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From his vantage point, tied to the chair behind Michel’s enormous mahogany desk, Brett gaped as Lucille waltzed into the room, wearing a body-hugging, low-cut navy dress with a side slit up to the thigh. His mouth went dry from being open for so long. She was walking into what he knew she knew was a hostage situation led by a mad woman with a gun, without cops or her uncle or a weapon of any kind other than that dress. But wow, that dress.
This is no time to get an erection, he told himself sternly.
No one moved for a long minute. Lucille started to back out of the room, with a sheepish expression. “Oh. It looks like you’re in the middle of something. I won’t interrupt your kinky sex thing.”
Sylvia recovered first. “Who the fuck are you?”
Her voice screeched. Even lovesick Michel couldn’t still be smitten with her after listening to that for the past two hours. Then again, Michel had been listening to that voice for years and was still head over heels. They were toast.
“Sorry, I just came to see Michel about a business thing. I’ll come back at a better time.”
Sylvia, when startled by the sudden arrival, had whipped her gun around to Lucille instead of Michel. Her face was orange-red under her tan. She sputtered with anger and motioned wildly with the gun. “Grab her,” she squeaked at her guards.
Two of the henchmen took hold of Lucille and pulled her into the room, her arms behind her back.
“Put her over there.” Sylvia motioned to the armchair next to Michel.
The guards plunked Lucille into the armchair, almost causing her boobs to pop out of the dress. A pity. Anger replaced chagrin. There was no way in hell these douchebags—he included Michel in that—were going to see the woman he definitely—probably liked’s boobs.
They tied her arms behind the chair as Lucille asked, in her best innocent voice, “Michel, what’s going on here?”
Michel, who this whole time had been looking varying degrees of contrite, amped it up a level as he turned to his spin doctor. “I’m sorry to drag you into all this, Lucille. I didn’t know we had a meeting scheduled or I would have canceled it. Of course, I also didn’t know Sylvia would be here tonight. It seems I’m out of the loop on a lot of things.”
“It’s okay, I understand, Michel.” Lucille leaned over as best she could to bump shoulders with him.
Brett glared at both of them. From his periphery, he saw Sylvia advancing on Lucille.
“Shut up,” she said, her voice a growl. “I want to know who you are, how the fuck you got past my guards, what the fuck you think you’re doing with my fiancé, and why the fuck you’re wearing my dress!”
There was silence as Lucille held Sylvia’s blazing gaze but said nothing.
Brett smirked. Lucille was wearing Sylvia’s dress. Ingenious. Of course his fashion-crazed cousin would recognize her own clothes. And of course nothing would make her angrier than seeing them on someone she assumed was her rival for Michel’s love. If Lucille’s plan also included a way of getting them out of this mess, they’d be all set.
“Can I speak?” Lucille asked politely.
“You’d better before I shoot your brains out.” Sylvia’s own black tank and pants were wrinkled, her black makeup heavy, and her tan patchy. Beside the radiant, well-rested Lucille, Sylvia was a mess, the strain of the past few days glaring in contrast with her composed captive. It had to be driving Sylvia insane. Her hand shook and her jaw clenched with barely suppressed rage.
“Oh, because you told me to shut up. Just wanted to clarify that you actually do want me to talk.” Lucille’s face was calm as she spoke, not giving away any indication she was scared of the starlet before her.
If Brett thought that dress was going to give him a boner, the sight of her playing it cool was enough to send him over the edge. He could picture this as a sex game they played, tying each other up, acting calm in the face of danger, but really getting hot and bothered and throwing around dirty phrases and slow strip teases.
Right when Brett started feeling like he needed a cold shower, Sylvia went and ruined it. She let out a growl and pointed the gun right at Lucille’s head. Lucille didn’t flinch, but the action was enough to snap Brett back to the real and present danger. After the last few hours, he had no doubt that Sylvia would never be able to kill Michel in cold blood. Lucille, though, meant nothing to her. Sylvia might be far enough gone to go through with it.
“You don’t want to do that,” Lucille said, her eyes on Sylvia’s. “There are way too many witnesses.”
“Witnesses who will be dead,” Sylvia hissed back.
Lucille frowned a little, a confused frown like she was trying to work it all out. “Okay, right. You want to kill Michel. And Brett for some reason. Actually, what is that reason? Why are you doing this?”
Sylvia’s lips were pressed in a thin line. She looked like she was considering spitting on Lucille. Instead she said, “You first. Why the fuck are you at my fiancé’s house in the middle of the night, wearing my fucking dress, and how the fuck did you get in here?”
“Fine, I’ll start. I got a booty call from Brett a bit ago—we’re hooking up, you see—but he didn’t say where he was. I came over to see if Michel knew. But no one was answering the gate so I had to climb over the hedge, ripping my own dress in the process. I didn’t think it’d be appropriate to show up to talk to my lover’s best friend wearing a dress ripped up to my vagina, so I borrowed one of yours. I had no idea you were holding these guys hostage in here or I’d never have presumed—”
Sylvia cut her off with another growl. “Shut up. That is the dumbest story I’ve ever heard in my life.” She cocked the gun.
Lucille gave Sylvia a look like she wanted to say something but didn’t want to at the same time.
“What? It’d better be good, because it’s the last thing you’ll ever say.”
Lucille sighed dramatically. “It’s just that I was going to dry clean this dress before I gave it back to you, but blood stains are really hard to get out, and also I’d have a hard time footing the bill, since I’d be dead and all.”
Brett looked from one woman to the other. He saw the guards doing the same, both of them ready to spring the moment their boss gave the word. Michel wasn’t paying attention, though. His face was twisted like he was in pain, his brow frowned in concentration. In fact, he didn’t seem to be aware there was anything else happening in the room, let alone a life-or-death standoff.
“Who cares? It’s just a dress,” Sylvia said through gritted teeth, her voice catching on the words.
“Just a dress? Just a dress?” Lucille repeated. “This is a $56,000 dress designed personally for you by Martín Piero himself. I’d say it’s a little more than just a dress.”
Another heart-stopping moment, the tension so palpable it zinged through the room. Then Sylvia lowered the gun.
Brett let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. If he wasn’t tied to a chair, he’d have kissed Lucille right then and there, in front of everyone. True, she hadn’t figured out how to get them out of the situation yet. Sylvia still had the gun, they were still tied up, and there were still a shit ton of highly trained guards surrounding the house. But that dress move was brilliant. If they made it out of here alive, he wasn’t going to waste any time in ripping it off of her, bystanders be damned.
“I hate you.” Sylvia scowled. “I don’t know who you are, but I hate you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m Lucille. It’s nice to finally meet you.” Lucille gave her a big smile.
“I can’t say the same.”
Lucille nodded. “That’s understandable. Now, there’s something I still don’t get, though. Why are you trying to kill Michel?”
All eyes—save, once again, Michel’s—were trained on Sylvia. It was the question they’d all been wondering, guards and hostages alike.
“For his money, duh.” Sylvia looked at them all like they were stupid.
“But isn’t your father one of the richest men in the world?”
Sylvia’s look didn’t change. “Where have you been? In Saudi Arabia with your head up your ass? My father cut me off six months ago. Some bullshit about not amounting to anything while living off his money.”
Brett spoke up. He’d, after all, almost died, on multiple occasions, for his curiosity on this particular subject, and since death was still an impending option, he might as well get some answers first. “So why try to kill Michel?”
Sylvia turned her how-stupid-are-you look on him. “Duh, he put me in his will? After he dies, I get everything.”
Brett nodded. “Thus the accidents...”
“...so no one would accuse you of murder since you’re the one with the most to lose,” Lucille finished for him.
They locked eyes for a moment and smiled. His last smile from her before they, or at least he, was murdered by a money-crazed bitch.
“Obviously. Only this asshole here”—she motioned to Michel, who snapped out of whatever fantasy land he was in and looked at her in surprise and then looked at Lucille, his face in a crushed, soul-wrenching droop—“added a condition that we had to be married first. So I tried doing the damsel-in-distress thing, only that didn’t work because some other asshole who was supposed to give you a lead on where I was decided to blow up the hotel instead. My only option was to kidnap my fiancé and my dumb ordained cousin here, get married, and then kill them both and make it look like a murder/suicide/lover’s quarrel.”
Michel watched Sylvia with his huge, sad, brown eyes. He looked ready to cry at any moment.
“That may be the most stupidly brilliant plan I’ve ever heard,” Brett said with real awe. She, the greedy ditz willing to do anything to preserve her five-star lifestyle, had played Michel good. Unless something drastic happened, they were, in the simplest sense of the word, fucked.
Lucille sent him a look that said, “Don’t encourage her.”
A radio crackled. One of the henchmen spoke up. “Miss Stanton, we have a situation downstairs.”
Sylvia’s rage amped up a level. “What now? Don’t tell me one of you called the cops or I’ll kill you now and sign the marriage license with your cold, dead hand.”
Lucille gave her another sheepish look. “Actually, that might have been me, but I didn’t call the cops. I was surprised by one of your guys on my way up, and I may have smashed him over the head with an unnecessarily fragile decanter. One of you should go check that out. He’s going to need medical attention.”
Both men looked at Sylvia, worried but waiting for permission.
“Well, go already!”
They both made to leave the room.
“Not both of you!”
One of them left, leaving the three tied captives with only Sylvia and one guard in the room. At least Brett thought they were three tied captives.
After the door closed, but before Sylvia turned her attention back to her victims, Michel, somehow untied, sprang from his chair and tackled her, throwing her to the ground and reaching around to grab the gun from her hands.
The guard made to help his boss, but Lucille, too, stood up from her chair, hands unbound, and kneed him hard in the balls.
Brett had to be honest with himself as he watched his best friend and his new whatever fight: he felt a little left out that they hadn’t untied him too. The two of them had obviously been plotting since Lucille entered the room, but they hadn’t thought to let him in on it. Rude.
He dismissed the jealousy and replaced it with concern. Short-lived concern. Both battles seemed to be going well.
The gun went off. A bullet embedded itself in the chair leg beside Brett’s right foot. “Hey, watch it!” he said to no one in particular.
The gun followed shortly after, skidding across the floor to crash into the chair leg by his other foot.
Michel had Sylvia pinned to the floor, but she was attacking him, thrashing her legs to kick him, straining her head up to bite him, her long nails curling to dig into his skin. Michel looked down at her sadly. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “I should have realized this a long time ago, but it’s not going to work out between us.”
“Get off of me, you fucking bastard!”
“I just don’t think you ever really loved me,” Michel went on, oblivious to the venom being spit at him.
Lucille, meanwhile, had kneed the guy a second and third time in the junk and then hit him over the head with a copy of Michel Polce: An Unauthorized Biography that Michel had on display nearby. The man fell to the floor with a grunt and didn’t get up. A small trickle of blood spilled down his face and onto the hardwood floor.
“Jesus, Lucille,” Brett breathed.
“I know,” she said. “I didn’t need to hit him so hard. It was a little overkill.”
Brett shook his head. “It was hot.”
Lucille looked at him sternly. “Brett, a man very possibly might have died just now, and you’re thinking about sex?”
Brett nodded.
“God, I love you.”
Brett froze. He’d been about to quip back, to tell her to come over and untie him so they could screw on Michel’s desk. It died in his throat.
Lucille didn’t seem to notice what she’d said. She leaned down, checked that the man was breathing, and then walked over to where Michel was pontificating to a feral Sylvia.
Brett had so many comeback lines. You can’t just say that and walk away. I love you too. Untie me so I can kiss you. Let’s get out of here. You are my one and only, and I’ve never loved anyone as much as I do you. Those were the best of the lot, but none of them were right. His throat closed off and he gaped, fish-like, tied to Michel’s desk chair with his numb, injured arm and the clothes he’d been wearing when they’d had sex earlier that day.
Lucille convinced Michel to let Sylvia up and to tie her to a chair.
“Just you wait until my men come back. You may think you’re all that, but can you take down five of them at once?” Sylvia was shouting, no doubt trying to be heard by her army downstairs.
Lucille sighed. She walked over, picked up the gun from beside Brett’s chair, gave him a wink that made his confusion worse, strolled back, and pointed the gun at Sylvia’s head. “I think it’s time you stopped talking. We’ll take it from here, thanks.”
“Lucille, what are you doing?” Michel asked. He stood beside Lucille, looking down at his former fiancée.
“Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to do this?”
Michel nodded. “Kind of, yeah.”
Lucille didn’t get a chance to hand over the gun. The door flew open, in charged a couple of guys in police uniform, there was a lot of shouting about no one moving, and chaos ensued. A gun went off. Sylvia screamed. Lucille dropped the one she’d been holding as a red stain began to spread from her right shoulder.