Marked By Desire - The Complete Series, page 63
Handle it. Handle it. Like this was a puddle of spilled milk and not much else. Like this wasn’t Joey’s life they were talking about. She tried to speak, to find words, but there was nothing to say.
Constantine’s threat was clear—bring Joey here like a lamb to the slaughter, or watch Jean go away for murder. Sera realized that as soon as the words came out of her mouth, her life was over, but she said them anyway. “All right, I’ll do it.” She felt her body relax with numbing acceptance. “Tomorrow night. It’s too early to go to him now. He’ll know something’s up.”
The words sounded normal, unconcerned, and Sera felt completely disconnected to them. It was as though someone else was speaking them entirely. Which was good, because she didn’t think that even she was that good of a liar.
She held her breath, waiting to see if Constantine would accept her statement.
Leaning back in his chair, he studied her intently for a long, hard moment. Finally, he smiled at her. “Good, I’m glad to see you’re being cooperative.” He patted the gun on his desk.
Sera forced a smile. “Blood’s thicker than water, right?”
He nodded and she was dismissed. Alexandre escorted her to her room silently. He was tense, but Sera had no desire to delve into the reasons why. She was done with him and his whole family. When she finally was left alone in her room, she sat down heavily on the edge of her bed, her heard whirling.
She had only one day to figure out how to warn Joey, get that gun back in her possession, get out of town and then hide away for good. Before everyone she loved ended up dead.
19
Sera had to get the pistol. There were a few other things she considered doing—running far and fast until they hit the border of Mexico, changing their names, getting married and then moving to Alaska to have enough children that they both became unrecognizable—but in the end, the only thing that made any sense to her was getting the gun.
It was the thing that would make Constantine bow for two reasons. It untied her hands as far as her brother was concerned. He didn’t have anything on Jean if he didn’t have that gun. But if she had the gun then she could use it to prove that Constantine was involved, too—after all, it was his gun. She could clean it up and make sure that there was no evidence linking it back to Jean and then Sera could turn it into the police. They could match the bullets or do whatever it was they did, bringing it straight back to Constantine. He said it was in his family for a long time, after all.
Sera wasn’t sure where he kept the gun. Unlike The Keep, she didn’t know the entire Decourdreau mansion inside and out as well. She was sure there was a safe somewhere where Constantine kept his most valuable items, but that could be anywhere… Behind a painting, maybe? It was a movie cliché to be sure, but there was a reason for that, she thought. In these old houses, especially in the south, there were a lot of secret passageways and hidden rooms. Hiding said secrets behind paintings or bookcases was convenient, and in a place like the Decourdreau mansion, it meant there were a lot of places to look before you found the right one.
Which was a problem for Sera. It meant that she was going to have to either work out which would be the most likely place to hide his valuables, or check every damn room.
And she didn’t have time for that. Even if she did, the chances of her getting caught were pretty high.
Mentally, she made a quick list of the places he was most likely to hide the things that meant the most to him. She couldn’t be sure which one, so she’d probably still have to check all of them until she found the right one, but at least a list would make the search a little faster.
She was fairly certain no one was around on her floor based on what she’d overheard, but all the same, she’d rather be overcautious than get caught. It wasn’t against the rules for her to leave the room she’d been provided, per se, but it was a precarious subject. On the one hand, she wasn’t stupid enough to think that Constantine trusted her.
So she tried her best to be casual, but also quiet, as she peeked out her door and looked down the hall.
It was quiet. Allister was running an errand that he refused to elaborate on, which told her pretty clearly that whatever it was he was doing was bad news. She’d just as soon not know any more about their illegal activities or anything else.
Alexandre was meeting up with his brother, Marcel—whom Sera hadn’t seen since their date—and both of them were elsewhere. At the restaurant Marcel owned, she thought, and was supposedly the legitimate business.
Sera didn’t want to know whether or not it was anymore. She was done with the whole family, no matter who was a good guy or not.
The good news was that with the house mostly empty, Sera had a chance to snoop. There were only a few of Constantine’s domestic workers around who could possibly tell what she was up to right now. She was sure they would have been given instructions not to let her leave, but would probably leave her alone as long as she stayed inside the house.
Her biggest worry was Allister. Constantine himself wasn’t due back until the afternoon, which gave Sera enough time to hopefully find the pistol and get it out of here, but Allister could be back any moment.
Constantine’s office was the last place she wanted to be. In the last week, she’d been there twice and that was plenty for her. Neither had been a pleasant experience. Unfortunately, it was the most likely place to hold Constantine’s safe and thus the pistol.
Sera stood outside his office door for maybe ten minutes, dread sweeping her. Scenarios played through her mind—Constantine hadn’t left yet, Constantine wasn’t leaving at all, Allister was in there, waiting for her to try something crazy—and each of them made her more uneasy than the next. Finally, she shoved through her worries. Screwing up her courage, she tried the door knob. She half-expected it to be locked, but was surprised to find that it turned easily.
“Guess I’ve got no excuses left now,” she muttered.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door and tried to shake the feeling that someone was watching her. The office looked just as it had hours earlier when she’d been standing in it, presenting the gun to Constantine. The heavy drapes, the old chair, the desk. All that was missing was the old man and his sons.
Sera went straight to the desk to search the drawers. One was empty, the other locked. Cursing under her breath, Sera picked the lock open, pulling the drawer and hoping to find the pistol.
Nothing.
Papers and receipts. Maybe even evidence of his double dealings, but she couldn’t understand it right away and didn’t have the time to try to just then. She had to move quickly. She moved on to check boxes and bookshelves. Everything, but it was no use. The pistol wasn’t there. And that was when a terrible thought made its way through her mind. What if Constantine had it with him?
“No,” she told herself firmly, doing her best to stay calm. “He wouldn’t risk getting caught with a gun on him out in public, especially a murder weapon.”
A little calmer for her reasoning, Sera went back to searching.
Since the office was a bust, she was going to have to try elsewhere. She started by walking back out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her.
She went down to the next option on her list—Allister’s room. It was a long shot, but she wasn’t sure where else was most likely for Constantine to hide something like the gun.
As she was headed towards Allister’s room, hoping that somehow Constantine trusted his oldest son enough to keep hold of the leverage being used against her, she passed an open door. At first, she didn’t even think about it. She was so focused on finding the pistol and that, in her mind, meant searching the rooms of his sons. But after a moment, it occurred to her what room that was.
“Darlene Decourdreau.”
Constantine’s late wife had had her own room. It used to belong to the both of them, but after her death he couldn’t bear to sleep there alone. Instead of repurposing it, he preserved it like some sort of sad, mourning shrine. It was one of those rooms that Sera was always told she was never allowed to enter. Mostly for fear that she would break something and disturb what was left of Mrs. Decourdreau.
But considering it now as an adult, Sera had to wonder, what if there was another reason that Constantine refused to let anyone in there. After all, what better place to use as a hiding spot than the one room no one would enter out of sheer respect for the late Darlene, if nothing else?
Hesitant, and feeling more than a little weird about it, Sera decided she had to try it. If she was wrong, then no harm, no foul. No one would ever know she was in there. If she was right, however, she could get the hell out, make sure Joey got out of town, and call Constantine from a distance to leave her and the people she loved the hell alone.
She walked as softly as she could, not only because she was still paranoid about someone else being around, but also because it was just weird to be in this room.
It was decorated tastefully, like the rest of the mansion, though there was a little more evidence of a woman’s touch here. The bed was made with a heavy duvet that was red and white, with tiny flowers lining the edges. The pillows and trim matched, and the red was close to the same color as the heavy curtains. There was a dresser that looked like a solid cherry wood and a matching vanity. Laid out on the vanity were silver brushes and combs, a little mirror, and a dish used for hair barrettes.
There was one of those old-fashioned screens that folded up and provided a quick changing area. It was off to the corner near the closet and had what looked like cherry blossoms imprinted on the screen.
Everything in the room was like that. Feminine, but not so much that it would be intolerable for a male. This room really did look like Darlene’s, and definitely not Constantine’s.
Which was what made one of the three paintings in the room seem off. The first two were nature pictures. Vast landscapes of wilderness with willows and rivers flowing through them. But the third one was different. It was a portrait, positioned next to the bed near the changing screen, a portrait of a beautiful woman that Sera recognized only from photographs.
Darlene Decourdreau. She was a beautiful, smiling woman, though her beauty was muted—her skin was a little pale, her hair a little lackluster, her lips a little thin. It must have been done after she became ill. It wasn’t a bad portrait, well done with some natural skill, she thought, though she was no judge really. What was odd about it, though, was that the stories Sera had heard of about Mrs. Decourdreau suggested that she wasn’t the least vain. Although she sat for portraits, Sera was sure, and allowed for Constantine’s lavishness, it was completely out of character for her to have her own portrait hanging so prominently in her bedroom.
Which meant Constantine had added it after she died. And a long time ago, she’d been told that nothing had been added or taken from this room since her death.
Biting her lip and taking a risk, Sera walked up to the painting. Hoping and praying that she didn’t mess it up in any way, she pushed it up along the wall so she could unhook it. Struggling a bit, she managed to set it down on the floor.
And sure enough, behind the painting was a safe.
Before Sera could break out into a happy dance, she noticed the key pad. Like the one at The Keep, it required a six-digit combination code to open it. And this was where things got tricky. Unlike the locks on doors or the drawers in Constantine’s office, this wasn’t something Sera could just pick. She needed a code to open it, and if she got it wrong, she was screwed.
Think, what would he use as a six digit code…?
The first thing that came to mind was a birth date. They could easily be six digits—either by using the full year or by using zeros, which already added a complication, and they were easy to remember. Okay, that made sense, but then which birth date?
Constantine had four sons, two of which had the same birthday. Which happened to be the only one she remembered. Would he use any of those? And what about Darlene’s? It was behind her picture in her old room, so it would make sense to use her birthday, right? Or was that too obvious?
The more she mulled it over in her mind, the more she doubted herself. Every answer seemed wrong.
Finally, she decided Constantine wasn’t the kind of man to do things like set codes based on the birthdays of his children, so she tried his birthday.
The code read incorrectly.
“Damn it!”
She had to think fast now. She didn’t know how many tries she had before it locked up, but she had to act quickly in case someone had already been notified. Feeling flustered, she tried the twins’ birthday next. It was wrong, too.
Sure that her third try was her last, Sera almost put in Darlene’s birthday—and at the last minute she stopped. Clearing the numbers, she tried one last time. The date of Darlene’s death.
The safe opened and, heaving a sigh of relief, Sera yanked open the door.
Just like at The Keep, the pistol was sitting there right on top of everything. Without hesitating, Sera grabbed the pistol and ran for the door. She didn’t bother covering up anything—getting those first two codes wrong had her spooked and she felt like she couldn’t spare the time.
She made it to the hall and almost to the large staircase that would lead downstairs when she heard the first shot. Letting out a scream, Sera covered her head and ducked down, seeing drywall dust spray down over her from where a bullet had pierced the wall.
“Oh, God.”
“You have something of mine!” came Constantine’s voice from down the hall—the way she needed to go to get to the stairs.
Panicked, Sera scrambled to her feet, trying to keep her body low to the ground, but also move quickly. She made it around a corner when another shot rang out. She screamed.
“I thought we had a deal, Seraphine,” Constantine called to her. “You can’t go back on a deal. Not ever. Not with me.”
Clenching her eyes shut tightly for a moment, she tried to think of what to do. The stairs were her only way out, but she couldn’t face Constantine. He’d kill her for sure. Hiding around the corner and fumbling her hand into her back pocket, she found her cell phone and dialed the number that she’d memorized recently. Joey’s hotel.
“I need room one oh eight,” she told the man that answered. After a moment, she was connected and she heard the phone ringing. After the third ring, Joey picked up. “Oh, thank God!”
“Sera?” he asked. He must have heard the panic in her voice, because he asked immediately, “What’s wrong?”
“Please, he’s after me,” she got out, knowing that it was risky to call Joey, but not knowing what else to do. “I can’t get out of the mansion, and he’s—”
Another shot rang out, too close for comfort, and Sera dropped her phone as she got up and ran. Constantine was right behind her now. It was a mixture of his poor shot and her dodging behind tables, corners, and anything she could find that was keeping her alive now and she didn’t know how long that would work.
She turned another corner and realized her mistake immediately.
It was a dead end.
“No,” she whispered, her hands pressing against the wall as though they could cause it to open up into another corridor, another room, anything.
She could hear Constantine. His voice just around the corner. “Nowhere left to go, my dear,” he called out, his tone almost gleeful at knowing he’d won.
There were no more options. This was it. He was going to kill her. No more games, no more threats, just pure and simple murder. She was shaking like a leaf, waiting for it to come, and that’s when it finally sunk in.
She had a gun, too.
It was old, and she didn’t know if it was loaded. It had fired once, recently, but even that was years ago and there was no guarantee it would fire again. Even if it did, she would probably miss…but at least she could try.
Lifting up the gun and straightening out her shoulders, Sera took a deep breath and prepared herself.
When Constantine came around the corner, she pulled the trigger.
20
A dead man lay ten feet from Sera. Constantine Decourdreau. She’d be lying if she said that she was sorry the man was dead, but there was still a churning feeling in her stomach that felt an awful lot like guilt. The gun that had caused this whole mess was sitting next to her on the floor. It wasn’t hot anymore or smoking, like all of those dark, dramatic film noir movies she’d watched with her brother years ago when they were kids. There had been something glamorous about murder in those movies, hidden beneath all of the grit.
Sera pulled her knees close to her chest, staring unblinkingly at the body. She felt herself lost somewhere between numb and cold, a place she was pretty sure was called shock. There was nothing glamorous about murder, she decided.
“It wasn’t murder,” she muttered to herself. “It was self-defense. He was going to kill me—and Jean.” Frowning, Sera found she couldn’t completely dispel her panic even with her reasoning, but the knowledge that she had saved her brother at least eased some of it.
And as long as she didn’t consider the sons who loved him, however unreasonably, she found that she could breathe a little bit easier. For now.
Sera didn’t know how long she would have been there if he hadn’t appeared around the corner, weapon drawn, face a mask of terror and determination.
“Sera!” Joey called out, rushing to her side. He didn’t even pause at the sight of the body as he passed. He knelt down in front of her, hands running across her body checking for injuries and then going to both of her arms and gripping tightly. His eyes were wide, filled with relief. “Jesus Christ, Sera! You terrified me!”
Her eyes focused on him and that’s when the tears started to come. “Oh, God!” She unwrapped her arms from her knees so that she could throw them around Joey. She held onto him as tightly as she could. “I killed him,” she sobbed against his shoulder. “I killed him.”
