The Love Trap by Nicole French

37

We barged into the apartment with all the grace of a freight train, practically breaking the door down to enter. Just as they had said, the apartment below housing our security was empty. The bottom floors, with their construction debris, were ghost towns. We were completely alone.

“Where is it?” Carson demanded.

Jude shrugged, though his grip on my wrist remained iron. “This would have been easier if we hadn’t left Anton bleeding out on Fifth Avenue. He’s better at sniffing out hidden goods than I am. Once a thief, always a thief, I say.”

“I don’t give a damn what you say,” Carson snapped. Ha ha! Looks like the Psycho Papa was starting to show his cracks. “We can’t stay here. But we need those documents.”

Realization dawned. They were here for the journals. The files. The notes. Everything Eric and I had collected over the last several months to trap Carson’s conniving ass. He was well aware of the investigations against him, of course. But he must have figured out what was going on down at the Brooklyn DA’s office. Just like he had clearly figured out that Zola and his ilk couldn’t be bought either.

So, apparently, the evidence had to be found.

“Come on, fellas,” I said, not even struggling against Jude’s strong grip. “Even if we did have all the goods on you here, don’t you think the DA has copies? Just like the CIA? And NIS?” I tipped my head. “I could keep going.”

But Carson, to my surprise, didn’t look the slightest bit worried. Shit. That meant that somehow he had already tampered with or even stolen the DA’s cache. He already knew the Feds were neutralized.

Carson just turned to Jude with a bored expression. “She knows where they are.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. And then smiled. “You’ll never get them.”

Jude tipped his head. “Try me, princess. We could play hot or cold if you like.” He bound my wrists roughly with some kind of plastic tie, then shoved me roughly toward Carson before starting in the direction of Eric’s bedroom.

I couldn’t help it. I grinned.

Jude, unfortunately, grinned back. “Hot, I see.” He pressed a hand against the bedroom door. “Is it in here? Will you be so helpful as to tell me the combination?” He tipped his head. “I wonder if it’s your birthday too.”

Too? Did that mean they broke into the safe in Boston too? I shook my head as something else occurred to me. “I can’t even get to them, you big idiot.”

Jude frowned. “Care to clarify that?”

Laughter bubbled up. Because the irony, oh, the fucking irony was too good. Before I could answer, however, a sudden chill of metal slipped against my neck, and I choked.

“I suggest you choose your words carefully.” Carson’s deep voice hummed like an engine against my ear as he wrapped my hands . Goose bumps sprang up all over my skin. “Otherwise, they may be your last. And I think you know exactly how well I keep my promises in that regard.”

I swallowed. “Fuck. You.”

The knife tip pierced my skin. I shuddered as a drip of blood slipped down my throat.

“Try again.”

Jude stood in front of the bedroom door, arms crossed while he waited.

“I’m laughing because…well, there is a safe. And yes, it’s in there. But only one person can open it.” I started giggling now, not even caring about the threat of the stupid knife. It would serve him right anyway if he sliced my throat before I was done talking. “You need his fingerprints. Don’t you see? If you want that evidence, only one person can get it for you, and you’ve…oh my God, you killed him!” I was practically choking on laughter now. It was either that or faint. “Because you did, didn’t you? Eric is probably bleeding out. You stupid fucking morons, you killed your only chance at getting into the safe that contains literally every piece of evidence against you!”

By the time I finished, I was so delirious with anger and frustration and maybe even some elation that finally this was the end that I started to cackle like a witch. Because even though this certainly wasn’t the end I wanted, Eric had still found a way to do exactly what I would have done in his shoes, had I had the chance. Stick it to the man, even on my way down.

“What is she talking about?” Carson demanded. “Hermes, you said his safe was easily opened.”

“Well, the one in Boston was a joke,” Jude replied, though he didn’t look so smug anymore.

My laughter was now full-on hysterical. “You fools. You are the ones who are so, so stupid. He already knew he had no privacy. He knew would do this! So he had that stupid thing installed beside our bed that only takes his fingerprints. That thing is state-of-the-art. I—oh God! I can’t stop!”

“That’s enough!” Carson barked. “Hermes, go find the safe. If we can’t open it, we’ll just take it with us. We’ll dispose of this one on our way out of the country. Daughter or not, she’s a liability, and I can’t have it.” He jerked my hands behind my back and quickly knotted something that felt like silk around them. “I would have liked to finish the job in Korea, you know. It was…cathartic…in a way. You see, I came to terms with the fact that you yourself are tainted, much less worthy of carrying my grandchild. Better we do away with you along with your wretched husband.”

I wrenched my head around, and spat in Carson’s face as hard as I could. Then, of course, I immediately received another harsh slap.

“That is quite enough!” Carson roared. He turned to Jude, his stupid, hooked-nosed face red with anger. “Jude! Get the safe, and let’s go!”

Jude nodded and turned to the bedroom door. I quieted. Fuck. This was really it.

“It’s his fault for thinking the society would come to him in the first place, Titan,” Jude said as he opened the door. “Not when they’ve been loyal to you for years.”

“No.” Eric stepped out of our bedroom. “They’ve been loyal to the society. It’s a very different thing.”

“Ahh!” I screamed at the sound of his voice.

“What in the hell!” Jude shouted.

Brandon jumped out from the room as well, and in a sudden rush, Jude was locked in a vicious full-nelson that sounded awfully like it broke something.

“Fuck!” he screamed through a face contorted with pain. “That’s my arm!”

Brandon just turned him around, and just as viciously, slammed Jude’s head into the doorframe. He immediately crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

“Slimy motherfucker,” he muttered, his Boston accent thick and unfettered as he stepped over Jude’s body. “You’re lucky it was just your arm.”

“Eric?” I asked, hardly able to believe what I was seeing. “Brandon? You’re…you’re here?”

Eric walked further into the room, hands behind his back like he was out for a stroll.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, his gaze lighting on me warmly. “I’m sorry I had to leave you on your big night. I just…well, I knew this one here wouldn’t be able to resist if he thought you and my mother were alone.” He narrowed his eyes at Carson. “Where is she, by the way?”

My hands were jerked behind me again, and the knife at my throat found new purchase. Carson practically growled. “Left to her own defenses after my daughter foolishly decided to attempt heroism.” He tsked loudly, like I had spilled juice instead of sacrificing myself. Granted, Anton wasn’t much of a comfort, but he was hurt, and he did have his orders. “Heather was always easy to scare into submission. She’s been quiet for more than twenty years. I’m sure tonight will give me twenty more.”

Eric just glared at us both. “Let her go, Carson. And maybe you’ll get out of here alive.”

I could feel the sallow curve of Carson’s smile against my temple. He smelled like old men’s cologne, far too much bourbon, and something else that was almost medicinal. Pills and plastic.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You think I have any scruples when it comes to my so-called ‘daughter’? She and her mother have been the stain on my life’s work. She’s already proven that she’d beyond redemption. If you want to save her life, you’d better run along and get me everything that’s in that safe of yours.”

To my surprise, Eric just cocked his head. “Oh? And what do you think you’ll want from there?”

But Carson was done with the repartee. “Just get it!” he shouted. “Whatever godforsaken things you keep in there are coming with me! Notes. Photographs. Your ridiculous poetry.” He sneered. “No true daughter of mine would fall in love with such a whiny little Nancy. It should have been enough to write her off from the start.”

“Right,” I snapped. “Because you don’t have the slightest flair for drama, do you, Pops?”

“Jesus Christ,” Brandon muttered to himself, obviously appalled by my terrible self-restraint.

“Jane.” Eric’s voice was even. “Hush.” He was stock-still as he spoke to Carson. “I keep a lot of things in that safe, Carson. Poetry, yes. Documentation, plenty. I also keep protection.”

And then, to my combined shock and horror, he raised a gun from behind his back and pointed it straight at Carson.

“Holy shit,” I said. “What in the hell is that?”

“It’s a gun, Jane,” Eric said, like he was speaking to a four-year-old. “A Beretta M-9, the standard issue for the U.S. military. As Carson undoubtedly knows, given how cozy he is with the armed forces.”

“You wouldn’t, Triton,” Carson said. “You’re all bluster, just like your good-for-nothing father. Jacob was a joke, and so are you. Do you have any idea how easy it was, pushing him off the boat? How simple? It was him or me, and when it came down to it, he couldn’t do it. He had me. He could have just…” “ He tipped his head. “So I made the decision for him.”

For a half-second, the gun shook. I flinched.

“Eric,” I whispered. “Put the gun down.” It was fucking unnerving. The saying “looking down the barrel of a gun” carried a whole new meaning.

“Jane,” he replied without moving his gaze from Carson. “Please shut up.”

I opened my mouth to argue—even then, I was arguing!—but managed to shut it as ordered. After all, I wasn’t super interested in being accidentally shot in the face.

“Eric, man,” Brandon tried to put in, “maybe you should—”

“Brandon, you too.”

“Triton.”

“Carson. Titan. Whatever the fuck name you want to go by. I only have one, and it’s not the one you gave me after an impotent son of a sea god. My name is Eric Sebastian Franklin Stallsmith de Vries. You killed my fiancée. You murdered my child. You have tormented and kidnapped my mother and my wife. And now you finally admit that yes, you killed my father.”

“So prepare to die,” I whispered to myself in a fake Spanish accent.

Good one, kiddo. I could practically feel my dad’s smile behind me, calling from the dead. He always did like the Princess Bride. Jesus, we were inappropriate together, even when one of us was completely imagined. It was like being the person who laughs at a funeral, except it was my own potential execution, and I was giggling with memories of my dead father.

“Shut up!” Carson hissed.

“Go on, Carson,” Eric said. “Give me one good reason why I should let you live. Because right now, I can’t think of a single one.”

The seconds ticked by. My gazed darted between Eric at the door, Brandon beside the wall, Carson’s feet, and back to Eric.

“All right,” Carson said softly. “How’s this? You won’t do it. You’re a coward, just like your father. Things get hard, and you run away. From the time you were a child, you let people push you around. Tell you where to live. You’ve fooled yourself into thinking you made a life on your own, but look at you. One call from the great Celeste de Vries, and you came running. You might want to pull that trigger, but you and I both know it’s never”—he jerked on my hands—“going”—another jerk—“to happen.”

Eric’s throat tightened visibly. The muscle in his jaw started to tick.

Like a bomb, I recalled. Ready to explode.

“Aren’t I right?” Carson asked one last time. The knife at my throat pressed in further, choking me. “Aren’t. I. Right?”

“Eric,” I wheezed.

Eric blinked, as if shaken out of a trance by my voice. And then, with the smooth lightning movements of a cat, he raised the gun and shot John Carson directly between the eyes.

I screamed. The hand at my throat fell away along with the body of the man who claimed he was my father. Blood streamed all over the shining floors, so dark it was almost black.

“Holy shit,” Brandon whispered as he glanced down at the body, then over to Jude’s still-unconscious form.

“Eric.” My voice was a ghost as I twisted around, drops of my father slipping down my cheek. My hair, my face, everything was wet. Wet with…him. “Oh, Eric. What did you just do?”

“His reason wasn’t good enough.’”

Eric held the gun in the air long after the echo of its shot had faded away. By the time he dropped it, his hand was shaking, and the gun fell to the floor. Then he looked up at me and promptly fell to his knees.

“Eric!” My voice was barely audible. Then I realized that I was falling too, or maybe just tripping in my scramble to reach him. But reach him I did, across the blood-splattered rug, where I launched into him. His arms wrapped around me, and he unbound my wrists, moving as if in a trance.

“Eric,” I cupped his face. “Holy shit, babe, what did you do?”

His eyes found mine, dazed, like someone had just landed a punch. “What I had to. I protected us.”

He fell back against the doorframe, clutching me to his chest, unwilling to let me look back at the crime scene of our living room. There was a hardness in his voice I had never heard before.

“Jane! Eric!”

We all jerked our heads up at the sudden clamor downstairs. Voices shouting, fists pounding at the door.

“The guards,” Eric said. “They’ve been waiting for us.”

“So Tony wasn’t accosted at the gala?”

“No, he was,” Eric said. “But the others waited with us. I knew…” He sighed. “I knew they would come here. Just like I knew they would take you.” He stroked my cheek. “I’m so sorry, pretty girl. I just couldn’t see any other way.”

“Eric!”

The other two members of our security thundered into the room, followed by, to my surprise, Matthew Zola.

“Oh, fuck,” said Clay, one of the guards, as he took in the scene.

“Get Letour secured,” Eric ordered. Brandon immediately went to help the two guards do just that. “Where’s the Russian?”

“In custody,” Zola said. “We found him with Heather two blocks from the museum. You were right. Jane sacrificed herself to save your mom.”

Zola looked from us to the crime scene and back again. Then, without hesitation, he pulled out his phone and dialed.

“This is Matthew Zola, Assistant DA for the Brooklyn office,” he said as he stared at the crime scene. “There’s been an incident at 17 West Seventy-Sixth Street, Apartment 4. Two men wanted by the CIA and the NYPD have been located. We need help.”

Eric and I watched, astounded, as Zola continued to rattle off directions to what must have been the police. After Zola put his phone away, he turned to us.

“Boss.” Tony stepped inside. “Your mother is safe. We grabbed the Russian outside of the park. She’s with her daughter now.”

I deflated with even more relief, although I was starting to shake.

Tony gave me a rueful glance. He took one look at the crime scene, walked across the room and, and picked the gun off the ground, stepping over John Carson’s bleeding body like it was nothing more than an errant railroad track. Zola, Eric, and I all watched as our head of security meticulously cleaned the weapon with his shirt cuff, then, just as carefully, wrapped his hand around the grip, placing his fingers on the trigger. He pointed it at the body once more and pulled the trigger, though the chamber was empty.

I jerked, though he was essentially only pantomiming. It seemed unnecessary. Eric, also started, like the sound of the gunshots awakened him from some horrid trance.

“Tony,” he said. “Don’t—“

“I had to shoot him,” Tony interrupted. “He was trying to hurt you and Mrs. de Vries. It’s my job. I had no choice.”

“Christ,” Zola muttered.

“Tony,” I said weakly. “You’re not a cop. You don’t have to—”

“It’s what I would have done,” Tony interrupted evenly. “Please. The DA here called the cops. That’s our story, and I’m sticking to it.”

“Well, I’m not.” Eric held me even tighter, like he was afraid to let me go. In the distance, I could already hear sirens.

But before I could stop him, he gently set me aside, then pushed himself up from the floor. He crossed to Tony and gently removed the gun from the big man’s hands.

“I appreciate it, Tony,” he said. “But you’ve helped enough tonight. And it’s my weapon. It’s my family. It’s my right to defend them.”

Tony looked like he wanted to argue back, but after perceiving Zola’s disapproving expression and my own visible horror, he seemed to relent. He gave a brief, curt nod and stepped back. “Understood.”

Eric returned to me. I was stranded in the corner, my father’s blood drying on my hair and skin. But Eric’s gaze held me fast.

“Jane,” he said in a voice that was finally starting to tremble. “Like the air I breathe.”

Red and blue lights flashed outside our windows.

I sucked in a deep breath. “Like the water I drink,” I whispered back.

Eric’s eyes closed when the knocks downstairs sounded.

“All right,” he said to Zola, Tony, and the rest of the security team. “Let them up. Let them see everything this man has brought to my doorstep.”