The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,116

Hector Auvray.”

Luc had been holding the door open a fraction, but now he opened it wider and stepped into the hallway as if to get closer to her, perhaps fearing their voices might be heard.

He whispered to her. “What are you suggesting?”

“Kill him,” she said.

The words were sweet, they dissolved like sugar in her mouth, and she savored them. Nourished with hate, she continued speaking.

“Challenge him to a duel in the morning, do not let your brother broker a peace between you, as I am sure he intends,” she said.

“And risk getting shot?”

“I know you to be a huntsman. Is your aim adequate?”

“Excellent.”

“Then you have nothing to fear. Aim for the heart. With Hector Auvray dead, Gaétan will want to put this whole mess behind us, and you will have yourself a bride.”

She could see her words were having the intended effect on Luc. His rage was now laced with greed, a powerful combination. And he was foolhardy. The fuse had been lit. He would explode.

“If she repulses you now in her soiled state, you need not touch her. Except to put a couple of children in her womb, that might be advisable. Otherwise, you may do as you please,” Valérie said, thinking perhaps this point was holding him back. But he hardly seemed to listen to her when she mentioned it.

Perhaps the silly boy had cared for her. In his mind, this might well be a rescue, Antonina playing the role of the poor maiden who is held in the claws of an ogre.

“He has dishonored her and dishonored you. He wants to make a fool out of all of us. Do not let him,” she said.

“I warned him to stay away from her.”

“By all means you did. But this upstart man thinks he can do what he wants, that he can stomp on all of Loisail. We are Beautiful Ones. He is a nothing.”

“You will assure me Gaétan’s support?”

“Money was made to wash away sins. He’ll give it, more than you expected.”

“I think I might kill him even if I did not stand to profit from it,” Luc said, his voice a low, harsh tone. “I might kill him so he cannot have her.”

“We understand each other, Mr. Lémy,” Valérie said. “Make sure it happens soon, and make sure to be discreet. A duel in the front page of The Courier will do us no good.”

“Come morning, I’ll tell that bastard what awaits him.”

He closed the door, leaving Valérie standing in the hallway.

She took a deep breath.

There was no other way. Besides, she wanted blood. She wanted a sacrifice. She needed to witness Hector and Antonina’s destruction.

In acknowledging the depths of her hatred, Valérie was simultaneously able to, perhaps for the first time in her entire life, admit the extent of her love for Hector. That she had loved him like no other man. That she had been able to exist, to breathe and talk and greet people on the street, because she knew he loved her. He nourished her in that way.

It was as if she had willed a part of her soul into his body, concealed it there. The best part of her, the part that was young and happy. There it had remained, safe. But now it was gone: she had been exorcised and that part of her was lost.

He had killed her, in his own way.

Satisfaction could be found only in vengeance, in his death.

CHAPTER 22

It was the singing that woke him up, not the sound itself but the strangeness of hearing it. For a moment Hector wondered if he were dreaming.

But, no: singing coming from his bathroom.

He had never expected to hear such a sound, it was a domestic detail and it was misplaced, causing him to lie under the sheets with his eyebrows furrowed for several minutes.

He had shared his bed with a few women over the years, but it had not been something so intimate and cordial that one of them would have wound up in his bathroom, singing, in the morning. Moreover, if he had ever pictured a woman he might fancy living with, that woman had inevitably been Valérie, and not once had he thought Valérie capable of indulging in song.

Hector grabbed his lounging robe and followed the singing, standing at the doorway, his hands in his pockets, his fingers nervously rubbing against one another.

One of the most important considerations when he had taken this apartment was the bathroom. Hector could do without a number of things, but he