Page 13 of Dragon in Denial
“Of Micca, yeah. That kid’s pretty cool. Shame his dad is missing out on all that personality.”
Her gaze flew to his. He smiled crookedly.
“Uh, yeah.”
“So you and Henri live with my parents?”
She nodded. “Mamáinsisted when I told her I was pregnant and the dad wasn’t in the picture. She said every parent needs a village and they had plenty of room. Plus, I think sometimes your mom pretends I’m her daughter. If you told her Henri wasn’t her grandson, she’d probably give you a tongue lashing to end all lashings.”
“Duly noted. So, you’re a single mom, living with my parents, and what, exactly, do you do for a living?”
And small talk, over. Antoinette instantly stiffened and shifted her gaze to a whole lot of nothing located over Ketu’s shoulder. She couldn’t admit to him what she really did. It was too dangerous to her own well-being.
As small of an impact as she made on Darius’s drug trade, it was enough that he had dragons out patrolling, searching for her—well, the mysterious person who kept attacking his dealers—and she didn’t fool herself into believing they just wanted to talk.
Ketu’s parents knew about her side business and so did Mitch; she’d made the decision to confide her dangerous secret because she knew she could trust them and she had needed to ensure Henri would be taken care of if something happened to her. But Ketu?
She didn’t even know him anymore. He’d been gone for ten long years, disappeared without so much as a goodbye, and he hadn’t once contacted his own parents during all that time. He claimed he was back in town on his reeve’s orders, but why, exactly, did a reeve from Detroit need to send one of his dragons to New Orleans? And why Ketu? She had far more questions than answers, which translated intonotinviting him any further than necessary into her complicated life.
She cleared her throat. “I tend bar at Mitch’s.”
His thick, dark brows shot into his hairline.
“It’s true,” she said, a tad too defensively. “I work days so I can be home with Henri in the evenings.”
He opened his mouth, then snapped it closed. She watched as his gaze roved over the cluster of warehouses on the other side of the fence. Shit. Of all areas for him to have tracked her down.
“What’s this place?” he asked again.
Antoinette looked at the nearest warehouse with all its lights ablaze. On paper, it was a manufacturing facility owned by the Rojo reeve. No one knew what the place was actually supposed to produce, and no one seemed inclined to ask questions, either.
But Antoinette knew it was where Darius produced and packaged those little figurines filled with dragon’s blood. She’d come here to see if she could catch a glimpse of how the operation was occurring, how those dealers were getting their hands on the figurines once they left this place. Maybe if she could figure that out, she’d find a more efficient way to destroy the trade. Or at least make a bigger impact than she was currently.
“Some kind of manufacturing facility,” she finally said. “We should probably get out of here.”
“What do they manufacture here? Does the reeve own it?”
Leave it to Ketu to ask what no one else dared. Of course, he’d been gone so long, he had no idea how the colony operated anymore.
When she didn’t reply right away, he shifted his focus to her, and it was like having all the air sucked out of her lungs for a moment when those pale, hazel eyes caught hers. While she struggled to regain her equilibrium, her damn dragon was rolling onto her back, spreading her hind legs and purring like a freaking kitten.
Yeah, okay, he has nice eyes. Chill.
And a handsome face. And beautiful, bulky arms. And that flat stomach, those strong legs. What do you think his dragon looks like?
I don’t care.
Yes, you do.
All I want is to destroy the dragon’s blood empire.
That’s not all you want. We want.
“You okay?” Ketu asked, his brow furrowed.
“Yeah, why?”
“You look…conflicted.”
