had proof of it even if she denied it. Even though she had ended up becoming Peter’s mistress.
“What’s the rest?”
He shook his head, bitten with guilt that his concern now rested with Kira instead of his family. Even admitting it didn’t change anything, for he suspected she’d been an easy target.
She should be the last person he’d wish to share his deepest grief and guilt with. Not the one woman he wanted to talk to about his tragic past.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“Most intrigues are. Please go on.”
“My parents were outraged and forbade Suzette to see Edouard,” he said, frowning as memories of his parents’ heated arguments filtered back to him. “But my sister was charmed by Edouard’s wealth, by his promises of showering her with riches.”
“And Edouard was relentless in his pursuit of her?” she said, accurately guessing that much.
“Oui. One night she ran away.” He shook his head, having relived that event a thousand times in his nightmares. “I was twelve, and I took great pleasure rushing to let my father know.”
She swallowed, the sound loud in the tense stillness. “Did he go after her?”
He stiffened, his hands fisting. “No, my mother did. My father jumped in the car to stop her, for her driving was atrocious. They never made it down the mountain.”
She winced, pinching her eyes shut. “And your sister?”
“I learned later that Edouard was waiting to whisk Suzette away to America.” To the Chateau Mystique. He stared at her, letting her see the anguish and torment he’d lived with for years.
“What happened to you after your parents died?”
“I was shipped off to a distant relative.”
“Then you were raised by family?”
André laughed—the sound as cold and calculating as his mother’s conniving cousin. Only by the grace of God and his own determination had he survived.
“They didn’t want me, ma chérie, but they gladly accepted the monthly allowance they were given to keep me.”
“I know how difficult that kind of life is.”
“You can’t begin to guess. While you were taking your lessons at an elite boarding school, I was working when the local school wasn’t in session.”
He glanced out the window at the bloated moon, the pain of being shuffled off to strangers still festering under the service. He’d had a roof over his head, a small closet-like room with a cot to call his own, and food that had been better fitted for the swine raised on the farm.
“Who provided your allowance?” she asked, her voice small.
“Edouard Bellamy. He paid them to keep me out of his and Suzette’s way.”
André had counted the days until he could escape that hell. Marked time toward the day he would ruin Edouard Bellamy.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be.” He didn’t want her pity. Nor would he admit how deep those scars cut—how much he blamed himself for telling his father what his sister had done. “Suzette made her choice. I made mine.”
How ironic that Edouard and Suzette had died after a horrible car wreck. Poetic justice? Perhaps.
“Why can’t you give up your vengeance?” Kira asked.
“Pride. Le code d’honneur,” he said, and when she slid him a questioning look added, “My honor demands I avenge those who have wronged my family.”
She shook her head, looking rather appalled. “That’s it? You vowed to ruin Edouard because your sister willingly became his mistress?”
Mon Dieu, she made it sound trivial. “There is more to it than that.”
He drove his fingers through his hair, loath to talk about his parents. They’d been spoiled and rich, living for the moment in whatever spotlight shone on them. They had been ill suited to raise a family or manage their wealth.
André reasoned it had been only a matter of time before his parents made a powerful enemy. Not surprisingly, it had been his mother who’d played a dangerous game with Edouard Bellamy—all to make her husband jealous enough to cease his wanderings.
He doubted either parent had realized Edouard Bellamy was vindictive to a fault. That when Bellamy realized he’d been played for a fool he’d ruthlessly lured André’s father into bankruptcy and André’s sister into his bed.
“André?” she asked. “What happened? Tell me.”
“My father built the Chateau Mystique for my mother,” he said. “His gift to her. Before it was completed Bellamy set out to acquire it by dubious means. I am merely reclaiming what belonged to my family and restoring our honor.”
She stared at him for the longest time, then lifted her hands and clapped, the sound obscene in the tense stillness. “Bravo, André. You have accomplished what you set out to do in the name of honor by employing dubious means—just like Edouard.”
He bristled, hating the comparison. Hating that she was right. But at least he wasn’t alone.
“Look in the mirror, ma chérie. You came here to do Peter Bellamy’s bidding. You are the one enceinte. Or have you so quickly forgotten the role you played for him three months ago?”
She scooted from the bed, her face ashen. “I’m going to my room to sleep. The ghosts in here make it too crowded.”
André took a step forward to stop her, then stilled the urge. The timing was bad. He’d only dig a bigger hole for himself if he pulled her back to him as he longed to do. If he kissed her. Loved her. Sought comfort in her arms.
His emotions were too raw. Tomorrow, he thought, as she left the bedroom without looking back.
Tomorrow he’d have total control of Bellamy Enterprises—and of Kira Montgomery.
KIRA curled in a ball on her bed, too heartbroken to cry. What good would tears do now?
Her father hadn’t just crushed André’s family. Edouard had ripped André away from everything he’d known. Everyone he’d loved. He’d somehow acquired the Chateau—the hotel André’s father had built for his mother—and he’d ensconced André’s sister there as his mistress.
She understood André’s agony, his rage, for she’d lived with something similar herself. Only it had been her own mother who’d abandoned her to Edouard’s care, and his brand of accepting responsibility had been to ship her off to boarding school in
