Mimi's Demons

Chapter 24: On Disciplining Children and Traitors

It didn't take long for Duke to find the stool pigeon.

A woman with dyed red hair and smeared makeup knelt before him, only slightly bruised, her arms tied behind her. She trembled, as she should, and wouldn't lift her head. He didn't need her too. He knew her face would have all the lines of a woman fighting tooth and nail against middle-age.

Filled out behind her, reflected in the black marble of the entry hall, were the men tasked with hunting her down.

"Janet," he said. "I thought you knew me."

She said nothing. Her shoulders were too thin for a woman. He wondered back to when she had started to lose weight and wondered if that was when she'd turned. Changes in a woman's body often reflected change in the brain.

He snapped his fingers and the head of the group came to him with a neat, organized manila folder, his head down. Duke took it and took his time scanning through it. He didn't doubt this lot's reliability. He knew, before reading, that the evidence condemning this woman would be in it, but he looked anyway to stretch out the expecting dread of the woman. Dying was easy. Everything leading up to dying, though, was the true punishment.

He stopped on the second to last page, frowning.

"You did this for a pool boy?" He wasn't surprised, but it was definitely insulting. "Did you think a twenty-five year old man with a face like that would honestly be into an old broad like you?"

Janet gave a broken sob.

Did he seriously almost die because of the classic seduction plot? Ugh, so unoriginal. He wanted to barf in his mouth and then sleep for the rest of the week. Or better yet, listen in on his daughter's play session with her dolls. The stories were getting increasingly outlandish. Marmalade had recently poisoned her ex, leaving Buttitches alone with a pet chimpanzee, and flown off to Camelot to become a knight who spurned all men. There'd been lots of blood, as his Mimi made it the most gruesome poisoning yet, drawing on a medical knowledge no eleven-year-old should know.

He really should think about the medical school he wanted to send her to—no, it was too soon. She hadn't even finished elementary. He'd bring the medical school to her. He wanted to see what she'd do with it. Desperately so. The things she'd bring to the family business...

He hadn't realized he'd trailed off staring at the picture of the dimpled pool boy until one of the men had held back a cough.

Oh yeah. He had people to kill.

"Do any of you have an especially sharp cup? Could we sharpen a tin one?"

Once he'd given his verdict and sent Janet away screaming through tears and snot, he got up from his chair, carefully stretched his back as to not aggravate his still healing stomach, and let his feet take him to where Omen reported his Mimi to be.

As a reward for her good behavior, Mimi had been let out into the gardens. The wall was tall and rimmed with broken glass that glittered in the morning sun, but was tastefully tucked away behind well kept trees and bushes.

Mimi sat on a fluffy plaid comforter, nibbling a bowl of tiny, sweet grapes as she read. Despite her blossoming into playing with dolls like a normal kid, she only ever did so when Serena played with her. Otherwise her preferred activity was reading. The sun made her hair glow gold and brought out the freckles sprinkled across her cheeks.

His chest warmed. He'd never realized how perpetually cold it had been until he'd acquired his daughter.

Her head tilted up when she heard his weight on the corner of her blanket crinkle the grass.