French Quarter Read Online Free PDF

kind are dangerous, Celina. Jealous and desperate. You don’t know because you’ve led a sheltered life. But they’ll do anything to try to be accepted in our world.”
    Desperation stole most of Celina’s  breath. “Mama,” she pleaded.
    “I told Errol he shouldn’t be mixed up with a man like that.”
    “Jack Charbonnet is a gentleman,” Dwayne LeChat said softly, and set down the tray—also softly. “You, lady, are a fool and a snob—forgive me, Celina.”
    “Well,” Bitsy said, but her voice shook. “How dare you, you pervert . Iwant you out of here today, Celina, but not before we settle our affairs to our satisfaction. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Please be quiet, Mama. Jack will be responsible for overseeing Dreams now.”
    Bitsy snorted. “Errol wouldn’t have allowed that. And don’t you be sucked in by a handsome face and smooth talk. They’re a certain kind, my girl, Cajun trash tryin’ to use money to buy respect. No background. They say his mother was never married to his father anyway—and she was half his age.”
    Jack took a step toward the Payne woman and felt rather than saw Dwayne move. The other man rested a hand on his shoulder and said, “Let it go, Jack. She’s not worth your anger.”
    He looked into Bitsy’s spiteful brown eyes and saw other brown eyes, these a contrast to long, blond hair. The hair had fanned wide on the surface of the pool, and the eyes had stared unseeingly upward. His mother’s naked white body atop a blue air mattress, bobbed on the surface, her legs obscenely splayed. Blood from the gaping wound across her neck stained the water.
    His father, or what was left of him, was pinned with metal nut picks to a wooden trellis on the wall outside open doors to the master suite. Racked by his own agony, he watched his wife tortured, raped, and killed before his throat was also cut. Even if they hadn’t dealt the final, killing slash, Pierre Charbonnet wouldn’t have wanted to live with either the memory of his beloved wife’s death, or with what Win Giavanelli’s men had already done to him.
    “Jack?”
    Evidently his mother had tried to persuade his father to turn his back on the Giavanelli family, and crime, and he had finally made a suicidal move to do what she wanted. If he’d been only an associate he might have got away with it, but not as a made man, not as one of Win Giavanelli’s most trusted captains.
    “Jack, what is it?”
    He heard Celina talking to him. Her voice came from a great distance. “Yeah.” It had been a long time since he’d seen the images so clearly. They’d haunted him from his tenth year through his adolescence, until the day he’d made up his mind what he had to do. Then he’d put them aside, but had not forgotten them.
    Jack had never stopped wanting vengeance, and he was getting closer to his goal.
    Win Giavanelli, still the family boss, had given the order for his parents’ assassination. He was going to die for that. Jack had expected to see him dead a long time ago, but he’d also learned that if he hoped to be unscathed afterward, he had to be patient.
    “Celina,” Jack heard Bitsy Payne say. “You do know he’s got connections to the mob, don’t you? Look. He’s staring at me. I heard his mother was killed by the mob. The man she was living with was murdered too. Not that he didn’t deserve it. He was a very rich criminal.”
    “You are talkin’ about my parents, Mrs. Payne,” Jack said when he could make his voice work. “Pierre and Mary Charbonnet? They were murdered when I was ten years old.”
    “Oh, Jack,” Celina murmured, and the horror on her face showed she hadn’t known.
    “I didn’t know about your parents,” Dwayne said. “My sympathies, Jack. Bad luck. Of course, if you’d had my parents, you’d have been glad if someone decided—”
    “Thanks, Dwayne,” Jack said quickly.
    “There was a lot of money,” Bitsy said, and Jack eyed her, fascinated, wondering just how far she