Ménage Material [La Belle sans la Bete Ménages] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Alex cleared his throat. “Y–You mean you want me to come over there? Actually go.”

  Devvy sucked in a breath and begged for patience. “I know it’s hard, Alex. But you’ll have to. I need you to speak to the police for me. God only knows what she’ll say. She came after me, but if she talks to them first, it will probably be the other way around, and I’ll be the one being cautioned!”

  More silence. This time, throbbing with Alex’s panic.

  She closed her eyes and whispered, “I love you, Alex. Baby, you can do this. It’s just like yesterday. You did it then and you can do it now.” Her eyes flickered open as the sofa fabric creaked. Antoinette was moving, away from her, thank God, and toward the drinks tray.

  “Please, darling. I need you.”

  Devvy watched as the other woman nearly filled a glass full of brandy and began to sip it as though she were drinking water.

  A quivery breath sounded in her ear. “I’m on my way.”

  “Thank you.”

  His chuckle was self-deprecatory. And to be fair, more of a groan than a laugh. “You shouldn’t be thanking me. I should be there. I—I’m going to try, chérie. I’ll do my best, and I don’t want to let you down, but call Bastien. Just in case. Please.”

  She didn’t want to call Sebastien. She wanted to rely on Alex, but knew she couldn’t. Not yet. Not with his past still completely unresolved and directly affecting his day-to-day life.

  There would be time in the future, time to get him the help he needed, with support from two people who couldn’t love him more if they tried.

  “I will. Either way, if you can manage it or not, I have faith in you, Alex.”

  She disconnected the call not wanting to put him under more pressure, yet hoping like hell he’d make it here. Pressing her speed dial for Bastien’s office, she waited for him to pick up. As she waited, she continued to stare at Antoinette. Not trusting this sudden placidness.

  Her eyes trained on the other woman’s spine as she stared out of the balcony window, she murmured when Bastien answered, “Do you know where Alex’s mother lives? Exactly, I mean.”

  “Yes. Do you need the address? I take it you’re going to confront her?”

  She snorted. “Consider the confrontation done. She attacked me with a hair clip! But I’ve called the police to stop her from telling them a whole different story. I need you to come here and translate for me.” A few months ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of making such a demand. Asking Bastien to leave the office? To help her? Never!

  Stunned silence was her reply and then a flurry of French. She heard merde repeated quite a few times and totally agreed. This was a shitty situation.

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you. Stay safe. Don’t break any laws to get here. It’s not worth it. Alex is on the way, or at least, he’s trying.”

  “Good. If he can make it, then all the better. If not, we can cope.”

  Before she put the phone down, she said, “By the way, I’ve discovered our blackmailer.”

  Another bout of French curses. She vowed, once again, to understand those goddamn swear words if it was the last thing she did!

  When he eventually spoke in English, his voice was grim. “Ten minutes.”

  The second she tucked her phone back into her pocket, Devvy was immediately on edge. Antoinette had turned around to face her. It was strange looking at the completely ordinary woman and feeling as though the woman she was seeing didn’t look right.

  She should look evil. Insane. Crazy and disturbed.

  It was like she was wearing a mask of normalcy, now. Devvy kept on expecting to see the Mr. Hyde side of her personality again. The nut job who wielded a hair accessory as though it were a dagger.

  “You did not tell my son.”

  Her statement could only be about one thing. Devvy shrugged. “It’s not something I feel comfortable discussing over the phone.”

  Antoinette shook her head, and Devvy was disturbed to see hope glinting in the woman’s eyes. “You won’t tell him. Not if you love him.”

  She sounded so sure, Devvy wanted to slap her for having read the situation so well. Although, maybe not well. After all, what woman in their right mind wanted to be the one to tell their loved one they knew they’d been abused as a child? What woman wanted to say their lover’s mother had known all along?

  It was hardly happy news!

  And Alex was, in so many ways, so strong and stubborn. So proud.

  It was how he’d dragged himself from the horrors of his past and made himself into one of the world’s leading cytologists.

  It took guts to do that. Pride and ego.

  He had phobias and flaws, personality quirks that were head-scratching and fears so deeply entrenched they made her want to weep, but he’d risen above them.

  In many ways, telling him what she knew would be all the harder for his strength.

  She would be breaking the shell he’d created years ago. The thin veneer that protected him, kept his vulnerabilities caged. If she were to do anything to damage it, God only knows what his reaction would be.

  She feared it would only ever be negative.

  That didn’t stop her from lying to the woman who had enabled her son’s childhood to be destroyed. “Because I love him, I’ll tell him. Just not on the phone. If you think he’ll talk to you now I’ve told him you’re the one blackmailing Bastien, you’re crazy. Oh wait, you already are,” she remarked with a roll of her eyes.

  “I’m not crazy,” Antoinette immediately denied. “I love my son.”

  Devvy snorted. “No mother who loved their son could let him be abused like that.”

  “Pierre was a good man. A good provider,” Antoinette snapped. “Alex’s father was no use. He left when Alex was just a boy. Divorced me, took up with another woman with children of her own, forgot about Alex. He might as well not have existed! I was alone, a child to care for. I had to pay for the roof over our heads, put food in our bellies. Pierre helped me do that.”

  Devvy sneered. “You think the end justifies the means? You pimped out your son to keep yourself in rent and to pay for food.” She shook her head. “How the hell can you stand there and tell me that? Almost as though that reasons it away.

  “You stood by while his innocence was taken from him. While a pervert distorted your son. Look at him, Antoinette. Look at the man you helped forge.

  “I love him, God help me, I do. More than I imagined possible. But he can’t leave the house without having a panic attack. His penthouse is empty. It’s huge! You think this place is spacious? It’s nothing in comparison to Alex’s place. He’s surrounded by space. That’s it.

  “He’s been in a relationship for nearly twenty years…”

  Antoinette butted in, “With that pervert, Sebastien Jacques.”

  The disgust in her voice had Devvy shaking her head. “You call Sebastien a pervert, but your fucking child abuser of a boyfriend was a “good” man? Lady, you need to get your priorities in order.”

  Antoinette sniffed. “My priorities are very well organized. Don’t think I didn’t realize what was happening between you three the instant you started staying the night at Alex’s penthouse.”

  Disgust crawled up Devvy’s spine. She remembered Alex saying how she’d stalked him, following him about town, watching his every move from the café across the road from his penthouse. Apparently Antoinette had never stopped her surveillance even though Alex had stopped going out completely. The idea that this woman had been keeping tabs on her and her lovers’ behavior made her feel queasy. “We’re adults. We’re consenting. We can do whatever the hell we want.”

  “I will not be dictated to, lectured by a woman who sleeps with two men.”

  Devvy couldn’t help it. She smiled. “That’s the nicest thing you could possibly have said to me. If you think I’m going to be judged by a woman like you, you’re mistaken.

  “I just wanted you to realize the way you’ve f
ucked up your son. You did that. Your partner helped, but you let it happen. You created a child who is so scared to live and love, he locks himself away. I just hope you’re proud of yourself, of your achievement.”

  Antoinette’s mouth pursed. Her lips flexed for a second, and Devvy could see she was contemplating how to reply. As she was waiting for the retort, Devvy heard a slight noise from the hall. The sound of steps. It was hardly noticeable, but Devvy knew what she had to do.

  In a zip code like this building’s, she knew the gendarmes would be quick to respond. And if it was a neighbor, so be it. She’d have a witness.

  Devvy screamed.

  She screamed like she’d never screamed before, and, calling on the years of drama class where she’d stood by embarrassed as hell, she sobbed through her screams.

  Antoinette looked at her like she was the crazy person, but she didn’t mind.

  She had a purpose.

  Over her screams, she couldn’t hear any noises coming from the hall, until bangs sounded on the front door. She ran toward it, made her fingers scramble at the door as though she were panicked, and opened it to find two concerned-looking boys in blue.

  She threw herself at one of them, saw his surprise, but noticed his arms opened automatically. “She just attacked me,” Devvy cried. “Started hitting me.”

  She was telling the truth, just adding a dash of melodrama. She should have felt guilty, but how could she? Antoinette would have done exactly the same thing had she heard the police.

  That sick, twisted bitch was not going to have anyone on her side.

  When the police tried to calm her, one of them speaking in garbled, pidgin English, the other went to investigate. He called out, and the one embracing her coaxed her forward.

  The instant she walked into the room, Devvy was glad for her melodrama.

  A paper knife.

  A goddamn paper knife.

  Right through the shoulder.

  What Antoinette hoped to achieve, Devvy didn’t know. Apparently, she’d never watched CSI. Devvy had no blood on her, her fingerprints wouldn’t be on the knife’s hilt but the wound’s location had definitely been “chosen.” At first glance it looked as though Devvy could have been the one to stab her. The old woman, gushing fucking blood on the floor, looked as pitiful as could be.

  Any sympathy the police had shown her disappeared with the blink of an eye. Their faces were now covered in masks of professionalism. They had a different job to do now.

  All Devvy could say was if it weren’t for CSI, and her minute knowledge of blood spatter patterns, she’d be peeing her pants.

  And not with amusement.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sirens glaring, flashing.

  Horns being honked. Chaos. It was worse than usual.

  The lights, the sounds, the smells…they filled him with sickness. Made the panic already winging its way around his body surge like an adrenaline rush gone wrong.

  As the taxi braked to a halt, with shaking hands, Alex handed over a wad of five euro notes. Leaving the car was the hardest thing he’d ever done and the easiest. Devvy’s earlier bout of weeping combined with this impromptu visit to his mother’s, something that could hardly be considered a pleasure visit. Alex had questions he really needed answering. He also really needed to save his lover from his mother.

  Now there was a sentence he probably wouldn’t say often!

  Sucking in a shaky breath, he took in the police cars nestled on the verge outside of his mother’s building. An ambulance was parked askew. The sight of that ambulance chilled him to his core.

  His mother wasn’t right. She wasn’t normal. He knew that, and at that moment, seeing the ambulance, Alex was sure she’d hurt Devvy.

  He expected to see a body in a black bag roll out of the luxury condo and he knew, just knew his woman would be in there.

  That belief gave him the strength to leave the taxi. He focused on his breathing. Each step seemed to take him backward, rather than forward. Being outside, the late afternoon sun gleaming overhead, burning his head and making him squint behind his glasses, cars toing and froing in front and behind him…. The panic was there. At his chest. Ready and waiting to blow. To overcome him.

  He felt like a complete and utter pansy. Completely weak and useless. What kind of man could only make it out of his flat and felt sick as he did it?

  Why she loved him, why Bastien did, Alex couldn’t understand.

  His weakness was ingrained.

  Impossible to fix.

  His self-hatred and the focus it took to not vomit made it so that he failed to spot Bastien. Not until he’d almost walked past him. All of a sudden, arms were there, embracing him. Thanking him. Praising him.

  He felt like a fool and completely undeserving. Both of his partners had thanked him for something that should have been as easy as breathing. He’d have shrugged off the praise, but he was too focused on not vomiting.

  Bastien’s arms were like a beacon, though. They supported him. Helped him across the road. The words whispered into his ears made little to no sense, but Bastien kept him grounded. He was outside, but Bastien gave him the security of inside.

  They crossed the street. Neared the empty ambulance. Both of them stiffened as they passed it, and entered the foyer.

  The concierge spotted them, her face white with panic. She blurted out something, but Alex’s ears weren’t working. Bastien retorted and guided him over to the elevator. Within thirty seconds, they entered the corridor that lead to his mother’s quarters.

  More noise. More shouts. More chaos that was hyperlinked to his already churning stomach.

  The smells, now, were worse than downstairs. There, the scents of tar and gasoline fumes and pollution had filled his nose.

  Now, feet away from the door, he could smell blood.

  A lot of it.

  A trolley careered out of the doorway and, God strike him down for it, but when he saw his mother hooked up to a portable IV, his legs quivered with relief.

  She stared at him, her eyes beseeching him as they always did. Begging him to be nice to her. To be kind. And as he always did, he felt guilty for not caring. For feeling nothing.

  He was damaged. He knew that. On the brink of being broken. The only thing keeping him glued together was Bastien, and now Devvy.

  Devvy.

  God, he needed her.

  He ignored his mother’s husky pleading. The soft words that become loud cries and shrieks of fury as the trolley moved down the corridor and to the service elevator. Her yells ricocheted off the walls as she realized he wasn’t going to go with her. She cursed and swore, but her words were wasted on him.

  His knees knocked as they walked through the door, relief and terror coursing through him as his imagination went to work on what they’d find the deeper they went into his mother’s apartment.

  There’d been only one ambulance. That meant Devvy was well.

  He didn’t even care that she’d done something to his mother. He was just glad his mother hadn’t done something to her!

  Spying her looking pissed off on the sofa almost made him collapse with thanks.

  As soon as she saw them, she jumped up and ran over to them. Throwing an arm over their shoulders, she buried herself in their embrace. For a second, her shaking made him see red. His mother had done this. More damage. More distress.

  She pulled away, mouth a taut line and glared back at the gendarmes. “Your mother is a psycho,” she exploded, her gaze returning to Alex. “She stabbed herself. Can you believe that?”

  Alex frowned. “She stabbed herself?”

  “Yeah! I went to let the police in and by the time we got back, she’s on the floor. Blood everywhere, a goddamn paper knife sticking out of her chest.” She tapped the soft fleshy bit that connected the arm to the shoulder and the shoulder to the chest.

  Bastien spoke to the police. “You are questioning my wife?” he asked, voice stern, his arm wrapped firmly about Devvy’s waist.<
br />
  The cop nodded. “Just routine questions.”

  “How routine? I don’t want you upsetting her.”

  The gendarme’s partner stood overlooking the pool of his mother’s blood retorted, “I don’t think this could get any more distressing. She’s angry, not upset. Look at her.”

  “What happened?”

  “My English is not so good,” the first cop said. “But from what I can tell, your mother attacked her, Monsieur Ivanov. Came at her with a…” he hesitated. “She said chopstick. I think this is a baguette. You know, the stick women put in their hair? Could you ask her to confirm?”

  Alex’s voice was a rasp as he did as bid. “The policeman says Mother attacked you with a chopstick. Is this right?”

  Looking mutinous, she took a step away from them, folded her arms over her chest and nodded. “The frigging things you put in your hair.” She harrumphed. “She must have shoved it back in her bun.”

  He tried to look supportive, but it mustn’t have worked because she turned away from him and stepped over to the balcony door. “I need some air.”

  She walked out onto the terrace, leaving him to stare at her back. “She said it is a type of hair accessory,” he told the officer.

  “I guess that makes a weird kind of sense,” the cop confirmed with a shrug. “She came at her with the chopstick, tried to attack her, but she managed to defend herself. We arrived, and your wife, sir…” He turned to Bastien, although his eyes flickered over Alex. The newspaper headlines this morning as well as Devvy’s greeting had just confirmed the gossip down at these gendarmes’ precinct. “…She was hysterical. My partner came into the lounge and found your mother on the floor.” His gaze switched over to Alex, managing to look sympathetic.

  “She isn’t covered in blood,” Alex pointed out, his voice still hoarse.

  On an everyday basis, he hated his mother’s apartment.