The Parlour (VDB #1) (24 page)

The doors eventually come into view. I lift my head purposefully and walk straight in. No messing. I’ve come for my bag because I’ve had enough of these stupid people. That’s all I need to portray, and as I stride in, I’m met with… nothing. No one’s here at all. The foyer is empty and I can’t hear a sound. I move straight over to the elevator in the hope that I can get my bag and be out of the door again before anyone notices me at all. That would be the easiest thing for everyone involved. The lift rises quickly, and before I know it, I’m at my apartment. I unlock the latch and scurry through the space to the bedroom. Nothing’s changed in the room. My backpack is still tucked into the wardrobe, and the clothes I was flinging about the last time I was here are still on the bed. Clearly no one has been in here. Snatching at my trainers, I shove them into the bottom of my backpack and then check the lining for my passport and photo. They’re both still there, too. With a quick scan around the room to check for anything else of mine, which is unlikely, I move back to the door and slip out into the corridor again. Wow, it can’t be this easy, can it? In and out without any incident at all?

The lift descends again and I find myself smiling at the covert operation. Okay, I might be on film if someone bothers to check, but at least I haven’t had to lie to anyone or get into an argument. I’m just about to leave, back through the entrance, when a strange noise startles me. It sounds a little like the strangling of a cat. It screeches through the hallway behind me and has me swinging back round to see what the hell is the matter. And then I see something I would never have expected in a building of this ilk. A beautiful little girl goes zooming past me into the main club. Her long, dark hair is tangled around her face as she continues to shriek and increases her pace. Her deep red dress flies about her ankles as she wrenches it upwards to aid her run. She must only be about five years old, but Christ can she run. I stare, momentarily dumbstruck by the vision, until I hear Vixon’s voice coming up the hallway, too, hollering and shouting at the little girl from the distance.

“Claire, Mummy’s going to be so pissed with you. Get back here. You know you’re not supposed to be out of your rooms. Fuck. Claire!”

I back up quickly to the doors so I can get out before anyone sees me. I feel the brush of glass against my back and keep pushing, but my bag tumbles from my grasp and clatters to the floor. The little girl stops and spins to look, then halts her sweep of the room and her little face finds me making a fool of myself in the doorway.
Shit.
I smile and quickly raise my finger to my lips in the hope she thinks it’s a game of hide and seek – anything to stop Vixon finding me and asking a bunch of questions I can’t answer. She giggles and mimics my movement, obviously thinking it’s a funny game watching me faff around in the foyer with my stupid bag. I keep smiling and giggling quietly with her as I back away again, still with my finger to my lips, but as she drops her fingers and smiles, it hits me immediately.

I’d know that smile anywhere.

Squinting to see her face more clearly, I recognise the vivid bright green eyes, too. I’m instantly pulled into them just as with a different matching pair. I’m mesmerized. Green pools of illumination swirl around and draw me closer, regardless of the distance between us. She’s Pascal’s.

Pascal has a daughter?

I trip over my feet to get away from the building, strapping the backpack on as I go and making my feet move as fast as they will. My lungs burn as the cold air whistles through them. Christ, I hadn’t realised how unfit I was. A daughter? I went through his file last night. It said nothing about a daughter at all. Surely that would have been on the top of the list if it were true.

Does he know?

Does Mr. White know?

Good God. Surely he knows he has a little girl. Maybe I’ve got it wrong and she’s just a little girl who happens to have the exact same smile and eyes as him. Who’s the mother? Why on earth would any mother have their daughter in a place like that?

I eventually stop at some random corner with absolutely no idea where I am. I just kept running until my lungs couldn’t run anymore. Wow. Well, that’s a useful piece of information for a divorce case. Is she Roxanne’s little girl? If she is then there’s a whole new set of technical difficulties to deal with. My hands brace against my knees as I suck in huge lungfuls of air. I really need to start running again. I couldn’t get away from a fat man stuffing down three hamburgers if my life depended on it at the moment. And given my current situation between Mr. White threatening my existence and Roxanne and Pascal playing with my training, I have a feeling running could be quite useful at some point in the near future. I spy a coffee shop a little further down the street and make my way to it. Perhaps if I have a coffee and cake and just calm the hell down I can ask some serious questions about what this means to the case. I need to clarify whether she is actually his daughter, and who the mother is if she is. I can’t think of any solution other than asking Mr. White to go and see for himself. It’s that or try to sneak into Roxanne’s office to snoop around. She could very well just be another woman’s little girl. She may be nothing at all to do with Pascal, although the moment the thought enters my head, I know it’s not true. She is his child.

I push on the door to the coffee shop and sling my bag into a chair in the window before collapsing myself into the one opposite. Well, this will be an interesting first phone call with my new boss. Great. I can’t wait for his reaction to the possibility that Pascal may have a child neither of them knows anything about.

A waiter comes over and takes my order then leaves me to stare blankly at my new phone. How on Earth do I word this? Honestly, I suppose, and with as little emotion as I can muster. It’s just part of the case, isn’t it? I just need to relay the facts and let him deal with the consequences. It’s really none of my business, other than how it reflects on Pascal’s divorce. Five minutes later, having had my coffee delivered, I’m still staring at the phone trying to work out what type of reaction this is going to cause from a man I’m terrified of. I comfort myself with the thought that the man who smiled at me this morning wasn’t nearly as scary.

I snatch the phone up and fiddle with things until I find the call log. There’s only one number in it, his. Okay, I can do this. I hit call and wait.

“Missing me already, Lilah James? You appear to be stalking me.”
Fuck
. I quickly rally my errant thoughts back together and strap on my professional voice.

“Mr. White, I believe there may be an issue that requires your attention.”

“Already? I thought you were good at this.”
Fuck you
.

“I am,” I reply instinctively, and I can almost see the sneer descending on his face at my tone. Straightening myself up in the chair, I try to make my voice less snappy. “I am, sorry, but, well, I’ve just been to retrieve my bag from The Parlour and I saw a little girl there.”

“I’m bored, Lilah. This is relevant, how?”

“Well, does Pascal have a daughter that you know of?” Silence greets me. Nothing but silence and the occasional heavy breath of a sigh. “She was the image of him. I got out before anyone noticed I was there so I don’t think anyone knows I’ve seen her yet.” More silence. I take a sip of my coffee and wait for an answer. It’s not as if I can push him for anything.

“How old?”

“Around five I would say.” More silence, this time followed by something clattering to the floor on his end. I swing my eyes round the store and catch a glimpse of another little girl. She’s playing with a dolly with her father and sipping at a milkshake. Sweet. I can’t say I exactly have visions of Pascal doing the same with his little girl, though. He’s not exactly father material.

“Why were you there?” His voice snaps my attention back to him instantly. It’s very firm, almost scolding in tone. I’m not sure, though, that why I was there is really relevant.

“I needed my bag. It has some family bits and pieces in it, and I didn’t want to lose it.”

“Hmm.” It sounds more like a huff of disgust. Clearly not a family man then. I decide to move the topic back to what he’d like me to do rather than discussing irrelevancies.

“Mr. White, I–”

“Have you told anyone else?” he cuts in. My hackles rise instantly. Whatever situation I may have got myself into, I’m no snitch. The streets taught me to keep my mouth shut, as does the code of legal practice.

“No,” I reply, disgusted. “You told me to call you if anything interrupted my work. This will definitely do that if the child is his. It’s a complication to say the least.”

“Hmm.” His tone is softer now, thankfully. It seems Mr. White needs standing up to, just as Elizabeth said. Clearly he enjoys a woman with a little bite.

“What do you want me to do? I could go and do some more digging in Roxanne’s office maybe, find out who the mother is? We don’t even know for sure that she is Pascal’s. He has a brother, too, Fabrice. She could be–”

“No, stay away from there. I’ll deal with it,” he barks back at me, sudden irritation lacing his every word again. The man is a minefield of ups and downs. Christ knows how she puts up with him.

“Okay,” I reply quietly, drinking some more coffee and scanning the street outside as more silence comes down the line at me.

“You say she looks like him?”

“Yes, she’s beautiful,” I reply, sipping again and imagining those huge green eyes full of mischief.

“Mmm, as is he, much to my torment. Idiot.” I smirk in response to his small chuckle and wonder how tenuous their relationship is. “Tell no one else of this, Lilah. Including him, until I get some facts together. And certainly not Elizabeth. Research birth records and see if you can find anything out. Roxanne’s family is based in Chicago, but she also has connections in Hawaii, so check records there, too.”

“Yes, Mr. White.” Legal mode quickly comes crashing back at me as his business tone kicks in. I can hear the closing of folders and him putting me on loud speaker as he moves about. I grab my jacket and start pulling it on. Time to get back to the apartment and start doing some investigating.

“How did you feel when you looked at her?” he asks out of the blue.

“What?” I reply, slipping my hands into my gloves as I balance the phone on my shoulder.

“Did she hypnotize you as he does?” I smile into the phone and can almost sense Pascal’s eyes coming at me, illuminating everything in his wake and hiding all sorts of deviant imaginings behind them.

“Yes.” There’s nothing else to say to that question, and as soon as I’ve answered it, I know I’ve just told Mr. White that Pascal does have a child, that I’m positive of the fact, because there isn’t a person in this world that can do what Pascal does by simply looking at you. Except the person with blue eyes I’m talking to, maybe. And he knows it as well as I do.

The phone goes dead.

“Bye,” I whisper to myself, yanking down my hat and heading for the door, leaving a twenty dollar bill on the table because I have nothing smaller.

The cold hits me again immediately as I go outside, and I hail a cab as soon as I see one. A very long walk and then a speed dash in snow has completely exhausted what’s left of my thigh muscles, and as I travel back to the apartment, I chastise myself for the state of my fitness. I may be thinner now, but that’s no excuse for such a terrible running performance. I need to get some bloody stamina back.

Before I’ve realised it, I’m in the kitchen throwing my things on the table and flicking the kettle on. Five minutes later and I’m sat in front of the laptop, frantically researching anything to do with Pascal and Roxanne. Mr. White will have to wait until later. I have a folder either side of me so I can gain as much cross-referencing data as possible – dates, times, and companies owned jointly and separately. Marriage licences need finding. Where did they get married? When? Why? That’s nothing to do with anything, but I’m genuinely interested. They don’t seem particularly friendly, do they? Were they young? Presumably, they’ve just grown apart
. Irrelevant, Lilah. Facts, that’s all I need.

After nearly six hours of collating more facts and appropriating them into the correct new files and folders, then cross-referencing them with other information I’ve managed to find on the tax system, company records etcetera, I’m finally able to lift my head up and blow out a satisfied breath. I’m still good at this. It’s easy. My brain arranges data into files before I’ve even considered the wheres and whys. People with emotional responses to things must get awfully confused by processing data, but to me, it’s a simple logging system. Everything is either relevant or irrelevant, useful or of no use at all. Although, most information is useful in some way, so I have yet another file for the ‘of no use at all’ information. You never know when you might need those sorts of documents. All in all, though, there’s a good selection of data already compiled and waiting for a lawyer to check it off against a counter case should Roxanne choose to go down that line. Although, by the looks of her own wealth so far, she need not worry about getting a divorce. She’ll be fine, as will Pascal. It’s only the fact that there’s a little girl potentially caught in the middle of this that may change the amounts of money involved. And I’m positive, given both of their interesting cottage industries, that they won’t want to drag any of this through the courts, other than their legitimate companies. In fact, if I were either of them, I’d be settling quietly out of court and just getting on with my life, which leaves me wondering why I’m doing all of this and not a lawyer. Mr. White, and therefore possibly Pascal, must be very worried about Roxanne for some reason. Maybe she’s not quite as nice as I thought. Is any woman nice when scorned?