Stepbrother Thief(73)
It might've been nice if he hadn't decided to disappear for three days. I don't know how to work my way through all of this without actually seeing him, talking to him. Shit. Seeing him shoot those men should've been the straw that broke the camel's back, the obvious end to any feelings I might've still carried for the man. But it wasn't. When I saw that deadly balance inside of him, all I wanted to do was fix it, shove him as hard as I could towards the light. I won't be one of those women who try to fix men, I think to myself, staring down into my coffee before looking back up at my daughter. She deserves better than that.
“I think you'll be showing at Paris Fashion Week before you turn twenty-one,” I say with a slight smile. Unconsciously, I reach up to touch the diamond pendant at my neck. I wish you were here, Mom. Things would be so much easier if you were.
“Good morning,” Cliff says, moving into the kitchen and heading straight for the coffeemaker. I've been avoiding him since that night at the hotel, and he knows it. I take a deep breath and toss back the rest of the coffee in my cup. I know a talk is coming on—I can feel it. “Solène, mon étoile, could you excuse Regi and me for a few moments to talk?”
Solène wrinkles up her face for a moment and then nods.
“I don't much enjoy gossip anyhow,” she says with a sniff, leaving the room in a whoosh of skirts and the clomping of boots. There's a brief exchange between her and Aveline before I hear the pounding of feet on steps and the slamming of a distant door.
My stomach twists up tight and I find myself standing up for another cup of coffee, anything so that my shaking hands have something to do.
“Don't you look lovely this morning,” Cliff says, pausing to give me a kiss on either cheek. I smile through a face of perfectly applied makeup—a dark chocolate liner with a touch of brown shadow, a nude lip, a gentle kiss of blush. My hair's up in a messy chignon, and I'm completely and utterly overdressed for yet another day spent trapped indoors. My open-front halter top shows way too much cleavage and the high waisted slacks I'm wearing are definitely too chic for an afternoon watching Netflix, but … I need the uniform right now, more than I ever have before. I need to feel polished and put-together. If I keep pretending that I am, the feeling's bound to wear off on me at some point, right? I look beautiful today, I tell myself trying to stay confident and in control. Every little sound, every footstep and opening door, it all makes me jump, gives me a serious case of butterflies and goose bumps because I think it's Gill, come home at last.
Only for three days, it hasn't been.
“Merci, Papa,” I say setting my cup on the counter next to his. He lifts his own mug to his lips with a very neutral expression hovering on his face. I try to remember that I'm not sixteen, but Cliff's perception of me is so important that sometimes I get worked up over nothing. And this, this is not nothing. “What did you want to talk about?” I ask, trying to get the jump on the conversation before he does. Control.
“What happened in that hotel was not your fault,” he tells me and I cringe slightly. Someone must've filled him in—probably Aveline.
“I know,” I say, because I do. I didn't make those men come after us, break into our room, and I didn't shoot them either.
“But it's also okay to let yourself be affected by what you saw.” I take a sip of my coffee and slam my cup back down on the counter, a little harder than I intend to. I lift my eyes up and glance left, out the window that looks onto the hedge of trees that line Gill's property.
“Thank you, Cliff, but I'm fine. Really. I knew that signing up to rob a hundred million in jewels could come with consequences.” I try to make a joke out of it, throw a smile onto my face, but Cliff sees right through me. His expression darkens and he moves away to sit at the table.
“Gilleon's a dangerous man, Regina,” he says, and even now it still weirds me out to hear him talk about his own son like that. “And whether he wants to admit it or not, his time with his mother changed him. This last decade of his life, it changed him even more.” Cliff spins in his seat to look at me as I turn around. “Now, you're an adult and I can't tell you what to do, but listen to an old geezer's advice.” I roll my eyes a little because Cliff's been referring to himself as an old man for the last fifteen or so years. “My son is charming, handsome, mysterious.” I laugh but Cliff raises his graying brows at me. “Don't make light of this, Regi.”
“Papa, I'm thirty-one years old,” I remind him, but he just shakes his head and points a finger at me.
“Don't throw your age at me. I'm sixty-five years old, so I've got decades on you. Listen, all I'm trying to say is, once this is over, let Gilleon go. Cut him off and say goodbye. It's the best thing for you, for me, for Solène.”