two look very sweet,” Marie-Laure said. “And aren’t we a lovely trio? We have the wife, the mistress and the niece all here together. I thought about taking one of his sisters, but the little girl’s better. Men always do prefer the younger ones. Look at you …” Marie-Laure studied Laila’s face. “Such a beautiful thing. You look like him. Different eyes, though. Sweet blue eyes, not gray. All the boys must be in love with you.”
Laila shuddered in Nora’s arms.
“No one is in love with me,” she said, and Nora kissed the top of her head and whispered, “Jeg elsker dig” into Laila’s ear—I love you.
“Don’t worry. Love is overrated. But tell me something about love, Laila,” Marie-Laure said, coming close to where Nora and Laila sat huddled on the ground. She sensed the man hovering behind them so she made no move to escape. It was too dangerous, especially now with Laila there shivering in her arms almost paralyzed from fear.
“What?” Laila asked, her voice quaking. Nora ran her hand up and down Laila’s back, trying to instill some comfort into the girl.
“Does your uncle love this woman?” She inclined her head toward Nora. “This whore of his? Does he love her?”
Laila looked up at Nora, who only nodded her head, indicating Laila should tell the truth as best she could.
“Yes,” Laila said. “Of course he does. She’s …” Laila’s voice broke and tears started to stream down her face. Nora started crying then, too, in simple fear for Laila. “She’s everything to him. She’s like his wife.”
Marie-Laure’s eyes flinched but she only turned back to Nora.
“What about her?” Marie-Laure said to Nora. “Does he love his niece?”
“Of course he does, you lunatic. She’s like a daughter to him.”
“The pretend wife or the pretend daughter? So hard to choose … I need to keep one of you here. But one of you needs to go to him and deliver a message. But who does he love more? Whom should I keep? Whom should I send? Whoever stays, we’ll have a wonderful time together, me and my houseguest.”
The man, Damon, stepped forward and into Nora’s field of vision. Had she seen him on the street she would have thought him homeless as gaunt and bitter as he looked. Thin and short, but those traits only made him look more menacing. He had a deadly tilt to his mouth and a roughness about his edges despite his expensive gray suit. He had the same look in his eyes that Kingsley had—the look of a man who’d killed without caring and could still sleep at night.
“I know …” Marie-Laure continued. “I’ll let you two decide. Choose. Who stays? Who goes? Quick, quick. Tell me.”
A smile of pure malice swept across Marie-Laure’s face. Laila gasped and started to speak.
Nora clapped her hand over Laila’s mouth.
“I’ll stay,” Nora said immediately and without hesitation. “Send Laila with whatever stupid fucking message you have. I’ll be your houseguest as long as you want.”
Marie-Laure shrugged seemingly unimpressed and unsurprised by Nora’s answer.
“C’est la vie. I think you’ll be more fun to play with, anyway. Damon?”
The man stepped forward, grabbed Laila by the arm and hauled her to her feet. Marie-Laure met her eye to eye.
Nora started to stand up but Damon shot her a warning look. Nora sank back down the floor. Instead, she reached up and clasped Laila’s hand.
“Tell your uncle, my husband …” Marie-Laure dropped her voice to a whisper. “That I gave him my death as a gift. And now I’m taking my gift back.”
7 THE KING
Even knowing how futile it would be, Kingsley made phone calls to a few of his better sources—one in the upper echelons of the NYPD, another in the FBI. They both pledged to quietly investigate but they made him no other promises. He would have made more calls but couldn’t afford the risk. Only being a priest brought Søren the same measure of peace that owning Nora did. If it got out that not only was Søren still married somehow but also had a lover, the justice of the church would come down swift and merciless. Only last year Kingsley had read a story in the news about a Catholic priest who’d fallen in love with a woman and married her. The consequence? Excommunication. Strange justice. Priests who molested children were put into counseling. The priests who fell in love with adults were damned. And Søren wondered why Kingsley had never converted.
Not a week ago Kingsley had wished to see a world without Nora Sutherlin in it. Had that stray, bitter whim brought this upon them? He was no fool. A world without Nora Sutherlin was a world without Søren. If the priest lost his Little One, especially if her death happened because of something Søren had done, no matter how inadvertently, it would mean his destruction. Søren couldn’t live in a world without Nora. Kingsley couldn’t live in a world without Søren. Her death would be like the sinking of a great ship. She would take them all down with her.
Marie-Laure … Kingsley sat on the edge of his desk, his forehead in his hand. Ma soeur, what have you done? And what had they done, he and Søren, as boys? How much guilt did he bear for this crime? He knew Søren had told Marie-Laure their marriage would be one in name only. It would be for the money and nothing else. But Marie-Laure, vain and mad with love, refused to accept that.
Did he say he loved you?
Non … but he should. He must. He’s my husband.
He told you why he married you. He did it for us, Marie-Laure, to help us.
I don’t want his money. I want him.
You can’t have him.
Why not?
And to that question—pourquoi pas?—Kingsley had no answer. No, he did have an answer but one he couldn’t tell her, wouldn’t tell her. Because he’s mine, not yours, he could have said. Because he loves me, not you, he wanted to say. Because I’d rather see you dead than let him touch you the way he touches me.
That final treacherous thought was the one that haunted Kingsley for the past thirty years. He never uttered it, only in his mind, his heart, and yet he still carried the guilt of how much he’d meant the words at the time. Sitting on the edge of his desk, staring out onto the midnight city, he conjured that horrible memory of his sister’s body in the snow on the ground. His targets were all demons back in his days as a Jack-of-all-deadly-trades for the French government. The world slept better when Kingsley put a bullet in those chests. He aimed for the heart and left easily identifiable corpses. They might be demons but they came from somewhere and he knew someone would want a body to bury in an open casket. He could at least give them that. After all, the body he’d seen at his feet the day he thought Marie-Laure had died … nothing before or since, not even seeing his parents in urns, had turned his stomach like that. The rock had shattered her face. Nothing but gray matter oozed from the broken skull. The body, too, was broken,
