Page 48 of Even Robots Die
“Twenty-three,” she answers me without blinking.
This is exactly the kind of answer that I was dreading, but that I also need. She’s my daughter’s age. Hell, she’s younger than my own daughter.
And I’ve been half hard because of her. This needs to stop.
I should go away. I should leave her to eat her pizza and go back to the castle. There is no reason why I should still be here. I’m not even hungry—for theReginaon my plate.
“How old are your sisters?” I ask instead.
You might be a masochist, dumbass.
“Amélie is twenty-one, Coralie is nineteen, Juliette is seventeen, and Élodie is fourteen,” She answers me without missing a beat. Like she knows by heart when each is born and by the way she straightened when she said it, I believe she does.
“When did your mother leave?” I ask to keep the conversation going, but it was the wrong question to ask because Florentine freezes with the slice of pizza half in her mouth.
“It’s none of your business,” she answers before chewing the piece that finally reached her mouth. “When Élodie was three, but it’s not like she was really present before that,” she finally says when she’s done, but she immediately stuffs another piece of pizza in her mouth as if to tell me she’s had enough of my questions.
I do the math. Florentine was twelve when their mother left them. It must have been hard.
But something more important in what she just said tugs at my mind.
“Why do you say that she wasn’t really present?”
“Oh, fucking god. I’ve told you enough,” Florentine answers vehemently. I watch her stand from her chair, pile the three slices of pizza she has left on her plate on top of each other, and move away. “Tell Franck his pizzas are awesome. I’m out of here.”
And just like that, she leaves the restaurant.
I have half a mind to follow her outside, but instead, I make my way to the back of the restaurant to pay for our pizzas.
It’s not like she can go very far away. And if she does, I have men patrolling the city, so I will know where she went.
“Managed to piss her off in less than ten minutes?” Franck asks me as he holds up the payment device for me. I add a little extra before paying for the disturbance and smile at the old man.
“You like pissing her off,” Franck adds at my smile. He shakes his head before adding. “You might want to be nice from time to time too or she’s gonna keep running away and you’ll end up alone.”
“What? No,” I tell him. “This isn’t like that. We’re not … We’re not anything.” I stumble with my words because the man caught me by surprise and I really don’t see what could make him think that there is anything between the two of us.
Hell, I just discovered that she could be my daughter, and it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn't get her so late. In some societies, she could be my great-granddaughter…
What a fuckery.
Whatever Franck thinks, there is nothing, and there will never be anything, between Florentine and me.
She probably hates me anyway.
“Tell yourself all you like,” Franck says before giving me a small glass jar and adding. “It’s for her, since you upset her before dessert.”
“And me?” I ask, dumbfounded.
“You barely touched your pizza, you don’t deserve it,” he tells me with a smile that makes me think he’s enjoying this conversation way too much. “And don’t think I didn’t hear what you said. There was no need to be a bat to hear you both.”
The old man winks at me and then he shoos me out before closing the restaurant door in my face.
That's the second time tonight that I feel like a teenager, and I can say that I really hate it.
29
Florentine
