Page 15 of Protect Your Queen

“You fucking bastard!” Jareth’s voice made me turn my head, even as I continued to move towards his sister. He grabbed a man by the collar and shook him until the camera strapped around his neck rattled. “You could have killed her, you fucking…”

I picked the girl - Jestiny - up off the road. She was light, frail, and stunned. She had the faintest scent of marigolds, or something else as yellow as her dress. She fit perfectly in my arms, her wide, glassy eyes looking back at where she had come from. I had to get her somewhere safe. Somewherenothere.

Hell, where the fuck was her car?

“Over here!” an old man with bushy brows said, his pale skin wrinkled and pock-marked with sun damage. Brian. The driver. I had known that from the docket I’d received on their close associations. Jestiny had family, no friends to speak of, and spent most of her time with this old guy.

Cameras still clicked sounding like the rattle of angry chains. I could feel the hovering presence of the photographers who chronicled our every fucking move. They were malignant birds, feeding off the chaos.

Brian rushed to open the back passenger door of a parked car and I carried her over as fast as I could. I dropped her into the leather seat as Brian got into the driver’s side.

“Get her out of here!” I bellowed and slammed the door shut.

When the car rumbled away from the curve, I almost let out a sigh of relief. Crisis averted!

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a fist slamming into delicate flesh.

“If I ever see you go after my sister again, I will have you up to your eyeballs in litigation. You’ll be shitting out subpoenas and die of rectal paper cuts, you worthless son of a bitch!”

A photographer sprawled on the ground, his red-rimmed glasses bent haphazardly over his snub nose. The helpless man raised his arms defensively as a menacing Jareth lifted his foot, ready to land a possibly killing blow to his ribs.

“You arseholes learn nothing!” I grabbed Jareth by the shoulder and pulled him back before his Kiwi-polished leather shoe could break some paparazzo’s rib cage. Jesus, he was intent tokill. It wasn’t to injure or intimidate. Hell, it wasn’t even a loss of temper. His black eyes told a story of a man intent on complete, pre-calculated murder.

“Come on, man.” I pulled him back into the car we had come in.

He lunged forward against me, still trying to reach his target – that specific journalist with the funny looking glasses. I couldn’t let him go. I held him around the ribs with all my might.

I could not let him curb stomp someone with this kind of audience around.

“Mario Pesci, I will fucking bury you!” Jareth growled, as I turned him around and pushed him into the open back seat of the car.

I could taste his fury in the air around us, creating more electricity than the desert winds that howled between LA’s tall buildings.

I rushed into the driver’s seat, ready to get us the fuck out of there.

I have known many killers in my time. You can see their disregard for others, and themselves, in their eyes. Most killers are quite reconciled with their mortality. It made their souls, and expressions, blacker than ink. Jareth had that look in spades.

Chapter five

Charlotte Gainsbourg

Jestiny

“Miss Jestiny?” Brian nudged me with a can of cold, sparkling lemon-flavored fizzy water. “Do you need to talk?”

I was sitting on my cream-colored couch in the middle of my Malibu beach house. The sliding doors to the enclosed garden were open. I could hear the sound of the distant ocean waves, and the cry of seagulls overhead.

“Miss Jestiny?” Brian had gotten me home, opened the doors, and sat me here. If I didn’t respond, he’d go and get me something to eat. If that didn’t work, he’d tell my brother, or sister, or… someone. I don’t know. Either way, it would get worse if I didn’t find a way to open my mouth and speak.

“You never sit down,” I remarked, as the pain of that small discovery seeped into my soul. “You always stand up in my presence, and you never sit down with me. Not to eat, or to talk or…”

I let out a sigh.

The person I spent the most time with wasn’t a friend. He was a person I paid. An employee. What did that say about me? What did that say about this gilded life?

I looked around. There was a large Baldwin piano in the middle of the floor. Glass surrounded us instead of walls, so I could see the fecund garden from the living spaces. There was a stone fireplace, for a chill that never really came. There were expensive rugs, a vaulted ceiling, and $400 minimalist lamps. Even the slight scent of Sandalwood and Mahogany was meant to convey money. That I was a Barkada, and the Barkadas had made it in the world.

It was such a long fall from where I was standing, wasn’t it? And everyone just wanted to see me jump to my ruin.

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