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“No, we can’t,” Yvette says evenly, her gun still trained on Anastasia’s head. “The time for civilized chats is passed, Alexandre. It passed when Liam came here, and you realized this little ballerina cunt was pregnant, and you let themleave.” She shakes her head in disgust, still keeping the gun level. “This girl has some hold over you, and there’s only one way to put an end to this.”
“Yvette, this is enough. You’ve lost your senses. Every decision I’ve made for and withpetithas been my own. You are a part of my life—an important part—but you threaten that with your actions. I will not have you harmingpetit—or the baby. You threaten both Ana and our child with this—”
“Mychild,” I growl angrily at Alexandre, but neither he nor Yvette appear to pay the slightest attention to me, focused entirely on each other and on Ana, who has gone bone-white with fright, her blue eyes wide and glimmering in her face.
“How thefuckdo you think you can be a father, Alexandre?” Yvette spits, her face flushing red. “This girl was supposed to be a toy, a-apet!But somehow, she got under your skin and into your head—both yours and Liam’s heads, apparently,” she adds, her voice laced with disgust. “I don’t understand why or how. Look at her, the skinny, damaged little thing. She’snothing. But both of you—willing to sacrifice so much for her.”
Yvette shakes her head, her finger sliding towards the trigger. “I’m going to do what no one else seems to be able to and put a stop to this once and for all. You’ll all thank me for it, eventually, once it’s done.”
“Non! Mon amie,Yvette,non!”Alexandre’s voice rises, his words a shout as he flings himself towards Yvette, as her hand twitches on the gun. Ana is frozen, visibly shaking but seemingly unable to move, but it doesn’t matter. Alexandre lunging for Yvette is enough to throw Yvette off guard and delay her shot. Before she can recover, Alexandre wrestles her to the ground, her gun spinning away across the floor as he pins her down, his hands going to her throat.
I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. On my other side, Max goes for the gun that Yvette dropped, grabbing Ana and moving her away from the two figures tussling on the floor as Yvette tries desperately to get out of Alexandre’s grasp. “Mon amie, amour, non, non, s’il te plait—”
Her words are strangled by Alexandre’s fingers digging into her throat, and I see Niall start to move towards them, but I stop him, staring in horrified fascination. Yvette had blamed Ana for having a hold over Alexandre, but it was really her who had had a hold over him all along—egging him on, pushing him to depravity, to violence. And now, in this final act of violence, I can see Alexandre breaking that hold.
At first, I think he’s only going to knock her out. But as Yvette flails under him, grabbing and kicking and scratching, held down by the weight of Alexandre’s body straddling hers and his hands gripping her slender neck, I realize that it’s going much, much farther than that.
And I’m not inclined to stop it.
He’s going to kill her, and I can’t think of a single reason to save her, other than the fact that I’d like to do it myself. But asides from that, I can’t think of any cause for Yvette to live.
“Alexandre—” Yvette chokes out his name, her eyes bugging as he tightens his grip. “Alexandre—amour—”
Her voice rattles, breaking off, and I can see the tendons in Alexandre’s throat straining with the force of what he’s doing, the sheer violence of it. It feels shocking to watch, even considering the things I’ve seen, intimate in a way that suggests none of usshouldbe seeing it, this moment when Alexandre has finally snapped.
It feels as if it goes on forever, but in reality, it’s only a few minutes. Yvette’s struggling slows, then stops, her hands dropping away from Alexandre’s arms and flopping heavily to the carpet at her sides. Alexandre doesn’t let go for a moment, his shoulders heaving, his hands still locked around her neck.
Max is the first to speak up, stepping away from Ana and gingerly towards Alexandre. “It’s over now, man,” he says quietly. “You can let go.”
The words seem to hang in the air, holding more weight than just the physical act of prying his fingers loose from Yvette’s throat. Slowly, Alexandre takes his hands away, the prints of his fingers dark against her pale skin.
He gets up slowly, turning towards me as if to say something. But my rage boils up again because all I can think about is that evening when he’d forced me on Ana, when he’d let Yvette whisper in his ear and talk him into committing that heinous act that could have ruined Ana and I forever, and he hadn’t killed her then.
Before he’s all the way up from the floor, I’m already aiming at him, my gun pulled free of the holster at my back and leveled at his head. “You’re done,” I growl at him, my voice rasping with anger as I step forward, not wanting to risk missing the shot. “I won’t keep letting you get between Ana and me. Not now, and not ever again.”
I’m so close to pulling the trigger—only a millisecond away. I can feel my finger twitching towards it, the blood rushing in my ears as I make the decision to end this once and for all—even in front of Ana.
I can’t let it go on any longer.
And then I feel her, the slender weight of her flung into me as she screams my name. “Liam, stop!” Ana shrieks, grabbing for my arm and the gun as she throws herself against me. In the same second that my finger pulls the trigger, my arm is knocked to one side, the bullet going awry as Ana nearly knocks me into the nightstand next to the bed.
There’s the heavy sound of a body falling, the dull thud of it on the carpet. For a brief moment, I’m afraid that I’ve hit Niall or Max, but when I look, it’s Alexandre, crumpled and bleeding on the carpet next to Yvette.
The only thing I can’t see is whether or not he’s still breathing.
TWENTY-ONE
ANA
For one terrifying moment, I think Alexandre is dead.
He’s on the carpet next to Yvette’s dead body, bleeding from a gunshot wound in his upper chest, close enough to the shoulder that it might not have hit anything vital—but then again, it’s impossible to know. I fling myself away from Liam, momentarily suspended between the two men as I have been all along. Then I’m on my knees on the carpet next to Alexandre, my hands pressed against the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding, to feel if he’s still breathing, if his heart is still beating.
It is. I can feel the faint rise and fall of his chest, the faltering beat of his pulse in his throat as it sends the blood pumping out of the wound, and I feel as if I’m shattering all over again. I’d wanted to move on from my relationship with Alexandre, to start a new chapter, but I’d also known a part of me would always love him and what we’d shared. I didn’t want him todie. Idon’twant him to die.
“Ana—” Liam’s voice reaches me as he staggers up from where I’d knocked him into the nightstand, Niall helping him up.
“No!” I glare at him, tears streaming down my cheeks. “I asked younotto do this, Liam! I asked younotto hurt him! I wanted tochooseyou, but I can’t make a choice if you’ve made yourself the only option!”
