Page 60 of Innocent Salvation

Chapter 24

The only thing keeping Snow from passing out from the pain after the second bolt of electricity was shot through her body was knowing her team would come. They’d find her and figure this out. She had to be ready when they did.

“This was the first apartment me and your mother ever shared, you know.”

Snow looked up at the man who’d raised her, trying to see something of the man he’d been. He’d been unconventional and difficult, but she’d thought he’d loved her in his own way and perhaps he had but now all she saw when he looked at her was resentment. “Did you love her?”

Henri was watching his phone. “From the day I first laid eyes on her she was like the other half of my soul. Until her, nobody understood me. Not my parents, my friends, nobody until her.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“It was and then Jean-Claude came along and turned her against me. Convinced her I was unstable, that I wasn’t good enough for her.” A cruel smile came over his lips. “But he’ll get his, him and that bastard son they share.”

“You’re going to kill them.”

“Not me, no. Dominique arranged that part.”

Snow’s drooping eyes snapped open wide. “What?”

Henri grinned, revealing all the secrets of the clever plan he’d hatched. “I always knew she’d come back to me, and she did. She helped me fake my death and the plan began. We dragged that idiot judge in because we knew it would help us if we were ever caught. An inside man if you will.”

“Sebastian is in on it too?”

“No, he has no idea apart from the fake identity. No, Domi and I did this together. She told me about her husband’s dirty history and that she had the Caribbean Pink. We planned to kill Jean-Claude and Patrick. Let them take the fall for the attack and bring you back into the family. Dominique would announce our love to the world, and we’d rule France together.” His face contorted. “It was going perfectly until I found out she’d betrayed me again.”

“When you realised I wasn’t your child.”

“Exactly, so now I’ll take the diamond as planned and Dominique will die along with you and her husband and son in a tragic family suicide.”

“How did you find out?”

Henri chuckled. “That idiot husband of hers mentioned a daughter in an email he sent her about Patrick and then it all clicked. You never looked like me, you’re nothing to me, but another reminder of her betrayal.”

“So, you’re going to kill me?”

For the first time since this began, he looked regretful, and Snow wondered if she could still talk her way out of it.

“I have to. It’s the only way I can walk away.”

“My team will never let you get away with this.”

“Maybe not but they won’t find me, so it won’t matter.”

Snow knew that was true. If Henri disappeared, it would take years to find him. He was an expert at living off the grid, they’d done it her whole life.

Silence fell between them, and she moved, trying to get comfortable and thanking God she was double-jointed but still, her muscles burned with pain and fatigue.

“Will you let me down? I won’t run.”

Henri rose and walked to her, his eyes raking over her in a way that made her skin crawl. He was the man who she’d called daddy and now, because his DNA didn’t run through her veins, he was looking at her with lustful eyes.

“You look so much like her at the same age.”

His hand skimmed her cheek, and she knew he wasn’t seeing her. He was seeing Dominique, the woman he loved and who’d betrayed him again in his eyes. The pair of them were utter sociopaths and sadists. She wondered if he’d killed before and knew from the way he was behaving he probably had.

Had all those people who’d looked too closely at them and suddenly disappeared, really just left or had he killed them to protect what he had? Had she really been raised by a serial killer and not known it?

“How many people have you killed?”