hadn’t had to help him, he realized. She could have said one thing and done something else. He walked over to her and pressed a kiss on her paper-thin cheek and was rewarded with seeing a blush bloom there. And for just a moment he could see the young girl she had been, looking up at him like he was the cat’s meow.
“Now get the hell out of here before I take my ruler to you.”
And just like that, the moment was gone.
Darcy sat in her office, but, of course, she couldn’t focus. It had been three weeks since she’d learned about her baby being alive. He wouldn’t be a baby, though; he’d be almost fourteen. Was he happy? Did he have a loving home? She had been his age when she’d met Lucien. What did he look like? Was he beautiful like his father? Did he have her hair or eyes? God, she wanted so desperately to hold him in her arms. And yet she needed to be mindful that he may not want to be a part of her life because he was no doubt wondering where the hell she had been. Her heart ached, but even if she didn’t have a place in his life, just to see him and to know that he was happy and healthy would be enough. Thinking about all those years they had missed was hard: first words, first steps, first day of school, first crush. It wasn’t fair, and there were times that she wanted to rage at the injustice of it, but yelling, though satisfying, didn’t accomplish anything.
Lucien was off doing something, but what, she didn’t know. He was still trying to protect her, but she could no longer find it in herself to be mad. His focus, like hers, was on finding their son and, even more, he loved her enough that he didn’t give a damn if his need to keep her safe pissed her off. It was a beautiful, if somewhat fucked up, gesture. As hard a time as they were going through with their loss, she was grateful to have him back in her life.
She and Ember were making plans to go to St. Agnes to check out the attic. They were going to sign in as guests of Ember’s friend Brandon. She wasn’t hopeful that they were going to find anything, though.
The sound of her phone was a welcome distraction.
“Darcy MacBride.”
“Darcy, it’s Josh.”
“Oh, hi. Have you found something?”
“I’ve been looking into the liquor order. From what I’ve been able to find, that shipment your mom gets is not a credit card transaction, but from an actual bank account.”
“That’s good. What’s the name on the account?”
“Don’t know. Whoever set it up did a really good job at keeping it private.”
“Where’s the bank?”
“Again, I don’t know. The account was set up to be anonymous.”
“Damn it.”
“However, I do have some good news. I’ve been able to determine that the vodka is not coming from a local liquor store. I’ve checked sales receipts for twenty stores in the area around your mother’s apartment and none of them match the two cases a month delivered to her. So I started looking at bars in the area, and all the places I visited were very helpful except one. I was actually shown to the door.”
“Why?”
“I suspect there’s some laundering of money going on and they’re using the bar to do it, integrating the dirty money in with the legit cash flow of the bar. Paying suppliers for the alcohol with dirty money is a good way to clean it. Your mom’s vodka, I’m guessing, is a by-product of the operation.”
“So the person who’s paying her off is possibly a gangster.”
“Or knows one.”
“I realize that Lucien associates with a shady group, but when this all happened with the baby, he hadn’t yet started that.”
“Whoever is doing this isn’t doing it because of Lucien’s colorful past.”
“So we’re back to square one.”
“Not quite. We know where the bar is located. Fun fact: it’s the same place where Lacy picked up her bribe money.”
“Well, hell.”
“I still don’t see why we didn’t bring Trace,” Kyle said as he, Darcy, and Ember climbed from the cab. They were on Queens Boulevard checking out Polly’s.
“Because if he knew we were coming here, he wouldn’t have let me come.”
“I shouldn’t have let you come—either of you.”
Ember looked over at Darcy and nodded her head in Kyle’s direction. “He’s great, isn’t he?”
They’d followed the directions given to them by Josh