Page 9 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)

Brice

F lorentine—Miss F. as she likes to be called when she works—turns bewildered eyes in my direction at my words.

The vixen thought I didn't catch her when she lied? She doesn’t know me well enough.

After raising Cassiopé who loved nothing more than sneaking out, I’m too used to it. I can sniff a lie kilometers away.

And I must admit, Florentine is good. She’s very good. There was barely a hitch in her heartbeat when she told me she needed to be the one to wake my men.

I let her believe that she fooled me. It was easier this way.

But now I don’t need her to be compliant anymore.

I don’t need her to heal anyone the same way she has anymore.

“How?” she asks. It’s only one word, but it carries all the disbelief in the world.

“I don’t kiss and tell,” I tell her with a smirk.

I suddenly have the need to kiss her, though. Why the fuck did I use that expression? It’s like my brain is clouded when I’m close to her.

I release her arm quickly.

Yes, it’s better when I’m not as close to her. I can breathe again and forget all about that sweet red currant, vanilla and rose perfume that seems to surround her.

“Where is the jet?” Florentine asks.

It seems like the cat is out of the bag.

Her smell clouded my judgment and I needed to get away, but I now remember why I was keeping her so close.

For just a second, I forgot I was hiding the fact the jet wasn’t there anymore.

Too late now, though.

“I sent it back to Paris,” I answer her without a single thread of guilt.

“You told me we would be free to go if I healed your guys,” she tells me with all the aplomb she can muster.

“Oh, that’s not what I told you, Miss Furious. What I told you was that I would let your father go. You just assumed that I would let you go, too. But, no. No, you’re not going anywhere. You’re coming with me to the castle.” I tell her, and I can see that each word hits her like a hammer on a nail.

“I’m not going with you,” she tells me, and I have to give it to her.

She looks beautifully enraged. Her red curls are flying all around her face and her freckles look like they’ve been set ablaze on her skin, and those dark brown eyes of hers look like they are black as night.

If looks could kill, hers would kill me right now.

“You don’t have a choice,” I tell her as I grab her and throw her over my shoulder.

“You’re coming with us. I didn’t do all of this to draw you out for you to go back to Paris after being in our company for just a few minutes.

We have things to discuss, and a little payback might be in order for what you did to my men. ”

I walk in the direction of the castle without waiting for my warriors while Florentine keeps hitting my back with her fists. She was honestly better with her guns than she is with her fists.

“Charles, find Jeremy. He shifted and flew away when she started shooting. There’s also a gun to retrieve in the street behind Le Loup et le porc-épic, ” I tell my second in command as I pat Florentine’s left pocket and retrieve her second gun.

“What are you doing, you pig?” she yells as she fights harder to escape my hold on her.

I send the gun over my shoulder in Charles’ direction. “It looks like that.”

And then I slap her ass before walking in the castle direction.

That seems to stop her completely.

“Something is really wrong with you,” she tells me before hitting my back another time.

I’ve taken worse beatings. I’m definitely going to survive.

I enter the castle and pass the first floor as fast as I can.

I don’t know why I keep imposing that on myself. I don’t know why I decided to come and live here. It was already bad that I picked this city, but it's even worse that I picked the castle.

The exact location where everything started.

The exact location where my brain was so tortured that they managed to turn me into their killing machine, that they managed to turn the sight of my best friend into a kill trigger.

Just thinking about Elhyor feels me with a mix of dread and shame for what I have done, but also of rage and fury for what I didn’t manage to do.

They rewrote my brain and now I can never go back to Notre Dame or I’ll want to kill him again.

Actually, I know why I picked this place. I know very well.

It’s to never forget. It’s to always remember that it’s where I became a monster.

I move to the second floor quickly, open the last door on the left of the corridor, and then I dump Florentine on the ground as if she were a potato sack.

“This is now your room. There are clothes in the closet, towels in the bathroom, and your bag will be here in a few minutes. We eat breakfast at seven. Now get some sleep.”

I walk back the way I came and lock the door after me.