Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

you. Regardless of Annie’s feelings, I will squash you like a bug. Annie’s playing the part now with her newfound freedom, abandoning her privileged life here, being the rebel and all, the tortured artist. I tolerate her behavior, although I don’t understand it. But make no mistake. Annie is my girl. She always has been and she always will be. She has a responsibility to this family that she’s too blinded to see right now, but she will eventually, trust me, she will, they always do. I believe this thing she has for you and the bohemian lifestyle you two have chosen is just a temporary distraction, and if it turns out that it’s not, that I’m wrong, well, the world is not large enough for you to hide her from me. I will find you and I can promise you, when I do, you’ll beg for mercy before you die.”
    That’s when Doug had taken Annie away from De Roché, away from all the money and privilege. Away from the sickness that infected De Roché and all that he surveyed. And Doug had remained defiant right up until the final moment. His defiance, however, could not drive away the fact that Annie was De Roché’s daughter and that he would always have to deal with the reality of it. De Roché was not a man to be fooled with, Doug knew. He might be power mad, he might even be insane, but it was of little consequence, for the man had the clout to accomplish nearly any task. Doug was maddeningly sure of that simple fact.
    Nonetheless Doug had heeded De Roché’s admonition; he had never told Annie of the conversation he’d had with her father concerning their future child. It wasn’t because he was afraid of De Roché. He wasn’t, despite the fact that De Roché had threatened his life. He was more concerned with Annie’s stability. How in the world would she have been able to handle such knowledge? Although Annie possessed great intelligence, enormous strength of character and undeniable talent, there was something hidden inside her complexities that baffled him, even frightened him. Sometimes he saw things in her eyes; a dark and fluttering presence that in a very real sense mirrored Doug’s own inner demons. Coincidence or something else? He never wanted to think about that. When Annie was up and on an even keel her strength could lift the earth but when she was down she brought the world down with her. Doug suspected that her emotional highs and lows had everything to do with her former life as Édouard De Roché’s only child. Now he was afraid he’d waited too long, and that disclosing her father’s desire to possess her firstborn might destroy her. But the true heart of Doug’s fear was that his years of silence would bear evidence to some sort of complicity between him and her father. But isn’t that what De Roché had been banking on all along? The man might be insane. He was by no means stupid.
    After marrying Doug, Annie had been ready and willing to leave De Roché’s lair for good. She was eager to be free of her father and his influence. Or so she’d said. The old man had gone nearly mad with grief on the day his daughter had left his fold as the wife of Douglas McArthur, jockeying and positioning, trying everything within his enormous power spectrum to win her back. And Doug had taken a perverse kind of pleasure in seeing it; ever aware that his world could come tumbling down at any moment and the last laugh might very well be at his expense. Annie had been adamant, however, repeatedly insisting that nothing her father could do or say would change her mind; she was, after all, in love with Douglas McArthur and that was a place she was quite happy to be in.
    “But he’s a carpenter!” De Roché railed with equal amounts of fury and loathing. “And you’re going to live in the woods in a half completed wood-frame house!” Doug had been working on the house prior to their marriage and that’s where he and Annie intended to settle down, at least for the time being.
    “Jesus was a