All In

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  Åsa waved to her, but Natalia couldn’t do any more than nod weakly back and look away. More than anything else she wanted to go home, but the chaos and the commotion in the room were so overpowering that she just sat there. It would take ages to squeeze her way out, and she wasn’t up to it.

  She collapsed in her chair.

  “Natalia, come!” She jumped and looked up. Her father had barked the order, short and firm. “We’re going to meet with them,” he said. “We have to save what can be saved now.”

  “But I . . . ,” Natalia began uncertainly. She’d never been involved in the business before, why now?

  “Hammar wants you there,” Gustaf said in a tone that conveyed extremely well what he thought about that. “Come, now.”

  Technically no one could force her to go. She didn’t answer to anyone. In the end, however, it was less trouble to obey. Natalia got up. Would this ever be over?

  58

  Peter squirmed. The conference room he and David Hammar were in had big windows, and the water was practically below their feet. David was standing by the window, his back to Lake Mälaren behind him, watching Peter with his arms crossed and a frosty stare.

  It felt surreal to be in here, just the two of them. Peter was unbelievably uncomfortable, despite having been the one to request the meeting. He and David hadn’t spoken one-to-one since they were teenagers. And even then they hadn’t actually ever really talked. They had fought and argued from the first day David started at Skogbacka.

  “I know there isn’t actually anything I can say to make up for what I did,” Peter began. He was forced to speak loudly because the room was long and David didn’t approach him, but remained by the window. Peter cleared his throat and steeled himself, but he still couldn’t look David in the eye. It took all his courage just to dare to be here, to dare to speak. He couldn’t actually look at the man he’d injured so badly.

  Peter wondered if he could explain what had happened even to himself: the frustration he’d felt long before he’d ever begun at Skogbacka, the incessant feeling of not being good enough, the jealousy that was so all-encompassing, and, the most shameful of all, the attraction he’d felt for Carolina Hammar. He’d thought she was so pretty, the blond fifteen-year-old with the cheerfully colored clothes and the friendly smile, the working-class girl. She’d been nice to him, and they’d talked to each other a few times, completely harmlessly. It had been like a respite, an oasis. And then people had found out that Peter De la Grip was interested in David Hammar’s weird sister. They’d teased him, and he’d felt ridiculed, so he’d done the worst thing you could do to another person. He and three buddies had gone by her house, had seen her in the window, had rung the bell. It wasn’t planned, it just happened, and it was revolting. Not a day had gone by since then that he hadn’t been ashamed, hadn’t known, to his very core, that he was the lowest of the low.

  “But I needed to say that I’m sorry, and I’m grateful that you were willing to meet with me,” he said in a half-choked voice. When he’d been told that Carolina had died . . . Her “death,” oh God, it had almost destroyed him. And now: she was alive. It was like getting a second chance. He felt such gratitude.

  “I’m so tremendously sorry for what I did to you and to Carolina,” he said a little more loudly. “That’s why I voted for you and Hammar Capital in there.” He stopped. The words were completely insufficient. “I understand that there’s nothing I can say that would make up for what happened. And I don’t know what I would have done if I were in your shoes.”

  David was still standing at the window. He turned away, looking out at the water. His arms were still crossed. The late-afternoon sunlight streamed in, making dust motes visible in the air. Silence swelled between them.

  Peter ran his hand over his forehead. He was so tired, so drained after this day—first, the meeting with his siblings at Natalia’s place, and then the tension on the way to the Grand Hôtel, and then the meeting with Carolina. It had been like turning back time. She’d been so like herself, and yet different. Colorful and blond, but grown-up and serious. The conversation in the hotel suite was something he would carry with him for the rest of his life. It still felt like a glowing dream. And then the meeting, of course, where for the first time ever—and very publicly, no less—he had opposed his father and thereby also buried his own future in the world of Swedish business.

  He looked at David’s back. He didn’t know what he’d hoped to get out of this meeting. Forgiveness? He didn’t deserve forgiveness, but Caro had forgiven him anyway, and that had been like getting a new life. He’d confessed and his sins were forgiven.

  “I talked to Carolina,” he said to David’s back.

  David abruptly turned around. “You saw her?” he asked incredulously.

  Peter nodded.

  “When?” David took a step toward him, and it was like facing a menacing tiger or an attacking lion.

  Peter was having a hard time breathing. “We’ve had you both under surveillance,” he replied and forced himself not to back away even though it was like forcing himself to stand face-to-face with a dangerous predator who was preparing to attack. “I knew where she was staying, so I went there.”

  “What did you say to her?” David asked, taking another step closer to Peter. Peter tried to keep his fear at bay, but it was hard. David Hammar was not a teenage underdog anymore. He was a powerful, full-grown man. There was nothing, literally nothing preventing him from beating the crap out of Peter right here. Peter glanced around at the walls and ceiling of the conference room and noted that they even looked soundproof.

  “If you did anything to her . . . ,” David began. He didn’t need to say any more. Peter realized that David was hardly one to make empty threats. There was nothing civilized about this man, just a thin patina of decorum, beneath which he was completely ruthless except to those he cared about. And Peter had never had any doubt that David really cared about his sister.

  He was the big brother Peter himself had never been able to be to his siblings.

  Peter held up his hand. “I went there to apologize to Carolina. I’d called her beforehand and she let me come. We just talked.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said that she’d forgiven me a long time ago, which obviously I had no right at all to expect. I hadn’t even hoped for that.” Peter’s voice broke, and he struggled not to let his feelings show on his face. If he started crying in front of David Hammar, he would die of shame. “There’s nothing I can say to make up for what I did,” he continued. “Nothing, I know that. But I still wanted to see her and apologize.”

  David didn’t say anything, but the worst of the tension in his face began to abate.

  “Carolina is okay,” Peter said.

  “I know,” David said. “I talked to her by phone just a little while ago. But she didn’t say a word about your meeting.”

  Peter shrugged. In his eyes, Carolina was a grown woman, not accountable to David, but he wasn’t so foolish as to mention that.

  David eyed him for a long time. It felt as if he were entering Peter’s head and rooting around in there, and it was the most uncomfortable thing Peter had experienced in his whole life.

  “You raped my little sister,” he said finally.

  Peter gasped for breath, but he replied, “Yes.”

  “You and your buddies whipped me like an animal.”

  “Yes.”

  David looked away. Peter waited.

  There was a knock on the door. “The others are coming in now,” David said. “Are you going to stick around?”

  Peter shook his head. “I’m leaving. There’ll be enough drama without my father trying to murder me.” He hesitated. For a second it had felt as if David had seen him, really seen the man he was trying to be, but he wasn’t totally sure. He held out his hand. “Good luck,” he said.

  David glanced at the outstretched hand for so long that Peter was convinced he was going to refuse to take it. There
was another knock. David sighed and finally held out his own hand. Gratitude suffused Peter as they shook hands—not all that warmly, but still.

  David quickly pulled his hand back, nodded briefly, and said, “Thanks for your vote earlier.” Peter could hear that David wasn’t completely comfortable saying the words.

  “Thanks yourself,” Peter said. And he meant it. He was profoundly grateful that he’d had a chance to acknowledge and take responsibility for his crimes, even if the statute of limitations had run out from a legal perspective, grateful that he’d been given a chance to move on, wherever he was headed now after this. He put his hand on the doorknob and opened it. Michel Chamoun was standing outside. Michel looked at Peter without saying a word and then looked at David with an eyebrow raised. The terrifying man who was in charge of Hammar Capital’s security stood outside like a colossus.

  “Should I stall them?” Michel asked.

  “No, we’re done here,” David said as Gustaf De la Grip’s voice cut through the air.

  Peter steeled himself before meeting his father. He’d managed to avoid him directly after the vote, and he assumed his father’s mood hadn’t improved since then.

  Gustaf spotted him and glared at him furiously. “So this is where you’ve been hiding,” he roared. “What the hell did you do? Are you an idiot?”

  Peter cowered in the face of his father’s rage, felt the familiar fear, and was ready to be beaten. In some way he regressed, becoming small and vulnerable again in front of all these influential men. Fucking shit.

  But then the head of security, dressed all in black, took a step forward. He positioned himself between Peter and Gustaf, slowly shook his head, and addressed Gustaf. “Back off,” he said coldly.

  Gustaf, who apparently had rarely if ever been told to back off before, looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He opened his mouth, surely to tell the man off, and it occurred to Peter that this was the man who’d allowed him to believe that Carolina was dead. His father had robbed him of the opportunity to stand up and atone for what he’d done. But it was over now, and maybe he could start to be free. The past didn’t need to control his life anymore. Peter tipped his head and, taking advantage of the tumult Gustaf’s reaction had caused, walked away.

  The last thing he heard was the head of security saying, “If you care at all about that finger, I’d stop waving it in my face.”

  Peter smiled to himself and left.

  59

  Wondering if he would be forced to intervene between Gustaf and Tom, David watched Peter retreat. It had been a life-changing meeting, and he hadn’t managed to fully grasp everything Peter’s apology carried with it. He would need some more time to digest it, but first he had a few other things to deal with.

  “Tom, you can let them in now,” he said.

  Tom gave the furious Gustaf a chilly stare before stepping aside.

  The patriarch swept into the conference room, flanked by people David identified as Investum lawyers and accountants. Alexander and Åsa were behind them, and last of all came Natalia.

  She walked in the doorway past him, and he all but closed his eyes and inhaled her scent. She didn’t say anything, just went to a chair and sat down.

  Then Michel came into the room, and now Rima Campbell was with him, the woman they were going to appoint as managing director of Investum. Rima shook hands with David. She was a serious woman, one of the best directors David had met, and she’d been his first choice from the very beginning. She’d apparently butted heads with Gustaf a month ago. She eyed him neutrally now. She was brave, David thought, smiling at her. He liked brave people.

  Rima sat down, set her phone and iPad on the table, tinkered with her electronics, and then calmly looked around.

  Tom was still standing in the doorway. He caught David’s attention. “Should I stick around?” he asked.

  “Wait outside,” David ordered.

  Tom nodded and cast one last menacing glance at the Investum people, a look that clearly communicated that they shouldn’t even think of getting up to anything, because they would regret it for a long time to come, before pulling the door shut behind him.

  Gustaf started right in. “This isn’t over, if that’s what you think,” he began before David had even had a chance to sit down. “You must have rigged the vote.”

  Michel stood halfway up, but David made a gesture to stop him.

  “Of course you’re entitled to your opinion,” he told Gustaf smoothly. “But I would watch the accusations if I were you.” He glanced at Åsa, who nodded in confirmation.

  “He’s right, Gustaf,” Åsa said tersely. “Try to avoid libel, please.”

  David continued. “The sooner you accept that you’ve lost, the sooner we can move on.”

  “I haven’t lost anything,” Gustaf said.

  Åsa shook her head, as if to say she gave up.

  Gustaf smiled scornfully, distorting his aristocratic features. “No one is going to touch you with a barge pole after this. You have no power in this country.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You are no one and nothing.”

  The silence that spread through the room was uncomfortable, to say the least.

  David watched Gustaf.

  For all the years they had known each other, the older man had always been cold and haughty, like a patriarchal relic, born to privileges that he took as his God-given birthright. Gustaf was used to never being contradicted, used to servile submission, and he acted accordingly—as if everything he said and did was unquestionable.

  But it was easy to be haughty when you had never experienced any serious defeat.

  “I’m afraid you’re wrong, Gustaf,” David said calmly, permitting himself to sound a little patronizing. “The shareholders have had their say, and as of today I am the chairman of Investum’s board.” He made a point of looking at his watch. “For at least half an hour now, actually. And that is something actually, I would say.” He adjusted the cuff of his sleeve and smiled coolly.

  Someone suppressed a nervous laugh.

  “You goddamned Eurotrash punk,” Gustaf said, his voice no longer as controlled. “You’re nothing,” he repeated. “You don’t know anything. You’re trash, the son of your mother, and everyone knew she was a whore. You ought to know your place.”

  The Investum people started squirming in their chairs. Åsa looked down at her hands and shook her head again. Only Alexander appeared unaffected, as if he’d ended up in this room by mistake and couldn’t care less what anyone said.

  David glanced at Natalia. She sat motionless, her face pale but composed. He didn’t want her to have to hear this. He had agreed—he didn’t even know why—to speak to Gustaf on the condition that Natalia was present, but he should have known better, should have realized that it would be nasty.

  “And your sister,” Gustaf continued, cutting David’s thoughts short. “Don’t you think I know she’s alive? Huh? You’re like vermin, worming your way in like roaches.”

  David still didn’t say anything. A strange calm had come over him. The madder Gustaf became, the more insulting he got, the more confident David felt. He would give the man ten more seconds. He listened to the profanities and reflected on how all the sputtering and cursing had the opposite effect from what Gustaf intended. If anyone in this room was acting like trash just now, it certainly wasn’t David. And everyone in the room knew it—except perhaps for Gustaf himself, who slapped his palm on the table. All these years the old man had been so cold and controlled whenever they met. Now he’d lost his self-control for the first time. This should feel good, but David didn’t give a damn. At last, he’d conquered the monsters of his past.

  “Are you done?” he asked neutrally. He didn’t even need to force himself to act unperturbed, because it didn’t matter anymore. It was over.

  “I’m going to drag you through dirt you can’t imagine,” Gustaf ranted. “I’ll make sure you’re slaughtered in the press. I have powerful friends. I can go
however high up I want. I’m connected.”

  Gustaf glared at Rima and Michel. “And if you think some gang of gypsies can run my company . . . If you, you piece of shit, think that my life’s work can be managed by jungle bunnies like them, you’re wrong.”

  Rima made a stifled sound, and if David hadn’t known better, he would have thought his new managing director was trying to keep herself from laughing.

  Michel shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

  The others squirmed.

  Gustaf opened his mouth, but David raised his hand. He’d had enough of this charade; it was time to talk business. “The new board elected me chairman of the board,” he said. “Our first resolution was to dismiss the previous managing director.” He nodded to Rima Campbell. “Meet Investum’s new managing director,” he said.

  “You can’t be serious,” Gustaf said, looking as if he were having a heart attack. “You can’t choose her. You have to at least pick someone who knows the company.”

  David raised an eyebrow. Until now Investum’s leadership team had consisted of men whose foremost merits were that they were Gustaf’s friends. They weren’t exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.

  “And you have to have someone from the family,” Gustaf said, as if he actually had any right to decide. “At least as a consultant. Anything else is inconceivable.”

  David watched him without saying anything.

  “There are rules and principles in this industry,” Gustaf continued. “Perhaps it’s hard for someone like you to grasp, but I know this world. Everyone listens to me. You need a De la Grip.”

  David wondered if the man were really so arrogant that he thought his words had any value at all anymore.

  “I might offer Natalia a consulting position,” he said slowly.

  Michel’s eyebrows moved up his forehead, which wasn’t so strange given that this suggestion had been purely impulsive on David’s part, not something he’d mentioned to anyone. But, he argued to himself, Natalia was good, Michel had acknowledged that. The company would benefit from her expertise and knowledge. Surely they could be professional and work together.