Bourbon Bastard
By DK Marie

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The Bourbon Betrayal

Chapter One

“My life is distilled down to liquor, letdowns, and love. In that order. And I’m about to have a double shot of all three.”

I say this to no one in particular, which is the luxury of living alone.

“Damn, it’s time to switch back to reading romcoms instead of dark romances. I’m becoming as broody as my brothers,” I mutter to the dregs of my coffee.

Standing, I set the mug in my kitchen sink and pick up the folder.

I’ve been carrying the damn thing around for months. I flip it open, stare at the same two pages, close it. Again. Maison Marchand is printed on the tab in clean type.

Everything about the cognac house is there. From production volumes to industry awards and nearly everything in between.

What isn’t there is anything real about their master blender, Olivier Beaumont. The man is a ghost with a résumé. I can find what he’s built at the house his late wife’s family owns, and plenty about Ambre herself—her ballet career cut short, her death that left Olivier a widower and single father at twenty-nine. But him? Nothing personal. And in every party photo he’s angled slightly away, half-present, like a man who learned early how to be in a room without being seen.

That doesn’t mean he’s the Olivier I knew. That man would know better than to show his face in Kentucky.

The problem is that boy didn’t really exist. What he did—to me, to my family—proved I never knew him at all.

What I do know is that he’s been taking up far too much real estate in the back of my skull for the last three months. Space I should be spending on things that actually matter. Supplier relationships I haven’t learned yet. Market gaps I haven’t mapped. If I should buy my condo or keep my escape routes open.

I’m best at those. Fifteen years of practice. Hell, I’m still reeling from my six-month lease with a renewal clause that I actually initiated. I stood in that leasing office for a full minute before I signed it, pen hovering, like my hand knew something my brain was still arguing about.

“Time to go.” My words bounce around my empty kitchen.

Not empty, actually. There’s a cookie jar on the counter, ceramic and ridiculous. I’d picked it out with Ivy, Thorne’s girlfriend. The cookies inside are Madison’s recipe. My half-sister had sat on my counter stool and narrated every step like I needed supervision. To be fair, I had.

I tuck the worn folder that’s been my constant companion into my messenger bag without opening it. My laptop follows, and I head out to the Mercedes.

My driver, Susan, is waiting. Same as she’s waited for me all my life, through every homecoming and disappearing act. She’s been loyal to the Blackstone name even when I wasn’t.

“Morning, Ms. Lillianna,” she says, as I slide into the backseat.

“Morning, Susan.” I buckle my seatbelt and act like I’m a woman who’s slept. “How’s the drive looking?”

“Clear,” she says. “You’ve got time.”

Time. Right. I have given myself forty minutes for a twenty-minute drive from my place to Bardstown. I have approximately twenty minutes of buffer to sit with my thoughts, which is twenty minutes more than I want.

Turning on my favorite playlist, I pull out my notes. But when I’ve re-read the same line twelve times, I give up and fish my phone out instead. I call Rosalia.

She picks up on the second ring. “You’ve got this,” she says, skipping a greeting.

I laugh. “You don’t know what this is yet.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got it.”

I press my lips together, trying to keep my worry from escaping, but three months stewing has them spilling out. “I might know Olivier. Probably not, but maybe,” I ramble.

“Yeah, I know. He’s Julien’s dad.”

“No, I mean from before. Before he was Julien’s father.”

“Before like?”

“Before like seventeen.” I drag my thumbnail along the edge of my phone case. “First love. The kind that leaves a mark.”

“Oh, Lilly.” The silence that follows has a shape. I can’t tell if it’s pity or understanding. Or which is worse.

“It ended badly.” That’s a massive understatement. “Then he disappeared to France. To France, Rose.”

“Have you told your brothers?”

“All I know is that the master blender’s first name and country are the same as the boy I knew.”

“They could look into it. Do you want me to—”

“No.” She’s going to offer to ask my brother, her husband, to dig into this Olivier’s past. I’ve already done that and found nothing. “If either of them thinks I’m nervous or worried, they’ll put a hold on the collaboration in a hot second.” I snap my fingers. “The Olivier of my teens took enough from me. He won’t take this.”

Quiet on her end, the comfortable kind. Rosalia letting it land.

“What does your gut say?” she finally asks.

“That it’s probably a coincidence.”

I could have hired someone. A private investigator with French connections might find what I can’t. But if it got back to one of my brothers… Well, I’m not ready to explain why I’m investigating the man we’re about to collaborate with, based on nothing but a first name and a feeling I can’t quite shake.

“Do you believe that?” Rosalia asks, pulling me back.

“I believe it about ninety percent of the time.”

“And the other ten?”

“Wonders why there doesn’t seem to be a single photo where his face is clearly visible. It’s odd, especially for a man whose late wife danced with the Paris Opéra Ballet and whose in-laws own the company he works for. That isn’t exactly a low-profile life.” I run my thumbnail along the material of my slacks. “And his son has been in my English tutoring rotation for five months. Is it a coincidence?”

I pause, looking but not seeing the landscape blurring past my window.

Julien Beaumont. Four years old and completely, devastatingly earnest. The little boy who’s absolutely convinced that every English word I teach him is funny. He laughs at “umbrella” every single time it’s spoken. I’ve started saying it just to hear him.

I’ve been silent too long. “Basically, the other ten percent is why I called you and not my brothers.”

She exhales. It’s not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. “That’s fair.”

“Not to you, it isn’t, but I needed to say it out loud to someone who isn’t going to turn it into a board meeting. Or worse, swoop in and try to rescue me.” I’ve been holding this in for three months and saying it out loud doesn’t make it lighter. I’m not sure what I expected. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you with this.”

“Don’t apologize. Sebastian—or Thorne—doesn’t need to know every thread you pull to see if it unravels. That’s not withholding, that’s being smart. You’ve got a first name, a country, and a niggle in your gut. And it’s not about the distillery yet. It’s about you.”

I’ve had people tell me they believed in me my whole life. Rose is the first to make it sound like a logical conclusion rather than a courtesy.

“Thank you for that, but what if I already messed up not telling them? A man with no traceable personal history. It’s odd, right? Normal people have pasts.” I tap my nails against my knee. “Hell, you can Google me back to a very unfortunate phase in my early twenties where I thought bangs were a personality.”

“Lilly.” She says it in the tone of a woman who’s watched me deflect before and isn’t interested in the performance. “You’re a Blackstone. And while his late wife’s cognac company might be big in France, he could be just some regular guy. Oh, hold on a sec.” She tells someone where to find romance novels. Then returns to me. “Sorry.”

I smile. “You’re in the bookstore. When was the last time you visited the hotel side of your building?” Rose runs her boutique book-themed hotel flawlessly, but she’s never happier than among her shelves.

“I love it here,” she sighs, sounding like she’s swooning. “Which reminds me. I know this isn’t the point right now, but will you continue tutoring? You’re stepping into the distillery full-time. That is going to take everything you’ve got. The tutoring, the students you still have, have you thought about what happens to them?”

“We’ll see. I’m not going to take on any new students, but I love this chapter of my life. I’m not ready to let it go.”

“I get that,” she replies.

Neither of us says anything for a moment. The black fences blur past my window. The fields have gone amber and gold. Then Susan pulls the car onto the winding road of Blackstone Bourbon. The sight makes my heart ache in a way I don’t entirely know what to do with.

“I’m at the distillery,” I tell Rosalia.

“Call me after,” she says.

“Yeah.”

I hang up before she can say anything kind. I said the thing I’ve been carrying for three months and I still feel completely alone with it. That’s not her fault. Some things don’t get lighter just because you finally share the weight.

Susan parks in front of the main building at 8:47. I take in the limestone facade, the copper weathervane my grandfather insisted on. The smell of char and oak hits before I even open the door. It’s the scent of comfort laced with hurt.

I’m thirteen minutes early.

The car idles. I’m not someone who sits around having feelings in backseats. But I let myself have this one. I take in the weight of the folder in my bag, the name printed on it, the particular dread of almost-certainty.

Ninety percent.

The worst number in the world.

The boy I knew traced French verbs across my palm in a library, slow and deliberate, because it was an excuse to hold my hand and we both knew it. “Appartenir,” he said. His accent wasn’t French. I was seventeen and certain, for the first time, that someone was looking at me—not the name, not what came with it.

I was right that he was looking.

I was wrong about what he was looking at.

I get out of the car.

Because I’m Lillianna Blackstone and I am not running today.

Adjusting my jacket, I pick up my bag. Walk through the door.

I’m carrying three months of research, a name on a folder, ninety percent certainty, and the memory of the first person I ever loved and the last one I ever trusted.

I hope I don’t recognize him.

I’m terrified that I will.

Excerpt From: DK Marie. “Bourbon Betrayal”