Morals Of Vampire {#3}

Part 16

[Part 16]

"Did you get the news?" Dante breezed into the room, as Louis looked up from his desk. With the slow moving of his label's headquarters from Lyon to the States, Louis had ended up bringing his work back to the mansion instead, focusing on making his creations while watching over the mansion.

"News? Mon ami, I haven't been outside in ages. I feel like this is house confinement." Louis grumbled softly, looking up jealously at his carefree friend. He missed the past where it was only him and Dante, outside in the world as best friends, being each other's wingmen. But Louis understood that the man had found someone to love, and he couldn't blame Dante. He was happy that Dante had found love, and even made a family, but sometimes in the lonely silence of the mansion these days, Louis remembered those days in a softly jealous light.

"I'll be your paper boy." Dante replied with ease, strolling towards his desk before he caught sight of the blueprints on Louis's table. "Is that the spring collection?"

"Summer." Louis corrected with a sigh, erasing the last line that he had made on the dress he was currently designing. "Being stuck here is making me lose my touch. I have only three designs coming for spring."

"Three?" Dante repeated with disbelief, blinking in surprise when Louis rested his pencil and gave up forcing a design up. "Didn't you do ten of them even when you were supposed to be watching Renee and train our new recruits last year?"

"That was when I could go back to France." Louis grumbled, though he should know better than to. While he was never really fond of the Coven and the Council in France, Louis had loved his homeland. It was where his life had started and ended, and was a place of utmost beauty. Breathing in the air of France could give him so much motivation to design, but Louis could no longer step there without risking upsetting them. "There was a reason why I had headquarters in Lyon for so long."

"Would it help lift your mood if I volunteered to help?" Dante offered, and though Louis very much looked forward to the return of the man to the industry to produce more beauty designs for the runway collections, suspicion still took forefront.

"Aren't you busy with Lexi and Leon, mon frère?"

Louis knew something was wrong in the way Dante hesitated for the briefest span of moment. Having been his best friend for so many years, Louis knew when Dante was hiding something from him, and getting a family hadn't changed his best friend a single bit when it came to secrets.

"I'm busy, but for you, I'm always free. Amico, you wound me. What do you suspect me of?" Dante tried his best to cover it up by doing his easy Casanova-style of breezing past conversation, but what had Louis not already seen before from the Italian man? Louis thought back on the serious conversation that he and Jean-Jacques had already shared the previous day.

"This is about Kay, isn't it? You're on Jean-Jacques's side, and you think that Kay did something to me to make me side him and act funny with Jack." Louis guessed with a sigh, knowing he had hit spot on when Dante blinked in fake surprise.

"Di dio, how can I suspect you like that? You are my best man, mio fratello." Dante stepped forwards quickly, slapping him on the back, but Louis already knew the intentions of his best friend. With another heavy sigh, Louis stood up from his desk.

"I've spoken to Jean-Jacques yesterday about the exact same matter, so if he sent you here, you will get the same reply from me, mon ami. Kay did speak to me that night, but it is about something that I cannot say. It does not concern the war either; so I will not be obliged to tell Jean-Jacques about it in favor of securities for our Coven. The secret is Kay's to keep, and it only happens that Jack suspected the very same secret –that I confirmed." Louis explained in one breath, then paused at a quick thought.