Rhapsody (Butcher and Violinist 1)

Both days, Eden hadn’t left her room. Louis checked on her three times a day as the staff brought her meals.

On the third day, I snuck back up to the floor and stood by her door. No sound came from the room.

I’d become a fool in love, more now, than when I’d gone to war for Eden’s heart.

I hadn’t been able to think straight. Forget working. Forget the Corsican. Forget the Russians.

I should be making love to her. Why did I tell her?

But my gut said I’d done the right thing.

Fuck this. I’ve given her time. Now I give her my time.

I wasn’t ready to leave this to chance, so I picked up the phone. “Louis?”

“Yes.”

“I need your help.”

Chapter 34

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Eden

My mind and world had been thrown off its axis. Jean-Pierre had murdered people in my name. Aunt Celina did too. Three years of war. Russians and French Mafia. They’d both built human walls around me. They’d both crept around in the shadows, telling themselves that it was all for me.

What part was? And what part says that I should run from the both of them?

Their actions scared me. But in a dark way, it made me feel safe and loved.

Regardless, it all has to end.

I’d spent the last three days trying to get in touch with Aunt Celina. She never answered. I left messages each time, telling her that we needed to talk and that I knew everything.

Is she okay?

Besides talking to Aunt Celina, I didn’t know what to do. I loved her. She’d been like a second mother to me when mine passed. There’d never been a time when I couldn’t go to her.

“She destroyed the Belladonna Symphony. . .”

My mind spun with all of Jean-Pierre’s confessions. Rage and hurt mingled with broken love. Aunt Celina had thrown a charity event and made a big show of trying to save it.

There’s no way Jean-Pierre is lying. He had the freaking footage of my apartment. If she could secretly put cameras in my home and never tell me, I could see her doing more.

And what of Jean-Pierre?

If I continued to get to know him, Aunt Celina would have to stand down. This was my life. No one would tell me who I would and wouldn’t date.

Even if I’m thinking about dating The Butcher.

Could I date him?

That was what I sat in my room thinking about. The girlfriend experience had been easy to slip into character. It was playing pretend for a short time.

Jean-Pierre had gone to war for me.

If I said yes to him now, I would be walking into more than just a simple relationship. There’d be no walking away. Before I knew all of this, I would’ve been happy to offer more than a financial arrangement.

But the death? The spying? The power that has been thrown around by both of them.

I was just a violinist. I ate cheesecake when I had extra for dessert. I practiced most Saturday nights, when others went out. I didn’t have people that I moved around the globe, battling enemies here and there.

What the hell did he see in me all these years?

I tried my best to think it through fast. Each time I woke up in the morning, I said I would go to him with a final answer. By the end of the day, I was shocked that the time had flown by and I still sat there staring out at Paris, feeling this surreal darkness around me.

I’d asked, when we were in the Louvre. “When you hacked into my aunt’s security cameras, how much would you watch me?”

“Regardless of the time difference, I tried to wake up with you in the morning and go to sleep with you at night.”

I had opened my mouth in shock. “So, you’ve seen the elephant onesie?”

“Yes, and the giraffe one.”

Jean-Pierre knew everything about me, and I still was just learning him. He had a three year start, and I was lost more than I’d ever been before.

Stunned, I asked. “You gave me Vibrato?”

“I did. I heard a phone conversation with your father that you were lonely and considering getting a cat.”

Parts of my life that I thought I knew were not true at all. Jean-Pierre and Aunt Celina knew more about my past years than I.

This can’t happen anymore. I need my own privacy. I need my own moments to wear a stained elephant onesie and no one is watching me.

What was the clear direction in dealing with something like this? I pondered that on the third day, knowing that I couldn’t let Jean-Pierre wait anymore. Regardless of what he’d done, it had never hurt me.

Others had died.

Many had perished.

The whole time I’d been protected by both Aunt Celina and him.

For that fact, I could not justify huge amounts of anger for me.