All In

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  Somewhere, deep down, David knew he was fooling himself and coming up with justifications that weren’t rational at all.

  Natalia just stared at him, her face chalk-white.

  “She’s not going to have a position in the company,” Gustaf roared so that the windows shook.

  “There’s no other De la Grip I would consider,” David said coolly. “You have no authority whatsoever. It’s pure courtesy on my part.”

  “Courtesy?” Gustaf howled. “Over my dead body. And besides, she’s not even a De la Grip,” he added. “Plus you can’t have a leadership team that consists of old women and immigrants. You’re going to be ridiculed.”

  “Gustaf, what the hell,” Åsa said tiredly.

  David looked at Natalia. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she looked even paler now. Her eyes were shiny, and the tense features of her face were trembling. He’d never seen her cry, but she seemed on the verge of tears now.

  “Out,” he said quietly.

  “You can’t . . . ,” Gustaf began indignantly.

  “Not another fucking word from you,” David roared. He looked around the room. “All of you, out.”

  The lawyers and accountants were already getting up. Apparently relieved, they gathered their papers and briefcases. Rima Campbell picked up her phone and her iPad.

  Alexander got up. “Come on, Dad,” he said calmly but determinedly. “You’ve said enough.”

  Michel had also risen and was starting to usher people out. Under Tom Lexington’s harsh scrutiny, everyone hurried off. One by one they all left. Åsa passed Michel, close, close. They stared at each other for a charged moment before Åsa slipped out.

  Natalia stood up as well.

  She avoided David’s eyes as she fumbled with her purse. She pushed out her chair, prepared to go.

  “Not you, Natalia,” David said calmly.

  She gave him a questioning look.

  He shook his head. “You’re staying,” he said.

  60

  It’s been a long day, thought Natalia. Actually it felt like the longest in her life. And it wasn’t over yet.

  She watched David empty the room efficiently and dictatorially.

  As the last few people exited, she tried to compose herself, and she was almost completely calm by the time the door closed. David turned around to face her, fixed his eyes on her, and asked, “What was that all about?”

  “Ha ha ha. Seriously?” she said coolly, fighting the feeling of irritation that flared up in her. She very grudgingly admitted that he had handled Gustaf most impressively, but he had no right to question her. She raised one eyebrow. “You actually think I have to tell you stuff?”

  He opened his mouth, but then closed it again. He took a seat at the table a little distance from her as if to give her a good view of his whole body: big, self-confident, dominant. Today had already taught her that that was how David worked—he dominated people.

  He put a hand on the table and watched her, as if he were searching for a strategy to deal with her.

  Good luck with that.

  She wasn’t planning on making anything easy for him.

  He leaned in over the table, and Natalia almost jumped at the movement. She was more tense than she wanted to admit. But David just grabbed a bottle of mineral water, opened it, poured some water into a glass, rose halfway from his chair, and handed it to her. “Drink,” he said.

  She raised her eyebrow again. Was he trying to annoy her?

  “You’re pale,” he said by way of explanation. “It’s been a tough day. Have a little water.”

  It made her feel like a stubborn child, but she refused to take the glass.

  He shook his head, set it down in front of her, and sat down again. “I’m not your enemy,” he said. “Your greatest wish in life was to work at Investum,” he continued in a low, compelling voice. It inspired such confidence, that voice of his. She was on the verge of leaning toward him.

  “Why are you saying no now?” He looked really bewildered, as if he couldn’t fathom why she wasn’t jumping at the chance to work with him, for him. “Is it because of me?”

  “Um, yeah,” she replied stiffly.

  “I’m sure we can both behave professionally,” he said.

  Natalia just shook her head. He seemed sincere, and she couldn’t decide whether he was just being unbelievably naïve or unbelievably stupid. Regardless of which, she could never in her life imagine working with David.

  She wondered exactly how much she’d misjudged him. Maybe he did this all the time? Slept with strategically important women and offered them jobs afterward, maybe as consolation?

  It was uncomfortable to realize how differently they’d invested emotionally in the relationship. Uncomfortable and horribly embarrassing. Obviously she would never work with him. It was hard enough to sit in the same room and have him looking at her so intently.

  She forced herself to sit completely still and not move a muscle.

  “What did your father mean when he said you’re not a De la Grip?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

  Oh, she might as well explain it. What did it matter? It would be public knowledge soon enough. “Gustaf isn’t my biological father. I didn’t know that before. Now . . . now there have been repercussions.”

  David looked at her for so long that Natalia had to keep herself from fidgeting in her chair. Now she regretted having refused the glass of water. She was insanely thirsty. Nonchalantly she picked up the glass and drank.

  “I’m sorry,” David said quietly. “I had no idea.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, her voice sounding artificially chipper. The glass had left a wet ring on the glossy conference table, and she strove to put it back in exactly the same spot. She brought her voice back to the cool tone she so desperately wanted to maintain. When she got home she would treat herself to a breakdown, but not here, not now. “It’s not your fault.”

  “What’s going to happen now? With, well, you know, with . . . ?” David made a vague gesture.

  Natalia smiled wryly. “With everything? I honestly don’t know. Everything is still spinning. But even if you hadn’t taken over Investum, I wouldn’t have had a future there. Gustaf made that completely clear to me, and now to everyone else as well, as you heard.” She wondered if her father was busy informing Alex right now. She trembled, but forced her body to stillness. They had to be almost done here.

  “I’m so sorry,” he repeated.

  “Thanks,” she said, even though she was sure that David was truly uninterested in her family situation. She would probably have to change her last name, and she would obviously be stricken from the official list of Swedish nobles. This would surely cost her some of her friends.

  But otherwise . . .

  Life would actually go on.

  She shrugged. “It’s not like there’s some emergency,” she said. “I can always find another job.”

  He gave her a questioning look. Of course. He had no idea.

  “I quit at the bank. Well, technically I was fired because my deal tanked.”

  And because I blew off work after you broke my heart.

  “I had no idea,” he said. “So why don’t you want to work with Investum now that you have a serious offer?”

  She sighed. “David, I honestly can’t picture a future in which I’m working for you in one of your companies.” How was it even possible that they could have such different views on this?

  “You’re right,” he said quietly.

  They sat in silence. She wanted to say something more, but couldn’t come up with any words. Strangely enough, she wasn’t mad anymore, just empty. She took another drink of the mineral water.

  “David?”

  “Yes?”

  “Since we’re talking about fathers anyway, can I ask you something?”

  He smiled a little, and she caught a glimpse of the David she’d fallen for, in the laugh lines around his eyes and the twinkle in them. “Absolutel
y,” he said.

  “Is Carl-Erik Tessin your father?”

  He studied her for a long time. She could tell she’d surprised him, which pleased her. He was so unerring and solid, it felt good to shake him up a little, not to always be the one brought up short. Besides, she was genuinely curious.

  “How did you come up with that?” he asked finally.

  “You two are very similar,” she said. She had liked the low-key count from Skåne. And according to Wikipedia, David had two middle names, Carl and Erik. It hadn’t been hard to figure out when she started thinking along those lines. “Is he Carolina’s father, too?”

  David nodded. “Yes, he was both Carolina’s and my biological father.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “He’s not dead either.” She couldn’t help saying it.

  “Apparently not,” he responded.

  “Do you get along?”

  Actually it was almost comical how reversed their roles were now. David’s father was a count, while hers pretty surely wasn’t. She glanced at his grim face. Not that he seemed to appreciate the humor of the situation.

  “Do I get along with a married nobleman who got my mother pregnant, twice, and then let her manage the best she could?” he asked slowly. “No, you could certainly say that we don’t get along.”

  “You should talk to him,” Natalia said, not really caring if she was meddling with things that were none of her business. She thought Carl-Erik seemed nice.

  “If you say so,” he said tersely.

  “Not that I’m really much of an expert at relationships,” she said with a rueful half smile at her own understatement. “So I guess I could be totally wrong.”

  A smile spread across his stern face, and she loved that she could still make him smile.

  “Is he a bad person?” she asked.

  “I don’t actually know,” David said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  And then they got lost in each other’s eyes.

  “Sorry for slapping your face,” she said softly. She had wanted to say that.

  “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I deserved it.”

  She assumed she ought to cherish his apology, but it felt strangely depressing for a man to apologize for having kissed her. She wondered how David actually felt about her. After all, he had kissed her on Friday, but it had been a power display. Which he now apparently regretted.

  But then today he’d offered her a job. Did he want to be friends, or something else? She wished she dared to ask, but the truth was that she wasn’t asking because she wasn’t up to hearing the answer. Maybe this was what they were doomed to—hurting each other and apologizing, over and over again. Maybe it would be better if they never saw each other again.

  She looked away. Although it was actually a little more complicated than that. She was going to have to tell him sometime, certain things anyway. Because that’s what people did, right? Told the man you’d slept with that, whoops, turns out I wasn’t sterile after all, and now I’m quite pregnant. And, yes, actually, I’m planning to keep it, thank you very much. Because she’d decided she was going to have this baby. Actually she’d known that the whole time. Nothing and no one could make her terminate this pregnancy. It was her baby, and she would fight for it like a tigress. Well, hers and David’s, of course, she added to herself. Because David could go on and on about never wanting to have kids, but this was every bit as much his doing as hers.

  She drew a circle with her finger on the glossy table. Soon, one of these weeks or months, she would get it together enough to tell him.

  Oh, for God’s sake, just tell him now, she ordered herself sternly. Do it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I’m pregnant”—just say it now.

  “Um, David, there’s something I have to . . .” she began at the exact same moment that he said, “Natalia, I was wondering . . .” and then there was a knock on the door at exactly the same moment, and they both fell awkwardly silent.

  Or maybe relieved.

  Malin opened the door a crack and peeked in. She looked stressed out and hot.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said apologetically, balancing an enormous stack of papers in her arms. She nodded quickly at Natalia and then looked at David. “Are you coming? Your board is waiting for you.” She gave Natalia an embarrassed glance but stubbornly stayed. “I’m sorry . . .”

  “I’m coming, Malin,” David said. He stood up. “Sorry,” he told Natalia as he straightened his jacket and pulled his hand through his hair. The private David disappeared, replaced by a business leader.

  Natalia quickly stood up as well. “It’s fine,” she said. “I have to go. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

  “You were about to say something,” he said.

  “It was nothing. I’ll go, so you can have your meeting.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Bye,” Natalia said finally.

  David took a step toward her. Natalia stiffened, and then she plastered on a smile, hoping to God that her true feelings somehow didn’t show. That he couldn’t see that all she wanted to do was bawl her heart out. David halted, and the mood was uncomfortably tense. Natalia cleared her throat and smiled again, calmly and effectively this time—at least she hoped so—and quickly extended her hand so David wouldn’t get it into his head to hug her, because then she would surely fall apart, and she quite simply didn’t want to do that. She’d fallen apart enough already for a whole lifetime.

  Some emotion flickered in David’s beautiful gray-blue eyes—she saw it but didn’t know what it was—and he held out his hand too.

  And then they shook hands, like two colleagues parting ways, and maybe it was forever.

  Cool, impersonal, and definitive.

  Despite that, it felt like she was dying here in this conference room.

  She released his hand. Felt Malin watching.

  Turn around and go, Natalia.

  Now.

  She had no choice. She ordered herself to do what was right and proper and expected. David and Malin were watching her, surely eager to get on with their meeting.

  So Natalia left.

  On her high heels and with as much dignity as she could muster, she walked out of the room and out of David Hammar’s life.

  Good-bye, she thought, and then closed the door behind her.

  Good-bye.

  61

  The conference center was still packed with people all heading out the doors at the same time. There were hundreds of people, forming lines and crowding.

  Carl-Erik Tessin was trying to get his bearings in the sea of people. A door opened a little ways off, and he saw Natalia De la Grip come out and hurry past, looking very tense. He’d liked her when they’d met at Båstad, which was unexpected given who her family was.

  Daughter of Gustaf and sister of Peter, two men he had every reason to loathe.

  And then Carl-Erik spotted Gustaf De la Grip. He towered above the crowd, like a bird of prey or a vulture, with his sharp features and cold eyes.

  Carl-Erik took a step forward, tensing.

  This was it. The time had come to confront the past. He had to risk it. Now or never, he repeated to himself like a mantra.

  “Gustaf!” he called. His voice carried surprisingly well over the crowd, and Gustaf turned around.

  Carl-Erik’s whole body stiffened as Gustaf looked to see who had called his name, but he forced himself not to step away. Gustaf looked him over. Carl-Erik approached. He tried not to lean too much on his walking stick, didn’t want to show weakness.

  “Are you speaking to me?” Gustaf asked disdainfully once they were facing each other.

  Carl-Erik tried to take a breath to calm himself. But he was jumpy. Gustaf had always been able to strike fear into him just by looking at him. Even though it had been fifty years since their days at Skogbacka, even though they were old men, the memories lingered in his body an
d maybe in his soul.

  Carl-Erik had been sent to the boarding school when he was ten. His parents had believed in harsh discipline, and they’d sent him away, even though he was quaking with fear. Carl-Erik was so homesick he cried at night, and he’d been scared of everything during the day—the teachers, the staff, and the older children. He’d taken so many beatings, and Gustaf De la Grip had been his worst tormentor. The things people wrote about in the newspapers these days, about harassment and hazing at the boarding schools, were just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who’d gone to boarding school knew. Carl-Erik’s hand squeezed his cane. “Yes,” he said. “I want to talk to you about David.”

  Gustaf scoffed, and it took Carl-Erik some effort not to immediately fall back into the roll of victim. He hated conflicts. Sometimes it felt as if he’d been afraid his whole life: first of his own parents, then of Gustaf and the other students at boarding school, then of his wife, and then—like some nightmarish repetition of the past—of Gustaf again.

  Even today he remembered the conversation from so many years ago. It would be exactly seventeen years on the Santa Lucia holiday this year. December thirteenth, he never forgot the date, and he had hated the holiday ever since. Helena had called him in a panic. They hadn’t spoken for many years; Helena had refused to see him since the day she’d realized he was never going to be brave enough to leave his wife. And she had forbidden Carl-Erik to have any contact with David or Carolina. He’d sent letters but never heard anything back. The years since then had been desolate, cold, and lonely, but he’d done what he’d done his whole life: given in.

  And then Helena had called late that night, the panic audible in her voice and the words tumbling out of her as she told him about Carolina being raped, David being assaulted, and the threat against all three of them. She must have been beside herself to have called, he realized today. She’d punished him for so many years by refusing to take his calls, but she’d called when the children were in danger. Helena was a proud woman—David got that from her, Carl-Erik thought—and it must have really cost her something to make that phone call. He’d taken the call in the middle of a formal dinner with counts and barons and his wife’s parents. With his heart thumping, he’d answered when the mother of his two out-of-wedlock children, and the only woman he’d ever loved, had called to ask for help.