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Trying to find me. Wanting to see me.
I can't imagine what she went through at the hands of my father. Michel robbed me of a relationship with my mother, and for what reason? He even had her name taken off my birth certificate. I'm finding out her name for the first time and it's from the lips of a man who's holding a gun to my head.
My whole body grows cold.
"But like I said, I could have forgiven all of that." Laurent is monologuing now. I can hear it in his voice. He's so hurt that he needs to get this out. I don't care for his feelings, but I care to hear more of the story. There's no other way I could have found out. "We fell out when you found out that I had been the one planning to help her, that we had been lovers." He sucks in a sniffling breath. I look at the screens. Is he crying? "I still blame myself for not being more careful. But killing her wasn't enough for you, was it?"
Laurent sticks his head beside mine.
"You should blame your father for all of this," he says. "This is his fault. On the anniversary of Lilou's death, when I went to her grave like I always do, I found it completely desecrated." His words come out so harsh they make my teeth rattle. "He exhumed her and destroyed the mausoleum." His attention goes back to Michel. "You even pissed on it, you filthy hog."
"I'm about done with your bullshit," Michel says. "Look at you. A blabbering, withering fool. And over what? Some pussy?"
My jaw drops.
Has he forgotten that Laurent has a gun to my head?
"What did you do with her bones?"
"Let Alize go, and I'll tell you."
Another scratchy laugh fills the air. Laurent doesn't immediately respond. He starts tapping his foot on the concrete floor. His finger still hovers on the trigger, and my throat is dry as a desert.
One wrong move, and my brains will be splattered on the wall.
And I never got to tell Alexander goodbye.
My father's still standing at the edge of the stairs, his gun pointed at us. But with Laurent behind me, I doubt he would have a clean shot.
And even if he did, Laurent dying wouldn't solve much.
I would still be left with him.
"You know, I didn't have the guts to kill her at first." Laurent’s voice nearly floats away on the tension in the air. "But then she applied to Harvard, and I knew my window of opportunity was closing. The bomb should have killed her, but I never wanted you to die in that attack on your jet. No, I wanted you to live through what I did."
Harvard.
Just thinking of that application feels like a distant dream. I was so young, so naive.
The future I wanted would have never been possible for me.
"When she survived, I had to come up with a different plan. As much as I hated you, I didn't feel comfortable killing Lilou's daughter with my own hands. It felt wrong, at the time." He chuckles. "My brother always brags about that school of his. Lilou even spoke fondly of it. So I sent Alize there, knowing that she wouldn't be able to keep a secret to save her life, and you weren’t dumb enough to step foot in a place under the jurisdiction of the Kingmaker Society."
He jams the gun against my temple, leaning forward so that his mouth is by my ear. "But even that she survived. And it just so happened that she ended up entwined with a family who had more to hate you for than I do. I started thinking that might end up being her demise."
I swallow thickly. That's why he was so excited that I got into a relationship with Alexander. Did he know that Michel killed Alexander's mother too, or is he talking about something else?
"But that didn't work either. I underestimated Alize’s ability to survive. Now we're here."
"You won't make it out of this alive," Michel says.
He's still so composed. The bit of discomfort I saw in him earlier is gone, replaced with indifference.Indifference.
For the first time, I'm seeing him for what he really is—a sociopath. That's the only word I can think of to describe him.
"I didn't plan to," Laurent says. "I want to see Lilou again."
"Then you should have just jumped off a fucking bridge like the coward you are," Michel snaps. "It would have saved me so much time."
