says. “I’ll have to alert the police that she’s awake, just so you know.”
“Do they have to question her already?” Pascal grumbles.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dumont, but there are procedures we have to follow in cases like this.” He pauses. “Have you told her . . . ?”
Pascal shakes his head.
The doctor nods, giving me a quick glance and a placating smile. “I’ll be back to check you out later.” Then he and the nurse leave the room, closing the door behind them.
Pascal watches the closed door for a moment before he turns back to me. There’s fire in his glacial-blue eyes now.
“I don’t want them questioning you,” he says in a low voice. “There’s nothing to question.”
“There isn’t?” I ask, my voice cracking. I’m so afraid to get the answer to my question. “Is he . . . ?”
He nods grimly. “He’s dead.”
And just like that, all the weight I’ve been carrying on my shoulders, in my heart, the weight that has dragged my soul further and further toward hell, is lifted. It’s like it’s been filled with air and the strings are cut and it’s just floating away.
“He’s dead?” I repeat, hoping this isn’t the drugs talking.
“I killed him,” Pascal says gruffly. “I had to.”
“You had no choice.”
“I had no choice.”
“And . . . what happened to the other man?”
“He’s dead.”
“Because of me?”
He swallows and doesn’t say anything. He reaches for my hand again. “You saved both our lives,” he says. “Don’t forget that. Don’t you ever forget that.”
I nod, a tear spilling down my cheek. I’m relieved that they’re dead, that we survived, but it does feel different from what I imagined, knowing I took someone’s life, even if he had no problem in trying to take mine.
Maybe that means I’m not as broken as I thought.
“So the police are going to question me?” I ask. “Did they question you?”
“They did. I told them the truth. I told them that he found out that you told your mother about what happened to you, and that you told me. He was threatened, so he had Jones and himself abduct you from the house with plans to rape and murder you. Luckily, I knew what they had planned, and after my father knocked me around a bit, I was able to show up at the house and stop them.”
“What did your mother say?” She was around. She would have to know it didn’t quite go down that way.
“She corroborated the story,” he says.
“And my mother?”
“As you can imagine, she’s a mess. The police questioned her, but she was crying too much to make any sense. I’m sure they will later, but she was gone on her walk, so she never saw any of this.”
I shake my head, and even with the painkillers, I feel the anger in my heart. “She’s never going to believe me. No one will. Even in death, your father has all the power. Don’t you see? Even in death, he still wins.”
All this time, I thought if I could have Gautier killed, then all the pain would be over and I would win. But this isn’t the case at all. He’s gone, but the world will never know the truth about him. A tattered legacy and death would have been the only fitting punishment.
But Pascal is grinning at me. His smile is crooked and cunning and oh so charming, and my heart turns from anger to lust and love when I see it spread across his face. My Pascal. Whatever he’s about to say is going to set my world right-side up.
“You know how I was really paranoid that my father had all those bugs around the house?”
I nod. “Yeah . . .”
“Well, it turns out, I was right to be paranoid. He didn’t bug the bedroom, but he did bug the study. And guess what he admitted to me in full in that study before he left?”
I swallow, eyes wide, heart hopeful. “No,” I say in breathless disbelief.
“Oh yes. The whole confession. Everything about Ludovic’s death, plus a remark about you. It’s not going to take long for them to piece it together. The police have the tape now. He’ll be convicted posthumously for his brother’s murder, and there will be zero doubt of what he did to you.”
“Except when it comes to my mother.”
“We’ll deal with that later. But you can bet I’m taking these tapes to the press. I want them to know exactly what my father did. I want to rip his