“Oh, sweetie,” she softly said when she saw Sofie, bruised and battered, curled into a ball on the sofa. “Baby, what has he done to you?”
She gathered the girl in her arms, relieved when Sofie hugged her back.
“I’m okay,” she sighed out, wiping tears with a tissue CoCo handed her.
“She’s feeling better now,” CoCo said, sitting on the edge of the sofa. “We iced her face and gave her a couple of aspirin.”
CoCo was the mother hen of the group, albeit a tough one. Having taken care of herself for nearly all of her nineteen years, as well as big brother Hugo and their cousin Etienne before he married Ciara, CoCo was brash and outspoken, but loyal to a fault. It had been an eleven-year old CoCo who’d brought Ciara back from the brink after Etienne’s death, cajoling and shaming her into giving a damn about her life again by asking for help in changing hers. CoCo had been Ciara’s first Orphan, but there had been many a time over the past six years that she had wondered exactly who’d been adopted by whom.
“Sofie still won’t tell us what happened,” Hugo growled from the other side of the living room, pacing back and forth like a tiger on a leash.
Ciara glanced at him and tamped down her anxiety. Hugo had joined the Orphans at the behest of his sister at the ripe old age of fifteen. He was now twenty and the oldest of the group. Hot headed like his cousin Etienne, Hugo’s waters ran much deeper. Not an easy mix. For now she set aside Hugo’s agitated state and turned back to Sofie.
“Sweetie, you need to tell us. Why did Beck do this?”
The girl glanced up, and suddenly broke into sobs. “Oh, Ciara, What am I going to do? How am I ever going to pay him? But if I don’t, he says he’ll go to my father and—”
“Whoa! Slow down. What do you mean, pay him?” Ciara asked.
“
Nobody’s
going to your father,” Hugo said angrily, stalking over to the sofa. “I’ll kill the rat bastard first.”
“Quiet, Hugo! Let the girl talk,” CoCo upbraided, taking Sofie’s hand and pressing a kiss to it. Davie and Ricardo came to sit on the floor at their feet. Hugo continued his pacing.
“Start from the beginning,” Ciara urged.
“I was going to the market. We’ve no milk for the morning coffee,” Sophie explained. Ciara bit back her impatience, letting the girl take her time. “I was counting the coins to be sure I had enough money, and wasn’t watching where I was going. He was there,
Brigadier
Beck, waiting for me outside the door.”
Hugo growled again, low in his throat, and CoCo muttered angrily, “Why does he keep after you? The man should be castrated.”
The brigadier was a longtime beat cop and had he’d met Sofie almost immediately after she’d run away from her abusive father. She was working the streets and he’d gotten used to enjoying her favors in exchange for “protection.” He hadn’t liked it when she quit turning tricks, and he’d been harrassing her ever since, trying to pressure her into renewing their arrangement.
“He’d been drinking,” she went on. “When I wouldn’t have sex with him, he hit me. I was stupid. I called him names and told him exactly what I thought of him. He lost his temper.”
Ciara winced.
“
Fils de putain
,” CoCo said. The fucking bastard.
“But that’s not the worst part.”
“
Chérie
, what could possibly be worse than that?” Davie asked sympathetically.
“He said if I didn’t pay him ten thousand euros, he’d tell my father where I am.”
“Ten thousand euros!” Outrage spurted through Ciara. Over twelve thousand dollars.
“I will kill him!” Hugo repeated even more vehemently. “It’s what Etienne would have done.”
“And Etienne is dead,” Ciara snapped, surprising them all. She took a breath and turned back to Sofie. “Where does he expect you to get that kind of money?” There was no way.
“He doesn’t,” Hugo spat out furiously. “He expects her to fuck him, whenever he calls.”
“I won’t!” Sofie cried. “I’ll leave Paris! I’ll go to London, or somewhere else. Anywhere else. So he’ll never find me.”
“No!” Ciara shook her head. “You can’t leave. What about your studies? You’re so close to finishing.”
Ciara was taking care of all the Orphans financially right now, except for Hugo, paying for the apartment, their food and tuition. She had few rules, but one of them was that each start a course of study that would give them an income and independence when completed.
When she was a girl, she’d seen a movie once where one of the characters had said, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” That had struck her as very wise. She’d begged her mother to stay in school, but that would have meant feeding her for three more years. And keeping her around. By then her mom had needed every cent she had for drugs. Ciara found herself out on the streets shortly thereafter, but she’d never forgotten that movie, and never stopped wanting to go back to school.
She was determined her Orphans would all learn how to fish.
To that end, Hugo had already graduated from his auto mechanics course, and started contributing to the family coffers. Sofie was a talented artist—a painter—but making a living at that was next to impossible, so she was at cosmetic school, with only a year to go.
Desperation crept into Sophie’s tone as she murmured, “But what else can I do? None of us has that kind of money. You have to steal just to pay our rent!”
They all stared at each other for a long moment. Ten thousand euros. And Ciara had thought she’d soon be able to give up her life of crime.
Now she despaired of ever being able to quit. Unless...
“We should go to the police,” she announced.
“
What
?” they all exclaimed in a chorus.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Ricardo said, leaping up.
Ciara waved her hands, trying to calm down the explosion of protests. “I met someone tonight. From the DCPJ. He seemed—”
CoCo and Davie looked horrified. “The
police judiciaire
?”
Hugo looked equally furious. “No!” he insisted. “
Pas le keuf
! Are you that naïve? Beck is a cop, too. There is no way they’ll take our word over one of their own. Just see what happened to Etienne!”
“But Beck’s in the Paris
préfecture
. The
judiciaire
is a completely different division—”
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll end up investigating us instead, and social services will split us up. And you,
you’ll
end up in jail!” he said. “Is that what you want?”
“Of course not.” Ciara jetted out a breath. She saw his point.
The unfairness of the situation burned at her like acid. The ones who needed the police’s protection most of all, the weak, the young and the oppressed, were often the ones who were most victimized by them. It was the same the world over. It’s what had taken Etienne from her. She was not about to let it happen to the Orphans, too.
Ciara had liked Jean-Marc, but he was undoubtedly the same as any other cop. What he’d done at the club with her did not exactly put him in the best light. Would he have stopped if she’d told him no in that storage closet? Maybe. But maybe not.
“Okay, you’re right,” she reluctantly said to Hugo. “We take care of this ourselves.” To the others she said, “We need a plan to make Beck leave Sophie alone. Everyone think about what we can do. In the meantime there’s little option. We must pay him off.”
“But how?” Sofie whispered. “It’s so much money.”
“Same way I always do. Speaking of which...” She pulled the diamond bracelet from its hidden pouch at her waist. “This must be worth several thousand. That’s a start.”
“Oh, Ciara!” CoCo exclaimed, taking it from her. “It’s gorgeous! Did you slip it right off the princess’s wrist?”
She made a face. “Yep. While I was dancing with my cop, too.”
All five jaws dropped. Even Hugo’s eyes widened before narrowing. “
That’s
how you met the
flic
? While you were robbing the princess? Didn’t he get suspicious?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m good at what I do.” She sighed. “And luckily for us, there are plenty more rich people out there with jewels and paintings and silver that other people want. I’ve been doing this for almost ten years. Another few robberies isn’t going to make much of a difference.”
She knew her lifestyle was wrong. She’d known it from the start. But she’d been so young when her mother had kicked her out...she hadn’t seen any option—other than selling herself on the streets, which she refused to do. She’d seen what a few years of that had done to her mother.
Then when Etienne had found her and swept her off her feet...well, Etienne was a thief. It wouldn’t have done to question how he made a living. Besides, back then the seamier side of life was all she knew.
But that had been fourteen long years ago, and with Etienne she’d discovered there was more to life than simply fighting for survival any way you could. Etienne was dead now but she was still stealing. Each month she told herself, just a little while longer... But months had turned to years. And now...it was too late.
She sighed and shoved aside her fruitless thoughts. “Sofie, I’ll get Beck’s money, never you worry. We’re not letting you go anywhere.”
“Or letting that blackmailing pig touch you, either,” CoCo added firmly, her eyes blazing.
“That’s right.” Davie and Ricardo both gave her hugs, and Davie turned to Ciara. “I just heard something that might come in handy. The Countess Michaud is having a big end-of-summer soiree next week. Everyone who’s anyone will be there.”
Ciara smiled. Outcast aristocrat Davie was her pipeline to the pampered and privileged upper-class world where she currently made her living. Although his father had kicked him out at thirteen, to society,
monsieur le Compte
de Figeac pretended all was well in the family. Without Davie’s tips, her life would be much more complicated and difficult. Ciara had the skills, but Davie had the info and the entrée to the jobs that paid well. Even his coursework in portrait photography had brought in useful contacts.
“There, you see? Everything will be fine,” she said, smiling reassuringly at all five of them.
These kids were all the family she had, all she would ever have. She’d do anything for her Orphans. To see they got the chances she had been denied.
And if that meant she had to steal more to pay off that bastard Beck, so be it.
♥♥♥
“Ah! The most famous bracelet in France,”
monsieur
Victor Valois said with a grin as he took the diamonds from Ciara.
It was the next morning, and she was visiting her friend and mentor in his fashionably shabby antique store,
Valois Vieilli
.
Standing behind a glass and gilt Louis XV jewelry display case, he winked. “And the most famous thief, as well. Congratulations! I saw the papers this morning. I was expecting you.”
“Are you sure you want to deal with me?” Ciara said, grinning back at the portly, balding old man for whom she had a huge affection. Valois had taken her in as a protégé when she’d brought him her first antique silver piece, accidentally stolen along with a purse on the
métro
during her first year living in Paris. Had it really been eight years ago?
“Surely, you jest! My star pupil? I haven’t taught you everything I know just to let
le keuf
intimidate me.”
“The cops?” she asked, clued in by the righteous indignation that suddenly flavored his words. “Have they been here?”
“
Mais, bien sûr
. They were waiting for me when I opened.” His grin returned. “One would think I was first on their list of suspected fences for stolen jewelry.”
Which, of course, he was. And paintings and antiques, as well. Those items were his specialty. His antique store was filled to the rafters with scrupulously legal wares: tons of old furniture and art pieces, rugs and marble, knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. The store had been in his family for generations. Ciara often thought that some of the things crowding the overfilled rooms must have been bought new two hundred years ago and simply gotten lost in the clutter.
But the items he was fencing were well-hidden, in a tunnel under the shop which his father had discovered during the War, part of the ancient Parisian sewer system below the city.
She knew she was in good hands. M. Valois was nothing if not careful. The police had never gotten a single shred of evidence against him. As ruthless as he was loyal, no one ever betrayed the old man. Ciara herself would go to jail in a heartbeat before breathing a word against him. Because she knew he would do the same for her.
“This time it was one of the
commissaires
who visited me. CPJ Lacroix. Angry as a hornet, he was.”
“Jean-Marc?” she asked uneasily. “He came here?”
How the hell...
? This was too close for comfort.
Valois peered at her over the rim of his jewelers loupe, brows raised. “Jean-Marc?”
She suddenly realized her mistake.
Lord
. She gave a nervous laugh. “Yes, well, I actually met him last night at the club.” She cleared her throat. “We danced. Before I realized he was a cop, of course.”
Valois pursed his lips and slowly regarded her. “A very attractive man,
non
? In a rough sort of way.”
She picked up a paper-thin Limoges porcelain teacup from the counter and examined it so she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “I suppose.”
“Lacroix appears regularly in the tabloids. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize him from his photos. Before you danced with him.”
She carefully set down the delicate cup. “I don’t read the tabloids, Valois.”
He chuckled. “Sure you don’t. And you don’t love how they’re treating you as the new Robin Hood. Robbing from the rich...”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah.” Over the past few months, the evening papers had grown quite fond of the infamous
le Revenant
and his daring exploits against the spoiled and privileged. But Ciara didn’t like the publicity. It only forced the cops to concentrate harder on catching her. “Why would a police
commissaire
be in the tabloids?”