She was choking. “What do you know about me that makes you think I would do something so horrible? What weakness do you see? You’re not stupid. You wouldn’t make this obscene proposal if you didn’t think there was a chance I’d accept it. What’s wrong with me?”
He shrugged. It was an elegant gesture, and also a little pitying. “It’s not your fault, chérie. The circumstances forced it on you, but you must understand that, by yourself, you are nothing more than a pretty decoration. You don’t have any real value. You don’t know how to do anything.”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m the most famous model in the world.”
“The Glitter Ba
by is Belinda’s creation, chérie. You would fail without her. And if you were to succeed…Well, it wouldn’t be your own success, would it? I’m offering you a function and the promise that I will never turn my back on you. We both know that’s what’s most important to you.”
He believed she was going to do it. She could see it in his perfect arrogance. He’d looked inside her, seen what was there, and decided that she was weak enough to do this obscene thing.
With a choked sob, she ran from the attic room and down the stairs to her own room, where she locked the door and pressed her back against it.
Before long, she heard his footsteps in the hallway. He paused outside her door. She squeezed her eyes shut, barely able to breathe. He moved away. She slid down along the door and sat on the floor, where she curled her body over her bent knees. She stayed like that, listening to the pounding of her own heart until the deepest hours of the night.
The key turned soundlessly in the lock as she let herself into the museum. She set down her shoulder bag and flicked on the panel of lights. Her palms were sweating, and she rubbed them on her jeans while she walked toward the small tool room at the back.
Everything was scrupulously neat, just as he was. She remembered the feel of his hands when they’d touched her breasts, and she crossed her arms over her chest. She forced herself to concentrate on the rows of tools. Finally she found what she wanted. She lifted it off the narrow shelf and tested its weight in her hands. Belinda was wrong. The rules were the same for everyone. If people didn’t follow the rules, they lost their humanity.
She closed the door and walked across the museum to the Royale. The ceiling lights shone like tiny stars in the gleaming black finish. The car had been cherished. Alexi had wrapped it in canvas and straw so no harm would come to it.
She lifted the crowbar high above her head and brought it down on the shiny black hood. The jaws of the beast snapped shut.
Chapter 16
Fleur cashed a check at American Express using her Gold Card as ID. When she arrived at the Gare de Lyon, she pushed through the crowd to the schedule board and studied the blur of numbers and cities. The next train was leaving for Nîmes, which was four hundred miles from Paris. Four hundred miles from Alexi Savagar’s retribution.
She’d destroyed the Royale, systematically smashing the hood and the windshield, grille and lights, beating in the fenders and the sides. Then she’d attacked the heart of the car, Ettore Bugatti’s peerless engine. The thick stone walls of the museum had held in the noise, and no one tried to stop her as she put an end to Alexi’s dream.
The old couple already occupying the compartment regarded her suspiciously. She should have cleaned herself up first so she wasn’t so conspicuous. She turned to stare out the window. There was blood on her face, and the cut on her cheek from the flying glass stung. It was only a small cut, but she should clean it so it didn’t get infected and leave a scar.
She envisioned her face with a little scar on her cheek. And then she imagined the scar beginning at her hairline, cutting a diagonal across her forehead, and thickening to bisect one eyebrow. It would pucker her eyelid and cut down over her cheek to her jaw. That would just about do it, she thought. A scar like that would keep her safe for the rest of her life.
Just before the train pulled out of the station, two young women came into the compartment carrying a supply of American magazines. Fleur watched their reflections in the window as they settled into their seats and began studying the other occupants in typical tourist fashion. It seemed as if weeks had passed since she’d slept, and she was so tired she felt light-headed. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the rhythm of the train. As she drifted into an uneasy sleep, she heard the echo of smashing metal and the crunch of broken glass.
The American girls were talking about her when she woke up. “It has to be her,” one of them whispered. “Ignore her hair. Look at those eyebrows.”
Where was the scar? Where was that pretty white scar cutting her eyebrow in half?
“Don’t be silly.” the other girl whispered. “What would Fleur Savagar be doing traveling by herself? Besides, I read that she’s in California making a movie.”
Panic beat inside her like the pounding of a crowbar. She’d been recognized a hundred times before and this was no different, but being connected with the Glitter Baby made her feel sick. Slowly she opened her eyes.
The girls were looking at a magazine. Fleur could just make out the page in the window’s reflection, a sportswear ad she’d done for Armani. Her hair flew in every direction from beneath the brim of a big, floppy hat.
The girl directly across from her finally picked up the magazine and leaned forward. “Excuse me,” she said. “Has anybody ever said that you look exactly like Fleur Savagar, the model?”
She stared back at them.
“She doesn’t speak English,” the girl finally said.
Her companion flipped the magazine closed. “I told you it wasn’t her.”
They reached Nîmes, and Fleur found a room in an inexpensive hotel near the railroad station. As she lay in bed that night, the numbness inside her finally broke apart. She began to cry, racking sobs of loneliness and betrayal and awful, boundless despair. She had nothing left. Belinda’s love had been a lie, and Alexi had soiled her forever. Then there was Jake…The three of them together had raped her soul.
People survive by their ability to make judgments, yet every judgment she’d made was wrong. You are nothing, Alexi had said. As the night settled around her, she understood the meaning of hell. Hell was being lost in the world, even from yourself.
“I am sorry, mademoiselle, but this account has been closed.” Fleur’s Gold Card disappeared, tucked like a magician’s trick into the palm of the clerk’s hand.