Page 60 of Courting Trouble
Morley made a distinctly British sound of disgust before he muttered, “Bloody French, even their gangsters arevogue.”
“Monegasque,” Raphael corrected. “Half English, actually, but that isn’t what you need to worry about…yourcurrent problem, is that I stand between you and your women, and you stand between me and the door through which I need to carry my gold. Fortunately for all of us, these challenges are easily resolved.”
Morley cocked his rifle. “You’ve balls of brass. I’ll give you that. But you’re insane if you think you’re walking out of here with that gold.”
“Say I don’t.” An edge leaked into the gangster’s voice, turning his consonants lethally sharp. “Like you, Dorian Blackwell, I have a long memory. I do not forget what is taken from me, and I always take what I’m owed…would it do for any of you to wallow in wonder over when I’ll chose to collect on the debt? Because therewillbe a reckoning. I am just as relentless as any of you. Dare I say more so.” He plucked at a loose fiber from Nora’s sleeve, and only the delicate flare of her nostrils advertised her panic. “No one in this room would be safe.”
This time no one stopped Titus when he advanced. “I will end you, Sauvageau.”
The pile of muscle behind the girls unsheathed a knife. He did nothing with it, but each woman tensed at the sound, the twins reaching for their elder sister.
On anyone else, Sauvageau’s smile would have been disarming. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor, but did you not take an oath to do no harm?”
Titus wasn’t a doctor right now. He was a man. A man come to claim his woman, to snatch her out of the jaws of a monster.
And then throttle her with his bare hands.
“I’m a surgeon,” he hissed. “Which means I knowexactlyhow to carve into you until your voice would give out from the screaming.”
Raphael glanced back at Nora with an impressed expression. “I do believe he loves you.”
She stared at him, her heart shining in her eyes. “I love him.”
Titus almost dropped the implements in his hands. To hear the words from her mouth for the first time stole his breath. But the fear that they could be her last words filled him with a dread he’d not known possible.
“And so we find ourselves at an impasse.” The gangster clapped his hands together. “Kill me and take my gold, and start a gang war the likes of which this city has not seen. Let me go and take my gold, then look over your shoulders until I come for it… and for you. Leave now and give me back my gold. And be done with the entire business.” He opened his arms like a benevolent king before turning to Nora. “The Fauves have no dealings with you or yours, and the Chief Inspector saved me from having to kill your husband for stealing from me in the first place.” He glanced at Titus. “Did you a favor, I think.”
“But—but what about the clinics?” Felicity’s panicked question echoed through the room like the ricochet of a bullet. When the gangster turned to her, Felicity gasped, putting her hand to her mouth as she visibly began to shake. Behind her lenses, her clear, blue eyes went owlish and round as wells of tears gathered in spikes in her lashes.
“What’s this you say?” Raphael glided toward her with a serpentine grace, and she took several steps backward, tripping on the hem of her gown.
Gabriel caught her shoulders with lightning reflexes. The wicked knife still in his hands, the flat of the blade resting against her arm.
She looked at it and whimpered, going slack like a frightened bunny in the enormous man’s grip. Her skin blanched a ghostly shade and her breath started to sob into her throat as if she couldn’t gulp enough air.
Raphael held out a hand, but paused when she shrank away.“Youneedn’t fear me, child. What do you mean about the clinics?”
“I—I can’t…I—I…” Felicity broke off, beginning to hyperventilate in earnest.
“Back away, sir.” Mercy lunged forward and slapped Raphael’s hand aside. “She cannot breathe when she is frightened!” She yanked her sister toward her and, to Titus’s astonishment, the silent and mysteriously hooded Gabriel released Felicity from his grip and retreated toward the water, sheathing the knife immediately.
Something about his posture told Titus that he was not…unaffected by the encounter.
Strange.
For his part, Raphael gazed down at the hand that’d been slapped away as if truly seeing it for the first time, and then up at Mercy with an arrested expression.
As if sensing danger, Nora stepped forward, thrusting herself between Sauvageau and her younger sisters. “You asked when we arrived, why we’d chosen now to come for the gold you’d lost.”
“Not lost,” Raphael corrected. “It was taken.”
She flicked a glance at Titus, looked away, and then back as if she couldn’t help herself. She stared at him, though she answered the gangster. “The reason we thought to…recover the gold was to give it to Dr. Conleith, so he could properly operate and finance the surgeries he’s building in the city.”
Titus was only paces from her now, but he couldn’t reach her, not without the risk of Sauvageau doing something dangerous. “Nora… what the devil?”
Sauvageau rested his elbow on his folded forearm, crooking his finger against his chin. “I’ve seen these surgeries in the city. I thought they were called Alcott’s.”
“Doctor Preston Alcott was a mentor of mine,” Titus explained, hoping to take the focus from Nora. “One who has passed.”
