Page 38 of The Butcher

I wanted her to take some kind of compensation, even a small sum to have a decent apartment, but I admired her principles.

“So, he can keep the money—and shove it up his ass.”

A quiet knock sounded on the door. My butler didn’t wait for me to answer it before he opened the door and wheeled in the cart, just like room service at a hotel. He didn’t look at us on the couch before he approached the dining table near the terrace and set up our dinner, putting down the white tablecloth and placing thedishes there along with the butter and the basket of bread. Then he wheeled the cart out again and disappeared.

We sat together at the dining table and ate our dinner, a soup and salad for her and a rare steak with potatoes for me.

She seemed to like it because she was focused on her food the entire time, like she’d been hungry all night but didn’t have time to eat. Last time I saw her atAu Pied de Cochon,she barely touched her burrata. She was either that hungry or in better spirits altogether.

I stared at her across from me, seeing the way she dragged the bottom of her spoon over the edge of her bowl, trying to cut off the cheese from her French onion soup. She dipped a piece of bread into it before she took a bite. That was when she noticed my stare, and she stilled when she realized she had my attention. “What?”

“I like watching you eat.”

“Why?” She dipped the bread into the soup again and soaked it before she finished the second half of the bread slice.

I chose not to give an answer, because I really didn’t have one. “You said you lost your friends and family in the separation. What of your parents?”

“They’re gone.” She continued to eat like the loss didn’t bother her.

As it didn’t seem to cause her pain, I didn’t say I was sorry for her loss. I wanted to know more, but since she didn’t elaborate on her own, I didn’t want to pry. But I could tell there was more to the situation by how closed off she was. “No siblings?”

“No.” Abrupt and cold, there was definitely more there. “What about you?”

“I never knew my father. My mother is still around.”

Her coldness evaporated when the attention had been shifted to me. “Does she live in Paris?”

“Yes—Champs-Elysees.”

“That’s a nice area.”

“It is.” I’d bought her a house so she could have something that no one could take from her. She had a butler in case she needed anything, like groceries or someone to pick up her medications.

“Are you close with her?”

“I talk to her once every couple of weeks.” It was a lot of the same conversations over and over, superficial bullshit like the weather and politics and her nosy neighbors next door. Nothing substantial. Nothing real.

Fleur seemed to have the same kind of awareness I did, to know when the conversation had gone as far as I was willing for it to go. “Do you have any siblings?”

It was a simple question but a hard one. A question that made me pause for several seconds as I tried to decide how I wanted to answer it.

Her salad plate was clean and her soup bowl was empty, but she continued to soak up the remains with the bread. “Was that blonde hitting on you?” When her piece of bread had soaked up as much soup as it could, she placed it in her mouth to chew. She either changed the subject when she understood my unease, or she simply grew impatient—but I suspected it was the former.

“Yes.” Most people chose to mold the truth into the version they wanted it to be, but I’d never tampered with it. Being brutally honest and accepting the consequences of that was far easier to me.

She held my stare for a second before she dipped her bread into the bowl again, doing her best to get whatever drops remained. She asked no follow-up questions to my answer. It was unclear if she was jealous about that—or if she cared at all.

This woman was something else.

“You said you kill people. Can I ask you more about that?”

“Go ahead, sweetheart.”

When she realized the soup was all gone, she gave me her full attention. “Does that mean you’re a hit man? Someone people hire to kill the people they hate?”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed in confusion, but she didn’t ask me to elaborate.

---