I get up, I go to work, I ignore the curious stares from Blaise that seem more inquisitive and intrusive as time goes on, I put my head down more than normal and focus on doing the best job I can while helping to train the interns. I then go home after work and drink myself silly and pass out on the couch at nine, the phone always in reach, the phone that never beeps.
All this waiting for a text or a call reminds me of how little of those I get these days. It makes me fall asleep with the thoughts that tormented me my entire youth in my head.
You’re alone.
Nobody likes you.
You have no one.
My dreams aren’t great either. Nightmares in which I’m trapped in the castle, and I have to witness my father dying over and over again. Sometimes Gautier slips him a drink, and my father chokes to death, turns blue, his mouth frothing after the first sip. Sometimes it’s Pascal, stabbing my father in the back with a silver butter knife as my father sinks to the floor, staring at Pascal in horror.
And in one dream . . . there was Blaise.
Blaise, who was across the room, yelling at me soundlessly, trying to get my attention. He looked like he did when he was almost twenty and in my bedroom. All young, with mussed-up hair and wild, passionate eyes. But there was something he was trying to tell me, something important that I just wasn’t getting.
I didn’t get it until I felt hands around my neck, tightening into a noose. Tighter and tighter, until I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t scream, and the last thing I saw before I woke up, sweating and gasping for air, was Blaise running toward me with his hands out, reaching but never arriving.
I’m sitting on my couch tonight—waiting, always waiting—and I stare down at the glass of wine in my hands, lost in the darkness of the cabernet. I think about Renaud and how I should contact him about all this, but Renaud wants to be left out of everything. That’s why he left for California all those years ago.
I think about phoning Olivier. We had been so close once, but somehow our father’s death made a gap form between us. Now he’s out with his fiancée, Sadie, and Renaud, and even though he does call every week to have a chat and he checks in via text every couple of days, there’s so much unsaid on my part. He fills me in on everything that’s going on—his new hotel, the wedding, Sadie, his future mother-in-law, a damn cat. He’s so excited about life that he talks a mile a minute. When the conversation comes back to me and how I’m doing, I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth.
No, this is something I started and something I’ll have to shoulder on my own. I’m not involving my brothers. They’d only worry about me in the end, and they both have enough on their plates.
The phone buzzes, making me spill wine on my blouse.
Shit.
It doesn’t matter, though. It’s black and it’ll come out. Plus, it’s Dumont.
I quickly pick up the phone and see a text from an unknown number.
Meet me at the same bar in thirty minutes.
I’m going to have to assume it’s from Jones.
Jones? Okay see you soon.
There is no response to that, so I quickly dab off some of the wine in the bathroom, throw on my coat and a scarf, and head out.
I take an Uber this time, remembering his words to be more discreet and eschewing the métro system.
But now I’m early. I step inside the bar, and I don’t see Cyril or Jones, though I don’t even know if Cyril would be coming anyway. Even though I hate seeing him, I don’t feel as comfortable meeting Jones alone.
I go straight to the bar and order a shot of tequila and quickly down it in front of the bemused bartender. Then I get a double Scotch on the rocks and try to find a place to hunker down.
The booth is occupied with some biker dude and his girlfriend, so I find a high-top table that’s free and take a seat.
As before, I’m getting a lot of stares, and I hate the fact that I’m alone. I wish I had brought a book with me. All I have is my phone, so I scroll through the social media accounts of the major fashion houses, trying to see what Chanel and Hermès are up to, forcing myself to look interested.
But it doesn’t work. The same ugly guy from last time, the one who told me to go back to where I came from, stumbles on over to me, leaning against the table. His eyes are bloodshot, and his breath reeks of onions. I try hard not to recoil.
“Hey,” he says to me in broken English. “You again. You speak French or Muslim speak?”
I raise my brow at him, and in fluent French, I say, “I speak French, English, and Hindi, but I don’t speak idiot, so I’m afraid I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
The guy stares at me for a moment like he can’t believe what he just heard.
Then his nostrils flare, his face goes red. His fat fingers grip the edge of the table like he’s about to throw it. I feel like he’s two seconds from spitting in my face.
“Pardon me,” comes Jones’s calm voice from behind him, breaking the scene.
The guy whips around, and I’m pretty sure he’s about to punch Jones in the face. But there’s something that makes the guy stop, and I’m not sure what. Could be that Jones is staring at him in such a way that would make holy water boil. Subtle but intense enough to make you squirm.
That’s some skill.
The man mutters something under his breath and then waddles back to his table, Jones holding eye contact as long as he can.
Then he looks at me, and I get just a hint of that stare that he was giving the man. It makes my skin crawl.
It quickly dissolves and a blankness comes over his face, and he sits down on the stool across from me, hands folded in front of him.
I’m so nervous.
“Do you want a drink?” I ask him, swirling the ice around in my glass. I realize that when I get to the bottom of this, I am going to be tanked, so I put it back down and push it away from me.
“I’m fine,” Jones says.
“So . . .” I raise my brow.
“So I was able to recover the data,” he says simply.
“What? How?”
“I went to the castle, went into the office you told me about, and I managed to recover it.”
I’m totally taken aback. “You were supposed to call me if you needed me to take you there.”
“I didn’t need you.”
“How did you get in?”
“How do you think?”
“You broke in?”
“Listen, Seraphine. I told you that you might not like my methods, but they are my methods. Take it or leave it.”
“But if Renaud finds out . . .”
I can see I’m testing his patience. A vein on the side of his temple starts to vibrate even though the rest of him remains calm. “I’m not sure you really understand who I am and what I do. And what I’ve done to get here.”
I swallow thickly and reach for the Scotch. With shaking hands, I take a burning gulp. I think I need another after this. “So what did you recover?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer.
“Nothing,” he says, showing his empty palms as a gesture.
My heart sinks. “What do you mean, nothing?”
“I reviewed the lost footage, and there’s nothing on it. I watched the entire party from all the angles for hours, keeping an eye on your father the whole time. There’s nothing there.”
“Well, I’d like to view it myself.”
“Sure. Take the next train.”
I shake my head. “I’m serious.” I hold out my hand. “You must have put it on an SD card for me to review?”
“That was never what you asked. You asked me to recover the footage and review it, and I did, and I’m telling you there is nothing out of the ordinary there.”
“But the footage was missing. Someone deleted it.” I nearly slam my fist onto the table.
“It could have been corrupted. Or deleted by accident. This is your brother’s winery. Why not ask him?”
“Because he wasn’t there during the b
all, he’s never there.”
“Then ask security or whoever is in charge of the place. A caretaker. I can ask if you’d like.”
“No,” I tell him, shaking my head, trying to understand this. Without the footage, I have nothing again.
“I’m sorry,” he says to me, not sounding sorry in the least. “But at least this makes things less complicated.”
“How?”
“The trail ends there. You have nothing to go on. It’s time to ignore your gut.”
“But you said that gut instinct counts for everything.”
“It does. Which is why you follow up on it. But not everything turns out to be true. Sometimes your gut is telling you something because you want it to be true, and I believe that to be the case here.”
“You think I want my very own uncle, who is now my very own boss, to have murdered my father?” I hiss, leaning in across the table.
Jones watches me for a moment, making some sort of calculation in his head. “I do.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I should have known you weren’t on my side. I should have known not to trust Cyril.”
“I’m not on anyone’s side. I just follow the money. And that’s something we need to speak about right now.”
I finish my drink and slam the glass down, my bangs falling in front of my eyes. “Why the hell should I pay you when you’ve produced nothing? I only have your word, and I’m starting to think that’s worthless.”
In a flash Jones leans across the table and grabs me by the back of the neck, squeezing so hard that my arm falls limp to my side and my head is frozen in place. I can barely breathe; my mouth is open and gasping, and I think he could kill me if he wants to.
I’ve never been so scared.
“I’m not worthless,” Jones says calmly. He reaches across with his other hand and brushes the bangs out of my eyes and stares at me. I know he can see the pain and shock and horror in my face, and he smiles. It’s the kind of smile I’ve seen on Gautier and Pascal. Evil. Soulless. Merciless. “I know my exact worth, and it’s fifty-five thousand euros. You knew my price when you hired me, and I did my job. And if I don’t get the money within twenty-four hours, I’m going to do this to you again, only this time I’m going to move my thumb an inch to the left, and I’m going to cut off your oxygen supply until I’m the last thing you see. Are we clear?”
I can only gasp quietly, aware that he could kill me right here and I don’t think anyone in this bar would care.
Finally he releases his grip and I slump back, falling off the stool and onto the floor. It happens so quickly I don’t even have time to yell. The back of my head hits the dirty carpet, and everything fades in and out until I’m being brought to my feet.
Only it’s not Jones.
It’s the racist guy from earlier, his hands sliding around my waist as I struggle to keep the room from spinning and find my balance. Without his hands I’ll fall over again, my head feels too heavy, but then his hands are roaming everywhere.
“Get off me,” I tell him, trying to push him away. “Let me go.”
“Like hell I’ll let you go, you brown bitch.”
I stare into the guy’s eyes and try to figure out what to do. One minute Jones was here, the next minute I was on the ground. Now I’m with this guy, and I don’t have anyone in my corner. I was afraid for my life before, and I’m afraid for my life now. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I look around the bar, hoping to see someone, anyone, that will help me.
I only see blurry faces of people who don’t give a shit.
But then I see someone coming toward us, a familiar form.
He barely comes into focus as he grabs the guy roughly and spins him around.
The guy lets go of me and I stumble, my hands grabbing the edge of the table and managing to hold on and stay on my feet. I try to focus my hazy eyesight enough to see what’s going on.
It’s Blaise, of all fucking people.
And he’s winding up, punching the racist fuck right in the jaw, a swift uppercut that sends the guy flying to the floor beside me.
Then Blaise is jumping on top of him, straddling the guy’s thick stomach and laying punch after punch into his face, blood spraying.
I yell at Blaise to stop, because I know everyone else in this bar is ready to fight him.
But Blaise keeps on hitting, like a wild animal on the loose.
Finally, when I see the big biker dude get up from the booth looking like he’s about to intervene in a bad way, I find the strength to grab my purse and whack Blaise over the shoulder with it to get his attention.
Dumont handbags are heavy.
He looks up at me in shock, hair across his forehead, damp with exertion. His crazed eyes focus on me, and he stills.
“We have to get out of here. Now.” I point at the door.
Blaise blinks at me, looks down at the bloody face of the man he’s just beaten, takes a quick sweep of the room, and gets to his feet.
He grabs my hand, and we start walking quickly toward the exit.
The bartender, though not as tall and built as Blaise, steps out in front of us, blocking the doorway.
“I don’t think so,” the man says.
For a second I fear Blaise is going to get into another fight. His grip on my hand tightens in a squeeze. Then he takes his wallet out and hands the bartender a stack of bills.
“For all the trouble,” he says firmly.
The bartender stares him down for a moment, then glances at the money.
He gives us both a grim nod. “That guy had it coming,” he says and steps aside an inch.
We both squeeze past him into the night and the darkness and the putrid smells of the alley.
Blaise is jogging lightly and pulling me along, and it isn’t until we’re around the corner and onto the main street that I stop, breathless and dizzy, and lean back against the cold stones of a building.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, and he’s standing close to me, too close. I can feel the heat from his body. “Are you cold?”
That’s when he starts taking off his coat, and I realize that I’m shivering through mine. He gently pulls me off the wall and slips the coat around my shoulders, pulling it together over my chest.
I stare at him, breathing hard, trying to put everything together as his gaze focuses on the coat collar, making sure my scarf is tucked in beneath it.
“Wh-what happened?” I’m finally able to say.
He glances at me, swallowing hard. “I saw what that guy was doing to you.”
“What guy?”
His jaw tenses for a moment. “The one who was trying to take advantage of you.”
“You didn’t see what happened before?”
He pauses, then shakes his head. “No.”
I’m having trouble making sense of anything, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m drunk, because I hit my head, or because a private eye turned thug just threatened to kill me if I didn’t pay him.
“Why were you there?”
“I was in the area. Passing through. I heard a commotion and went into the bar and saw you.”
I shake my head and then wince at the pain. “Bullshit,” I spit out. “That’s bullshit, Blaise. Why were you there?”
A drop of rain falls on my nose, cold as ice.
“We need to get you back home.”
“No, you need to tell me what’s going on!”
He looks up and down the street. “I’ll tell you later. First we get you home.”
As the rain starts to fall, the kind of rain that feels like a prelude to snow, I have no choice but to let him. I’m too tired and out of it to argue, too scared over what happened and too suspicious to appreciate the fact that Blaise is here.
Things start to pass by in a blur.
With his coat around my shoulders, I’m now wearing two coats, and Blaise leads me over to a taxi, and then the next thing I know we’re going up the stairs of my apartment.
He takes me right to my door, and I’m wondering how the hell he knows where I live. When did I ever have him over? But then there were so many parties that I’ve had over the years, especially with Cyril in the picture. It’s possible he had been an uninvited guest.
I fumble for my keys and open the door.
He closes it behind us, locks it, takes me by the arm, and leads me over to my bed.
I immediately collapse on it, facedown, and the world starts to whirl around, black.
“What were you doing there, Blaise?” I manage to ask, my words slurring together into one. “Were you following me?”
There’s a pause as the lights in the bedroom flick off.
“Yes,” he says.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BLAISE
Four years ago
“She’s dead,” my mother says over the line, the hardness in her voice fading at the end. Before I have a chance to ask who, before my mind and heart run away on me, she goes on, “Eloise. She was in a car accident early this morning.”
My heart lurches to a stop in my chest. “Was she with Seraphine?”
“No, she was alone,” she says, and I can hear the clink of ice cubes. I can’t blame her for drinking now. “It was a bad accident on the highway between Paris and their house. Many cars smashed up. Eloise, she . . .” She trails off. “I need you to come home, Blaise. The funeral is next weekend, and I need you there.”
I’m surprised at the route she’s taking. My mother rarely needs me for anything, nor did I think she was that close to Eloise. I know that the relationship between them was always strained, particularly in the later years; even so, my mother acts like she doesn’t need anyone.
“Blaise,” she says abruptly. “You will come.”
The thing is, I probably would go anyway, without my mother demanding I do so. I liked Eloise deep down, even if my parents did a lot of talking behind her back, even if I was raised to view that side of the family as being inferior in some way. But I’ve been in Thailand for a long time, and I have a feeling that if I set foot back in France, I’m not going to be coming back here.
“Okay,” I say with a sigh. I stare out the window of my villa into the hills of Mae Hong Son. There’s a jungle fowl strutting along the edge of my infinity pool, and the sun is making the water sparkle. I don’t want to leave this place, leave the person I’ve become here. I especially don’t want to put a stop to my Muay Thai classes.
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