“It’s not weird,” Angelique tells her. “It’s pretty. You’re pretty.”
“So are your eyes and so are you, sweetheart. Different doesn’t mean weird.”
Angelique smiles just as Jericho steps into the doorway. He looks rushed, enraged, upset, and helpless, all of those things at once. When his eyes fall on his little girl, I watch as something inside him breaks. I swear I see it. Angelique slips from my arms and runs to her father. He crouches down to catch her. He hugs her so tight that it squeezes my heart and makes it swell at the same time.
I may see a devil when I see Jericho St. James. But even the devil was an angel once. I know this devil now. He’s dark, without a doubt. And he is fierce. He’s haunted by the past and broken in ways he may never be whole again. But he’s my devil. Mine and Angelique’s and our baby’s. A devil to watch over us.
23
Jericho
When Angelique was born on the day she should have died, I changed. It happened in that same moment that two paramedics held me back while another sliced Kimberly’s stomach open. The same moment I heard my daughter’s first cry. I remember it as I stand watching her sleep now.
Angelique was born violently. Cut into the world moments after Kimberly’s death. She’d kicked. That’s what one of the paramedics had told me later. That he’d seen the kick like she was trying to call for help. Like she knew her mother was dying or dead. If they’d waited any longer, she’d have died too.
That moment I heard her strangled cry, any innocence, any stupid, youthful, blind ideals, aspirations, hopes, they vanished. And in their place a darkness settled. A vast, empty darkness. The only reason I lived was because she lived. Our child survived the attack that killed her mother.
At first, she was the last piece of Kimberly. I clung to that idea, to anything that could tether me, no matter how elusive that tether, to the mother of my child. And then she became Angelique, her personality forming, her sweet nature so much like her mother’s. I was glad for that.
I didn’t think I’d ever love anyone again after holding my fiancée as she died in my arms, but I loved our baby. I loved her fiercely, desperately. Violently. Exactly the way she came into the world.
And when I heard what happened here today under my own roof, what that woman said, well, I would have killed her if Ivy hadn’t come down the stairs after her. If Dex hadn’t come to take my hands from around her neck and lead the woman out of the house. I would have committed murder with my child in the house.
I have killed. Over the last five years I’ve dealt with many evil men. I don’t regret a single death. I don’t lose sleep over any of them. The first were the two who were responsible for pulling the trigger. The assassins themselves. They each suffered very slow, very painful deaths, each watching the other die.
After them, I went up the ladder. Until I got to Felix Pérez and his recording of the meeting that confirmed where the order came from. I wanted to be the one to end Pérez too, but his death belonged to another. And she killed him with the pearl handled dagger I provided so that’s something at least.
At the heart of it all is Carlton Bishop. He was the man who began it. Who put the hit out on me. Although now I’m wondering if it’s Julia Bishop who was holding the reins all along. For centuries our families have been at odds. Battling. Bishops fighting to take back what they consider theirs. St. James’s holding on fiercely. Growing slowly wealthier and more and more powerful as the Bishops slowly declined.
Carlton went a step too far. He’s as bad as Reginald. The man who started it all. As rotten.
But I digress.
I take a sip of whiskey and watch my little girl sleep. What I feel guilt over isn’t the blood on my hands but the knowledge that this woman, a woman I hired and paid and invited into my home spewed lies and hate into my daughter’s ear and made her feel lesser.
Isabelle told me what Angelique said to her. That she didn’t want to tell me the comment about the eyes because we share those strange eyes, and I might have my feelings hurt.
That’s the part that breaks my heart in two.
I swallow the last of the whiskey, a fresh rage burning from the inside. I walk out of the bedroom and into the dark hallway. I need to hit something. But almost at exactly the same moment my bedroom door opens at the end of the hall and Isabelle comes rushing out. She goes immediately to the banister like she’s running from something. I rush to her.
“Isabelle?” I say, hearing her heavy breaths. I’m not sure she hears me. “Isabelle,” I repeat when I get to her, taking hold of her arms. “What is it? What happened?”
She blinks. Looks up at me, then around herself. She looks like a ghost in this shadowy corridor in the long white night dress she’s wearing. I see her little toes with their pink polish peeking out from beneath the hem. I assume her brother’s t-shirt is in the wash or she’d be wearing that.
She takes a deep breath in, calming a little.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
She nods. When I let go of her, she wipes at her forehead, and I see the beads of sweat at her hairline.
“The dream?”
“Yeah.” She takes another deep breath in then out. I wonder if she’s learned to do that to calm herself down. To get herself under control. She looks up at me.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I ask carefully.
She shakes her head. “What are you doing out here?” she asks, changing the subject.
I glance down the hall to Angelique’s room. “I changed my mind,” I tell Isabelle.
“What do you mean you changed your mind?” she asks, following my gaze. She touches my face, brushes my hair back from my forehead.
“I’m going to kill that woman.”
“No, you’re not. You’re tired. I’m tired. Come to bed.”
“I don’t know what damage she’s done. Right under my nose.”
“Jericho, stop.”
I look down at her, her soft face, long hair loose down her back. She looks like an angel. An angel for a devil.
“I’m glad Angelique has you,” I tell her, brushing her hair over her shoulder. “You’re good for her.”
“So are you.”
“I let it happen, Isabelle.”
“I was here too, remember. I let it happen too. But it’s over now and we just have to show her what a wonderful little girl she is. How loved she is. How kind and good. That’s all we can do.”
I nod although I’m still thinking about how I’m going to murder the old bag. “I’ll take you to bed,” I tell her, taking her hand to walk her back into the bedroom. I draw the blankets back for her. She sits on the edge of the bed and smooths out the pillow.
“Stay with me,” she says, taking my hand and intertwining our fingers.
“I won’t sleep tonight,” I tell her.
“Please.” There’s a strange expression on her face. She looks at our hands together on her lap, then at me. “The dreams get worse now.”
I study her. “The anniversary is coming up.” The night of the break-in. The anniversary of her brother’s murder.