it was out of fucking control.
“Just ignore that son of a bitch,” I said. “He’s incorrigible. And getting between us.”
“Getting between me,” she joked.
“I hadn’t meant that to be funny.” I smiled weakly. I didn’t want to screw things up. I had to get things right with Janie, just had to. I wanted to grow old with this woman. Wanted to sit on a park bench and feed pigeons with her, one day. Or squirrels. Or whatever pensioners did. I was in this for the long term. Till death do us part.
I stroked her hair, threading my fingers through her soft locks, cupping the delicate shape of her scalp in my hands. She was so little, so vulnerable. And I was such a brute. Beauty and the Beast. “Please forgive me,” I whispered, bowing my head to hers. “I don’t know what came over me last night. Did I hurt you?”
“A bit.”
“Sorry, baby.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied.
This was the moment, was it? When she’d weep and tell me she couldn’t go through with it? “What are you sorry for?” I asked softly. “You’re about to bear me bad news? Tell me you don’t want to marry me?”
“No, don’t be silly.” Her sweet words made my solar plexus take a leap. “I was keeping secrets from you,” she told me.
The next couple of hours we sat out on our terrace above the water, and did nothing but talk. I stayed calm throughout, even though some of the things Janie revealed made me feel as if my heart were burning coal-fire. The whole Natasha memory was dredged up because of what Kristin had done. They were so very alike, not just physically but in the way they used people. I had forgotten just how much Natasha had wounded me. Not so much because I was in love with her, but the betrayal factor. The trust. Believing someone cared for me when the only thing she wanted was my money, and what she could extract. She had sucked me dry. Devoured my blood like one of those tropical leeches. And now I was hearing nasty details about Kristin, it was doubly painful. As if Natasha had risen from the dead and was taking everything dear to me and trying to destroy it. Destroy Janie.
Janie told me about how she had been locked up in some basement, next to Kristin’s goddamn laboratory. The anger I felt inside was beyond any emotion I had ever experienced. Poor Janie, terrified, not knowing if she’d live or die, while that stupid wannabe actor probably did a good job of scaring her shitless. I listened on to Janie’s tale, willing myself not to explode. Each second got worse. She explained how Alexandre’s sister Sophie, and her daughter Elodie had intervened, and how they’d discovered that Kristin had wangled her way into getting power of attorney from my mother (thanks, Mom, for letting me know), obviously in preparation for my planned death. At one point, Kristin was even pretending to Janie we were married. Fucking lunatic. I’d fire that little weasel of a concierge who worked at my hotel, for starters. Throw him out on the fucking street and make sure the only work he got was scrubbing toilets. Janie’s story got even worse; by the time she’d told me about her own hospitalization, I couldn’t take anymore. She’d been through hell and back, and I’d been oblivious all this time. Worse, I’d handcuffed her last night, after she’d been abducted, only a couple of weeks before! I felt just horrible.
“Say something,” Janie said. “You’ve suddenly gone all silent.”
“I just can’t believe someone can be so malevolent, so malicious.” And how I could have been so insensitive.
“She’s obviously crazy, actually deranged. There are people like that in the world. Who function perfectly on one level—you know, her success as a doctor and things—but are actually mentally unstable in other areas of their lives. She’s a wacko and should probably be locked up.”
A dark thought flashed across my unforgiving brain. I didn’t want the woman locked up, I wanted her dead. Out of the picture for good. She was a danger to Janie—I couldn’t risk having her lurking in the shadows, even if Elodie was tracking her whereabouts via the Internet and her cell phone. That was no guarantee. Elodie would get bored, sloppy, forget about Kristin because she’d have better things to do with her life. What if Kristin reemerged one day, seeking revenge? Her torture of animals compounded it