Seventy-two hours after the incident, a young man
dressed in a suit and tie browsed through a high-end gadget shop in Ghirardelli
Square to kill time.
“Willy?” Victoire
asked, sidling up to him.
He spun around beaming
with anticipation. Three weeks, five days and fourteen hours passed without
losing himself in her arms. “I missed you so much, if I don’t kiss you right
now, I’ll die!”
Her eyes narrowed. “Willy,
I told you: we can’t take any risks. I just can’t.”
His fingertips caressed
the side of her face. “Okay, okay. Don’t freak out.”
“Are you making any
progress, Willy? It feels like
ages, and I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to pretend all is well.”
Peter had looked
unusually forlorn and stuck close to home insisting she stay with him. She
thought he might have a cold, but there were no physical symptoms. She left the
house on a false pretext to meet Willy only because he persisted over the
phone.
Willy took something
out of a bag and handed it to her. “I brought you something.” Victoire’s mood lifted
when she saw the packet.“It’s my gift to you,
Victoire, negatives and all!” He grinned and watched her devour the contents.
“Oh-my-God,” she
uttered, carefully inspecting every single shot.” Her entire body tingled, the
cold forgotten. “These police pictures and the ones with ambulance,” she
inquired, sitting upright keeping the evidence held close to her chest. “Are
they in any way related to the story on the news about the dead gay guy?”
Willy leaned back on
the hard bench, crossed his arms, smiled widely and nodded.
Victoire looked at the
pictures again, thinking them too good to be true. Her jaw remained wide open. “Did
Peter kill him?”
Willy shook his head. “Apparently
not. The police are looking for a Turk. He’s the one who got the hell out of
the place first looking like the Italian mob was on his tail. Peter and the
other two stormed out right afterwards. Check it out.”
But Victoire heard all
she needed to know and much more. Suddenly, her blackmail plan took a more
twisted turn. An unearthly look took possession of her face. “Do you know what
this means?” she whispered.
“Are you telling me?”
he chortled. “I saw them escape the scene of the crime. Victoire, your husband
just might be an accessory to manslaughter!” He rubbed his cold hands with
glee. “Wait till the press gets a hold of this.” He bounded up and gestured
with his arms. “A story of this magnitude is going to rock more than just Silicon
Valley. Victoire, all you need to do is drop off the pictures at any police
station-anonymously-and you’ve got your freedom!”
The hand Victoire hoped
to play was much less public. “Wait!” she pleaded. “Just wait, okay?” She stood
up clutching the package possessively. “I’ve got to think here.”
A sense of dread
assailed him. He expected an entirely different reaction from her. His
shoulders slumped.
“I don’t get it, Victoire. You are now in a position to call
every shot. Why on earth would you hesitate?” He looked pained, muddled. “Please don’t tell me you have feelings
for the guy!” A gust whipped his straight hair about his pale face.
Victoire immediately
nuzzled up against his ear and cooed, “No, darling, no. I never have.” She
touched him briefly on the mouth. “But I just can’t see a man like Peter
capable of hurting anybody, despite everything he is or is not. He’s kind and
generous to a fault.” She stood back keeping her hands on his chest. “What kind
of a person would I be if I threw him to the wolves, Willy? I couldn’t live
with myself. I’ve got to talk to him. Alone.”
“You do what you think is best,
Victoire. Just know that I love you. I’ve loved you since the morning I first saw
you. There isn’t a day, even an instant, that goes by that I don’t yearn for
you. You told me yourself you’re unhappy because you don’t really love the guy.
But now you know what he’s all about, and what really makes him tick. Victoire,
it’s all there in black and white.” He shook his head and took her face in his
hands. “You deserve much more, so much more. Don’t let pity blind you.”
Victoire went in for
the kill. “Willy, I’ve prayed so hard to hear you say those words, you have no
idea…”
Willy gobbled up the intense, unrestrained hunger
of her brief, deep kiss. Every nerve ending in his body sprung to life.
She pulled back and stared at him intently. “I
love you. I love you so much that
if you don’t wait for me, Willy Waites, I’ll lose my mind!” She grabbed him by the tie. “Swear to me you’re mine, mine alone
and that no matter what, you’ll never let me go!”
He pulled her so close
to him that she could barely breathe.
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