Belle Read online

  Belle

  Treasure Hernandez

  www.urbanbooks.net

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Urban Books, LLC

  300 Farmingdale Road, NY-Route 109

  Farmingdale, NY 11735

  Belle Copyright © 2019 Treasure Hernandez

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior consent of the Publisher, except brief quotes used in reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-6228-6266-5

  eISBN 13: 978-1-62286-267-2

  eISBN 10: 1-62286-267-8

  This is a work of fiction. Any references or similarities to actual events, real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended to give the novel a sense of reality. Any similarity in other names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed by Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in its veins.

  —Edward Kennedy

  Prologue

  Lucas Dubois sat staring at the screen of his laptop computer, and suddenly it felt as if his tie were choking him. Or maybe it was that the contents on the screen were making it hard for the brandy he was sipping to go down. He loosened the royal blue Stefano Ricci tie, but the lump in his throat didn’t go anywhere. The time was two in the morning, and Lucas sat alone at the long marble island in the large kitchen of his home. He’d arrived an hour prior, and instead of going to his room and getting into bed with his wife, he’d decided to pop in the small USB drive that had been placed anonymously on his desk. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. The only thought running through his mind was, how could he have been so stupid?

  “Shit,” he said and rubbed his face with the large palm of his hand. “Shit!”

  He caught himself before he shouted out again. He didn’t want to wake his sleeping wife and son. He definitely didn’t want his wife to know why he was so upset. Not after everything he’d sacrificed for his business and for them to have the life they had. However, soon she would know. But by then the ball would be back in his court. When he found the USB on his desk, there was also a sticky note attached to it with a phone number inked on it. Grabbing his cellular phone from the pocket of his dress slacks, he dialed that very same number and waited for it to stop ringing.

  “I see you got my present,” a distorted voice answered after the third ring. “I hope it found you well.”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. “I found it. Just got finished viewing the file on it.”

  “Good. Now we can discuss terms, Mr. Dubois. Well, more like numbers. I think two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a great starting point.”

  Lucas took another gulp of his brandy before scoffing into the phone. The scoff soon turned into a full-blown laugh. He put the glass down and picked up the USB drive, staring down at it briefly before he spoke again.

  “Starting point?” he inquired. “Go fuck yourself.”

  “What?”

  “I said go fuck yourself. I don’t think I stuttered.”

  “Think wisely. If what is on that USB gets out, your entire business will be ruined. Think of your family.”

  “I am thinking about my family. If I give you two hundred and fifty thousand now, you’ll come back. It might not be now, or even in a year. But you’ll come back, and you’ll keep coming back,” Lucas answered, getting up from the island and walking over to the sink. “And because of that, I’m going to put my big-boy pants on and deal with whatever scrutiny this little fiasco comes with. So my answer to you is no. I may lose a lot, more than I want to, but I keep my dignity. And that is worth more to me than even this business. Have a good night . . . whoever you are.”

  Lucas disconnected the phone and put it back in his pocket. He set the USB drive on the granite countertop and grabbed the meat tenderizer out of the drainer next to the sink. He swung down one good time and destroyed the small black device. All that was left of it were itty-bitty pieces. Of course, he knew whoever was blackmailing him would have made plenty of copies by then, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want it in his house.

  After disposing of all the evidence, Lucas powered down his laptop, flipped the kitchen light off, and headed upstairs to get in bed. Maybe it was because of the liquor coursing through his body or because he was so tired that he forgot to arm the home’s alarm system.

  Upstairs he started to walk down the long hallway toward the master bedroom’s closed door, but he paused and turned around. Instead, he headed to the other side of the hallway where the kids’ rooms were. Lucas peeked in on his son, Luca, who was sound asleep and, as usual, on top of his comforter, wearing his favorite dinosaur pajamas. Lucas smiled to himself and shook his head. He didn’t know what the kid had against being underneath covers, but with the way his mom was against the thermostat being over seventy-four degrees at night, he needed them. Lucas entered the room and tucked Luca underneath the covers, kissing his forehead before he left almost as quickly as he came.

  His next stop was his daughter Belle’s room. He opened the door, turned on the light, and smiled. She was away at college, but with as much life as her bedroom had, it was like she was still there with them all. Pictures of herself with friends and posters of her favorite celebrities were sprawled all over her walls. The room smelled of clean linen, Belle’s favorite scent, and her bed was neat, which it never would have been had she been home. She was his pride and joy. There was nothing he felt she couldn’t do, and he felt in his heart that she would be something great, if she didn’t want to take over his business, that was.

  He smiled to himself once more before flicking the light back off and shutting the door. The last thing he needed was for her to come home screaming about how someone had been in her room while she’d been gone. The last time that happened, Luca’s PlayStation ended up broken, and Lucas wasn’t trying to shell out another $400 to replace another one.

  As he finally made his way to his master bedroom, he began to unbutton his shirt. He envisioned Taina groaning in her sleep and complaining about how he wreaked of cheap liquor.

  “E & J are old friends. They give me the best advice,” he would say right before he pulled her close and buried his head in the back of her neck.

  Most people couldn’t say that they had lucked out and married the love of their life. But Taina was everything and more for him. He felt like a blessed man whenever he made it back home to her. He made a promise to her the day they got married that she wouldn’t regret taking his last name, and so far he’d kept that promise.

  The door was slightly open, and he smirked to himself. She must have heard him in the hallway. “I always forget that you could hear a mouse’s footsteps in your sleep,” Lucas said upon entering the room, but he instantly froze when he saw that his wife was still sound asleep.

  However, standing over her, wearing a black ski mask, was a man Lucas didn’t recog
nize. He was tall, about six feet, and Lucas didn’t like how he was looking at Taina in her sleep. He walked up on the man, preparing to cause damage if need be.

  “What are you doing in my house?” he demanded to know in a hushed tone. “Get away from my wife!”

  Lucas was so focused on how closely the man in front of him was to the bed that he didn’t notice the gun with an attached silencer in his hand. When he finally did, he stopped in his tracks, and the man in the ski mask finally looked his way.

  “You should have taken the deal, Lucas,” the man said and sighed. “You should have just . . . taken the deal. Now you have to pay.”

  Fwap!

  Lucas hadn’t realized that somebody else had come up from behind him until he felt the pain in the back of his head. The blow knocked him to the ground, and when he touched the throbbing point and looked at his fingers, he saw that they were covered in blood. Another man wearing a matching mask had entered the room, and he was holding a gun too.

  “Did you really think that you could tell me to fuck myself without consequences?” the first man asked and pointed his gun at Taina’s sleeping body. “She’s a deep sleeper, isn’t she?”

  What he didn’t know was that she probably had her sleeping plugs in, which she often wore when she had a long day. The man’s finger wrapped around the trigger, and Lucas felt fear in the pit of his stomach that he’d never experienced.

  “Wait!” Lucas cried, putting his hands up and struggling back to his feet. “I’ll give you anything. Whatever you want. You got it. Two hundred and fifty thousand? I’ll have it wired to any account you want. Just please don’t hurt my family. Please.”

  The man paused and lowered the gun. He looked back at Lucas, and a smile formed in the mouth of the mask.

  “We figured you’d come around,” he said, and Lucas took a small breath of relief. “But unfortunately for you, that offer is off the table now. The boss feels that you’re more valuable to us dead.”

  He raised his gun again and shot the sleeping woman in her head without so much as blinking an eye. Lucas’s scream filled the room. He tried to leap at the man, but he was too slow. Before he could even lay a hand on him, the same gun that had killed his wife was pointed at the middle of his face.

  Pfft! Pfft!

  Two shots to the face made him drop like a fly. The second man in the room checked their pulses and nodded when he was sure they were both dead. He stood back up and made a distressed sound.

  “You get to have all the fun,” he said.

  “No worries. You get to do the fun part,” the first masked man said and nodded down the hall. “No witnesses, remember.”

  The second man looked down the hall to where he’d seen a kid sleeping in his bed. He gave his partner a look before walking out of the room and to the kid’s bedroom. He stood in the doorway for a second and watched his chest go up and down. He’d kicked the covers off of his body in his sleep, although the house wasn’t that warm. The gun in the man’s hand rose, aimed at the little boy. As he prepared to tug the trigger, his hand wavered slightly. But that wouldn’t stop him from doing what needed to be done.

  “Sleep tight, kid . . . forever.”

  Pfft!

  Chapter 1

  What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

  —Helen Keller

  “Sometimes life isn’t kind to any of us, and time is limited. We don’t know why the Dubois family was taken from this earth so soon. All I can say is the devil is working. You hear me? The devil is working! So in this great time of pain, we ask you, Lord, to wrap your heavenly arms around each and every shoulder in this congregation today. We ask that you catch every tear falling and ease every aching heart. We send a special prayer today to our sister Belle in this tumultuous time. Remind her that through this great loss she still has been granted with the gift of life. . . .”

  At that moment, Reverend Ingram’s words seemed to run together, and Belle Dubois lost track of what he was saying. She never thought in a million years that she’d be sitting in the front row, staring at the lifeless bodies of her family lying in three caskets. Her mother, her father, and her 7-year-old brother were all gone, just like that. The veil connected to the black hat on her head covered the despair all over her face, but it did nothing to help the aching pain in the pit of her stomach.

  Just a week ago, Belle was away and enjoying the college life in Texas. Her parents had just bought her a new all-white 2018 Chevrolet Camaro, and life couldn’t get any better. That was, until it got a whole lot worse. Belle had just returned to her dorm room after a night out when she got the call that turned her life upside down.

  Her entire family had been murdered in their sleep.

  She flew home as fast as she could, but she didn’t even remember the trip. Everything after that phone call was a blur, even talking to the detectives in the interrogation room. There was one thing the detective said that rang over and over in her head: “We think whoever did this was after your father. Your mother and your brother were just casualties in the crossfire.”

  Her father, Lucas Dubois, was a very wealthy man and had a heart of gold. Same with her mother. Belle didn’t know who would do such a thing to her family. Whoever it was had to have been pretty sick and sadistic to kill a 7-year-old kid.

  “Oh, Luca,” Belle whispered as she stared at the smallest casket before her. “I love you forever.”

  Tears ran down her face in a warm stream, and she felt a strong arm wrap around her shoulders. The gesture should have been a comforting one, but when she saw that the arm belonged to her uncle Karan, she pulled away and jumped to her feet. Shooting a glare his way, she gathered her things and stormed out of the church, suddenly needing to be alone. She couldn’t take it. Not only had she lost her family, but she’d lost everything else, too.

  “Belle!” she heard her aunt Sinthia shout, but it was too late.

  Belle couldn’t stand it any longer. Even when she was sitting with her back to the entire church, she could feel all eyes on her. She couldn’t even grieve in peace. The last five days of her life had been a complete nightmare, and the things she was feeling inside she wouldn’t wish on anybody. Once out of the church, she threw the black veil from her face and bent over with her hands on the knees of her black dress. She gasped for air as if she’d just emerged from a pool after being under too long. She didn’t care about the air nipping away at her damp cheeks on that cold Nebraska day. All she wanted to do was get as far away as possible from the North Omaha church.

  “Belle!”

  Belle straightened up and whisked around to see that her aunt Sinthia, Uncle Karan’s wife, had followed her outside. Belle returned the concerned look on her aunt’s face with a glare of her own.

  “Belle! Why did you run out like that?”

  “Leave me alone, Sinthia. Go back in there with your crook of a husband!”

  “Now you wait a good minute, young lady! You will not speak about your uncle like that, especially on a day like this! I don’t think Taina would appreciate you acting this way.”

  “You mean on the day that he stole everything my father owned?” Belle shouted. When she saw the shocked look on her aunt’s face, she scoffed. “Yeah, that’s right. I know everything! The lawyer paid me a visit right before I left for the funeral. He told me that my father died before he could finish his will. He also told me that because I am not Lucas Dubois’s biological child, I have no right to any of his businesses or his money. Can you guess where all of that plus his assets will go? Can you guess, Auntie? You. You and your husband. That bastard put our house on the market yesterday! My family isn’t even in the dirt yet! I have nothing! No home. No family. I have five hundred dollars to my name because my accounts have been frozen. So fuck you! Fuck you and your husband. And don’t you ever say my mother’s name again if you know what’s good for you. After today, neither of you will ever see me again!”

  Belle didn’t wai
t for her to say another word, but even if she had, no words would come. Sinthia could do nothing but place her hand on her chest and watch Belle storm off to the only thing she had in the world: her car.

  Once the door to the Camaro slammed closed, Belle angrily hit the steering wheel with her gloved fists. Snatching the hat from her head, she threw it to the side and began to scream. She was feeling every human emotion at one time, and it felt as if she were going to explode. She was lost, had nowhere to go, and had no real family to call on.

  She’d lost track of how long she was sitting in her vehicle, sobbing and crying, when finally she stopped and pulled down her visor to get a good look at her face. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

  “My Belle, my beauty. You will always be the most beautiful girl in any room you walk in.”

  Taina’s voice sounded in Belle’s head. It was something she’d told her daughter since she was old enough to walk. She always told Belle that she was a different kind of gorgeous. Some would even say her beauty was out of this world. Taina had been very easy on the eyes herself, but her looks were nothing compared to Belle’s. That was why she gave her the name in the first place.

  Although Belle had taken Taina’s brown skin and curvy figure, she had other exotic features, and she never knew the origin of them. Taina always claimed to have been slightly wild in college. Therefore, she could never pinpoint who Belle’s father was. That meant Taina would never know where her amber eyes, her slightly pointed nose, or the long, fine hair on the top of her head came from. It was something that used to eat away at Belle as a kid, but when Taina married Lucas when Belle was 5 years old, none of that mattered anymore. She finally had a dad to love her and give them the life they deserved. Lucas loved Belle like his own flesh, so it was only fitting that he give his last name to her too.