Midnight Waltz - Midnight in Paris (Book 1)

- Warning - This book contains scenes of violence and s****l content. Additionally, it includes depictions of substance use, murder, and manipulation of consent, which may be triggering for some readers. If any of these themes are disturbing to you, I recommend refraining from reading this book. For those who wish to continue, I hope you enjoy the read. Thank you! Introduction -Harvey- St. Tropez - July 12, 2019 Revenge is a rather unsettling feeling; I admit it. But I’m not a calm man. Unlike the picture I’ve drawn. I looked at the man sitting in the middle of the pavilion on the dock. If I didn’t know him, I might have thought he was just watching the sea. No, I knew Bellamy. I had known him since I was thirteen, and he was never the type to be lulled by the calmness of the sea. I knew he was tracking the routes of the cargo ships leaving even now from his phone, while listening to the prosecutor discuss my father’s murder investigation through his earphones. I looked at my phone. I had the same route details, but I had never looked at them. There was no need. Bell was always here for this sort of thing, and I never really needed to. Until now. 1 New Message I sent the draft of my dissertation to Prof. Stewart. He wants you to apply for next year. Harvey insists... Rosa I pressed my lips together as I stared at the spot where the sun sank into the sea, squinting my eyes. The Oxford chapter was closed now. There was no going back. Here is the English translation of your text: When Jules returned with cold water from the nearby vitamin bar, I put on my sunglasses and camouflaged the spot I had been staring at. "The sea must be warm," Jules said as she adjusted the straw hat on her head and tried to wrap her arms around my waist. I quickly snatched the bottle from her hand and turned around to drink, "Let's swim." I knew the woman behind me had expectations of me. f**k! The world had so many expectations of me, but I wasn't at that point yet. I handed the bottle back to Jules and said briefly, "I have things to do." I deleted the message on the screen and sent Bellamy a short but important message. Let’s talk. H.D. I looked at Bellamy one last time from a distance, took the room key off my wrist, and handed it to Jules. "You swim." Bellamy pulled out the other phone from his pocket and read the message I sent. His eyes were scanning the surroundings for me. I didn't wait for him. I didn't wait for Jules's reaction either. As I left the woman behind me, I turned toward the hotel. With each step, I could feel St. Tropez sinking into darkness. The moment I entered the hotel's boundaries, the jazz music reaching my ears fused with the blue lighting that flowed into my eyes. While everyone in the hotel was experiencing a thousand shades of calmness, the anger swelling within me irritated I passed through the lobby, knowing I was buried in an injustice. Not just me. Nichole too. Shila and Aimon as well. "Nichole." My sister, in her dark orange pareo, was walking a few steps ahead in the hotel corridor. She hadn't left her room since we arrived here, so seeing her in the corridor now was surprising. Nichole looked as surprised as I did when she turned to face me. Maybe because of my furrowed brows, she thought she needed to explain herself. "I... I was going to the hotel garden," she started, her voice trailing off in the middle of the sentence. The glimmer in her eyes was from her emotions overflowing, as it had been for the past few months, and she was trying to hold them back. "Bell called me to the dock," she finally admitted, unable to hold it in any longer. I would have wanted her to leave, but she wasn't strong enough yet. She had left the room, but she couldn't even make it to the garden. "We have things to discuss with Bell," I said, showing respect for her sadness. I wouldn't force her to talk if she didn't want to. Nichole nodded gratefully, then wetted her lips. She tugged at the fringes of her loose pareo with her fingers. She moved as though to turn away, but hesitated before speaking again. "Harvey." I waited for her to speak. My sister and I had never been overly close. Not even with my twin. With the messed-up genes of our family, I had always been the outsider. But now, it was just Nichole and me. We were that little family with no one else but each other. I knew that when Nichole looked at me, she expected the affection of an older brother, but also knew she wouldn't get it, which is why she lived with that helplessness inside. But this was who I was. I wasn't that perfect man who would hug her with brotherly affection thirty years from now. That person was Bellamy. "When will we go home?" "Tonight," I said. After what I had learned, I couldn't waste any more time here. Since the blood of my father and brother had been spilled on us, I had been waiting for a sign, and after what I learned a few hours ago, I finally knew what I had to do. *** Although I sometimes went to the company in Paris, I had never been to the management floor of the hotel in St. Tropez before. As I passed by the door with my father's name on it, I felt a burning anger tear through my chest and fall into my stomach. My father might not have been the best man in the world, but this was too much. “Monsieur Carpentier is not here.” The last thing I expected when I tried to enter my father's office was for someone to stop me. I turned to look at the young man who had approached from behind and blocked my way. He had managed to dress in a bureaucratic manner that was completely out of place for the heat of St. Tropez. I licked my lips and pulled my wallet from the back pocket of my shorts. Seeing my last name would be enough. “Harv... Monsieur De La Cour!” The young man hesitated as he read the name on my ID and swallowed nervously. “I apologize,” he said, regretfully. “I didn't know you were here.” “It’s okay, Chevell,” Bellamy said, coming up behind me and touching my shoulder. Chevell bowed his head again in apology, looking directly at Bellamy. “Come on, buddy.” Bellamy moved ahead, guiding me as if he knew just how critical this conversation would be. I understood. We had grown up together, but we had never been like brothers. To an outsider, I was the stepson of the De La Cour family. Bellamy, on the other hand, was the biological one. “Take Aimon's seat.” I nodded and sat in one of the guest chairs. “I was talking to Calvin,” Bellamy said immediately, speaking up. “He says there’s no trace of an assassination in your father Here is the Turkish translation of the text you provided: I just laughed. "Juliet doesn't think so," I said sarcastically. Until a few months ago, I wouldn't have trusted Juliet on this matter, but after what I'd learned, Juliet was now providing a much more reliable report. As Bellamy rubbed his chin, I sent the documents from my phone to him. These were the checkpoints on the highway routes my father had made agreements on. And most of them were in collaboration with Du Pond. As Bellamy focused on the notification sounds from his phone, I stood up and poured a shot of espresso into a whiskey glass from the coffee machine's carafe. Then, I filled the glass with Sherry Cask from the bottle on the table. "Where did you find these?" I took a sip from my glass and swallowed nervously. "Harvey," "It's not important." "It is." Bellamy looked at me as he set his phone aside. "First Shila, then Aimon." I gritted my teeth. "Someone's messing with you, Harvey. This could be a trap." "It could be." I said before downing the rest of my glass. "But it might not be, either." "Aimon wasn't a threat to Du Pond." Bellamy said seriously. Maybe he wasn’t. But it was also a fact that Du Pond’s pants caught fire when I got involved in the equation. Especially when he heard I was making the coke star. This was all too coincidental! My father had been taking over Du Pond’s checkpoints for a year and was preparing to open a lab under the guise of a beauty brand. Yet, neither Aimon nor Shila had even threatened him. But when my father asked me to make the coke star, within a week, first my father died. And my twin, Shila... "Harvey—" "Give me my gun." I placed the empty glass on the coffee table between us and looked at Bellamy. It was clear he hadn't expected this from me. "I can handle this." I knew Bellamy wasn’t eyeing my crappy hotel or logistics company. A man like Bellamy wouldn’t care about my little fortune. No, he was paying his debt to my father. He was helping Aimon's psychopathic son to take revenge on the man who had protected that little orphan who had sought shelter with the vast fortune of the underworld. But he couldn’t handle it. "You can’t handle it." Bellamy could perhaps avenge my father, but he couldn’t avenge Shila. To do that, he’d have to kill me first. - Note: Hello, first of all, I hope you liked my book. I should let you know that I am Turkish, and this series was originally written in Turkish. As an author, I don't have enough proficiency in English to translate my book. That's why I had ChatGPT do the translation. For this reason, if there are any issues with the translation or unclear sentences, I would really appreciate it if you let me know. That way, I can quickly fix the mistakes. I'm also very curious about your comments. While supporting me on this dark romance journey, please don't hesitate to share your thoughts 💕 One last thing I need to inform you about is that this series consists of 4 books, 3 of which are written and completed, so a new chapter will be posted every day. The final book is still being written 💕 You can reach me through my social media accounts: Facebook: https://w**************m/angelina.ivashkov/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/purebloodgl/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@purebloodgl Follow me on i********: and t****k for promotional videos of Paris at Midnight