Honeymoon in Paris

by Juliette Sobanet

  She shrugged him off of her. “The last time I depended on a man, I was left with nothing. No way to take care of my children, no money, nothing! I’ll never make that mistake again, let alone with someone who’s romping around Paris with a different girl in his bed every week.” Isabelle flicked her angry gaze over to me. “Charlotte’s friend Fiona knows all about Marcel’s skills in the bedroom, doesn’t she?”

  “What are you talking about?” Marcel asked her.

  “In one of our daily gossip sessions, Charlotte so kindly informed me that she discovered her friend Fiona naked in your bed that morning. And it’s funny, because when I showed up unannounced at your apartment that night, you insisted on keeping me in the living room and out on the balcony. You did not want me in your bedroom that night, and now I know why.”

  So Nicolas hadn’t been lying. It had been Marcel and Isabelle kissing on the balcony the night of our champagne-induced memory loss. And the black-and-pink thong I’d spotted on Marcel’s floor—it belonged to Isabelle.

  But that still didn’t explain what Fiona was doing naked in Marcel’s bed the next morning.

  “You really don’t know how to keep your mouth shut, do you?” Marcel snapped at me.

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware that Isabelle—my new friend—was dating you, because she never told me.” I couldn’t help but let out a little sarcasm. The mess that Isabelle and Marcel had made of their lives was not going to garner any sympathy from me.

  “It wasn’t what it looked like,” Marcel said.

  “Then what was it?” I asked. “It looked to me like you took advantage of how drunk my friend was to have another meaningless exploit.”

  Isabelle crossed her arms and leveled her fuming gaze at Marcel.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but Isabelle cut him off. “The truth, Marcel. I want the truth.”

  “The truth is that Charlotte’s friends were falling all over me all night. I wasn’t planning to do anything with any of them. I was furious my brother was going to see you in the first place, Charlotte, and the only way I could keep an eye on the situation was to ask you all to stay at my apartment. Nicolas left with your friend Lexi, and I thought the rest of you went to bed in one of the guest rooms. But when I walked into my bedroom, I found Fiona asleep in my bed. She’d already taken off all her clothes. I tried to wake her up and get her to put them back on, but she just mumbled something about how she likes to sleep in the nude and how she missed some guy named Marc. Only a few minutes later, you showed up at my door, Isabelle.”

  “What a convenient story,” Isabelle remarked.

  Considering Marcel’s reputation, it did seem farfetched that he would have a naked girl in his bed and not try to sleep with her. And I wouldn’t have pegged Fiona as the type to insist on sleeping in the nude, but for Fiona’s sake, I honestly hoped Marcel was telling the truth. And I hoped I would make it out of there safely so I could tell her.

  “What did you mean when you said you needed to ‘keep an eye’ on the situation that night?” I asked Marcel.

  “I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough,” Marcel said before taking a step closer to Isabelle and running his thumb down her cheek. “I’m telling you the truth, mon amour. I’m in love with you, and I was finished with all of the other women. They are meaningless to me. It’s you I want.”

  Oh, these Frenchmen! Do they ever turn off the romance?

  Marcel pulled Isabelle into his arms then planted his lips on hers. I’d seen enough of Marcel’s overly dramatic movie kisses. The last thing I felt like doing right now was watching another one from my vantage point as the tied-up, beaten-down hostage.

  “Now that we’ve gotten that all worked out,” I interjected, “can you please let me go?”

  They held their kiss for another few seconds before Isabelle turned to me with a new fire in her eyes.

  “I’m not going to ruin anything for you, Isabelle. I promise,” I assured her. “Until this afternoon, I had no idea you were connected to Marcel or his father in any way. I would never want to hurt your ability to provide for your daughters.”

  She walked over to me, slowly shaking her head. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte. But I can’t do that.”

  It was then that I noticed the shiny knife she’d pulled out of her pocket.

  Oh, God.

  “Isabelle, think about what you’re doing here,” I said. “If you hurt me, you’ll lose your girls forever.”

  Marcel’s eyes widened when he noticed the knife in her hand.

  “Don’t try to stop me, Marcel.” Her voice crackled as she ran a finger over the sharp blade. “I’ll handle this.”

  Just as Marcel lunged at her, the sound of shattering glass pierced my ears.

  My muscles instinctively tensed, bracing for a blow.

  But instead, a troop of black police boots stormed through the racks of lingerie, guns aimed at Isabelle and Marcel, who had tumbled to the floor as Marcel struggled to ply the knife from his crazy girlfriend’s hands.

  A deep, steady voice sounded from the lineup. “Drop the knife.”

  That couldn’t be…

  I lifted my gaze to the man who’d just spoken, but I couldn’t believe it was true. I blinked a few times, thinking it must’ve been the blow to my head that was making me imagine the sight of the handsome, sexy man standing amid all of these armed officers.

  But he was as real as the pounding of my heart.

  “Luc?” I managed to spit out.

  Still dressed in the dark jeans and white-collared shirt he’d left the house in this morning, Luc was the only one of the bunch not dressed in a police uniform.

  But he did have a gun, and like the others, it was pointed at Isabelle and Marcel.

  He nodded at me before repeating his warning. “Drop the knife, Isabelle.”

  Isabelle’s hand went limp, the knife clattering to the ground as tears poured down her cheeks. She sobbed into Marcel’s shoulder as he held her tightly. “It’s over now, chérie,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s over.”

  I barely heard them going on like the pair of tormented lovers they were as I watched my husband scoop the knife off the ground and rush toward me.

  As two of the policemen pried Isabelle off Marcel and cuffed them both, Luc cut the ropes off my wrists and feet.

  I was too stunned to ask Luc all of the questions burning on the tip of my tongue, but I did manage to say one word: “Adeline.”

  “I have her,” Luc said. “She’s safe.”

  I released the breath that had been lodged in my lungs, and it was only once Luc had freed me from the chair that I noticed my entire body was trembling.

  Luc wiped the blood from my cheek, then wiped a tear from my eye. “And you are too, mon amour. You’re safe now.”

  “But… I don’t understand. Are you some sort of undercover cop or something?”

  “I’ll explain everything once we get you out of here. I promise.” He wrapped his strong arms around me and pulled me into his chest. And for the first time since this entire scandal had begun, I stopped questioning him, stopped doubting him, and instead placed my trust in my husband and let him hold me tight.

  TWENTY-SIX

  After a quick trip to the hospital to stitch up the gash on my forehead and to confirm that I did, in fact, have a concussion from the blow I’d been dealt earlier in the black “taxi cab,” Luc drove me back to our apartment where his mother and sister were waiting with Adeline.

  The minute we walked in the door, Sandrine wrapped me up in a tight hug while Luc’s mom kissed him on the forehead, then promptly shook him by the shoulders.

  “You had us all so scared,” she said in French. “What were you thinking?”

  Luc sighed. “Oui, I know, maman. I will explain everything.”

  “Have you known all along what’s been going on, Charlotte?” Luc’s mom asked.

  I shook my head, but thought better of it the minute my temples started pounding again.

  �
��Maman, I think Charlotte needs to rest,” Sandrine said, ushering me toward the couch.

  “I want to see Adeline first,” I said. “Is she asleep already?”

  Sandrine nodded. “Yes, we just put her down. She was exhausted, the poor little thing. But thankfully she was only exhausted from playing with Isabelle’s daughters. She had no clue anything bad was going on, and she was only a little confused as to why this strange woman picked her up at the crèche. Thank God she’s okay.”

  Luc followed me back to Adeline’s room, and when we peeked inside, we found her all curled up under the covers, clutching Luc Penguin, Charlotte Penguin, and Adeline Penguin tightly to her chest. Thankfully, Brigitte Penguin was nowhere to be found.

  I took a careful seat on the edge of Adeline’s bed, stroking her pretty auburn hair as she breathed lightly in and out. Luc sat on the other side of the bed and kissed Adeline on the forehead.

  “Luc, what if something had happened to her?” I whispered. “I would never have been able to forgive myself.”

  Luc took my hand and smiled at me. “Nothing did happen to her, mon amour, and none of this was your fault. Now come with me. It’s time for me to tell you the truth about everything.”

  I gave Adeline a kiss and silently thanked God that our little girl was okay. She wasn’t only Luc’s daughter anymore, she was mine too. And I would do everything in my power to protect and love her for the rest of my life.

  Luc took my hand and led me back into the living room where Sandrine and Michèle were waiting for me with a pillow, an ice pack, two pain pills, and a glass of water. Once they got me all settled in on the couch, the three of us turned to Luc and waited for him to begin.

  He sat down in the armchair facing us and, finally, he told all three of the women in his life the full, uncensored truth.

  “I guess I’ll have to start from the beginning,” Luc began in French. “In high school, when Dad was convicted of embezzlement and sent to prison, I know you never believed me, maman and Sandrine, but I knew he was innocent.”

  Luc’s mother crossed her arms and pursed her lips, but thankfully she stayed silent. It was all I could do to force this dazed, pounding head of mine to focus on Luc’s words. If the two of them started arguing, I’d have to leave the room.

  “There was just no way a man who had managed our family finances so poorly for so long would have the know-how to commit a financial crime of that magnitude. Plus, they never did trace where all of that money ended up. It looked as if it was transferred through several offshore accounts—but then, it never turned up.”

  Sandrine nodded. “Yes, but I figured Dad had managed that money just as poorly as he’d done with our family finances.”

  Luc shook his head. “No, that wasn’t the case. I’ll tell you exactly where that money did go, but first let me explain how I found out in the first place. I know you have all thought that I worked in finance for several years in Paris before making a career change to teaching.”

  “Clearly we know now that wasn’t the case,” Sandrine said. “So what have you been doing?”

  I thought back to the image of Luc leading a pack of armed French policemen into the lingerie store before he’d busted both Isabelle and Marcel. I still could hardly wrap my throbbing head around it.

  “It was a necessary lie,” Luc conceded. “After college, I trained to be an undercover agent for the government, and my focus was on investigating financial crimes.”

  “Did you do all of this for Dad?” Sandrine asked. “Because you believed he was innocent?”

  “Yes, I knew all along who was truly behind the embezzlement, and I wanted to bring the truth to light in the hope that it could fix our family, not to mention save our father’s reputation and career.”

  “This family is broken for many more reasons than for what your father did,” Michèle admitted. “I had a hand in it all too, you know. If I had never married Vincent—”

  “Maman, please. I will get to Vincent in a moment,” Luc said, flaring his nostrils as he said his ex-step-father’s name.

  “In order to obtain my position with the government,” he continued, “I had to act as if I believed that Dad was guilty, and I had to cut off all contact with him—or at least pretend to. The idea of the government hiring the son of a man who’d been convicted of embezzlement was crazy enough, let alone if I was still talking to him. But you see, even my word that I’d cut off all ties with my father wasn’t enough. I had to have a friend on the inside to help me get the job, and this is where my friend Guillaume Dubois came in.”

  “That name sounds familiar,” Sandrine said. “Did you go to college with him?”

  Funny, like many of the names I’d learned in the past three weeks, I’d never heard the name Guillaume Dubois out of Luc’s mouth.

  “Yes, he was one of my closest friends, and more than anyone I know, he understands what it’s like to have a dramatic family. Both of his older brothers are ex-cons, and one of them is currently in prison.” Luc turned to me before continuing. “In fact, Charlotte, do you remember the couple that crashed our cocktail cruise before our wedding reception in Annecy?”

  “I may have been smacked in the head earlier, but I could never forget that.” I thought back to the pretty girl with long auburn hair who’d accidentally boarded the boat we’d taken out on the Lake of Annecy. She’d told me she was a wedding planner and that she was absolutely mortified that she’d crashed our wedding. Later we’d found out they were wanted by the police.

  “What do they have to do with your friend Guillaume?” I asked Luc.

  “The guy who crashed our wedding cruise is one of Guillaume’s brothers—the one who’s not in prison. But I want to allow Guillaume to explain all of this to you. He has invited us to his family’s vineyard, which isn’t too far from Lyon. Once you’re feeling better, of course.”

  “A trip to a French vineyard sounds amazing after the day I just had,” I said with a tired smile.

  “You won’t have a day like this ever again, chérie, I can promise you that,” Luc said as he reached over and squeezed my hand. “So to get back to the story, I worked on many high-profile cases, and because my cover was never blown—well, until now of course—I moved up quickly in the organization. In addition to investigating financial crimes, I moved on to investigate and bust organized crime rings.”

  “Wait a second,” I spoke up. “When we first met last year at the Cité Universitaire, you said you were going to grad school—but you weren’t going back to school, were you? You were living there undercover, and you were the one who busted that drug ring at the Cité that we read about in the paper on the last day of our honeymoon.”

  Luc raised a brow and grinned at me. “Yes, that was me.”

  “I thought it was weird that a thirty-year-old once-married man would live in a student dorm. I guess this explains why you kept disappearing for weeks and months at a time, and why you barely ever told me anything about your past.”

  He nodded. “Yes, chérie. Part of that was due to the divorce and custody battle, of course, but the other part was due to my job. I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you.” He looked to his mom and sister, who were now staring at him with mouths agape. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you two either. It was imperative that I keep my cover to do what I entered the organization to do.”

  “Which was to take down Vincent Boucher,” I said.

  “Even with a concussion, you are catching on quickly, mon amour,” Luc said, flashing that sexy smile of his my way. Despite all of the drama, the secrets, and the lies, the fact that I now knew my husband was an undercover government agent had just raised his sexiness level to the max.

  “You did all of this to get revenge on Vincent?” Sandrine asked.

  “Not for revenge,” Luc said. “I did it for justice. Justice for our father and for our family. I knew Vincent was behind the embezzlement, but because he is such a master at making sure none of his illegal activity is traced back to him, i
t has taken many years to build a solid case against him.”

  “What about the information Nicolas provided in that envelope?” I asked. “He said that whatever was inside proved without a doubt that your father was innocent.”

  “Nicolas must’ve found a way to break into his father’s confidential files, and he did find some old financial documents that show proof of Vincent’s involvement in the embezzlement case, but I’d found that same proof years ago.”

  “If you’ve had the proof all along, why did you take so long to arrest Vincent and to prove Dad’s innocence?” Sandrine asked.

  “Because I started to figure out that Vincent was involved in something much bigger than just embezzling company funds. And I wanted to bring him down for everything. Not just for what he did to our father.”

  A troubled look washed over Michèle’s cold features. It must’ve been hard for her to hear that the father of her children really had been innocent all along, and that Vincent—the man she’d made the mistake of marrying next—had been the true culprit.

  “So what is this big thing that Vincent has been involved in?” Michèle asked quietly. “And what does it have to do with that lingerie store?”

  Luc nodded to me. “If Charlotte is up for it, I’d like for her to tell you. It seems I have finally met my match. She has become quite the spy this past week.”

  I pressed the ice pack harder to my temple and smiled at my husband. “Well, I had to take things into my own hands because you weren’t telling me anything. At least now I understand why you couldn’t tell me.”

  “So what did you find out?” Sandrine asked me.

  I cleared my throat and launched into my story. “After overhearing and recording some of Vincent’s private conversations at the offices of Bella France this week, I began to believe that Vincent was running an organized prostitution ring.”

  Michèle’s face paled as she shot a hand to her heart. “A prostitution ring? Are you serious?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I know. It’s shocking… and appalling. From what I could figure out, it seemed Vincent had a team of people in the entertainment industry—Marcel and Brigitte included—who recruited young, beautiful, desperate actresses to sleep with wealthy film executives and other high-ups in the business. And—correct me if I’m wrong, Luc—but it sounded as if, in return, they were promised better roles and more money.”