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“And now he’s going.”
“But—”
“Say au revoir, Tess.”
“Please…” Henri was wise enough not to come near us but the smile he shot my wife almost made me strangle him. “It’s an honour to meet my sister-in-law.”
“Nothing about her is yours,” I snarled. “It’s time you left—”
“Will you think on my request at least?” Henri asked. “It would mean—”
“What request?” Tess interrupted, pulling her wrist from my pinching hold. “I deserve to know. You’re family.” She elbowed me in the side. “He’s family, Q. He’s your brother.”
“Half-brother.” I scowled, rubbing where her sharp little appendage caught me.
“He’s still blood.”
“Yes, and he likes to spill blood,” I hissed.
Her eyebrows raised. “As do you if I’m not mistaken.”
Henri sucked in a breath.
I groaned. “Esclave, you’re really not—”
“Esclave?” Henri scowled. “You call your wife slave? What the fuck?”
Tess grinned. “Think of it as sweetheart or darling. I always knew, even from the very first moment he called me that, that he was madly in love with me.”
“Madly obsessed with you more like,” I muttered. “Dangerously possessed. There’s a difference.”
“Not for us there isn’t.” She winked. “And we all lived happily ever after, even with your fetishes.”
Goddammit, this woman.
Pressing a kiss to my cheek, she waved between me and Henri. “So…what’s the story? You’ve been in here ages and are still glowering daggers at each other. Let’s go get a drink. Have some dinner. Mrs Sucre is getting mighty tetchy that her soufflé is ruined because we didn’t eat it in time.”
“Tess, mon amour.” I gritted my teeth. “Please leave. I’ll escort Henri out and—”
“Dinner would be great,” Henri interrupted, throwing a hesitant smile at Tess. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble?”
“Trouble? Oh no, Mrs Sucre always cooks far too much. You can meet Suzette and Franco and—”
“He’s not staying, Tess.” I did my best to hold on to my temper, failing by the second.
“Why not?”
“Because he’s not welcome here.”
“So that’s what this is about?” Tess asked, flicking both of us a look. “Henri came looking for family and you’re refusing to give him one? How can you not welcome your own flesh and blood, Q?”
Fucking woman.
She’d always read me too easily.
Always stuck her nose in where it didn’t belong.
Before I could form an answer, Henri murmured, “I don’t know a thing about either of you and you don’t know a thing about me, but…I feel more myself in the twenty minutes I’ve been here than I have in my entire life. I feel like I can breathe. Like I’m…free. Not fully. I doubt I’ll ever know what true freedom feels like, but I do feel as if I can relax a little. Like I won’t fuck everything up by saying the wrong thing or admitting who I truly am.” His grey eyes landed on mine. “If I can have that freedom for a few more hours before I’m evicted from your lives, then—”