No! I am not like my father. I’m not!
But then he thought of his father’s youngest son, ten-year-old Tee-John, and had to admit that he very well might be.
Letting out a whoosh of exasperation, his father continued with boozy recklessness, “If this is about revenge, forget it. You can’t hurt me. No one can. Your mother was the only one, but the bitch went and died on me.”
With a howl of outrage, Luc picked up the machine and threw it against the wall. Still, the hated voice droned on with self-pity and recriminations. If he were in the same room with his father, and if he were twenty-five years younger, now would be the time when the belt would come off and the beatings begin. “You’re a bad boy, Lucien. Bad, bad, bad. Someone’s gotta beat the badness out of you. Bad seed, that’s what you are. Devil’s spawn. Bad, bad bad.”
Luc stormed out of his apartment, slamming the door after him.
It never ends. Never.
Things weren’t any better when Luc arrived at Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals. The first clue was the half-dozen police cars in the lot. Thanks to a Cajun police officer he knew from high school, Luc finally got through to the lab, which had been cordoned off. He discovered that there had been a break-in the night before. Drawers had been pulled out, file cabinets were overturned, bottles smashed, papers scattered everywhere. A detective he’d represented once in a messy divorce suit told him off the record that all of Sylvie’s files and some of her experimental rats had been taken, though Luc noticed that a few of the rodent couples were humping away in the corner, despite the turmoil surrounding them.
But there wasn’t a sign of Sylvie. Apparently she hadn’t been seen since yesterday.
“Where’s Sylvie?” he asked her boss, Charles Henderson, who was standing in the open doorway of his office, talking with a police officer.
The officer left and Henderson gave him a disdainful once-over, apparently because he hadn’t shaved in two days. Some hidden part of him wondered if his clothes were dirty or wrinkled, as they had been when he was a little boy, but, no, he’d donned clean jeans and a cotton shirt, fresh from the laundry packets. Maybe Henderson looked down on him just because he was who he was. Yep, that was probably it.
“I have no idea where Sylvie is,” Henderson replied. “I thought maybe you would know, LeDeux.”
Me? Why does everyone think I have some relationship with Sylvie? “She was supposed to meet me here this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“None of your freakin’ business, that’s why.” He inhaled deeply to control his temper. “Where’s Sylvie?”
“I don’t know. I told her when I saw her yesterday not to come in today, but—”
“You fired her?”
“No, I didn’t fire her.”
“Suspended?”
“Look, I don’t have to explain myself to you. But if you must know, I advised her to stay away for a few days till the board met.”
“What does the board have to do with her coming to work or not?”
“Are you her lawyer or something?”
“Something.”
“The board needs to discuss all the ramifications of Sylvie’s… I mean, our… uh, product.”
Luc’s eyes went wide with sudden understanding. “You intend to market her love potion? Now? Before the human testing?”
“Well, that hasn’t been decided yet.”
“And Sylvie agreed to this?”
“Well, not exactly. But it’s not up to her. Any work done on Terrebonne Pharmaceuticals property belongs to the company,” Henderson proclaimed. His eyes shifted craftily with those last words.
“Is that, so?” Luc swung on his heel, about to leave and hunt Sylvie down elsewhere. Apparently, Sylvie needed a good lawyer. Not that he was about to volunteer.
“If you find Sylvie, tell her she’d better deliver those formula files to me right away. We need to put them under lock and key. And she’d better bring those two lab rats back, too.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Luc said, peering back over his shoulder. “Neither you, nor the perps, got your hands on the precious formula?”
Stains of red bloomed on Henderson’s cheeks, but he clamped his thin lips together.