running amok and even had President Martin’s predecessor assassinated. Shit was bad. I was twenty-six at the time.”
Luca nodded in agreement, like he remembered the time just as vividly.
“And the Oath honored their contract and continued to hunt me…for eight years.” Eight years of anxiety. Eight years of horror. “Until Luca stopped it.” I looked at him across the table, a man who had meant nothing to me and now meant the world to me. The only person who had my back. The only person who…I had at all.
Fleur looked at Luca at her side, a gentle smile on her lips.
Luca didn’t look at either of them, just stared at me across the table, a little light coming back to his eyes.
“Luca’s a good guy,” Bastien finally said. “To a select few.”
When we finished breakfast, we said goodbye on the sidewalk outside.
Bastien and Luca did one of those hand-grabs that guys did. “We’ll talk about this later,” Bastien said.
All Luca did was nod.
Fleur hugged Luca and gave him a hard squeeze.
Luca was affectionate back, giving her a squeeze with one arm before he let her go.
The blacked-out SUV pulled up, and they hopped inside before it left.
