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His eyes looked wild, almost feral as his bones curled around the hook.
“It’ll never be over between us. Léonie Bastide, I’ll love you past my dying breath. I’ll love you through the underworld and back. I fucked up, sweetheart. Fucked up like Hell. I should never, ever have used you like that. I lied on you and lied on your name. It was fucked up and wrong. Please forgive me.”
I only shrugged, and looked my lying husband right in the face.
“You were right, though. You aren’t the father of this baby. Your brother Mano is.”
CHAPTER 15
Étienne
“He is not,” I snarled, glaring at Hugo, who had risen from his seat and was watching me warily.
I flicked my eyes back at Mano. Hell no.
“I think I would know,” Léonie said, and I couldn’t believe this was her tone. I couldn’t believe that was her scornful curl of the lips. “You said my baby wasn’t yours. So you win, Étienne. This baby isn’t yours.”
Her hands were so steady on that boat hook, and she was absolutely glowing in the sun. Even the horrific léger I had written on her forehead, thankfully fading now, didn’t diminish her glowing strength and confidence.
After all these days running on the fine edge of sanity and insanity, so impatient to find my wife that it felt like I was peeling out of my own skin, like it was going to roll off me in strips, now she faced me without any excitement. Any relief to see me.
Only revulsion.
I had to fix this.
“Léonie. Please. I know that's my baby.”
“Why do you know that?” she countered. “Like you said, you were gone a lot. You don’t know what I was doing.”
The bottom was sinking out of my damn soul, dark devastation was crawling over every inch of my skin.
“Because you love me,” I said. “You have always loved me.”
She shook her head, and her eyes never left mine. That boat hook never left my throat.
“I don’t love you anymore. Not after what happened. This is what you wanted, Étienne Bastide. You cast me aside. You called me a lying whore. You publicly rejected each and every attempt on my part to explain. Now give me my divorce and get the hell out of here.”
Divorce?
“I will never give you a divorce,” I bit out, grabbing the boat hook and jabbing it toward my throat. “Kill me fucking dead now if you want me to stop. Because I won’t stop until I get your forgiveness.”
Her eyes widened, and for a moment I thought I saw a spark of something deep inside them, but then she jutted her chin over to Mano.
“Let daddy back over here so he can see how his baby is doing.”
“If I thought you were telling the truth I would fucking send him to the bottom of this lake before I let him have you! You are mine. I claimed you a long time ago.”
“It’s too late for that dick-measuring stuff. You publicly rejected me.”
As I watched in horror, the boat hook at my throat, Hugo went to stand by my wife, putting an arm around her waist, hand spanning her baby bump. But she never wanted anyone to touch her but me.
And now Hugo was doing it?
“You need to leave,” he said. “The child in her belly knows my voice. Knows my songs. He knows my love. Not yours. You weren’t here to protect him. So you’re no kind of father at all.”
Rage and despair filled me—at my brothers, at myself.
My fingers itched for violence and the boat hook scraped by my throat as I grabbed Hugo.
