Devil's Pawn (Devil's Pawn Duet 1)

But there’s something in that smile of hers. Something off. There’s a hardness to Julia. Or maybe it’s just that her skin is thicker than mine.

“You know you’re the talk of the town,” she says, stepping around me to walk toward Jericho.

I turn after her and watch. His eyes are on me, and I wish they weren’t. They’re too hard. Too cruel.

“After your big disappearing act to return like you did. I heard you made quite the entrance the other night. Too bad I missed it.”

She stops a few feet from him, and I watch how she does it. How she doesn’t shrink away. And I think about what he said. Well, what his brother said. That I’m no match for him. I’m not. But my cousin, she could take him on. She’d have a fighting chance. Is that why he chose me?

Weirdly the thought of them together bothers me.

He shifts his gaze from me to her as if just realizing she’s standing there. “Excuse us,” he says and steps past her to approach me. Julia turns to watch him, and I see her surprised expression but it’s only a blur because he’s taking up all the space in the small chapel. All the oxygen there is to breathe.

By the time he reaches me she’s gone. I only know from the loud clang of the heavy door closing.

“I told you to stay put.” He takes my arm and I see he’s holding something in the other. “What were you two talking about?”

“Nothing. My cousin mostly. I’d like to see him.”

“Hm.” His gaze moves over me, and I clutch my purse tighter. If I can get to the house, I can hide the phone. But only if I get it past him first.

“Where were you?” I ask.

“Meeting.” He doesn’t sound like himself. Something has him bothered and he’s having a hard time hiding it. The way he’s looking at me feels different. Like he’s trying to glean what is inside me. He searches my face before his gaze lands on my collarbone.

I touch the scar to make sure it’s hidden by my hair.

“A meeting at a social event? Is that the whole reason we came? So you could go to some meeting?” I ask to deflect.

“Why do you come in here?” he asks, glancing around the chapel. “It’s twice now that I find you here.”

I shrug a shoulder, try to dislodge his hand. He eases his grip a little. “My mom used to bring me here when I was little, and she had to clean the compound. It was good money, so she took the jobs, but when my father or brother weren’t home, there was no one to leave me with, so she’d bring me here and tell me to stay put.”

“How little?”

“I don’t know. The first time was my fifth birthday.” I remember because she promised we’d go buy a gift with the money she’d earn.

“She left her five-year-old daughter alone in a church?”

“Unlike you and everyone in this place, we didn’t grow up with money to spare. We couldn’t afford a sitter.”

“Did she think Jesus would babysit?”

I narrow my gaze. “I guess she did, pot.”

“Pot?”

“Pot calling the kettle black. You know the expression? Or do you need me to explain it?”

“How the hell does that apply to me?”

“You leave your daughter to be watched by strangers.”

“I hardly—ah fuck it. I don’t answer to you, Isabelle Bishop.” He sets the folder he’s holding down on the altar and studies me, the look in his eyes stranger than usual.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

Instead of answering he shifts his hand to my shoulder and pushes me to my knees.