Was he falling in love with his wife?
Had he always been in love with her?
His phone rang and he glanced down at the number before sliding his finger across the screen to accept the call. This was why he’d wanted Jane away from her desk. Though he was taking this call on his personal cell, Jane often walked in on him without knocking, and this wasn’t a call he wanted overheard.
“Remy, thank you for calling me back.”
Remy Guidry’s voice came over the line with a deep chuckle. “Well, when you said you needed personal security services, I’ll admit I was intrigued. Is Quaid finally making good on his promise of revenge for our last poker tournament?”
“I need a private investigator.”
“Don’t you have connections to one?” Remy’s tone had lost its joking nature. “You have an in-house investigator, right?”
The only thing his in-house “investigator” did was work with HR to run security checks. He was also one of Rene’s second cousins. Rene didn’t trust him to handle what he needed now, but Remy was beyond reproach. “I can’t trust him with this. I can’t have gossip.”
Remy had spent years in the Navy SEALs, and when he’d gotten out, he’d worked for a security firm in Dallas that had a sterling reputation.
“All right. Tell me what you need. If I can do it, I’ll handle it for you,” Remy replied. “If I can’t, I’ll find someone who will.”
“It’s about Louis. I need you to do a deep dive on him.”
There was silence on the line for a moment before Remy came back. “I thought you were going to ask me about Charles.”
He had file after file on Charles. He knew his enemy. It was time to figure out who his friend was. “Louis is developing a relationship with my mother that makes me nervous.”
“Developing a relationship? I thought they were lifelong friends.”
“I’m worried it’s becoming a romantic relationship.” He hadn’t seen it at all until Sylvie had pointed it out, but it was obvious something was going on this morning. His mother had been holding Louis’s hand when Rene had walked in, and she’d moved slightly away as though she hadn’t wanted her son to see her so close.
And though he did see the logic his wife had pointed out about Louis not being the person who’d left the bid behind, he wasn’t completely willing to cross him off the list of suspects.
The thought made him sick. Louis had been his father’s closest friend, the one he would consider above all reproach. Louis had been the one who’d stood by him at his father’s funeral, who’d helped arrange things because Rene and his mother had been reeling from the sudden death. Louis had stepped in when Rene had to take his mother in for chemo treatments, and when he himself had been in the hospital, and in the long months recovering from the accident.
Had being in charge gotten to Louis? He’d given years and years to the company and to the family, but he wasn’t the boss. Maybe he was sick of being the right hand of the king. Maybe he’d had a taste of being the king and wanted it for himself.
“Your father’s been gone for three years,” Remy pointed out.
“And my mother has access to a hundred-million-dollar fortune all on her own.” It was a fortune any number of men would love to get control of and potentially run through as fast as they could.
He hadn’t thought of his mother ever wanting to date. He’d thought she would be like Marcelle and Delphine, having adventures with her friends and enjoying her family.
Last year he’d thought she wouldn’t be around to enjoy her family. He’d thought he would lose her, too, and he would be alone in the world.
He wasn’t going to allow anyone to take advantage of his mother.
“All right, I can see the need to be careful, but this is a man you’ve known your whole life.” Remy sounded an awful lot like Sylvie, but then neither of them had grown up being warned time and time again that everyone was out to take advantage of them. Neither had to wade through the swamp of toxic family politics.
“I still have to make sure he’s not looking for my mother’s money. I don’t want her to get her heart broken,” he explained. “She didn’t date much before she married my father. She’s been through a lot in the last few years, and I don’t want her getting hurt. There’s also the fact that I’ve got someone in my company who’s handing over our bids to my cousin, and Louis is in a perfect position to do it. I need you to tell me if he’s in financial trouble or if he’s had any odd dealings I should know about, especially anything with Charles.”
“I can check into it,” Remy promised. “I’ve got a friend in Dallas who can look into his financials to see if he needs money, and I’ll find someone who can tail him for a few days.”
“I appreciate it.”
“But maybe you should sit down and talk to your mother about what’s going on,” Remy advised. “I know if my momma found out I was investigating a potential friend or boyfriend, she would have my hide. I mean that literally. She would use it as a rug to remind my siblings she was still in charge.”
Had his mother ever been in charge? Maybe that was the problem. His father had made all the big decisions. After Dad died, his mother had started looking to him. He had to protect her. Even from people he considered family. After all, his family had taught him to always look for the knife they could shove into his back. Louis had been around long enough to have learned that lesson, too.
Was this how he wanted his son or daughter to grow up? He pictured a little Sylvie in his head. Any daughter of hers would be smart and ambitious, and she would be vulnerable. Would he toss her into the ocean like his father had done to him?
You have to learn how to swim and fast, Rene. You can’t trust any of them.
Would he say the same thing to his kids one day?
Would Sylvie nail his hide to the floor if she caught him doing it?
“I want to get a clear picture of what’s going on before I say anything.” The person he might be talking to would be Louis. His mother was still fragile. If he found out Louis was doing anything he shouldn’t, he would take care of the situation.
The question was what shouldn’t the man do. It would be easy if he found out Louis didn’t have as much loyalty to the son as he’d had to the father. If Louis was in league with Charles, he would eviscerate the man.
If Louis wasn’t and he was still trying to get close to his mother? He wasn’t sure what he would do.
“I’ll get back to you in a few days,” Remy promised before he hung up.
Rene sat back, his gut in knots.