Chapter 13: Léonie - Crushing His Mountain Flower

“Steady on!” Hugo cried, but I’d already stomped in panic on the brake, the truck spinning sideways and stumbling off the gravel road, headed directly for a massive, thick tree trunk!

Hugo’s hands were on the wheel, trying to steady it, and we just barely managed to avoid the tree, the lower branches scraping across the windshield and the trunk snapping off the mirror on my left side.

As we shuddered to a halt, the passenger side window exploded and I saw my cousin Laurent, big, broad-shouldered, looks like an ox Laurent, reach through and unlock the door.

I had last seen him as my baby shower and for a moment I stared dumbly at him.

What the hell

“Léonie, run!” Hugo ordered, sliding a tire iron across the seat at me.

Laurent wasn’t here to help me at all.

My heart pounding, I scrambled out of the seat just as my cousin Margot reached my side of the car.

Foolishly, I couldn’t stop a shocked gasp. Margot was almost the exact same age as me, the pair of us so similar with our long red hair and freckled faces that our Mme used to dress the two of us alike and try to fool the rest of the family, make them guess which of us was which.

It felt like a wound deep in my flesh to see her with a knife pointed at me.

The girl who had chased fireflies with me. The girl who had hunted for fiddleheads. The girl who had sat beside me on fall evenings shelling peas, our freckled legs side-by-side.

“What are you doing?”

Margot only gave me a sharp smile.

“Your luck has run out, Pinoteaux princess.”

At 18, our paths had diverged. My father ran the Pinoteaux, so I was raised to be soft, innocent, and ignorant. Margot’s da had been caught skimming money off the top of the family profits, so she had to work as a guard or in transport. As much as I’d wanted to stay friends, it hadn’t been allowed.

“Look at me! I’m no threat to you!” I protested, one hand gripping the tire iron, the other on the door.

And for a moment, I was a fool, such a fool, to think she wouldn’t kill me without blinking an eye.

It wasn’t until she lunged that cold panic filled my veins.

Unless I could be stronger and cleverer than I ever had been in my life, my cousin was going to kill me.

Wake up, Léonie!

“Did Réjean tell you that you could be a house girl if you killed me?” I said, grabbing the door and shoving it toward her. “He lied.”

She dodged the door easily. “No, he’ll have to pick up his end of the bargain,” she said, her eyes gleaming.

I was already backing away, around the SUV and heading for the forest.

But Margot had that knife pointed right at me, and I couldn’t move fast enough.

“Otherwise Étienne has him over a barrel. And Réjean hates that. . .”

Twisting sideways so my belly could fit, I backed up so I could squeeze in between two big trees. Maybe I could lose her in the woods somehow. . .

But Margot was faster, stronger, and she wasn’t nine-months-pregnant.

Her knife hit the tree bark a millisecond after I moved my hand.

And the thing was that I couldn’t call on any of my fight training.

I had none.

I’d been trained to be a docile wife and nothing more.

Margot kicked me in the back of the thighs and I stumbled forward, my belly making me ungainly and awkward, my cheeks and hands scraped up by a sharp, jagged rock face as I desperately tried to keep myself upright.

Ciel kicked my ribs, his little fists pummeling my organs. Making me breathless.

He would love the mountains so much, love the feeling of summer showers on his skin, love how much his Uncle Hugo was looking forward to holding him.

No! I wasn’t dying here.

A piece of rock broke off in my hand and I tightened my fingers around it.

“Everyone thought you were such a clever girl getting a man like Étienne Bastide interested in you,” Margot said, advancing forward as I desperately scraped my way down the rock face. “But I saw through you. You’re nothing more than a little greedy slut.”

I stumbled forward, barely out of her reach.

Grandmother, please help.

Margot had her knife out, the sharp point gleaming at me, and there were only a few seconds left—between her life and mine.

Pushing off the granite, I flung the rock as hard as I could at her head and miraculously, like the ancestors themselves were guiding my aim, or maybe it was all my rage and a burst of crazy pregnancy strength, it hit her right on the temple.

My cousin staggered.

Desperately, I sprang forward and hit her with my tire iron, my stomach churning at the savage violence in my own fingers.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Laurent struggling with Hugo, his big meaty hands squeezing Hugo’s throat, my brother-in-law’s cane fallen out of the car and onto the ground.

“Let him go or I’ll kill her!” I screamed.

It was a shot in the dark. What did I know about them? Or any of my family? But Laurent paused, and strode forward, a big cudgel in his hand.

“Don’t do it!” he growled.

The moment he dropped Hugo, I grabbed at the rest of that crumbling rock and yanked at it, sending a mound of rubble onto my cousin with a sickening, violent thud.

My stomach gave a nauseated heave. I killed Margot.

The blood rushed red-hot in my ears and I barely had a chance to run before Laurent grabbed me and dragged me out of the woods.

Gripping me painfully by the hair, his knife flicked out to run down my cheek.

“Fuck you, Léonie. Bitch. But I guess it’s gotta be blood for blood now.”

“No!” Hugo barked, ripping at Laurent’s other arm. “Take me! Let her go. Think of the baby!”

My heart gave a painful anguished clench at the look on Hugo’s face.

“She’s who we were sent to kill!” Laurent snarled. “I don’t give a fuck about the baby. One less loose end to take care of.”

My belly hung heavy and swollen as panic clogged my throat.

No no no

“We can pay you!” I cried desperately. “Come back to the lodge and we can pay you off.”

“Nah. I’d rather get the reward from Réjean. And besides, you just made it personal.”

He dragged the knife along my cheek again, and this time I felt it break the skin.

Hugo tore at Laurent’s arm, trying to pull the knife away from my face.

But with one massive foot, my cousin kicked Hugo in the mouth.

I heard his nose break, but Hugo only rolled over, dug his elbows into the ground, and began to crawl back toward me.

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But it was going to be too late.

Laurent raised his arm to plunge the knife into my heart, and I had my hands splayed out protectively over my belly, my last instincts, as always, to protect my son. . .

I spat out in my cousin’s face as his muscles tensed to strike the killing blow.

“Fuck you and your bloodline!” I screamed as loudly as I could.

So something in the hills could hear me. So the trees and earth could witness my unjust murder. So any ancestors would know we were coming, my baby and me.

“Fuck your bloodline, curse your family, curse your cowardice!”

Laurent only snorted.

And just as his arm swung forward, I heard the sharp crack of a gunshot.

Laurent’s arm faltered, and he had the strangest look of utter shock on his face as blood dribbled out of his nose.

I screamed, tearing my hair out of his fist. But I didn’t back away. With the palm of my hand, I hit him in the face. Once. Then again.

His knees crumbled and Laurent fell heavily to the ground.

And behind him—Armand stood with a raised shotgun, Tilly behind him.

My scalp ached, but I moved even closer as he fell.

“Curse on your bloodline, curse on the ground where you fall, may you wander forever in the afterworld, may you never find the ancestors.”

Hugo crawled the last few feet and he had a rock in his hand—but Laurent was already dead, his mouth sagging open, my curses sitting pretty on his skin.

“Are you all right?” Tilly cried out, hurrying toward me.

My ears were ringing, blood pounding in my temples.

“Thank you, thank you,” I could only gasp. “Why⁠—”

“It ain’t right what’s been done to you,” Armand said, and I felt my heart threaten to burst from my chest.

My husband might have abandoned and cast me aside, but there were people in this world who loved me.

“You won’t get in trouble for this, will you?” I asked as we helped Hugo up.

“Where are you planning to go?” Tilly asked, not answering my question.

When Hugo began to explain our plan, Armand shook his head.

“You’ll never outrun him that way.”

He didn’t even need to say his name, because we all knew who him was.

Étienne

“He won’t want to chase me,” I protested, wincing slightly as a hard Braxton-Hicks contraction gripped my belly. “He doesn’t love me. He has a new woman now.”

Armand grunted. “Better safe than sorry. I have a better idea.”

“What? What is it?”

“The Savatier clan.”

Wait, who was that?

“They don’t really get involved in our affairs,” Hugo said slowly. “From what I’ve heard, they’re practically hermits. And why would they want to help us?”

“They’ve been left alone for many years,” Armand said. “But they have a nice little territory over by Blue Sky Lake. And I think with the right inducements they might take you in. Inducements like everything you could tell them about the Bastide family business. . .”

Hugo and I looked at each other.

Would they take us in?

Tilly frowned as she looked behind me.

“I see the dust of those trucks the monsieur must have sent. Better get going, you two. We’ll take care of the bodies.”

I looked down at Margot and Laurent.

Would knowing they’d tried to kill me spark even the tiniest shred of regret in Étienne Bastide’s cold, dead soul?

If he wanted a wife who was dead to him, why not make that official. . .

“You know,” I said. “Who would know this body was Margot and not me? We look a lot alike. It would be easier to hide if everyone thought we were dead already. . .”

Tilly’s normally stoic mouth twitched up.

“Just as you wish, Miss Léonie. I’ll make sure when your husband comes back, he finds you right here.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” I gasped. “We can’t thank you enough.”

“Mention my name,” Armand said, “My Da has worked in the house there for decades now.”

“We would love for you to come too,” Hugo assured him. “Your loyalty will go both ways, I promise.”

“Go now,” Tilly said, and they hurried us back to the truck as Armand quickly changed the blown tire.

“So grateful,” I whispered, running on adrenaline, knowing I couldn’t afford to crash yet.

Then I had to get in and drive quickly, the sweat slick on my chest as the sun pounded down on us, since the dust of the oncoming trucks was close now, and closer.

But Hugo’s calm strength guided me unerringly across the unmarked mountain trails, his clever, logical brain able to follow Armand’s hasty directions even though he’d been locked away.

It was his first time in the world in many years, but his eyes stayed fixed on the road, concentrating carefully, because we had no time to lose.

Would they take us in?

We drove over steep hills and down sharp switchbacks as the sun beat down on the windshield and Ciel rolled in my belly and my gut swam with unease.

Until at last I felt the taste of fresh water on my tongue, and we rolled through the trees and up to an iron gate with old-fashioned scrollwork, gently dappled with moss.

It looked like some abandoned fairy home, a beautiful jewel hidden away from the rest of the world.

I reached over and gripped Hugo’s hand, my heartbeat fluttering like a hummingbird’s.

“What do you think they’ll say? We come from two notorious families they probably hate.”

He looked disheveled and bloody, but the grin at his newfound freedom almost split his face as he winked encouragingly at me.

“Let’s go. Who could resist you, Léonie? Even covered in blood.”

And together we got out and rang the doorbell. . .