Chapter 6: The Fiancé

Ava

~~~

My blood runs cold. How did she know I was already planning to leave? The only person I told was Evelyn, and she would never snitch.

Finally, The Madame turns her soulless eyes toward me. “Actually, I heard two, but let’s start with the one that directly affects my wallet.”

In one swift motion, she pulls a gun out of her pocket, and it takes everything in me not to scream.

Guns take me back to The Incident more than any other weapon, and staring down the barrel of one makes me gulp. I have to try not to let the memories of that day creep back in.

“W-who told you?” I quiver out, ashamed at the shake in my voice.

She cocks her head at me, her blue wig falling to the side. “Your reputation told me, foolish girl. You have a history of running when the rent doesn’t get paid—or so I’ve heard.”

She beckons to the mostly empty room with her gunned hand. “I gave you till today to pay. Then I walk past your idiotic blonde friend and a car packed with a lot of shit I recognize as yours. It wouldn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”

She smiles, baring crooked teeth. “Though being a genius has helped me immensely, wouldn’t you say?”

I gulp, immediately fiddling with my butterfly necklace to ease my anxiety.

“Are you going to kill me, l-like your last tenant?” I shakily ask.

For a moment, The Madame’s thick eyebrows draw together in confusion, before she finally realizes what I mean and lets out a howling laugh.

“You mean Donald?” she wheezes out between laughs. “Please. If I killed Donald, he would never have paid the rent he owed me—though him having to do it with two paralyzed hands made the task a bit trickier.”

Bile rises at the back of my throat at her confession, but I almost choke it out when she cocks the gun.

“I don’t want you to be so lucky, little fool. I want death.”

I nearly get on my knees and beg, but the thought of my mother stops me. When she faced the situation that left her bedridden and was told to beg for a bed space in the hospital, she didn’t. She never let her pride fade.

“We’re Allards,” she’d said to me, wiping my tears, “and we don’t go down without taking something down with us.”

It’s possibly not the best advice, but what trouble will taking it cause when I’m possibly not the best person?

So, instead of begging, I pull out my small knife. Compared to the gun, I know for a fact the odds are not in my favor, but if I could at least harm her enough to run away, then I could buy myself time.

But The Madame only widens her smile. “Little fool.”

“Maybe,” I agree, “but at least I’m a brave one.”

At the sound of the word brave, her eyebrows crawl up, and with some level of annoyance, she drops her gun.

Huh… a very strange reaction to a non-threatening word.

“Brave,” she sighs. “That reminds me of the second rumor I heard about you.”

Now it’s my turn to be confused. I edge closer, hoping I can get her to keep talking so I can escape.

“What second rumor?”

She squeezes her face in a grimace as she grits out, “Mi Valienta.”

Sinclair. That’s what Leonel Sinclair called me last night. I’d never known what it meant, and with what little time I’ve had since then, I never bothered to check, but could it mean…

“My brave one,” The Madame verifies, actually looking ill as she does so. Her eyes flicker to my knife. “Well, maybe he was sort of right about that, little fool.”

My head spins. Leonel Sinclair was calling me brave, right after he called me foolish? It doesn’t make sense.

But what makes even less sense is how she knows about it. Yes, we’d been recorded, but I doubt anyone’s phone picked that up when he whispered it to me.

“You know Mr. Sinclair?” I conclude.

The newscaster on the TV starts talking about something groundbreaking. I’d completely forgotten it was on.

The Madame shrugs, and to my surprise, she tosses the gun aside.

“Not until last night,” she replies. “He let it slip when he promised to not allow me to hurt you.”

Okay, forget the news. This right here? This is groundbreaking.

The Madame looks at me like something she scraped off the back of her shoe. “All this time, Allard, you had some billionaire boyfriend?”

My brain comes to a complete halt. In some logical world, billionaire boyfriend and my last name should not come together in a sentence. Actually, us Allards are notorious for having the exact opposite.

“What does that mean?” I manage to get out, surprised my brain could even put together words.

The Madame points to the TV. “It means that.”

Confused, I turn to see the groundbreaking news still playing. If I thought my brain had stopped before, what I see may as well tear it out of my head.

In the corner of the TV, a picture of me and Sinclair sits. It’s the one of us kissing.

Even though I’d felt something with his lips over mine, seeing the picture makes me realize I wasn’t the only one. He looks like he had nowhere else he’d rather be. I’m not sure what exactly that makes me feel.

But this still doesn’t make anything clear to me. Not until I catch the presenter’s announcement.

“—The Axion Tech CEO’s press team was delighted to inform news officials last night about his recent engagement to an upcoming artist who we’ve identified as Ava Allard.”

My breath hitches as I read the words over and over.

What.

The.

Fuck?