Sinclair (Acquisition Series) (2 page)

“Get him out of here and clean this up.” She waved a dismissive hand at the men and grabbed my upper arm.

“Mom?” I let her pull me to the dining room. She shoved me into a chair, took the one across from me, then snatched the sugar cane leaves from my numb fingers. My ears rang in a high note, nothing like the deep sound of the gun. And I couldn’t stop the tears.

“Mommy?” I needed her more than I’d ever needed anything. Where was she?

The woman across from me smiled. “Hold your hand out.”

I shook so hard my teeth chattered. “N-no.”

“Sinclair, put your hand on the table.” Her voice darkened. “Now.”

I swallowed hard and placed my hand on the edge of the table. She reached across and yanked it so I was leaning over, my arm outstretched. My tears plopped onto the dark wood beneath me.

She plucked a sugar cane leaf and felt along the stiff side. As she slid her finger down the sharp edge, red welled up from a smooth cut on her fingertip.

She smiled and placed her other hand, palm down, next to mine. “Now, let’s begin.”

CHAPTER TWO

Present

“
H
AVE YOU HEARD WHO’S
gotten picked for this year?” Judge Montagnet sipped his bourbon, his black robe open as he lounged in his chambers.

I pulled on my sleeves, ensuring that my cuff links were perfectly turned.

“No, Judge, I sure haven’t. Should be an interesting year with Cal in charge.” I smiled. It was mechanical. Sometimes I would have to actively think about how a normal person would react to a statement or an action, and then attempt to mold my response in the same fashion.

“I really can’t wait. Christmas trial is always my favorite. Did you attend during the year Cal won?” He shifted his hips higher, the law clerk between his legs making sloppy noises as he bobbed his head on the judge’s cock.

“No, I’m afraid to say the sugar business called me away to foreign lands quite a bit that year.” I finished my bourbon and set the glass on the polished wood table to my right.

Judge Montagnet closed his eyes and gripped the young man’s head, pulling him close. After a series of choking noises and some low grunts from the judge, it was over. The law clerk sat back, sputtering and gasping for air. He wiped his sleeve across his eyes, and it came away wet with tears.

No pity for him welled in my deadened heart. I had no concept of what that word even meant. Was it a feeling? A thought? I was better off without it, not that I had a choice in the matter. I couldn’t miss something I’d never experienced in the first place.

Boredom swirled around me, and I wanted to get the hearing over with as soon as possible. As the district attorney for the parish, I had to prosecute all criminal offenses while Judge Montagnet made a show of presiding over the trials. The job only became fun when I found a really nasty rat and made him squeal.

Luckily, I’d found just such a rat in Leon Rousseau. His arraignment was set on the docket, and I had big plans to investigate every scrap of paper and every dime flowing to and from his accounts. Making his life a living hell would amuse me for a time, at least until I found something better.

Judge Montagnet zipped up and patted the law clerk on the head. “Good work. Run along now and let them know I’ll be on the bench in a moment.”

The clerk stood, crimson painting his cheeks, and left.

“I guess that’s my cue.” I rose as the judge straightened his robes and smoothed his white hair.

“I’ll see you out there. Anyone you want me to roast today?”

I smirked. “I think I can handle the roasting at the moment. You’ve had all the fun so far. Now it’s my turn.”

He smiled, his wrinkles turning his thin skin into accordions around his mouth. “I sure have.”

I fastened my top coat button and strode out into the courtroom. The bailiff nodded at me as I skirted the bench and headed toward the counsel tables. The public defender had already set up his files on his side. My side was bare. I knew my cases; no files necessary.

I scanned the gallery behind the short wooden wall separating the front and back of the courtroom. Leon Rousseau sat and stared at me with his beady eyes. But he wasn’t what caught my attention. I didn’t break my step, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the redhead sitting beside him.

Her head was bowed, and she wore a black suit, the skirt too long for my tastes and the cut too modest. So prim and proper. I wanted to toy with her, bat her around like a cat playing with a mortally wounded mouse.

I’d never been drawn to another human being. The sensation was odd, irritating. Even so, her red hair would look perfect clenched in my fist, and I had to take a sharp breath at the thought of her skin bearing marks from my belt.

I walked the remaining steps to my table, but she didn’t look up. The flame of desire began to burn lower when I realized she was too tame. I would break her in an instant, and I didn’t want to play with broken toys. Pity.

She looked up at me. Her green eyes pinned me to the spot, and my heart kicked against my ribs. She was more. So much more. Her hateful gaze scorched me like a firebrand, and I wanted the burn. I wanted to give it back to her, make her scream and call my name—in agony or pleasure, or that perfect mix of both. She held me there, as if the hate in her eyes had snared me in a trap.

“Counsellor Vinemont?” Judge Montagnet’s voice echoed around the wood-paneled walls. “Which case would you like to handle first?”

I cut my eyes from her to Leon Rousseau and back again. He gripped her hand with his. A name flitted around my mind. A daughter, he had a daughter.
Stella
. I smirked as her name came to me, and she kicked her chin up a notch in response.

Still meeting her gaze, I called, “Judge, I’d like to take Leon Rousseau’s case first, if that’s all right with you.”

When her eyes fell, the beast who lived in my hollow heart roared. She was fire, but she could be contained. Dominated. By me. And I already felt the need to do it again.

CHAPTER THREE

T
HE
V
ICTORIAN HOUSE NEEDED
work—the paint on the window casing was peeling, and some areas of the roof bowed. The grass was neatly mowed, and a porch swing with fluffy pillows moved with the breeze. Something about the swing made me think that she often dallied there. Perhaps she liked to read.

“Ready?” Sheriff Wood’s voice crackled over the hand-held radio in my car.

I clicked the button on the side. “Hit it.”

Several lawmen rushed from the unmarked vehicles along the narrow street. Most converged on the front porch, while a few others rushed around the back. After Mr. Rousseau pleaded not guilty at his arraignment two weeks prior, I set the wheels in motion to crush him. His life was mine to destroy, and I looked forward to watching it crumble.

I climbed out of my car and leaned against it, the sunlight warming my skin and trying to penetrate my dark glasses.

After a swift knock, Sheriff Wood leaned back and kicked the door in. The deputies swarmed inside as if they were looking for the number one man on the most wanted list. In reality, Mr. Rousseau was just a low level schemer and a high level liar.

But I liked the flair of going big, and more than that, I wanted to rattle his daughter’s cage. Just the one glimpse of Stella had haunted me. Her soulful eyes, the emotions that roiled beneath her surface, were ingrained in my mind. She was something different. Something wild. While I was a placid lake, nothing daring to touch the treacherous surface, she was a cascading river. Alive where I was dead, making noise while I lay silent.

She was a mystery. One I needed to unravel and devour.

I’d pulled everything on her that I could find—her high school yearbook photo, and a news clipping about her mother’s suicide were the highlights. Stella’s own suicide attempt intrigued me, and I’d only discovered it after getting her medical records from Dr. Ward, a Vinemont family friend. Her father had found her after she’d slit her wrists. What drove her to it? Him?

Shouting brought me back to the task at hand. Voices rose inside the house, and then quieted. Once satisfied everything was on lockdown, I strolled through the broken front door. A small library was to my left, a sitting room to my right. I continued down the narrow hallway, my shoes silent on the threadbare rug.

“—bust up in here and do whatever you want!”

I turned the corner into a den area where Mr. Rousseau, Stella, and a young man with blond hair stood under the guard of two deputies. The other deputies ransacked Mr. Rousseau’s desk. Noise from upstairs told me the deputies were destroying things for fun during their ‘search’.

Just as I’d instructed.

“Son, don’t make me take you in. Spending the night in a jail cell—”

“You wouldn’t dare. My mother is—”

“I don’t give a good goddamn who your mother is. This is an official parish investigation. If you keep interfering, I’ll arrest you. Got me?”

“That won’t be necessary.” I strolled to the deputy as another crash sounded from upstairs.

“You.” Mr. Rousseau narrowed his eyes and wrapped his arm around Stella’s waist. She wore a white T-shirt and jeans. A simple ensemble that hugged her curves. It would look even better stained with blood or tears, maybe both.

The young man bristled. “Don’t look at her.”

I met his gaze for a moment. He was muscled with a thick neck. Based on his clothes, he played lacrosse. Based on his muscles, he had a penchant for steroids. I gave him a withering glare and turned to Mr. Rousseau. “I have a warrant. Everything is in order, I assure you.”

“Signed by that snake, Judge Montagnet, no doubt.” Stella scowled.

A smear of blue paint colored her cheek, and her fingers carried a mix of the same blue and streaks of yellow. I’d visited the small gallery in town and studied the few paintings of hers that hung there. They were dark and brooding. I rather liked them. But her current palette was lighter. I’d work on the colors, pushing her back into darker and darker shades. After all, this was only the first search of many. I intended to turn the screws until Leon Rousseau jumped at every sound and feared I was the monster under his bed.

“Snake, Ms. Rousseau? It isn’t wise to impugn a judge’s honor, especially one presiding over your father’s case.”

“We aren’t blind, Mr. Vinemont. I saw you in his chambers before the arraignment.” Her shoulders moved back, her challenge obvious. My gaze flicked to her hardening nipples. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She must have been spending a comfortable day in her house of straw until the big bad wolf came to her door. Now the wolf was inside, and all I wanted to do was eat her up.

“You’re impugning my honor as well?” I smirked.

“What do you know about honor?” She threw it back in my face with a quickness that had my blood racing. If I slapped her, would she quiet down or hit me back? I hoped the latter.

“More than the Rousseaus, apparently.” I surveyed the room. Sketches and paintings lined the back wall near the tall, narrow windows looking out onto the rear yard. A deputy went to one and ripped it down.

“No.” I kept my voice low, but the deputy glanced at me, seemed to shudder, and placed the drawing on a nearby table. He didn’t touch any more of the art.

“You can’t do this.” Mr. Rousseau shook his head and leaned on Stella. He was like a parasite, sucking her life away.

“It’s done.” I gave Stella one more long, appraising look. Her red hair fell in waves down her shoulders. I wanted to mark her alabaster skin with my teeth.

“I said, stop looking at her.” The young man stepped forward.

“Dylan, don’t.” A warning note laced through her voice. She was smart. One more step and I would drop Dylan on his ass.

“And you are?” I walked past Dylan and studied the closest sketch. I already knew who he was, but I might as well ask to be polite. Mother always wanted me to be polite, though not particularly to trash like the Rousseaus. None of them mattered to me, not even Stella. We were a different species.

“Dylan Devereaux, Leon’s stepson.”

The sketch appeared to be of a knife, the smooth edge almost glinting on the paper. The handle was a deep mahogany brown, and I smiled at the pool of blood drawn beneath it, some of the drops still on the blade.

“I think we’re about done here.” Sheriff Wood called as deputies carried boxes of material out to their cars. They’d emptied the entire contents of Mr. Rousseau’s desk and taken various other papers they’d found in the house.

“How much for this drawing?” I turned and peered into Stella’s eyes—still fascinating, still full of hatred.

This was only the beginning. Her hatred would build until her other emotions were weak whispers next to how much she wanted to destroy me. I needed to taste her rage, to savor it on my tongue.