Chapter 8 #5
He wanted me to suck his cock and I happily obliged.
As the sex proceeded, he dominated but not entirely.
He had a generosity; maybe sex was one of the few areas where his family and his investors weren’t watching, so he could please only himself and me.
As he fucked me, he smiled at his own expertise.
This wasn’t dorm-room or outer-borough, shove-the-takeout-containers-off-the-bed sex.
This was something between a Parnassus Group coffee table book and making love, and I lost myself so completely that I barely thought about how I’d describe the experience to Brock and maybe the other Tuxes.
In the early hours of the morning, as Luc slept, I crawled out of bed as silently as possible and made my way to the bathroom, a predictably echoing chamber of white marble, with a shower large enough to store five normal showers.
I wondered if I was being filmed, in the bedroom and here, by surveillance cameras, but I doubted it.
Luc was a suspicious but private man, and he’d never arrange that degree of exposure.
I retrieved three of Dr. Huron’s tiny recording discs from my pants, which had stayed heaped on the living room floor, and I quickly stuck them beneath a side table, a bookshelf, and a desk in what appeared to be an office, although it lacked even the most organized clutter.
I crept back to bed, and by the time I woke up, just before 7 a.m., I turned to see Luc’s pillow, but he wasn’t there. I assumed he’d be in the bathroom or brewing coffee, until I propped myself up on an elbow and saw the pool of blood, soaking into the sheets where Luc had slept.
I jumped out of bed and ran through the apartment, but he wasn’t anywhere, there was only a trail of more blood, now muddied with my footprints.
I called out his name to no response. Where was he?
If he’d been injured in some way, why hadn’t he woken me up?
Why hadn’t I heard anything? Unless—had Luc been taken?
But by who, and to what end? Was the Clotho diamond, however prized, worth Luc’s capture, or his life?
Should I call Reggie? Where was my phone? Was there a French 911? I stood in the living room, trying to center my thoughts. Had I somehow attacked Luc? I’d had wine, but only a single glass. Had I been drugged and committed some vicious act during a manic episode?
“Andrew?” Reggie said, ascending the marble staircase. Yes, I thought, with overwhelming gratitude—Denzel Washington is here, or maybe Clive Owen, someone born to size up fraught situations and take charge.
“We don’t know anything, not yet,” said Reggie, heading into the bedroom.
“It happened within the last half hour,” he told me, as he surveyed the sodden linens.
“We’d activated the discs you’d planted and we heard someone open a door, climb the stairs, go to the kitchen, and then there was silence, since you hadn’t installed a disc in the bedroom, but whoever it was, and there may have been more than one assailant, they left, within minutes.
They must’ve had access codes or disabled the security system.
I got here as fast as I could but I was blocks away. I heard you scream.”
Had I screamed? I couldn’t remember, but if Reggie was telling the truth, someone had attacked Luc, someone trained to slash a victim quickly and soundlessly. But what if I’d opened my eyes—would I be dead now?
“They didn’t kill you on purpose, so you’d be the prime and only suspect,” said Reggie.
“There’s film of you and Luc at dinner and entering this building.
Marcus is searching through footage from the surrounding neighborhood, but so far he’s got nothing.
These are my theories: Luc had intercepted the diamond, so his father had him murdered, as a traitor, and has staged everything to look like an abduction.
Or a competitor has kidnapped Luc, and will ransom him in exchange for the diamond—but Luc fought back, which explains the blood.
Or maybe Luc’s ex-boyfriend, the race car driver, is taking some extreme form of revenge. ”
Any of these were possible storylines, to be hashed out by notes from studio executives and focus groups, but they had no effect on my terror.
“You have to get out of here right now, and I’m not just talking about this place or Paris—we’re leaving the country.”
“But Luc, and the blood…”
“We’re taking care of it.”
Tuxedo Society members, in hooded hazmat suits with little black bow ties printed at the collars, were already climbing the staircase with cleaning supplies.
“Luc will be reported as missing within twenty-four hours, but we’ll be across the border. Are you ready?”
Was I? For what? Escape? Arrest? A Tux handed me a change of clothes, along with my backpack, yoga mat, and duffel, which I’d left at the hostel.
My fancy outfit from last night was being shoved into a garbage bag, presumably to be burned.
The team was wiping down every surface with bleach and stripping the bed.
“Come on,” said Reggie, as I struggled into my jeans and hoodie, as if resuming my normal life, without surreptitious trips to Paris and a brutal crime scene. Things were, as Brock would later comment, “getting real, baby. No more Mr. Nice Girl. You’re in the Tuxedo Society.”