Catharine & Edward by Marianne Knightly Read Free Book Online

I’ll call them for you.”
    “I need my phone.”
    “You’re not getting your phone.”
    Cesaire grew more agitated. “I need to make a call!”
    Time to try another tack. “You want to see your kid again, you want us to tell you how your kid’s doing, you better fucking start talking and you’d better fucking do it now.”
    Cesaire gasped, then dropped his head into hands, the handcuffs clinking as he did. “My boy. My boy. My poor boy.”
    Edward spoke more gently than before. “Where’s his mother?”
    Cesaire scoffed. “That bitch. Left me and my boy barely a day after he was born. At least I never married her.”
    “He’s been sick a while?”
    “Too long. One day, fuck, one minute is too fucking long for a kid to be sick. This shit, it’s fucked up. But my boy,” he inhaled a deep breath full of pride, “he’s a fucking trooper. Never complains, never gets angry. He’s a fucking miracle.”
    “You want him safe, you’d better start talking.”
    Cesaire’s black eyes glittered. “No one hurts my boy.”
    “For Christ’s sake, you think we’d hurt a kid, any kid, much less one with cancer? No way, asshole. Get your head out of your ass. You’re in pretty deep, with pretty fucking crazy people, by our guess. You think for a minute that they give a fuck about your sick kid? You think they won’t use him against you?”
    Cesaire muttered a curse. “Jesus, you think I don’t know that? Why the fuck do you think I’m in this position to begin with? They blackmailed me.”
    “A sick kid is not blackmail.”
    “Threatening to stick some poisonous shit in his IV is, and that’s what they said they’d do. I had to break into the palace, plant that stuff, or else.”
    “Who is ‘they’? Who coerced you into this?”
    “I can’t say.”
    “Won’t say.”
    “No, I cannot say! They’ve threatened my boy, damn you! I’m not doing anything to help you until I know he’s safe.”
    Edward leaned across the cold table. His voice was low and even when he spoke. “You know we can help your boy. Help us.” Edward watched the man struggle, his hands twisting, the silver handcuffs clinking again.
    Then he sighed in resignation.
    “I don’t know who’s behind it.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “Fuck you, it’s the truth. They approached the editor of the Vallerian Star , blackmailed him with something and, no, I don’t know what they blackmailed him with. All I know is that he called me into his office the next day, said I’d be visited by someone and I had to do what they said.”
    “What’d you say? Giorgio Vincente’s the editor, isn’t he?”
    “Yeah, goes by Vinnie. Fuck knows why. I told him I wasn’t going to be forced to do anything just ’cause he’s got some shit he doesn’t want out.”
    “You just said you didn’t know what they blackmailed Vinnie with. How do you know they weren’t blackmailing Vinnie with family, same as you?”
    Cesaire huffed a laugh. “That asshole? Burned all his bridges. He fucked over everyone he knew to get that job, which is why no one gives a fuck about him in return. He wants personal attention, he pays for it.”
    “And someone came to visit you? Threatened your boy?”
    Sacheverelle’s eyes narrowed and his lips twisted in a snarl. “A woman. Brunette. Fucking built and knew it, wearing a plastered dress and fuck-me heels. I was in a park trying to get a picture of a movie star known for stepping out on his wife when she walks up to me. Bitch was smiling when she told me what I was required to do or else my boy dies. Fuck! She even pulled out a picture on her phone; she was dolled up as a hospital volunteer standing next to my boy.” His eyes darkened. “She stood next to my boy, infecting his airspace.”
    “Do you have a copy of the picture? Or know when it was taken?”
    “I figure it was taken about three weeks ago. My boy finished another round of chemo about that time, and wasn’t looking too good. As to a copy of the