Page 15 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
Bang! went the door, the hinges giving a full centimetre with the single blow.
“Aaaaah!” Henry breathed out urgently. “Fine! Take it!” He slammed the coins down. “But just you play along.” He jumped to his feet, dashed to the door, braced it with two hands and tried his best to sound calm and formidable when he shouted, “You touch it again, and I’ll take his hand!”
The expected attack on the door didn’t come, and three solid seconds passed before Henry turned his desperate gaze on Émile and nodded his head sharply.
“What?” Émile whispered.
“Say something!” Henry hissed back urgently. “Pretend you’re scared.”
Émile gave a nod and a smile. “Léon, is that you?” he called. “I’m so scared!”
Henry rolled his eyes right up to the ceiling, but Léon’s hands were on the window, the shape of him clear through the drapes as he tried to peer in. “I’m here! Émile are you all right?”
Henry shook his head sternly at the boy.
“No,” Émile reported dutifully. “No, I’m not all right at all. Oh, Léon, he’s so cruel. I haven’t eaten in days!”
It escaped neither Henry’s nor Léon’s notice that the boy had been with Henry mere hours rather than days, but Léon instantly put that slip down to the stress the poor child must have been under. His hand slammed down on the window, very nearly breaking the glass, to which Henry yelled across, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You can hear the boy’s alive now,but I’ve a knife at his throat, and if you make one false move, you’ll get nothing but his head back.”
Léon immediately distanced himself from the window with the shock of the words. His retreat drew Henry a little closer, hidden by the darkness on the inside, but able to see Léon quite clearly through the cotton drapes. His arms had fallen at his sides, limp but for the tensing and untensing of his fists, and he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ll stop.”
He so desperately wanted to be near his brother, that much was clear and only natural, and Henry had his keys, and he was very close to letting the boy go to him. But if he did that, Léon was likely to get in the way of the next part of his plan, if for no other reason than perfectly valid retribution. So Henry had to be bold, and he had to be cruel. He had no other choice. “If you want to see him alive again, leave now. Go.”
“I can’t.” Léon’s voice was rough, broken. It ripped out of him like a final plea before death. “Please, I gave you what you wanted. Why can’t he come with me now? I swear, I won’t get in your way. I won’t tell a soul what I’ve done. Please.”
Henry let out a barely audible groan of frustration. “You’ll get him tomorrow. Perhaps tonight, even?—”
“Tonight?” Léon grasped desperately at the offer. “When? Where?” Then with a shake of his head, he was back at the window, hands pressed against it as though he could feel Émile on the other side. “No. No, I won’t leave him. I can’t just go.”
Henry wrenched three more livres from his pocket and smacked them down on the table in front of Émile, who snapped to work on sight of it. “You must go, Léon,” he yelled. “They do dreadful things, awful things. Please, you must do what they say, or they’ll hurt me again.”
“Again?” Léon cried. Both hands were shading his eyes as he tried to discern the kidnapper in the darkness. “I told you, you bastard, if you lay a hand on him, I will kill you!”
“The boy is fine!” Henry shouted, leaping back into the shadows, shaking his head at Émile, rolling his hand in circles as a sign the boy should come up with a better story than that, and fast.
“N-not me,” yelled Émile, watching Henry’s flailing arms. “Me, my, uh, the…” His eyes lighting on one of the toys Henry had bought for him, “My cat!Acat.”
“What?” Léon yelled.
“What?” Henry mouthed.
“He took a-a-cat…”
Henry threw his hands up in the air in exasperation.
Émile gave him a nod and a wink that was supposed to suggest he had it all under control, and he said, “He chopped off its leg!”
“What?” Léon screamed.
“What?” Henry wailed, both hands tearing into his hair.
“Right in front of me!” Émile asserted proudly. “He let it bleed everywhere, and it cried and cried. Please, Léon, you must go now. He has it. He’ll take another leg! Please, I can’t bear it.”
“Oh, Émile!” Léon all but wept.
“Why would you say that?” Henry whisper-screamed.
Émile only gave him a mollifying head tilt, perfectly at odds with his terrified voice. “Please, Léon! He has it now! I’m so afraid of what he’ll do. It’s just a tiny kitten.”
