LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER NINE

      ANDRÉ’S mobile phone chirped early the next morning. He took the call on the downstairs balcony, so as not to disturb Kira—she needed sleep, for they’d made love into the wee hours of the morning. He smiled, thinking of the passion, the feeling of rightness that hummed within him.

      Hearing his detective on the line tempered his euphoria. He squinted at the horizon and wished he was upstairs with Kira, wished he’d not had to order a more thorough investigation of his lover.

      “Any news on the money?” he asked, squinting at the horizon as the sun burst through the windows to gild the room in gold.

      “Yes, sir. I checked my resources twice to ensure the information was correct.”

      The pause crackled with tension, lashing the calm André had harbored since waking with Kira curled against him. “Spit it out,” he said, impatient to know the truth.

      “The two million you paid to acquire the Chateau was immediately diverted into an account held by Peter Bellamy.”

      “You’re positive?” André asked. “There can be no mistake?”

      The detective answered immediately. “There’s no error.”

      André pushed away from the railing and stormed into his suite, his gut erupting with the destructive force of a volcano, his suspicions running as hot as lava. All this time Kira’s beautiful mouth had spouted lies.

      She’d sworn time and again she didn’t know Peter Bellamy, yet moments after receiving a wire for two million dollars the funds had been routed to Bellamy. Her protector.

      What had Bellamy given Kira in return?

      “There’s more,” the detective said.

      “Concerning Miss Montgomery?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      André laughed, the sound deceptively soft as he stared up the stairs to the bed where she still slept. “Goes from bad to worse, oui?”

      “Not my place to say.”

      Of course not. That was his decision to make.

      He’d used this detective before. Knew that he was like a dog with a bone, that he wouldn’t give up until he’d discovered everything about the person in question. In this case, Kira.

      But it had taken a damnably long time to gain the truth. André’s patience for intrigue was gone. He wanted all the facts. All the secrets revealed. He wanted to see the whole picture, warts and all.

      “Out with it,” André said.

      “I tracked down Kira Montgomery’s mother,” the detective said, without inflection or pause. “She swears Miss Montgomery’s father is Edouard Bellamy.”

      The words went into André’s mind and exploded, sending something dark and dangerous coursing through him. He gripped the railing as the sharp ache of betrayal speared his chest, stealing his breath. His heart skipped a beat, then started racing as the awful truth sank into his soul.

      Of all the scenarios he’d imagined, of all the contrivances he’d suspected, this hadn’t been one of them. This news blind-sided him, drove a spike in his heart.

      Oui, he’d been blind too often where Kira was concerned. Too ensnared by her beauty, her artful innocence, her passion.

      Not anymore.

      “There is no question this is so?” André asked.

      “Only DNA tests can dispel doubts. But I spoke with the woman myself and followed up tracing the dates and places. It fits that Kira Montgomery is Edouard Bellamy’s illegitimate child.”

      He thanked his detective and ended the communication, his mind a whirlpool of dark, putrid thoughts. Her insistence that she wasn’t Peter’s mistress tolled in his ears—at least in that she told the truth. Mon Dieu—they were brother and sister.

      It was all so obvious now—Edouard Bellamy had educated her. Given her a coveted position at his La Cygne Hotel in London and forty-nine percent of Chateau Mystique. Because she was his daughter!

      Mon Dieu! With Suzette dead, Edouard must have known that André would launch a takeover. But, according to the proof he had, Peter had sent Kira here.

      She and Peter had conspired to forestall André. Not by engineering a public and humiliating end to his engagement, as he’d assumed—never mind that he and his fiancée had secretly parted ways the week before, by mutual agreement. And not by destroying a lucrative business deal that he’d worked hard to achieve.

      No, she and Peter had trumped André with an innocent baby.

      They’d ruthlessly plotted to force André to make a terrible choice, certain he’d choose the one that would damn him in eternal hell. For Edouard’s blood coursed in his child’s veins through Kira.

      Kira had played well the part of corporate whore.

      If André held to his vow to destroy the Bellamys he’d see the downfall of his own flesh and blood. An innocent life, caught in the crossfire.

      He

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