London sighed, his words sinking in. There was some truth to what he said. Maybe she should talk to them. At least she should think about it.

The rest of the drive was spent primarily in silence until Luc’s phone began ringing shortly after seven. When he slanted a glance over to her, she looked down at his phone’s display. Xander. Her heart stuttered.

“I’ll bet Lys gave him my number, damn it,” Luc groused with a grim face as he answered the phone. “Yes, I have her. Yes, she’s safe. Sweetie, do you want to talk to them now?”

She wanted to. Ached to. Hearing their voices . . . nothing ever made her feel better than being close to them. But this wasn’t about soothing her. She had to get her head on straight first. “Not now.”

“Sorry, guys. She needs a little more time.”

“Please!”

London could hear Xander’s frustration through the phone and winced. If she let them in her ear now, even to tell them that she wasn’t angry and that she was all right . . . it would be so easy to let them talk her into burying her fears and opening her arms to them again. But they’d run into this brick wall of her insecurities again and again until they got sick of them and broke it off. How much more would it hurt then?

Luc looked at her expectantly. She shook her head.

“Not going to happen, Xander. And pleading with me won’t work. She was innocent and struggling just to start life. I don’t have any illusions that she’s innocent anymore, and this relationship has heaped a lot of emotional shit on her shoulders that she’s trying to process. Find some fucking patience. She’ll call you if she wants to talk.”

Luc was more than a little harsh with Xander, and when Luc disconnected the call, she knew Xander wouldn’t try to reach her again through her cousin or her husband.

“I wanted a lover, you know.” The confession croaked out. London felt her face flame, but she needed to get this off her chest. Alyssa would comfort her, no matter what she said. But Luc was proving to be a straight shooter. “I wanted not just to be alive but to feel alive.”

“Sex isn’t a life.”

“But sex is a part of life, and I’ve experienced so little in mine. I just wanted . . . everything. A job, friends, independence. I can say I had those briefly, I guess. At least, I can check a broken heart off my list now,” she tried to joke.

He sighed and looked at her with such understanding she nearly cried. “Sweetie, you’ll have all the experiences you need. I understand that you lost ten years and it’s made you anxious to catch up. But there’s a reason parents try to protect their teenagers from experiencing everything too fast.” When she would have opened her mouth to object, Luc held up a hand. “I know you’re not a teenager anymore. If you had been, your ass would be grounded now. But I’m just saying that you have to understand that not every experience is good. And those that are aren’t always easy. Be patient with yourself. And while you’re at it—God, I can’t believe I’m going to say this—but maybe you should be patient with them. If they’re calling all over hell this early in the morning, they care.”

That was probably good advice. Could she really put it to good use? Her natural inclination was to want to settle problems and questions as soon as they cropped up. But this one was too important to rush.

“Thanks. I really do appreciate you.”

“Glad to hear it. You can stay up and spend time with Chloe. I’m going back to bed when we get home.”

At first, she tensed. She shouldn’t be alone with the toddler, and Luc knew it. But he’d be in the next room. She had to start trusting herself. Then she’d see about trusting others.

She laughed at him. “You’re on.”

They arrived in Lafayette midmorning. Alyssa hugged her tightly the second she walked in the door. “We’ll talk when I get home. About anything you want. As long as you want.”

But her cousin’s demeanor said she was late for work, so London shoved her out the door. “Go. Luc is going back to bed. I got this.”

Alyssa smiled, looking as beautiful as ever in a black ruffled blouse, a short cream-colored skirt, and two-toned peep-toe stilettos. London sighed in envy when Alyssa gave Luc a lingering kiss. She could feel the love between them. Luc had embraced her cousin’s terrible past. Lys accepted his shortcomings. They shared a great life, a wonderful house, a beautiful baby. Instead of asking if it was enough, they just went with it and took life as it came.

Maybe she had overreacted to Xander and Javier being so insistent about seeing her back. No, she wasn’t ready today, but tomorrow?

Chloe cuddled up in her arms when Alyssa bopped out the door with a wave. Luc locked up behind her, then stumbled back to the bedroom. With a smile, London nibbled on a late breakfast, watched the toddler, and tried to clear her head.

When Luc woke a few hours later, London handed his daughter to him with a grateful smile. Then she grabbed her phone and turned it on, just in case. Ignoring the four voice mails and umpteen missed calls, she shoved it in her pocket, palmed her keys, and let herself out for a walk. It was damn hot, and she’d soon swelter, but she had to keep training for her 5K. And she needed some peace and quiet.

London wandered for a while, wiping the perspiration from her brow, and found herself in front of the office building she’d shared with Javier and Xander. A bittersweet pang wrenched her chest. She should just keep walking. If she wanted a clear head, being in the space in which the men she loved had seduced her, body and heart, wasn’t smart. But she wasn’t quite strong enough to resist the temptation.

She let herself into the lobby, halfway thankful that the copy and postage facility on the bottom floor dictated that the building remain open seven days a week. With shaking fingers, she called the elevator, then proceeded to the office door, letting herself inside with the key Javier had given her on day one.

Pushing inside the dark room, she turned to flip on the lights.

Before she could, a hard body barged in behind her, shoving her into the room. As she stumbled to find her balance, London heard the door close almost silently. The intruder—a man, based on his grip—grabbed her arm and threw the lock home. She turned to stare at him over her shoulder, and he covered her gasp with his gloved hand.

With her heart pounding, London peered up into his cold dark eyes. Without a word, she knew he was a predator of the worst kind. He had no soul.

“So sorry, love,” he muttered with a French accent.

London didn’t understand his apology—until he lifted a length of rope between them and brought it toward her neck.

Chapter Nineteen

“HAPPY seven a.m. This fucking better be good,” Nick Navarro growled in his ear.

Javier bit back a pointed reply. He had to stay on task. Shit was hitting the fan. He didn’t need to include a breakdown with it, no matter how strung out he felt or how much Nick deserved it. He needed to stop the panicky slide to blackout he’d experienced in the past. London needed him.

“This is fucking important.” That was as nice as Javier could manage. “You’ve been keeping tabs on Chad Brenner, right?”

“Yeah. He hasn’t left Florida in weeks. Seems to be a workaholic house hermit with a serious Chinese and pizza delivery habit.”

“I don’t give a shit what he’s eating. Have you kept tabs on his bank accounts?”

“There hasn’t been anything unusual as of yesterday afternoon.”

“Look again.”

Navarro groaned, and Javier could hear him rustling sheets as he pushed out of bed. A feminine moan of protest carried across the line, and he forced himself not to care. He paid Nick handsomely to give up some beauty sleep or sex when big stuff happened.

Thirty seconds later, Nick whistled. “How did you know? Brenner is fifty thousand poorer. He took ten of it out in cash three days ago. The rest just before the bank closed yesterday evening.”

“That’s what I thought. Have you been tracking Valjean?”

“I’ve always got a tracker on that fucker’s whereabouts. I know some real helpful folks at Interpol, and we trade information now and then.” He clicked the keys of his computer a few more times. After a pause, he sighed. “Why the fuck would he be in Mexico?”

“Because he just killed one of my former employees.”

“No shit? And you think Brenner is the money man?”

“That’s exactly what I think. Look back through Brenner’s financials. Can you go back about a year? Do you see any significant cash outlays last June?”

“That will take a few minutes . . .”

Minutes that were going to make Javier insane. He muted the call and turned to his brother. “What the hell should we do if it turns out that Brenner paid Valjean to kill Francesca? Kill the fucker?”

“I’m sure you’d like to but . . .” Xander dragged in a deep breath and shook his head. “We’ll go to the police. I don’t know if we have enough evidence to prove anything, but we have to try.”

“Agreed, but why would Brenner have paid someone to murder Francesca?” Javier had been coping—barely—with the fact that his neglect had driven her into the arms of the man who’d killed her. But Brenner’s possible involvement now cast a different light on this.

“Revenge. That’s the hand he played with Carlton.”

Javier’s eyes slid closed as something terrible—final and painful—filled him. It had been wrenching enough to know that he’d starved Francesca for attention so badly that she’d sought a killer. But to know that she’d been targeted because he’d created a terrible enemy in Brenner only made his guilt weigh that much heavier.

“But why not come after me?” he argued.

“I think he did,” Xander pointed out. “If something happened to you after such a public dispute, wouldn’t it have looked suspicious? Besides, if you were dead, then Brenner couldn’t watch you suffer all the ways he was fucking with you. He stole all our innovations for the last year or so just to have the pleasure of watching you and the business slowly go down the toilet since Fran’s death.”

Revenge. The motive was so simple that Javier had overlooked it. Yes, there were lots of layers and sharp complexities to the events that had nearly destroyed him. Fran’s resentment, Xander’s refusal, his own disregard, Brenner’s arrogance. But at the end of the day, the situation boiled down to mere retribution.

“Gotcha!” Nick shouted over the phone.

A moment later, Nick returned. “Last June, I show two large cash withdrawals from Brenner’s account, one for ten thousand on the first. The second was for another forty K four days later. At the time, that was every dime the fucker had.”

A down payment, followed by a payoff for services rendered the day after Francesca’s murder. The evidence was circumstantial at best, but it was a start.

“Fuck.” Javier raked a hand through his hair. “Do you have any idea where Valjean is now?”

Nick paused, pounding a bit on his computer. “He’s not in Cancun anymore. He was there less than twenty-four hours according to the intel I’m getting. As soon as Mexican police were onto him, he disappeared. They surmise that he hired a charter boat and sailed out, bypassing customs. But he can’t go far on a vessel like that.”

“How far?” Javier barked.

“Another destination in Mexico, Belize, Cuba. Those would be the easiest. Wait!” A few more clicks later, Javier could almost hear Nick’s frown over the line. “The FBI is reporting a possible sighting of Valjean.”

FBI only handled domestic matters. Was Valjean on U.S. soil? “Where?”

“Port of New Orleans.”

Only a few hours from Lafayette. Had Brenner sent Valjean to kill him finally? Let him. Let the fucker try. He was ready. They’d give all this over to the police, but they’d be slow to turn the wheels of justice, and even then, it might not be enough. Javier was ready to have it out with Brenner. If the fucker wanted to play hardball, fine.

“Another ten grand disappeared from Brenner’s account this morning.”

The words dropped like a boulder. So this was it. “Brenner’s sending someone to end me, then.”

“Would he?” Xander questioned. Nick asked basically the same thing in his ear.

“Look at it this way,” Navarro added. “If all he wanted to do was kill you, why bother setting the elaborate scheme of selling your information out from under you? Why kill your wife? I don’t think he wants you to die, man. He wants you to suffer.”

“Just like he did.” The pieces snapped into place for Javier. Some of Brenner’s parting words had been about not resting until he’d destroyed everything Javier had ever cared about. By killing Fran, it had fucked up his head so badly, he’d almost run S.I. Industries into the ground. But he’d been so much better since coming to Louisiana. And he had London—