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slipping to her narrow waist. "Certainly nothing wrong with us enjoying a ... say, a dinner one evening,
eh? Where we might discuss arrangements more in detail ...?"
"A-Arrangements ...?" Madeleine repeated, her face flushing as the rage began to mount inside her.
"M'sieu' ... you will please remove your hands from me at once. Wh-What do you take me for, anyway?"
Rafael Girarde chuckled lewdly and Madeleine detected the lascivious gleam in his eyes. "Let's not play
cat and mouse, ma chere, I believe you've already established the answer to what you are ... my only
concern is the extent of your price, eh?"
The brunt of his words was like a blow across her cheek; she actually staggered backward from it, even
as he clutched at her waist.
"Damn you!" she hissed. "Goddamn you! You dare speak to me this way? Put your hands on me ...?
My husband will kill you for this insult! I swear ...!"
Girarde continued to chuckle, as if she hadn't spoken a word. Finally, and calmly, he said: "Madame, I
have a strange feeling that your husband would be more apt to kill you ... if he knew the truth ... if he
knew the truth ... eh? Now, isn't that just a little bit closer to the facts? The so-called nephew of our
country's infamous crime czar has no idea that his pretty little wife is the mother of an illegitimate child ...
or wouldn't you care to answer that?"
Madeleine could do nothing, it seemed, but stare blankly at him. She had totally misjudged him, and by
so doing, had compromised herself dangerously. For one brief moment, her legs nearly wilted beneath
her ... and then came the resurgence of anger and rage that caused her to flail out at him wildly with
clawing hands as the tears gushed down her cheeks.
"You bastard!" she screamed, "You dirty rotten bastard!"
The sudden ferocity of her attack sent the handsome Ministre floundering backward and sputtering
obscenities of his own, his retreat giving Madeleine the necessary time to break for the door, and before
he could stop her, she was beyond it, racing through his office in a state of sobbing, emotional frenzy, to
which M. Girarde's matronly secretary leaped to her feet to stare after her, then slowly turned to her
employer with gaping, questioning eyes.
"Mon Dieu, M'sieu'! What is wrong with her ... she was almost hysterical ...?"
"Ohhh ... shut up and ... get back to work, eh?" M. Girarde spat at her, going back into his office and
slamming the door behind him.
Chapter 7
Shortly, it began to rain and Madeleine walked aimlessly in it. She had taken a cab to M. Girarde's
office rather than to drive and have to search out a parking place in downtown traffic, and now in the
aftermath of the degrading incident the Ministre Of Gouvernment had subjected her to, she found herself
wandering erratically along hardly familiar streets, the summer downpour nearly soaking her.
Dear God, in all of her young life she had never felt so despondent ... so all alone as she did at that very
moment. Where could she turn? She had no one ... absolutely no one. There was no way she could
approach Antoine, or unburden her soul to him, and subconsciously she had been aware of this all along,
which was undoubtedly the reason she had not done so already; he would never understand ... never
forgive her. She realized this to be a certainty, now, for the first time. And M. Girarde, whom she had
misjudged entirely, he, too, was a vile beast, without the slightest touch of compassion in his heart, God,
she was destitute for sympathy or a helping hand, and she must see her baby ... she must, or lose her
mind altogether!
So ... there remained but one course ... Uncle Gaston. Dear God! Could she do it? She remembered the
little ogre's words: "You be 'nice' to me and I'll get your kid back for you ... make Antoine accept it ...
Girarde is a nothing ... a Ministre Of Gouvernment, but a nothing. I'll get the child. I swear it ... if you're
'nice' to me ..."
Oh God ... have mercy on me, she thought as she felt the warmth of her tears even in the midst of the
rain drops brushing down her cheeks, and then, she raised her arm at the oncoming cab and signaled it
over to the curb.
* * *
"So, you finally decided to come," Gaston Larreau smirked broadly at his adopted nephew's wife
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