9. White Icing #2
“Of course not,” I said. I huddled deeper into my heavy wool coat, shielding my baby bump from the freezing wind. “His debts are clear after the ransom. But he despises me, and my mother would love to get rid of me. He’d jump at the chance of finally being a free man.”
Bastien frowned, dropping his chin as he looked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s a coward, Bastien.” I stepped away from the bench, closing the distance between us on the terrace. “He’d kill me if he could, if the trust wasn’t in his way.”
I gestured toward the silver tray. The steam from the teacup had thinned to nothing.
“He hides behind buffers and physical cash to keep his hands clean,” I said. “He would never use a weapon. If he wanted me dead, he would use the allergy.”
I held Bastien’s gaze. I knew exactly how to bait my husband.
“It’s deniable. All he needs is a motive.
“If I draft a new document naming him and my mother as the sole trustees…” I paused, watching my breath fog and dissipate into the winter sky. I wrapped my arms protectively around my midsection. “We give him that reason.”
Bastien held his silence. He broke his guarded stance. Turning his back to me, he stepped off the edge of the stone pavers.
His boots hit the dead lawn. He paced a tight, agitated line across the grass. His heavy tread crushed the brittle, frosted blades into the dirt. I watched him move, the biting wind whipping loose strands of hair across my face.
I didn’t flinch or reach up to brush the hair away. I understood his rising anger; he was a man paid to keep people breathing.
Now, I was demanding he stand in the shadows and watch me willingly ingest a known poison. The thought of intentionally triggering my own throat to close made my hands shake. I refused to let the fear win.
I would not play the victim anymore.
“Once the baby is safely delivered and out of this house,” I said. I projected my voice over the rustling oak branches, forcing him to listen. “I bait them.”
Bastien stopped pacing. He spun on his heel to face me. He sliced his bare hand through the freezing air, shutting me down before I could even explain the plan.
“Absolutely not.” His voice was a low, dangerous rumble that cut through the howling wind. “It’s too dangerous, Cecilia!”
I stepped right to the edge of the paved path.
I refused to let him intimidate me. The legal system offered me nothing but a messy divorce and shared custody with a coward.
Tobias and Lavinia had orchestrated a nightmare, and they were currently sitting inside my warm house, drinking my tea and waiting for my money.
I would not spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I would not stay locked in a permanent stalemate with the monsters who had handed me over to a kidnapping crew. If the evidence of the past crime did not exist, I had to manufacture a fresh one.
“It’s the only way to get hard evidence of a felony!” I shouted back, the frigid wind burning the back of my throat. I kept my chin raised, refusing to look away first.
Bastien’s boots shifted against the frozen grass. He held his ground.
“How do you even know they’d fall for it?” he demanded. “That they’d confess?”
Releasing my tight grip on my coat lapels, I stepped off the paved stone path to confront him. The frosted grass crunched as I walked directly into his personal space. I planted the heels of my leather boots into the frozen earth. He loomed over me, but I refused to step backward.
I forced him to meet my gaze. “Of course they will,” I said. “I’ve seen them watching me.”
I thought about the antique mirror in the living room.
I pictured Lavinia’s smug smile when she believed I was drowning in a panic attack.
Tobias had stood right beside her, reveling in the sight of my broken composure.
They enjoyed watching me break. That arrogance was exactly how I would trap them.
“They love to see me suffer,” I continued, raising my voice to carry over the wind. “I know them. This will work.”
Bastien remained motionless. The harsh wind stung my cold skin. I ignored it and kept my hands by my hips. He stared down at me without a word. I braced my weight against the frozen dirt, daring him to push past me.
I was asking a career bodyguard to stand back and let me willingly swallow poison. The absolute insanity of the request hung in the space between us. He stared down at me, his jaw set in a resistant silence.
“That might be true,” Bastien said. “But if I am one second too late breaching the door, you are dead.”
I did not blink. “Then don’t be late.”
The wind howled past the empty stone basin. I held his stare, offering no apologies for the risk I was asking him to shoulder. I had to protect my baby, and I would control the ending of this nightmare myself.
“I trust you,” I said.
He maintained his combative stance for another long second. Then, a harsh exhale of white breath escaped his lips into the freezing air. The tension bled out of his posture, leaving behind a reluctant, grounded calm. He wasn’t a man who took orders, but he trusted my strategy. He would not stop me.
“Fine,” Bastien said, dragging a hand over his jaw. “But we do it my way.”
I held my position on the grass, waiting for his terms.
“I am bringing Beaumont in to calculate the exact dosage and timeline,” he continued. “We leave absolutely nothing to chance.”
I gave a single nod. The chaotic fear of the safehouse was gone, replaced by a ruthless clarity. I stood face to face with Bastien on the freezing lawn. The trap was set in my head; I just needed the legal paperwork to bait it.