Page 70 of Her Inconvenient Groom (French Conquests 4)

“I did it for you!” she protested, looking put out that nobody seemed to be acknowledging the sacrifice she had made. “All you’ve done lately is bitch and moan about missing out on the chance to be CEO. And complain about your rights being violated. How much better you’d be at heading the company.”

“I never told you to murder her!”

“It needed to be done. And you were just content to bellyache, and pull stupid stunts like calling aboard meeting.”She snorted. “As if that would do any good. Can’t you see this woman is way too sneaky to allow something so simple to undermine her? She needed to be taken out of the picture completely. I knew it, even if you don’t have the guts to admit it.”

Chantelle felt a wave of nausea, just listening to the rantings of this distorted mind. She’d cared for this woman, treated her like the sister she never had. She felt Dustin’s arms tighten around her, and was grateful for their comfort.

“But not me,” Samantha concluded. “I did what you couldn’t!”

Dennis released his wife and stepped back, regarding her brokenly. Looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “We may have had our differences, but she’s my sister!”

Samantha scoffed. “You mean step-sister? She’s just some other woman’s child. Just some kid your father was foolish enough to adopt—”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Chantelle surprised herself by saying. “Dennis and Tom aren’t mystep-siblings. They’re myhalf-brothers.”

Everyone in the room turned to stare.

“What?” Dennis said, turning even more ashen.

“Simon was my biological father too.”

“How is that even possible?”

She couldn’t believe she was telling them this. Simon had made her promise to not breathe a word of this ever. It could potentially destroy the company’s reputation to reveal the truth. But maintaining the lie had caused more trouble than it was worth, so the truth would have to come out.

“Do you remember when he was dying, how he asked to speak to each of us in turn?”

Both Dennis and Tom nodded.

“Well, he told me.” She wet her lips. “He admitted that he and my mother had an affair and conceived me years before they met again and married. He was in France on business when they met over thirty-three years ago. It was a brief relationship. My mom was married, but separated from her husband, Renaud. Simon was married to your mother and going through difficulties with his wife, who had recently given birth to a stillborn daughter. When he returned to the States to take over his father’s — ourgrandfather’sbusiness — he left my mom behind. Pregnant. My mother reunited with Renaud and he raised me as his own until his death. Your father bought the French estate for my mother when he learned of the pregnancy, but didn’t divorce your mother on the advice of his father. Simon didn’t want to hurt your mom with the news of my existence, considering she’d recently lost her own child. Simon fixed things with your mother mostly for the sake of you two and took care of me financially from afar. Simon and my mother reunited after their spouses passed away.”

Just thinking about it made her throat tighten. Her mother had taken that secret to her grave. Chantelle thought back with pain on the months she’d spent being angry with Elodie for her deceit. How unforgiving she’d been. Now she felt she understood. And that understanding brought forgiveness, for Elodie, for Simon, for everyone.

“I can’t believe this,” said Tom.

She added, “Believe it. I did the test using hair follicles left on your brushes. We’re blood siblings.”

“I wish I’d known,” Dennis said quietly, still unable to look at his wife, and Tom nodded.

“I wish so, too,” Chantelle agreed sadly.

A sound at the door made everyone turn. It was two uniformed officers.

Samantha gasped and recoiled in horror. “What—?”

Sienna held up her phone and waggled it at her. “I called the cops.” Her face split in a grin. “You lose, bitch.”

Chapter 38

“You sure you can make this?” Dustin asked Chantelle for perhaps the third time in the past two hours. They were on a forest trail that had started off flat, but which now had a noticeable incline. He was certainly fit enough to make it, buthewasn’t the one who had spent almost two months in the hospital. Months where she’d grown stronger and all the poison in her system had been eradicated by a counteractive drug. Her body and organs were back to normal.

“I’m not an invalid,” she told him snippily. “Stop treating me like one.”

“Nobody, saying you’re an invalid,” he answered, trying to hide his amusement. “But you haven’t spent much time on your legs since you were discharged. Maybe a major half-day hike isn’t a good idea.”

She brushed away a damp lock of hair and puffed, stubbornly shouldering her light backpack and taking another sip of plain spring water. Since discovering what had been happening to her flavored water over the past few months, she had sworn off any such beverage unless she dropped the slices of lemon into the bottle herself. “I told you—”

“You need this to soothe your soul,” he said, humoring her, slipping his arm through hers. They’d arrived at her mansion just two days before, and despite Rosemarie’s dire warnings and Dustin’s gentle dissuasion, she’d insisted on giving in to the urge to take a hike along the trail to an old family cabin, where she’d hiked with her parents as a child.

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