Page 98 of Girl Anonymous

“You’ve got your teeth into him,” Jack accused.

From the office door Dante said, “Jack, it’s simple. I’m in love with her.”

A gasp came from the front of the foyer.

There Connor held a briefcase to his chest and gaped like a dying fish.

Owen stood beside him, holding two grocery bags full of what looked like flower garlands. “I told you so.”

Nate shut the sliding doors, protecting Dante’s office privacy.

Jack violently shook his head. “No. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen into that old trap. She’s merely a woman. Who can tell one from another?”

Dante viewed his cousin in pity.

“You’re too strong for that!” Jack was shouting again. He looked around and, seeing Béatrice, he stalked toward her. “Mother, what are you doing here? I thought all you wanted was to be free of the Arundels. Remember? You said that in the note you left before you waltzed out to your whale-­watching in Canada.”

Maarja viewed Jack, then Béatrice, then Jack again. Hismother? Downtrodden, fearful, and depressed Béatrice was hismother? By who? By the boyfriend who left her after the explosion that killed Benoit Arundel?

No. By Benoit himself.

In Jack’s face she saw the madness and malice of old Benoit, and in Béatrice’s cringing fear, she saw a woman who had been cruelly taken and used by Benoit, and who feared her own son for the pain he inflicted.

As Nate had said,Not on my watch. She moved swiftly to intercepthim, and found herself abruptly halted by Nate’s grip on her arm.

Dante moved between Jack and his mother. He didn’t say anything. He simply stood there, feet braced, hands at his hips, challenging Jack in his presence and stance.

The moment smelled ripe with the scent of potential bloodshed.

From somewhere in his scarred soul, Jack dug up some semblance of good sense, and with visible effort, he stepped back from the encounter. “I’m leaving, and I’m not coming back. You can use your feeble organization to shit flowers out your ass for the whole world to smell. San Francisco is my home now, and the police force is my family.” As if he suddenly realized what he was missing, he groped under his jacket. “Dante, you bastard, give me my service pistol!”

“I’ll keep it for now,” Dante replied. “Until you’ve calmed down.”

“I won’t calm down.In love.” Jack snorted. “You’ll make us a laughing stock of the business world.” As he left, he was weaving, making a wide path, looking for someone to shove aside.

He left without accomplishing his goal.

CHAPTER 47

Only Béatrice’s shivering sob broke the stillness in the house.

With a soft word, Maarja freed herself from Nate’s grip and hurried to Béatrice’s side, but when she tried to put her arm around the white-faced woman, Béatrice shrank back as if Maarja had somehow acquired the patina of heartlessness from her association with the Arundels.

Maarja sort of understood. “Mom,” she called.

Even without sight, Octavia had read the situation, for she was already on her way. She slid her arm around Béatrice’s shoulders and whispered encouragement as she led her toward the kitchen.

Alex was on her feet, leaning against her desk, white around the lips. She, too, had been too recently involved in violence, and this scene had brought back the horror. “Was that man drunk?”

“No.” Dante stared after his cousin. “Something else.”

“Meth?” Connor suggested. “It’s got to be something aggressive for him to speak to you like that.”

Dante grunted, then nodded to Connor and Owen. “Glad you two made it. Any more light on our little financial issue?”

“No,” Owen said. “When Connor woke up, we got in the car and I drove. Took us an hour and twenty minutes to go thirty-eight miles. He slept like a baby.”

“Those Taylor Swift songs you were singing weren’t lullabies!” Connor groused.

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