All In

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  When her phone dinged, she jumped, unsure how long she’d actually been sitting out there staring into space. She fetched her phone. A text from Alexander.

  In Stockholm. Staying at the Diplomat. Busy?

  She texted him back quickly.

  I’m home. Come over?

  Fifteen minutes later, her doorbell rang.

  “Hello there,” her little brother said, strolling in and kissing her on the cheek. “I thought we could go together.” He handed her a brown paper bag. “I brought you breakfast.”

  She took the bag, opened it, smiled, taking out the sandwiches. Sourdough bread with brie and vegetables. “Thanks,” she said. She’d been awake for several hours and realized she was starving. They saw each other so rarely, and yet Alex had remembered what she liked. He’d always had a great head for details.

  “No problem; you are my favorite sister, after all,” he said, walking out to the kitchen. It was an old joke, but suddenly it stung. She was only his half sister. Did that change anything? And when would she dare mention it?

  Natalia made more tea, which Alexander declined. He moved around the kitchen restlessly, and when they sat down at the table he couldn’t stay still, but fiddled with everything, stretched out his legs, and drummed his fingers on the table.

  “How are things?” she asked.

  “Good.” He got up, running his hand through his hair. “But I’m not sleeping that well. I hate jet lag.”

  Natalia ate her sandwich and tried not to let his constant moving about bother her. When they were little he’d always been in motion; apparently he hadn’t grown out of it yet.

  Her phone, which was on the counter, started ringing.

  “It’s Peter,” Alexander said, looking at the caller ID. He made a face and handed her the phone. “He’s called me like five times today.”

  “What does he want?”

  Alexander shrugged. “No idea. I didn’t answer.” That didn’t surprise her. Her brothers’ relationship was touch-and-go and filled with conflict.

  Natalia answered. “Hi, Peter.”

  Alexander rolled his eyes, sat down at the table, and stole a slice of cucumber from her sandwich.

  “What are you doing?” Peter asked her curtly.

  “Eating breakfast,” she replied, looking at Alexander. He made a gesture like he was slitting his throat. “I’m home. Alex is here,” she added, disregarding his gestures. “We’re going to the meeting together.”

  “Then I’ll come over too,” said Peter, and he hung up before Natalia had a chance to reply.

  “What did he say?” Alexander leaned back in the kitchen chair. He was wearing a suit, something he rarely did, but of course it looked great on him. Long, black eyelashes and dark eyebrows were a dramatic contrast to his blond hair. He looked like some divine creature who’d just been expelled from paradise for morality-related reasons.

  Alexander had once graced the cover of Vanity Fair, photographed shirtless with two naked female models at his feet. Art, they’d called it. Sexist, Natalia had thought. Rumor had it that Alexander was actually supposed to have been photographed with two other jet-set guys but that they hadn’t been able to get a picture where Alexander’s beauty didn’t completely overshadow the other two men. The solution had been to let him pose with women instead, and the cover had been legendary.

  “Peter’s coming over,” she said and pushed the rest of the sandwiches toward Alexander, eyebrows raised. She was having a hard time getting used to these fluctuations. First she was starving, then stuffed. Nothing in her life had ever been this changeable before; everything had been predictable. Now there was a big storm everywhere. Especially in her body. And all because of a fetus that was the size of a thumb.

  She was starting her seventh week today—it was totally dizzying. Every morning she woke up and thought she must have imagined it. But she was still pregnant.

  She was on the verge of putting her hand on her abdomen, but stopped herself and set it on her teacup instead. Alexander would have noticed that right away. He was lethal if you underestimated him. She realized that she was going to have to tell her brothers at some point—that she was expecting a child, that she wasn’t their sister, that their father had disowned her, that she was unemployed.

  “Are you feeling alright?” Alexander asked, studying her. “You look pale.”

  “I have something that I . . . ,” she began, but she was interrupted by the doorbell ringing again.

  “I’ll get it,” Alexander said, getting up and walking out to open the door.

  Natalia listened to the voices in the hallway and then to the footsteps approaching. The voices got louder, and even before Alexander and Peter entered the kitchen, they were arguing about something.

  Natalia studied her brothers, so similar and yet so different. Peter’s face was red with rage, whereas Alexander was looking very aristocratic, with that mixture of derision and disdain that he somehow reserved solely for his big brother.

  It was always the same, Natalia thought gloomily, as if they had some constant, ongoing argument. She tried to remember if it had ever been different or if they had always felt this antipathy toward each other. Peter was seven years older than Alexander, she was the middle child—the illegitimate one, she reminded herself—but she had vague memories of her brothers when they actually weren’t arguing, when a little Alexander had toddled after a laughing Peter, but maybe she was deceiving herself. These days she wasn’t really sure about anything.

  These days, Alex took every opportunity to openly mock Peter’s choices in life and the way he groveled before their father. For his part, Peter picked on everything Alexander did and didn’t do. At the heart of it, Natalia suspected, Peter had always felt inadequate; he’d never had Alexander’s natural charm. But then no one had Alexander’s natural charm. Being jealous of him was like being jealous of a sunset or a painting.

  Peter greeted her with a brief nod, said no thanks to a cup of tea, and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.

  Alexander sat back down in the kitchen chair, with his lips curled into a stiff smile.

  Natalia drank her tea, which was now cold. Actually it was sad: three siblings with so little in common.

  She snuck a look at Peter, trying to imagine him raping Carolina, raping anyone. Was he that brutal? If he had, how could he live with himself? And what did it say about her that she wasn’t confronting him?

  Alexander drummed his fingers on the table, and it struck her that Alex might know about the rape. He’d gone to the same school, after all. He’d told her about the hazing David had gone through. He must have known something.

  It was as if everything that was stable in her life had started to disintegrate. No matter what happened, it would never be like before. This insight wasn’t new, but it was painful.

  Her mother still hadn’t answered a single one of her phone calls.

  It was slowly starting to sink in how deep this went. Things that had happened, things that had been done or not done, came to the surface and changed life forever. She was going to have to deal with it, whatever it was.

  Peter snorted at something Alex said. He shouldn’t have come if he was just going to argue. But that was Peter in a nutshell. He couldn’t tolerate his siblings doing anything without him. He had to be there, keeping an eye on things.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “I’ll get it,” Natalia said, leaving the kitchen with some relief to go open the door. She rarely had so much traffic at home, and she wondered who it could be.

  Natalia opened the door.

  “Hi,” Gina said. The housecleaner looked surprised, standing with her keys out. “I didn’t know you were home,” she added apologetically.

  “Sorry, I’d totally forgotten that you usually come at this time,” Natalia said. She’d forgotten that it was a normal weekday. Of course, Gina had no idea she was unemployed now and spending a lot of time at home. She’d never realized how complicated it wa
s to have so many secrets.

  “Come in. We’re nearly on our way out,” she said, stepping aside.

  Ever since Natalia’s breakdown, the atmosphere between her and Gina had been uncomfortable. As if the balance between them had shifted in some invisible way. Natalia led the way to the kitchen with Gina following, like a silent shadow.

  Alexander stood up as they entered and greeted Gina with his normal, easygoing charm. Peter totally ignored her, although they must have met several times. He gave her a blank look and furrowed his brow, as if it were beneath him to greet her.

  “I’ll start in the living room,” Gina said, getting her supplies out of the broom closet and lowering her head as she left the room.

  “Thanks,” Natalia said uncomfortably. She wanted to say something more, apologize for Peter’s rudeness, say that it was wrong to divide people by social class, but the moment was lost, and words would hardly have improved the situation.

  “You could at least say hello,” Natalia hissed.

  “What?” Peter asked, looking genuinely surprised. “To her? But she’s just here to clean, right? Why should I say hello to her? I didn’t even know she spoke Swedish.”

  “Shh,” Natalia said, embarrassed.

  “You’re such a dick,” Alexander said.

  Peter shrugged. “I don’t give a damn what you think,” he said to Alexander. “You don’t do anything sensible, you drink and take drugs and sleep around. I hardly need a sermon on morality from you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Are you even sober?”

  Alexander’s eyes flashed, but then he went through that transformation that always scared the life out of Natalia. He adopted a cool, bored expression and sort of disappeared, as if behind a mask. As if there were nothing in the whole world worth caring about. No one could tune out emotionally like Alexander.

  “Oh yeah, I’m sober,” he said. “At the moment anyway. Try not to fall apart out of moral indignation.”

  Natalia looked at her brothers. They were actually more alike than either would want to admit. Both were tall and strong, and they were both blond and blue-eyed. Unlike her. How could she have missed that when it was so obvious? She was so unlike them, not just because she was female but also genetically. She let her eyes linger on Peter. Should she tell him that she knew about the rape? She should talk to him, but not when Alexander was listening.

  She rubbed her forehead.

  Soon she was going to have to sit down and decide what order to do all of this in.

  The list of Things I Need to Talk to People About was starting to get quite long. Maybe she should make an Excel spreadsheet or a flowchart.

  They heard the sound of a vacuum cleaner turning on in the hallway. Peter looked at the time and got up from the counter with a quick motion. He straightened his clothes and said, “I have to go. I’ll see you there.”

  “Where are you going?” Natalia asked, astonished. Now that they were all here, she had assumed that they would go to the meeting together.

  Peter looked over his shoulder. “There’s something I need to take care of first.”

  “Do you know where he’s going?” Natalia asked after Peter had left.

  “No idea,” Alexander replied, unconcerned.

  “I was hoping we could talk a little bit, all three of us, come together, you know, show a united front.”

  “United front?” Alex asked sarcastically. “Really? I know you want to fight for the family business. I know that you’ve been slaving away like an animal, and I admire you, because you are admirable. But, Nat dear, not even you can save this.”

  “I can try,” she said, irritated by his lack of desire to fight. “I talked to Uncle Eugene, by the way. He’s coming too.” She’d talked to so many people in the last two weeks that her jaws hurt.

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. I think Hammar Capital got to him first.”

  “Natalia, how . . . ,” Alexander began in a worried tone. He paused and then started over. “This thing between you and David Hammar, how are you doing?”

  “I can’t talk about it,” she said in a warning tone. “Not now.” He really was frighteningly sharp, she thought, freaked out.

  Alexander stretched his shoulders as if he’d already stopped caring and quickly said, “Fine. Get yourself together then, and let’s get going to our lynching.”

  “Do you think it’s going to be that bad?”

  Alexander watched her with his brilliant blue eyes.

  “No,” he said. “I think it’s going to be much worse.”

  51

  Peter walked away from Natalia’s building, anxious to get away from there. Seeing his siblings had annoyed him. He didn’t even know why he’d gone. Seeing Alex and Natalia and their uncomplicated relationship, being excluded, it all just made him feel irritated. In a way it had always been like that: Natalia and Alex, in perfect partnership, gifted, clever, confident.

  Inconceivable that he still cared, even though they were all grown up and living their separate lives. Even though on paper he’d succeeded far better than either of them.

  The walk took him just fifteen minutes. His heart was pounding uncontrollably. How many times in recent days had he thought that if he had a heart attack, then it would all be over? He didn’t want to die, not really. But sometimes it would be such a relief to escape. All of these demands sat on him like a weight, as if he had to constantly fight not to be pushed into the ground.

  He glanced up at the façade of the hotel, glad that they’d decided to continue the surveillance on Carolina Hammar. Now he knew she was staying here, at the Grand Hôtel. She’d checked in over the weekend.

  And Peter knew what he had to do.

  The only logical thing now that he knew she was alive.

  He slowed his pace. He’d been so sure, but suddenly he hesitated.

  There was still time for a change of heart. If he did this, it would have totally unforeseeable consequences. It could never be undone.

  No one knew he was here.

  If he blew it off, no one would find out.

  He wished he were better at making important decisions.

  He had made so many decisions that had irreparably, almost fatefully, pushed him in just this direction. All these choices and tipping points. The alienation in elementary school. The hard-core hazing at Skogbacka. David Hammar, who refused to submit and whom Peter had taken his frustrations out on. Carolina.

  Where had it all gone wrong? What would have happened if he’d never met Carolina?

  He knew exactly how it had ended.

  But where had it started? She provoked us. She actually wanted it. How many times had he told himself those words? An impulsive act, violent peer pressure, a series of circumstances, and suddenly you were a rapist. Although he wasn’t. No charges had been filed. And Caro had vanished, and everything had been erased, as if it hadn’t happened.

  Now she was back.

  The one person who was witness to what he’d dedicated his entire life to suppressing.

  How had it happened? He didn’t know.

  As if in a fog, he walked through the door being propped open by a smiling doorman.

  His father had always said that the choices he made defined him as a person, as a man.

  Peter looked at the slip of paper with Carolina’s room number. Would this choice define him now? Would he finally be free?

  52

  David and Malin arrived at the conference center early on Monday. They stood on a glassed-in balcony overlooking the enormous lobby. Lake Mälaren and the Stockholm inlet glittered outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Below them security personnel from two different companies, wait staff, and conference hosts were all scurrying around.

  It was a big facility, the biggest in Stockholm apart from the sports venues. David had known there would be a lot of interest in this shareholders’ meeting, but this . . . the RSVPs had poured in.

  “What if there’s still not enough room?” Malin said, echoi
ng his own thoughts. “People will go nuts if they can’t get in.”

  Tom Lexington, whose company was in charge of Hammar Capital’s security, came over to them. He gave David one of his firm handshakes and then did the same to Malin, who managed not to make a face at his tight grip.

  “How’s it going?” David asked.

  “I think they’re getting backed up again out there. Is it usually like this?”

  “No,” David said with a shake of his head. “Most shareholders’ meetings are quiet, sleepy affairs.”

  “This doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of those,” Tom noted.

  “No, this one is going to be more like a gladiator match,” David agreed. “Can they set up any more seating?”

  Malin nodded, her cell phone plastered to her cheek. “I just talked to Investum’s communications director”—she made a face to show what she thought of him—“and he says they can accommodate seven hundred people in there.”

  David gave Tom a questioning look, and Tom nodded and said, “That ought to be enough.”

  Malin excused herself and walked off.

  David caught Tom’s eye and asked, “Is everything quiet at the hotel?”

  He’d succeeded in convincing Carolina not to come to the shareholders’ meeting after all. She’d been pale and resolute, but had agreed to send her lawyer as proxy. Maybe she’d realized it would be too much for her, but she’d seemed distracted, and he was worried.

  “I have a man over there,” Tom said. “Just as a precautionary measure,” he added. “We don’t foresee any threat against her.” He smiled joylessly. “Unlike you. There’ve got to be at least a hundred people here today who’d really like to see you have a stroke or a heart attack on stage. This is like a reunion for everyone who’s ever wanted to see David Hammar’s head on a stake.”