Her Inconvenient Groom by Niomie Roland
Chapter 33
“I wish someone would tell me something,” Chantelle fretted.
She was propped up in bed, still in this awful private room that had begun to feel like a prison, with its plain ugly walls and plain ugly lighting fixtures. The monotony of the hospital sameness was broken only by a series of machines arranged in a semi-circle around her bed. Some were connected to her in one way or another, while others waited patiently on standby in case she started to seize again.
“Hush,” Jacyn said, stroking her arm as if she was a nervous animal at the pound, who needed to be soothed. “Every time you start fussing, that machine,” she pointed, “goes haywire.”
The doctors had been doing their best, administering medicine to counteract the poison, and treatments to help manage or reverse the damage done to her, especially her liver and kidneys.
Chantelle could see much better now; her vision was improving every day, but from time to time it would surprise her by fading into a blur, as if the devil was trying to remind her not to discount the havoc he could wreak in her life. And at least she was strong enough to sit up and feed herself. Although she was rarely hungry.
But all of that was cold comfort. “To hell with the machine! I don’t care! All I know is I have been lying here for two seeks and still nobody will tell me anything about Dustin! What’s going on?”
“Babe,” Naisha came to stand beside her sister-in-law in a gesture of solidarity, “please don’t get yourself riled up. It’s not good for you.”
She scoffed. “Not good for me? I’ve been poisoned. I lost my baby. My hair is falling out. My eyeballs are yellow, I’m jaundiced all over, and my internal organs feel like soup. I’m dying, Naisha! Why would I care if those damn machines go beep-beep-beep or honk-honk-honk?” It was frustrating. Infuriating. Why would nobody just tell her the truth?
She turned to Sienna, who had flown back to France the moment she’d heard what had happened. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“Dustin is still in custody,” Sienna said levelly. “He’s been charged with your attempted murder.”
Finally, the truth, Chantelle thought. The ugly, painful truth, but the truth all the same. The idea that Dustin could be languishing in a French jail was too much to bear. Especially when he had nobody to speak up for him.
“He needs help,” she insisted. “He can’t just stay there.”
“Hon,” Shaundra spoke up from her position by the window, “there’s evidence that he tried to poison you.”
“What evidence?”
“They found a vial of poison in his tattoo kit. Several of your flavored water bottles had been tampered with and contaminated, and their caps glued back into place, so that the seal seemed unbroken.”
The idea of poison in the water she drank daily made her gag.
Naisha took over from Shaundra. “The doctors say there are traces of the poison in your system and it’s what responsible for the loss of your—”
She couldn’t go on.
Chantelle drew her knees up and let her head fall onto it, feeling again the agony of the loss. It was an emotional pain that manifested physically. Deep within her empty womb. “He wanted that baby. He’d never—”
“The police questioned everyone, at length. They’ve talked to all your staff, Rosemarie, everyone. They think they are all loyal to you, and for one reason or another just don’t fit the crime. The only suspect they have is Dustin.”
Chantelle turned towards her assistant, desperate for backup. “You knew him, Sienna. Tell them he couldn’t have done something like this!”
Sienna hesitated, and then answered delicately, “You are worth billions, Chantelle.”
Chantelle blurted in exasperation, “But we have the prenup. You know it. You were there! The terms of the contract were very clear!”
Jacyn asked, curious, “Contract?”
Chantelle sighed. She’d been upholding this lie for almost two months now, and she felt it would do her good to come clean. She motioned to the women to draw up their chairs and sit, and with Sienna standing by her side, began to explain about the complications surrounding her marriage. She told them about her insemination and pregnancy. Followed by the shocking news about her grandfather’s will and the stipulations that could have barred her child from inheriting.
“You tracked down the sperm donor?” Jacyn confirmed, incredulously.
“Yes.”
“It was my plan,” Sienna butted in.
“Of course it was!” All the women except Chantelle said at once. Then they all laughed.
“I’m guessing Dustin was the donor?” Jacyn asked.
She nodded, feeling a little foolish now that the hare-brained idea was out in the open.
Shaundra, the most practical of the three, was the first to fully grasp the situation. “In essence, there is no financial incentive for Dustin to do you harm?”
“None at all,” she said emphatically. “He knew that. And besides, that man would never do such a thing. He lived for his family, his stepmother and siblings. He’s loving and kind—”
“And you love him,” Naisha said.
Chantelle didn’t say anything.
“I knew it,” Sienna said under her breath.
Chantelle groaned. This was an awful, awful mess, and this innocent man was in jail because of her. “Besides,” she added, “when I think about it, the nausea dates back to before the pregnancy. Before I even met him. Occasionally, I’d feel dizzy, but I always put it out of my mind. Brushed it aside as pregnancy symptoms and stress, you know? I felt better in France. But again, I figured it was because I didn’t have all the stress of the workplace while I am here in France.”
Shaundra asked slowly, “If not Dustin, then who?”
“Nobody has a financial or practical interest in seeing me dead,” Chantelle insisted. “My will leaves most of my assets to my brothers, and the rest to several charities. I might have made a few enemies in the course of business, but those battles are fought in the courts or the boardrooms, not with poison!”
“And what about your brothers?” It was Shaundra again, direct as always.
“What about my brothers, what?” Chantelle echoed, not quite catching on.
“Is it possible that they could be behind this?”
Chantelle was shocked by the idea. “Dennis? Tom? No! We spent years of our lives together, ever since my mom married their dad. We had Christmases and picnics and vacations as a family! Things only got bad when our father named me CEO.” She stopped, stunned by the possibilities invading her head.
As the other women watched her face carefully, realization dawned.
“Uh-huh,” Sienna said softly, almost to herself.
“Could it be possible?” Chantelle asked, still in the grasp of doubt. “It couldn’t be, could it?”
“Let’s logic this thing through,” Naisha said. “Let’s try to figure out who was around, when you were feeling your worst.”
“They were at my place up to a few days before I got really sick—”
“Up until Dustin threw them out!” Sienna added with spirit. “As he should have!”
Chantelle felt tears prickle behind her eyes, and her heart seemed to tighten in her chest, constricting into a hard little rubber ball. Images of the years she’d spent with her brothers when Dad was alive—when both Mom and Dad were alive. Dennis dropping her off to school, turning up at the principal’s office to talk him out of suspending her that one time she got in trouble.
They were angry and jealous of her position, but that didn’t amount to hatred. And if it did, if their passions ran high, it wasn’t to the extent where they’d try to kill her, was it?
She remembered then that she’d never had the chance to tell them she was pregnant. Did they find out somehow and became determined to end both her and her baby’s life? It was all very confusing considering Dennis donated a substantial amount of his own money to pro-life organizations.
Chantelle bowed her head and felt two pairs of warm arms encircle her. Jacyn on one side and Naisha on the other.
“We can find out for sure, you know,” she heard Sienna say.
“How?” With a crime as underhanded, cruel and clandestine such as this, it would be impossible to tell.
Sienna, the young woman in whom she had built the greatest of trust, grinned. It was a sneaky, determined, very Sienna-like smile. “I’ve got a plan!”