Shattered: A Billionaire Romance Series (Contemporary Romance Novels)

by Love, Michelle

  He felt nothing.

  He looked at his hands, studied the long fingers. They were so pale as to be almost transparent. These hands have killed, he thought dispassionately. They had killed three people that at one time or another were special to him, that he had loved.

  ‘What the devil are you doing?’

  Emile turned slowly. Hippolyte was standing in the middle of his apartment, staring at him. His friend was stooped, grief written all over his face. Emile didn’t answer him, just went to stand next to him, put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Hippolyte’s eyes were full of pain.

  ‘Django is missing,’ he said, his voice breaking.

  Emile stayed silent but continued to meet his gaze. Hippolyte started to cry, sobbing into his hands. He mumbled something hysterically and Emile gripped his wrists, pulling his hands away from his face. ‘Calm yourself, man, and tell me again, slowly.’

  Hippolyte gathered himself, and in a voice that sounded as if it were coming from the grave, whispered, ‘What the hell is happening to us?’

  Emile tugged his sweater over his head and went to join Hippolyte in the kitchen. His friend was nursing a large glass of scotch and Emile sat down and joined him. Hippolyte was calm now, and he studied Emile now, his gaze penetrating. ‘You look like hell.’

  Emile shrugged. ‘What of it?’

  Hippolyte shook his head, prodding a finger at him. ‘All this has happened since that first night of the Cabaret. We never should have gone.’

  Emile sighed. ‘Why on Earth would us going to that club have any effect on anything? Iseult didn’t go the club and so far, she is the only one we know has died. Gaston is still missing and now you tell me Django is nowhere to be found. Perhaps one or both of them is visiting family outside of the city.’

  ‘Why do you smile when you say that?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware I was.’

  Hippolyte sat back in his chair. ‘I swear to god, Emile, this has something to do with that woman.’

  A flash of anger went through Emile. ‘You mean Seraphine?’

  ‘I do. Ever since we were with that woman…’

  ‘Excuse me? What do you mean with?’

  Hippolyte laughed then. ‘Emile, really. Do you think it was coincidence she chose you first that night? That by the time she was finished with you and it was my turn and then Django, you were passed out from pure physical pleasure? We knew it was your first time, Emile. We knew that Iseult had kept you waiting for your wedding night. We thought ‘what a riot!’. None of us liked Iseult, Emile, none of us. We prayed that you would fall in love with someone else and leave her; instead Gaston did the favor for you.’

  Hippolyte sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, not seeing the rage on Emile’s face. When Emile spoke, his voice was measured, careful but seething with anger. ‘You both put your hands on my Seraphine?’

  Hippolyte sighed. ‘She’s a whore, Emile, a filthy whore. What did you expect?’

  Emile leaped across the table and threw his slight body at Hippolyte’s massive frame. The two men clattered to the floor, tumbling and wrestling, until finally Hippolyte threw Emile across the room and Emile crashed into the large mirror he kept propped against the wall.

  Hippolyte stood, his mouth bleeding, wiping away spittle. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? You chose a whore over your friends?’

  Emile was paying him no attention because, as he lay in the wreckage of his mirror, he caught sight of his reflection. The reflection he’d first seen in the mirrors at the hotel out of the corner of his eye and now he understood, it had crept up on him.

  The sunken eyes, the translucent skin, the haunted, desperate look in his eyes.

  Hippolyte snorted in disgust as Emile picked up a sliver of mirror and stared at himself. ‘Look at yourself, that’s right. Look at what you’ve become. You don’t deserve us, Emile, because the only person you’ve ever loved is yourself.’ And he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

  His words hung in the frigid air even after he had been long gone and finally, Emile began to smile.

  The police came for Hippolyte late on New Year’s Eve. They’d found a body; would he be so kind to come to the morgue to identify it? He knew, immediately, that it would be Django.

  He gazed down at the body of his friend, the gaping hole in his neck, the bloated, waterlogged appearance of his skin. ‘We pulled him from the Seine. We think he was killed on the banks and rolled in. There’s a significant amount of blood down by the Left Bank.’

  Hippolyte felt sick. The look on Django’s face he would never forget. There was fear, of course, but more than that, there was hurt, betrayal. Emile.

  A commotion behind him and some technicians wheeled in another gurney, a body covered in a white sheet. ‘We got another one. Been dead at least a week, frozen solid under a pile of snow.’

  ‘Where?’ The police sergeant who had brought Hippolyte to the morgue spoke up, his face alert and professional.

  The technician told him and the police officer nodded. ‘That’s two streets away from the girl’s murder.’

  Hippolyte closed his eyes. ‘Can I see the body?’

  The policeman gave a curt nod and the technician lifted the sheet. Hippolyte sighed, utterly exhausted. ‘It’s Gaston Fournier.’

  When the police let him leave, after extensive questioning, Hippolyte wandered through the darkening streets of the city. Despite the cold weather, Parisians were flocking onto the streets to celebrate the New Year and Hippolyte had to push through crowds of party-goers, revelers, street vendors and street entertainers. The stores along the boulevards were still sparking with every color of decoration, festive cheer and sale signs.

  But he saw none of it. His world had turned to black and white and red with blood, and now all he knew as he had to save his only friend – no matter what he had done.

  Emile dressed simply in a long white dress shirt and pants. He didn’t even bother putting a jacket on – he didn’t feel the cold. His appearance drew stares from passersby as he walked regally to the Cabaret at eleven p.m. The nymphs at the bar nodded to him as he made his way back to Seraphine’s room. He knocked once and walked in.

  Seraphine was facing away from him but she smiled at him in the mirror. ‘My love, you came.’

  Emile nodded. ‘Of course I did, my daring Seraphine.’

  She turned and studied his eyes and her smile widened. ‘You are ready?’

  ‘I am ready.’

  She rose from her seat and came to him, kissing him softly. ‘At last, my love, at last.’

  Hippolyte was surprised they let him in, given his disheveled clothes and the smell of alcohol coming off him, but the nymphs greeted him like an old friend and gave him a table at the front of the stage. They seemed gleeful, almost celebratory – he supposed because it was the show’s last night. The lights went down almost immediately and Hippolyte was shocked when Seraphine walked onto the stage, hand-in-hand with a totally naked Emile. The music began and the couple were surrounded by dancers, moving and swelling like waves around them. They rose up to shield the couple and then Hippolyte saw Emile and Seraphine on the plinth, making love.

  To Hippolyte’s horror, a nymph approached the couple carrying a red velvet cushion. Hippolyte remembered it from an earlier show; it held the lethal knife of ice.

  He started to stand as Emile grasped it in his hand but suddenly there were nymphs holding Hippolyte down. Desperate, he screamed at his friend. ‘Emile! Mon amie, non! Please, no!’

  But Emile did not listen, did not even acknowledge his friend’s please. He smiled down at Seraphine and raised the knife. ‘I love you,’ he whispered and plunged the knife into his own chest, hacking at his skin, cutting his own torso open, reaching in and pulling out his own beating heart. ‘I give you my heart, Seraphine.’

  It was still beating as they both bit into it and Emile smiled as he passed from light into darkness. There, he finally saw Seraphine in her true form and he exulted in her div
ine beauty and grace.

  ‘We will be together forever now, my precious Emile,’ she said and, kissing him, led him into forever.

  Hippolyte also saw Seraphine in her true form. As his friend died, his blood gushing from him like a torrent, he saw her, the serpent, coiling and uncoiling around the husk that had been Emile before her jaws opened wide and finally consumed him forever.

  The End

  To be Continued

  The Dark Season Series

  An Alpha Billionaire Romance

  Vespa Velutina

  Book 2

  By Michelle Love

  Description

  In the very last days of the 20th Century, a recent ex-pat in Hong Kong faces a lonely Christmas and New Year. Moving into a new apartment, he becomes obsessed with a painting of a beautiful woman that hangs in the apartment. After spending Christmas Eve working and then drinking alone, he goes to bed drunk only to be woken by a strange buzzing and the unexpected sight of snow falling on Hong Kong. What happens next though defies all logic and explanation when the woman in the picture appears in his bedroom to give him the best, most erotic night of his life…

  Vespa Velutina

  Hong Kong 1999…

  Pal Magnessen walked through the arrivals hall at Hong Kong International Airport, aware that he was the single lone male in the passengers from his flight. Everyone else was shrieking greetings at their loved one, their friends, in what he assumed was Mandarin but could have been Swahili for all he knew. Back in Oslo, he’d mastered English at school as well as his own language but as soon as he was able to opt out of learning any other language, he did. It wasn’t his thing, language.

  Which had made his plans to work in every developed country in the world a little difficult. Luckily, here in Hong Kong at the turn of the new century, there were enough English speaking ex-pats left that his transfer to the University of Hong Kong’s Biomedicine Faculty easier than his last job in Sao Paolo.

  Also, leaving Sao Paolo meant being half a world away from his ex-wife, Louelle. God, just being free of that bitch…she’d taken him for everything in the divorce but by the end, he’d just wanted to get out. His old friend Ken Woo had called him, begging him to come fill a spot on the faculty. ‘No-one wants to teach bio anymore, no-one. They all want to teach media. Fuck this world.’

  Pal had laughed at his friend’s sulky tone but he’d agreed straight away. Two days later and here he was. Ken had booked him into a motel for the first few nights. ‘I know you’re particular about your living space,’ he’d told Pal on the phone the day before his flight, ‘but I’ve got you some details so you can check them out yourself.’

  It was only two p.m. when Pal checked into the motel. He dumped his bags and sat on the bed, undecided what to do. He went to the little bathroom and brushed his teeth, glancing in the mirror. His blue eyes were red from travelling, his blonde hair, thick and curly, was pressed flat on one side. He’d taken an Ambien when he’d gotten on the plane and had slept nearly the whole flight so now, he felt antsy, eager to get on. The motel receptionist had handed him a brown envelope from Ken; details of available apartments. Pal looked through them now. Some were tiny – at least the ones he could afford. The last one he came to seemed way too good to be true; a penthouse in central HK for less than a week’s salary per month. A week’s salary. Pal glanced at the pictures – there was no way it was as good as it looked.

  Still, he shrugged, why not find out. He called the number on the listing and was pleased that the realtor spoke impeccable English. He arranged to go the place the next morning.

  Feeling weirdly pleased, he took a cab into the center of the city and wandered the streets for a while. The city was alive with people enjoying the seasonal displays and Christmas lights. Even more than Christmas – which was technically more for tourists and English ex-pats than it was for the locals – the city was gearing itself up for the Millennium – the year 2000 was less than ten days away. Pal, stoic by nature, wasn’t buying into the panic of the New Year and Y2K; he was looking forward to the future. A future without that incubus Louelle. They had been married for five years - five childless years. Louelle had told him she was desperate for children – as he had been but as soon as he said ‘I do’, she changed her mind. It had been hard for him to not grow resentful but he’d given the marriage a good shot until it became impossible.

  His family – what was left of them – were scattered across the globe and they rarely kept in touch.

  So Pal was alone, here, in a new country at the turn of the century. And for the moment, that was really very okay.

  He had to stop himself from whooping the next morning when the realtor showed him around the penthouse. He had been right – it wasn’t anything like the photographs…it was better. Pal laughed softly to himself. Better didn’t even cover it. Wall-to-ceiling windows, plush furnishing, modern and clean state of the art kitchen…

  ‘Are you sure that this rent amount is correct? It seems very little for such a place.’

  The realtor smiled. ‘The owner is very particular who she rents to. For the right person, she is very generous – if some of her aesthetic taste is singular.’

  Pal had no idea what he meant. The place would look good on the cover of an architectural magazine. ‘I’ll take it.’ He remembered what the man had said about the owner. ‘If the owner thinks I’m a suitable candidate, that is.’

  The realtor nodded. ‘You are. Ken Woo sent through your details when he enquired about the place for you. The owner cleared you.’

  Pal felt his heart leap. ‘You’re serious, it’s mine?’

  The realtor handed him the key, grinning. ‘All yours, friend.’

  Pal followed him out of the door, eager to go get his stuff and move in. ‘Do I get to meet the owner?’

  ‘I doubt it. I’ve never even met her, just spoken to her on the phone. Sexy voice, one of those low husky types, almost a lisp, you know?’

  Pal moved his bags into the apartment and unpacked his meagre belongings. He’d put most of his stuff into storage before he left Brazil, not wanting to haul it across the world if the job in HK didn’t work out. Not that his stuff amounted to more than a few books and papers.

  After he unpacked, he strolled around the apartment, taking in the finer details. In the large living room, a huge flat screen t.v. sat on top of a sleek glass console, huge comfortable couches, black with contrasting yellow pillows. The kitchen, he found, was fully stocked with both local food and American food. He snagged a Coke from the cooler and went back to the living room, standing at the huge windows to look down at the streets below.

  Pal sighed. Man, if this was his reward for putting up with Lou-hella, he’d take it. He’d left the Jing-Main lights in the room off so he wouldn’t catch the reflection rather than the view but from the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the shadow of something – a female face.

  He turned to see the portrait on the far end of the room. How had he not seen this before? He moved closer. The portrait was of one of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her delicate features were like that of a doll; the porcelain skin, dark, almond-shaped eyes, the thick straight hair curled up into the cutest little bob. He couldn’t take his eyes of her pert red little mouth….Pal felt his body respond, thinking of that mouth enveloping his cock, almost feeling the pull on it, the warm, wet sensation.

  Damn…her eyes, doe-like, almost cartoon character-large, followed him around the room. Pal imagined her watching him and liked the sensation. He moved still closer…and pressed his lips against hers. For a second he stayed there, eyes closed, imagining the softness of her mouth, the warmth of her breath. Maybe it would taste of cherries or maybe sweet tea…

  You are kissing a painting, Magnessen. You are a thirty-eight year old scientist and you are kissing a painting. He stepped back, chuckling, and opened his eyes. He grinned at the painting. ‘Sorry about that, ma’am.’

  Was it his imagination or were her eyes a
mused? ‘You are a freak, Magnessen.’ Pal, his mood happier than in many, many years, touched the frame briefly, laughing at his own foolishness. ‘Goodnight, my lovely. This old fool is about to turn in.’

  He slept well in the massive king-size bed, the jet-lag finally catching up with him. Only once did he wake, disturbed by a low hum in the room, real or imagined he did not know.

  In the morning, he showered and ate a good breakfast and afterward, went to work. The facilities at the university were superb, state of the art, and he grew excited about his work again. Biomedicine in the late 20th Century had taken on a major role in all medical fields and Pal had been at the forefront of most of the research.

  He was busy setting up his first experiment when Ken Woo came to find him. The slender and athletic American-Chinese man was the opposite of Pal’s big and burly frame but they shared the same sense of humor, and passion for their field. Ken bore Pal down to the university’s refectory for lunch and the two men caught up on each other’s lives.

  ‘So you’ve taken on of the apartments?’

  Pal grinned. ‘Sure have and I have you to thank for that. It’s the penthouse – and I still can’t believe the rent is so cheap.’

  Ken grimaced a little. Pal frowned. ‘What is it?’

  Ken sighed. ‘Okay, well…don’t get mad but I know a little of the history of the place. A couple of people who lived there have died; and no-one stays there for long.’

  Pal’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? How did they die?’

  ‘One jumped from the roof, the other of some kind of illness, I heard. One of them was a lecturer on economics, I heard.’