Page 111 of Playing with Fire

Maxime's hands trembled. He turned to Algerone, resignation and terror mingling in his expression. "Algerone, I... you have to understand, everything I've ever done was with your best interests at heart. I've only ever wanted to protect you, to ensure your success—"

“Maxime,” Algerone said firmly. “Explain yourself. Now.”

Maxime looked like he might be sick.

"Imogen, she…She tried to tell you," he began, voice barely above a whisper, words tumbling out in a desperate attempt to justify himself now that the secret was exposed. "She called the company. Said she needed to speak with you urgently about a personal matter. I... intercepted the call."

"You knew." Algerone's voice was deadly quiet, each word precise and controlled despite the betrayal etched across his features. He removed his hand from Maxime's grip as if the touch suddenly burned him. “You knew she was pregnant with my children and you didn’ttell me?”

Maxime's entire body was shaking now, his composure crumbling with each passing second. "The entire future of the company hung in the balance. I thought... I believed I was doing what was best for you. For your legacy."

"My childrenaremy legacy," Algerone said, each syllable precision-cut. His eyes remained fixed on that same distant point, refusing to meet Maxime's desperate gaze. His hands gripped the bedsheet until his knuckles turned white, the only outward sign of the fury and betrayal churning within.

I watched Maxime's confession with cold detachment, no satisfaction in seeing him fall apart. This wasn't about enjoyment or revenge. It was about the truth. About forcing the man who had destroyed my family to finally face what he'd done. The righteous anger that had driven me here remained, but tempered with something unexpected: a hollow feeling where satisfaction should have been.

I folded my arms over my chest. “Go on. Tell him the rest.”

“Please.” Maxime was shaking visibly now, tears welling up in his eyes. “Please don’t…”

“Tell him or I will.”

Maxime let out a resigned puff of breath and wiped away a single tear, staring at the floor. "I tried to pay her off,” he admitted quietly. “At first, I tried to pay her to…deal with the situation medically. I told her you’d pay for everything. The best doctors. She wouldn’t do it. She insisted on not terminating the pregnancy. When she stayed firm, I tried to pay for her silence. I told her you wanted nothing to do with her, that you weren’t interested in further contact. She…accepted that. Initially. Everything was fine until…” He took another shaky breath. “Until it wasn’t. I didn’t know there were three. Not until after the birth. That’s when everything went wrong. She became…erratic. Paranoid. Threatened to go public. I tried to calm her down, offered her more money, a house, whatever she wanted. But she wouldn’t take it. She was having some sort of mental break and wanted to do interviews and talk to paparazzi.”

"So you threatened her," I supplied, every word precise as a scalpel. "Frightened her so badly she contacted Annie Laskin and begged her to take her babies if anything happened."

"I never meant—" Maxime began.

"What exactly did you say to her?" Algerone interrupted, his voice dangerously soft.

Maxime's face was ashen, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow as he struggled to form words. His hands clutched at each other, white-knuckled. "I... I was only thinking of your future," he whispered, voice barely audible. "I had convinced myself it was the right thing to do."

"Tell him what you said," I demanded, my voice hard. "Tell him exactly what you threatened her with."

Maxime's shoulders hunched defensively. "I merely suggested that certain behaviors could have consequences. I reminded her you were a mercenary with connections. Enough influence to make a B-movie starlet disappear. I threatened her.”

A muscle in Algerone’s jaw flexed. “You threatened the mother of my children, knowing she was mentally unstable, knowing that she needed help, and you kept all of this from me? For more than twenty years?”

“I-I thought she would back off!” Maxime stammered. “I thought she’d stop calling. I didn’t think… It never even occurred to me that she might… That she would…”

The monitors tracking Algerone's vitals spiked again, a nurse appearing briefly at the door before Algerone waved her away with a sharp gesture. His face tightened with pain he refused to acknowledge.

When he finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper, yet it filled the room with more menace than any shout could have. "You threatened a mentally unstable woman," he said. "The mother of my children. And as a direct result, she took her own life. Then, for almost twenty years, you kept it a secret. Even after I came to you, after I began searching for them, trying to piece together what had happened, you said nothing."

"To protect you!" Maxime's composure finally cracked completely, his hands gesturing wildly. "Everything I've ever done has been to protect you!"

Algerone didn't respond. He simply turned his head away, eyes fixed on a point on the far wall, a muscle working in his jaw. The silence stretched between them, oppressive and heavy with decades of betrayal.

"Algerone, please..." Maxime reached for his hand again, but Algerone shifted it just beyond his reach—a small movement but devastating in its finality.

The silence continued, broken only by the steady beeping of the monitors and Maxime's increasingly ragged breathing.

"Get out." The words were so quiet I barely heard them, but they carried a weight that made even me flinch. There was no emotion in Algerone's voice. No rage. No hurt. Just a void where thirty-two years of trust had been.

Maxime froze, eyes wide with disbelief. "Algerone—"

"Get. Out." Still no rise in volume, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. His eyes remained fixed on that distant point, refusing to even acknowledge Maxime's existence.

I watched something break in Maxime then, something fundamental and irreparable. His shoulders slumped as if the strings holding him upright had been cut. He stood slowly, movements those of a man three times his age, and backed toward the door.

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