Free Steal My Heart by Linsey Lanier

the sleeping child and settled himself beside her. He studied the tender face, the pouting lips. She was a lot like her mother. Stubborn, willful, proud. So the former Mrs. Mark Storm had never told her daughter who her father was. He couldn’t blame her.
    With his forefinger, he wiped the moisture from under her soft cheek.
    So many tears. The little girl didn’t know the meaning of real tears. Not the way he did.
    He’d learned that in Paris, growing up on the shabby streets of Goutte d’Or with its pickpockets and drug dealers. And from a mother who sold her body to a different man every night but never seemed to have enough money to feed her own son. He’d known tears then. He’d known want and hunger and fear from the moment he was born.
    And yet in those crime-infested streets he’d found his destiny. There he’d taught himself the Trade simply from observation. When Jean-Claude first transferred twenty francs from a stranger’s pocket to his own without a soul nearby being a whit the wiser, he knew he had talent.
    He worked the streets tirelessly. Soon he had enough for good food and good clothes. He became ambition and enlisted the aid of others. Young boys from broken, dysfunctional homes like himself. He taught them the skills he’d learned. Sent them out to practice it. Guided them—all in exchange for a cut of their take. He kept them in line with praise and intimidation.
    And one unbreakable rule.
    Once in the employ of Jean-Claude Laroche, you could never leave. If you tried, you would find yourself floating facedown in the Seine. No one had ever dared test him.
    At seventeen, he left his mother’s rundown flat and moved into a lovely place near the Champs-Elysees. He made friends with merchants and later weaseled himself into the circles of the rich. He learned their habits, where they were careless, when they were away from home. He pretended to be everyone’s friend, all the while robbing them blind. They were such easy marks.
    He began to build his empire in earnest. He traveled. London. Rome. South America. The Middle East. At last he settled in New York and set up shop there. That was where one fateful afternoon, he’d found Mark Storm begging on the side of the street.
    As needy and desperate a street urchin as he had once been himself. He took him under his wing, as he had with so many others. But Mark was different. Mark had superior talent. After the boy matured and began bringing in sums to rival his own, Jean-Claude began to think of him as something of an heir. After all, who else would run his empire after he was gone?
    But it seemed loyalty was an attribute Mark was short of. He turned against him.
    The night Storm went out on his own, Jean-Claude had just been about to capture him and pay him back for his betrayal when the young man was arrested by the Feds. When he learned Storm’s wife was pregnant, he’d come up with a much better plan. All it would take was a little patience. And when Storm deepened his betrayal with the unthinkable, it sealed the young man’s fate.
    As he would soon see.
    Once more he ran the back of his long finger over the sleeping child’s cheek. Tender, delicate. Her fair skin and pretty hair were just what some men preferred. Just the sort of features that would bring top dollar on the black market.
    Sell her or kill her? Such a dilemma.
    He would make the decision shortly. He only had to discover which way would make Mark Storm most regret the day he turned on his old mentor.
    He took the empty water glass, rose and locked the bedroom door behind him. Yes, he’d find out soon.

Chapter Eight
     
    Paige left Mark and his everything bagel with strawberry cream cheese at Déjeuner and drove around the city for an hour, her mind an angry blur.
    Six o’clock? Coney Island?
    Why was the kidnapper making her wait so long? Was he just taunting her? Why? She had his stupid necklace. Why didn’t he just take it and give her Holly back? And Mark knew the man