Quis Solvit: Urban Paladins, #4

Cui Bono

Copyright © 2018 by Severine Wolfe

First E-Book Published November 2018

Cover design by Melody Simmons

ISBN: 9780463920725

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission from the author.

All characters, places, and events in this book are fictitious or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is strictly coincidental.

License Statement

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Sipping one past the goalie...

One night of passion leaves something behind and Tristan and Vanessa must deal with the fall out. Neither one wants to admit the strong pull towards each other. Vanessa because she’s been burned before and Tristan because, frankly, no one would believe it of him.

When Vanessa’s life is in danger Tristan must protect her and convince her that he does love her. Not for her money or what they’ve created together, but just her. It’s always been her.

Vanessa, a decade after the death of her husband still finds it impossible to trust anyone around her. Can she let her guard down long enough for Tristan to slip in?

Dedication

This is my eighteenth book. I never figured I’d write this much. So, this book is dedicated to all of my readers who keep me challenging myself to get better and tell interesting stories. Thank you for prodding me along.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Ihave to say a major thanks to grammarians all over the English-speaking world for assisting me in my never-ending quest to master this language. You don’t make it easy.

ONE

Vanessa

Y

ou would think that as someone who was surrounded by bodyguards and people from myth, I would be afraid of nothing. As I sat on the floor of my shower, sitting on the tile, my back against the built-in shower seat, warm from the hot water beating down upon it, I knew that there was nothing further from the truth. I had everything to fear.

I had more money than I could ever spend in my lifetime, I had the respect of my community and my peers. I was the CEO, owner and operator of a tech company that made parts that no computer could run without. I was lauded and written about. I put on a smile for the cameras and the people and, yet, I did not have more than a handful of people I could truly trust. And those people, with the exception of two, were beings from stories so old no one knew who had written them.

But, the real question came to me as I had stood in my shower was, would I trust them?

It's amazing how the conditional tense of a verb changed the meaning of... everything.

What had caused my mental breakdown during my morning ablutions? The answer to that question sat on the counter in my bathroom with a huge, positive sign, shining like a beacon to show everyone what an idiot I was.  Yes, I, Vanessa Kane, billionaire heiress of my father and my dead husband, was pregnant because one night I had succumbed to weakness and allowed a man into my bed because I needed affirmation of life and the male had been all too ready to supply it and then skate off as if nothing had ever happened. Well, he hadn't skated far, at least. For some reason he was refusing to return to France where he belonged. So, I could forget he existed.

Why? Of all of the men on the planet I could have lost it with, why did I fall prey to Tristan Grenier? To listen to his friends, people who liked and respected him, he was the biggest sexual libertine since Casanova. According to the biggest man-whore I personally knew, Martin Hayes, Tristan had shown him the ropes of Nail and Bail. Martin had played that particular game until he met Allison Robertson, now Allison Hayes. She had stopped his roving eye, his urge for a taste of something outside his marital bonds.

I knew I frowned and stopped crying the moment I thought of Cedrick's ultimate betrayal. When going through my dead husband's papers to help Martin with an investigation, I had run across credit card statements from one of Cedrick's cards. They were dated about the time of our marriage and I found a room at a hotel near the house we had rented for our honeymoon. I had one of Mary's guys dig and found the name of the woman the room was rented for, with a hefty tab for room service. Cedrick, my loving, dead husband had brought his mistress along on our honeymoon, His eighteen-year-old mistress. I'd barely been twenty when I had married Cedrick.

I wanted to scream every time I thought about it. I wanted to throw fits, fling things about, and find Cedrick's soul in hell and demand more torture. He'd fucked my life over forever and he got to die and escape the hell I was living in. However, I was getting the best revenge on that cheating asshole. I was living life and trying my damnedest to wipe all memory of him from the world and try to right the wrongs he'd done. Kidnapping, raping ASSHOLE!

I slapped a hand over my mouth as I realized that I had yelled that at the top of my voice. Jesus, I was Vanessa Fucking Kane. I was the standard other Junior Leaguers tried to emulate. I was the epitome of poise and grace and my tragic widowhood had made me a saint.

I laughed harshly as I turned off the now cooling water of the shower and grabbed my soft towel and rubbed another across my hair that I now kept short, as I liked it. I avoided looking in the mirror. I always did. I had no desire to see what everyone else saw, knowing that every image of my public life was a damned lie.

I caught the pregnancy test out of the corner of my eye and turned away from it, fleeing to my vanity and my lotions, moisturizers and façade builders. I didn't want to face that truth. I was still reeling from the knowledge that because I had been human one night, I was now tasked with bringing a new life into the world. My head dropped to my chest and tears threatened to ruin everything I'd just slapped on my face.

Sex with Cedrick had not been earth moving, or even particularly enjoyable. It was a chore for both of us. For him because I wasn't fourteen and for me because it just wasn't good. For years I'd labored under the delusion I was frigid, but thanks to one night with a French Casanova, I knew I was not.

The tears did begin again. Because, God help me, I still wanted Tristan like a man desires water when in the middle of the Sahara Desert. I knew it would go away if he did. But he was staying in Houston for some reason. I had to keep seeing him as Martin and Ceilidh worked on batting cleanup for their recent job of clearing out corrupt government officials. That was the reason I'd found myself at the mercy of Tristan after he'd ashed Evinrude Rindahl.

I'd never seen them do what they did before, the Paladins. I'd heard them talking about ashing someone, but it was just so bizarre how a person was there and in less than the blink of an eye they were nothing but a small pile of ash. No mess, no blood, no outcry, just ashes. Tristan had told me that it was the only way they could keep doing what they had to do. The horror of blood and screaming would drive them more mad than ignoring the compulsion that forced them to act on evil.

I closed my eyes. Once again, I had chosen poorly when it came to men.

Jesus! What was it with me? If I was put into a room with one hundred men, ninety-nine of whom were decent men, I would choose the worst of the bunch. Cedrick had married me for my money. Tristan couldn't even stick around after the sun rose. And yet, he had never really left. I had to face him on conference calls, when he would come in with either Ceilidh or Martin when they were working on a case, or if he was helping Mary out on a Paladin case. If I knew he was coming in, I managed to avoid him, and yet, I was aware of him the entire time he was in the building. When I couldn't avoid him, I was polite and got the hell out of the room as quickly as I could. I didn't need my stupidity repeatedly rubbed in my face. I had my work erasing Cedrick Kane from history as it was.

I reached my hand over and picked up my phone and did something I'd never done since I'd taken over Kane. I called in sick. I let my assistant know so she could tell Mary, and then I walked into my bedroom and laid on my bed, trying to quell the panic and calm myself.

I placed my hand over my stomach. Since I knew the exact date of my fall from grace, I knew I was two months pregnant. Abortion was not an option for me. Cedrick and I had never had children. I don't know why, but I'd wanted to wait, and he'd been happy with the status quo. I had never thanked God so well as I had the night I had learned Cedrick had hired someone to kill me. I was now thirty-seven years old and I had managed to get pregnant after a bullet had torn one ovary from my body. A miracle, some would say. I wasn’t exactly in agreement.

I shivered as I thought back to that night and thought no one would have expected something so wonderful as a miracle from my one night of sin. Tristan had seemed inspired and under some compulsion to make me come. And Lord, had he accomplished that goal in spades.

I swallowed as self-pity tried to crawl up again. I slapped it down. I had not let it win when Cedrick had betrayed me, and I would not let it win now that I held new life in my body. Not planned but not unwanted.

Lord, this was going to be hard. I had been asked so many times since Cedrick died when I was going to remarry. I had always just given a sad smile and shaken my head. They had taken it to mean that I was still so in love with Cedrick that I simply could not accept another man. It sickened me to have him held up like that, but what else could I do? He'd hidden his sickness so well that to bring it out now would be madness, so I didn't. I didn't contradict them, but I never, ever validated their suspicions either.

The phone next to me rang and I picked it up. It was Mary, so I answered. She was my partner in crime, as it were.

Are you okay, Vanessa? She sounded so worried I felt like a complete bitch for lying to her, but what else could I do? There was no way I could admit to my utter folly of sleeping with Tristan Grenier and forgetting all about birth control. Like I'd had that worry at all since before Cedrick died.

I'm just feeling a little achy, is all, I lied. Well, I did ache inside my soul, but that was hardly cause for calling in sick when I wasn't. Hmm, perhaps Kane should offer existential sick days as an employee perk instead of dental?

Do you need me to bring anything over?

I chuckled at that. Mary was the eternal mother, especially with her only child, Stephen, now in college.

I'm good, but thanks for the thought, I sniffed, making it sound good. I got my flu shot, but it could be the cold. I plan on trying to get in with my doctor today and I'll let you know as soon as I do. I don't want to bring a virus into the building.

Mary laughed, and I could hear her sip at the ever-present cup of java. If you make me sick before Stephen's Christmas Vacation I would have to kill you. I am planning on taking him up where they have snow for the holidays, then send him back to school.

I did smile and laugh at that.

When was the last time you took time off, Vanessa, my astute friend finally asked me.

I had to think about it. Not since I'd taken over Kane Inc. No, that couldn't be right. Surely, I'd gone to a beach somewhere? Hadn’t I?

Geez, Mary, you play dirty pool, I accused her, and she cackled like an old crone. She may have a grown son in college, but she didn't look any older than I did, and I could easily pass for twenty-five. The woman was a chocolate goddess with skin so soft I was jealous. She was beautiful, but she was just as gun shy as I was. If she had been seeing anyone in the ten years I'd known her, she'd kept it on the down low. Nary a hint of her even having a date had shown its face in all of that time.

You should take a month off, Vanessa. You're looking tired.

I swallowed down the guilt. Hah, at least I have a cold to blame for it. What's your excuse?

Oh, honey, I know you're not talking about me. Your new security chief nearly swallowed his tongue when I said good morning on my inspection this morning. Now there is a big hunk of man meat just begging to be eaten.

A laugh burst out of me. Mary must be smitten. She’d never remarked on men or how they looked. And, I had watched Game of Thrones with her. She'd not even remarked on Jason Mamoa. Not even a breathy sigh.

Man meat? Do I need to send you to the sexual harassment training next week?

Only if it shows you how to do it and get away with it, she chuckled, and I could just see the smirk on her face. Don't worry Vanessa, he works for you. I'm not going to ruin that.

It saddened me that she had to put everything into those boxes of hers. She and Brook were very much of the 'don't shit where you eat' school.

I inhaled and leaned heavily on the presumptions of our friendship. Mary, if he's interested, and you're interested, there should be no barriers to either of you finding out if it would be any good. He doesn't work for you, he works for me, which means that you only vetted him for me. You know far more about him than I do, so if you guys want to bump uglies, go right ahead.

Bump uglies? She sounded offended. That's what you do with men you don't care about. Damn, girl, you need to get laid.

Oh, I had been. Very well, in fact. So well that I now had to make a doctor's appointment and start making some heavy decisions.

I will when you do, was my response.

Mary laughed again. You better get your man on deck, baby, because now that I have your blessing, I'm asking Mr. Security Chief out for drinks after work.

You're not bringing me chicken soup? I asked, trying to get her distracted from my sex life.

Your expensive doctor will have gold laced chicken noodle soup, blessed by the Pope for you, I'm sure, she joked, and I could feel her attention drifting.

Speaking of which, I'd better get on the phone and make that appointment. I'll call you later.

Don't make me come looking for you, Vanessa. I find people for a living.

Oooo I am so scared, I joked and hung up.

Talking to Mary had helped me from my slide into the despair I'd felt since I'd looked at the pregnancy test results. Mary had been a young single-mom when Brook Hastings, her foster brother, had returned from The Wars and found her and they had started Carter and Hastings Investigations. They had started out doing mostly process service and moved up into genuine private investigation and security work. Of course, she hadn't lived in the fishbowl I did. Tabloids had wars with paparazzi for pictures of me to publish. The scrutiny I was under was enormous.

I could do this. I was not without resources and I could easily hand over day to day running of Kane to someone else and go live on an island somewhere with my child. Huh. That idea caught in my brain and took up residence. Hell, it was buying property.

I finally smiled. I could do this.

TWO

Tristan

"W

hen are we heading back to Europe?" Kemal whined yet again. His nearly incessant demands to be returned to Romania where he had no support at all was driving me to the edge of madness.

Tais-toi! I finally yelled, at the end of my tether with my apprentice who no longer needed a Master to guide him.

Shijo Ozawa poked his head out of his bedroom. Who is yelling during my meditation time?

I nearly growled like a feral animal. Both of my fellow Paladins were about to make me 'go postal' as the Americans were fond of saying.

Shijo stared at me and shook his head. You need to get laid, Tris. We should hit the bars tonight.

That perked up my young Padawan learner. Kemal, the former evil Ganelon or Death Knight, as Martin called them, nodded eagerly. His dark, swarthy looks drew women like moths to a flame. Because of his celibacy after he was captured by a crew of Ganelons, he'd spent years refusing the advances of the only female in their cohort. He had said he'd rather turn gay than couple with her. At the time I had shrugged. There was a time when I would fuck anything that would let me. Those days had ended shortly after Martin had met his Allie, and I had met my doom.

My Doom that refused to even acknowledge that I existed.

This was retribution for every woman I'd ever fucked and forgotten in my life. I was thirty-five and I had spent the past twenty-years cutting a wide swath through females from eighteen to fifty in Europe, Asia, and both Americas. My dick shriveled in Australia. I couldn't even entertain sexy thoughts in Australia. I don't know why, but that one continent was Paladin Kryptonite. New Zealand didn't bother us, but Australia? None of us could spend much time there. I'd built up a tolerance and could spend perhaps three weeks there, but by the end, I was so weak and felt sick to the bottom of my soul with the evil that was in the very land itself.

Why don't the two of you hit up the clubs then. Buy a box of condoms beforehand.

They both perked up and at least Kemal shut up his whining mouth for five minutes. I waved at them and went into my room. I went and sat on the end of my bed. After a short pity party, I threw myself back on the bed, my legs hanging off the end, my arms stretched out by my sides.

Mon Dieu, pourquoi? Why, God?

Why indeed.

That one night with Vanessa had been perfect. I had been so attracted to her from the first time I’d seen her in a Skype call. Back then, she'd been newly widowed, a figure of pity for me. Her husband had tried to have her killed and steal all of the money she'd brought to him through their marriage. Over the years I'd seen her slowly, cautiously, come out of her shell. She was a beautiful, self-assured woman. Rich beyond the dreams of Solomon, but still a real person. She was kind, gave to several charities, her money and her time. And, for one night, she had been mine.

She'd been distraught after I had ashed Evinrude Rindahl and his bodyguard. She'd played her role perfectly until we were in the car and rolling back down the hillside from Rindahl's castle and then she had vomited up what little breakfast she'd managed, and she'd shaken all the way to the airport. She had brought herself together to walk into her jet and then she went to the back, where her personal room sat, and she’d locked the door. We were in the air ten minutes later and shortly touched down in Munich where she had meetings lined up for the new factory she said she was planning in Germany. She wasn't really. She had said it was stupid to build anything of any worth in Europe as Socialists were on the cusp of nationalizing everything to support their pathological altruism.

That was the main reason I had moved all of my money out of Europe and into an off-shore account that Ceilidh had helped me set up to ensure I would have money when Europe burned itself and Western Civilization down. I had also moved all of the artwork my family owned out of France and into a storage space in New Zealand. I'd sold the family estate before I'd even met Ceilidh and Martin. I wasn't rich like Vanessa, but I could easily not work for the rest of my life and not hurt for money.

I had been on guard duty in her hotel suite the night we had ashed Rindahl and the cadre of Ganelons guarding him. She had been crying in her sleep and I went to wake her up, offer her a glass of water, and it had turned so quickly into something else. The memory alone could keep me awake nights.

Martin had told me that he never considered what he did with Allie as fucking. You fucked women you didn't care about, they were just available, but nothing you'd consider actually caring about. With Allie, for him, it was making love, every single time.

I hadn't understood what he'd told me until that night when I'd finally made love to Vanessa Kane. I didn't even realize, until I'd kissed her, how badly I'd wanted her for all the years I'd known her. I'd made love to her for hours until she finally slipped into a restful sleep. I'd dozed for a while and awakened in just enough time before Kemal came to the suite for his shift and I could get some sleep.

When I woke up and showed up for my afternoon shift, she'd been composed and distant from then on, even through the expected police questioning. She'd flown home that night and she had never given me a backward glance. She'd left me in Germany to find my own way home.

And I could not stay where I was because I was called to be with her. So, I bought a plane ticket back to Houston.

I stayed because I could not bear to leave where she was. That made me sad and I finally realized that I had it worse than Martin had when Allie had left him and gone to Japan to train with Shijo. He didn't have to see her several times a week and have her ignore him like he didn't even exist. There was nothing worse than that.

The fact that this could be cosmic payment for the way I'd treated women over the years did not escape me. I'd been teased about it for years and never taken it seriously. Plus, I'd had the advantage of thinking I'd never be so stupid as to fall for one woman, when there were so many out there to choose from.

I heaved a Gallic sigh. I was tied up in knots I had no idea how to untie. This is what involvement with a woman did to you.

I flung an arm over my eyes and groaned. Why couldn't I forget that night? I'd forgotten so many others, why not that one particular night?

Because, and I hated to admit this, it mattered to me.

That one night with Vanessa had meant everything to me. I had craved her for years. People had teased me about being a man-whore, but since the moment I had stood in the same room with her, I had known she was the one I'd been looking for in all the wrong places. Women like Vanessa Kane did not remove their tops, flash their tits and go down on you in an alley for Mardi Gras beads. Good women did not troll nightclubs looking for a hook up just to add some notch to compare to some imaginary belt they thought men kept. The trouble is, men don't bother to remember those encounters like women do.

So, for the last year, or so, I'd been celibate except for dates with my hand, because Vanessa was unattainable to me and I could not think of a way around her walls because, I wasn't sure I should. She wasn't cold. No, she just kept a distance between herself and everyone around her, even Mary and Ceilidh, her best friends.

I thought of what Ceilidh would do to me if she found out and it shriveled my balls where I lay. She wouldn't ash me. I didn't have to fear that. No, she would use Brook's K-Bar knife to flay me alive then chop me into little bits to use as fish bait. The only thing she was more protective of was her family and Vanessa was a very close second.

I had no one I could talk to about this and it drove me crazy because I was driving myself nuts trying to find a reason to go when everything in me screamed to stay here. I would have talked to Stepka, but he had returned to Italy and Giulietta after we were done in Washington DC and the current push we had going on to get rid of corruption in the US justice system. Paladins were real sticklers for justice and this had burned a hole in Martin's brain. We had all been pulled towards it because it was our call as well. Eradicate evil, promote justice. The whole idea of one man with his hand in a choke hold around the justice system, not just in America, but European Justice sickened all of us.

Things were hot for both Stepka and Giulietta in Europe right now. He had said he wanted to take her to a place in Siberia until things cooled down. I have to admit, I would love to swoop in and carry Vanessa off someplace where I had her all to myself for... forever, I guess.

I was so pathetic. In all of our early training, if we came from a Paladin family, we were taught to think of justice as the highest ideal, and if we stayed true to our call, we could reach paradise. Much like the church teachings that I barely nodded at most days. However, in the past two months I had found myself praying for God's will to be that I would be with Vanessa. That I could hold her and call her mine. To date, God had laughed at me.

Everything within me craved more of her. I had not forgotten her scent, her taste, the feel of her body underneath mine, around mine. I groaned, knowing I was becoming aroused and trying not to open that door. I seriously wanted to beat my head against a wall to keep my thoughts from running towards Vanessa. Hers certainly never ran towards me.

I was indeed paying for my sins as Martin's Father Tim would be sure to tell me as I sat in the confessional on a Saturday afternoon.

My phone chiming brought me out of my bout of self-pity and I stared at the screen. Martin wanted to have a guy’s gaming night over at his place, across the hall from us. I told him sure. I was always willing to kick his ass in video games when possible. Young pup.

God, I hoped Iain was there. Even better, I hoped Brion would be there as well, to witness Martin get his ass shellacked by all of us.

I got up off my bed and opened my bedroom door and looked out. Shijo was in the kitchen fixing something very un-Japanese to eat. Pizza Rolls? When did those ever get good? I would never understand American food.

Where's Kemal? I asked firmly expecting him to grunt from the living room I could not see into.

"He