by J. D. Fox
“Purely by chance,” Genevieve said with a wry smile. “I know that it probably seems too bizarre to be true, but I had no idea that you were getting into any kind of business with my ex. If I had… I might not have taken the job. I just wanted to be as far away as possible from my old life.”
“Go on,” Olivier told her, not entirely trusting what she had said so far, but willing to hear her out. Genevieve continued, explaining how she had begun to wonder about the nature of his business, how she had gone about getting more details, and the people she had called. It was too much effort— with too much corroboration from the people he knew— for Olivier to discount it entirely.
“When you fired me, I decided that I couldn’t just let things lie,” Genevieve continued. “I had to know if you were at risk of being double-crossed, or if something might happen since I had a hunch that Clinton had been involved with what went down with my parents.”
“Why would you think that he was involved?” Olivier frowned. Genevieve shrugged.
“I just… things that people said as I called around, and stuff that I had dug up, just made me think that he had left me for more reasons than just the fact that my parents are jailbirds,” she replied. “After all, we know a good few people who have been arrested for white-collar crime.”
“And so what were you doing with him?” Genevieve smiled wryly again.
“Getting information,” she replied, and Olivier stared at her in shock for a moment.
“How is that?” Genevieve sat down and Olivier found himself wanting to sit down too, but he also wanted the moral authority of standing. He shifted his weight.
“I figured that given how flirty Clint had been with me when I called him to get information about his new business dealings, my best chance to get more information and find out if he were going to screw you would be to meet up with him and get him drunk,” Genevieve said matter-of-factly. At that, Olivier couldn’t quite resist the temptation to grin. The smile stopped at the ends of his lips, and he managed to conquer it after a moment.
“Keep going please,” he said. Genevieve did, explaining how she had arranged the meetup with her ex, and how she had gone to dinner with him, and then went back to his hotel room.
“I didn’t have sex with him,” she said, meeting his gaze levelly. “I could have if I had wanted to, but I didn’t want that in the least. I let him make some moves on me just to keep him going and to get him in the mood to talk, but I didn’t even let his hand get under my dress.” Olivier wasn’t sure he could believe that, but he knew that he wanted to.
“And so? What did you find out?” Genevieve held out her phone to him.
“He had told me when we were talking that the business he’s starting here with you wasn’t intended to last for very long,” she explained. “And that told me just what level of shadiness I was dealing with. So I went through his emails and text messages, and found some things out.”
Olivier flipped through the images that Genevieve had saved, and he had to admit that he was feeling a little bit better about her involvement in everything, but he still couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was involved in something more significant; some plot that would make his life harder.
“Tell me the meaning of all this,” Olivier said. There was too much for him to take in all at once.
“Essentially, it looks like he’s going to make you the patsy for money laundering,” Genevieve said. “Just like he made my parents the patsy for other activities—like fraud and tax evasion.”
“How do you say that?” Olivier knew he wasn’t speaking correctly, but for the moment that was less important than getting the message across.
“Basically, he has it set up to look at the end of everything like you solicited him, and that you were getting investors to come in on the basis that it would be a laundering operation.” She went on, and while Olivier had his doubts, he couldn’t tell himself with confidence that she was describing something impossible. If Clinton made it look like the deal was entirely his baby, and that he had knowingly laundered money gained through insider trading among other crimes (leaving Clinton out of the loop) before he closed down the business— therefore bilking investors on the French side— he would be in jail for a long time.
But still, how could he entirely believe her? She had gone behind his back and done things that looked too suspicious to be purely in his interests. “Why should I believe any of this?” He gave Genevieve her phone back, and she smiled sadly.
“I watched my parents get arrested, put on trial, and go to prison,” she told him. “At this point, I’m not even doing it for you; I’m doing it for Mathilde. She doesn’t deserve to see that happen to her dad. And if you’re too stupid to take precautions, then that will be on you, but I will have done whatever I can to make sure you know what you’re dealing with. I can’t do any better than that, can I?”
“I will take things under advisement,” Olivier told her. His own phone pinged, and he checked to see that he had a text message, through the secure app he used, from Clinton, asking for a preliminary meeting; I’m in town, or at least close— Rouen. Should we get some lunch and talk over the details before the signing in a few days?
“Am I dismissed effective immediately?” Olivier looked up from his phone and stared at Genevieve for a moment, weighing his answer.
“Mathilde misses you,” he said. “She was hoping that you would take her to the museum to look at the gardens.”
“I can certainly do that,” Genevieve said.
“I have a message here from your ex,” Olivier told her. “I will meet with him and see some things for myself.”
“And until you come to your conclusion, if you haven’t already?” Olivier shrugged.
“I gave you a week, and there are only a few more days left in that time anyway,” he said. “I see no reason to interrupt Mathilde’s life any earlier than that.”
“I don’t even know where I am,” Genevieve pointed out. “But I guess I can find an Über.”
“My friends will drop you off at the house,” Olivier told her. “I will go to my lunch meeting with Clinton and see what there is to see.” Genevieve rose to her feet and Olivier watched her walk past him. For a moment, he wanted to grab her, to pull her to him and demand that she prove that nothing more than kissing happened between her and Clinton, but that would be ridiculous. He suppressed the urge and watched her leave.
When he was alone once more, Olivier considered what he had seen on Genevieve’s phone, and decided that he would, at least, ask some probing questions of his business partner to find out what merit there was in what she had said. It should— he hoped— be enough to make up his mind about the woman working for him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Genevieve paced in the living room, her heart beating fast and her mind racing. She had taken Mathilde to the museum and done the voices for the different flowers, taking as long as possible to go back to the house. But eventually there had been no reason to stay out any longer, and Mathilde had needed a nap anyway, so she had been left to her own devices for about an hour, stewing and wondering just how seriously Olivier was going to take her input.
“He’s not stupid; he’s managed to go this long without getting arrested,” she told herself, turning at the window and walking back in the direction of the door. “He wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. Even if he’s pissed at you, he’s got to be smart enough to take precautions.”
Gen closed her eyes and threw herself down onto the couch blindly, sighing. She had done her part of the job, hadn’t she? She’d gotten Olivier the information he needed to make proper decisions, and if he decided not to do the right thing, she could hardly be blamed for it— could she? Gen opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling and wondered. Not for the first time, she played the confrontation with her boss through her mind, focusing on the details she hadn’t been able to
fully appreciate at the moment.
There had been odd moments of tension between the two of them that Gen couldn’t entirely explain to herself. Olivier clearly had been convinced of the possibility that she was working alongside Clint, as opposed to being against him. Would her evidence be enough to make him understand just how hard Clint was working to cover his own ass and eventually implicate Olivier? There was that moment when you talked about being in Clint’s hotel room, Gen remembered. She half-smiled to herself at the thought of how important it had been to Olivier that she hadn’t done anything of substance with her ex.
But had she ever really wanted to? There had been a moment--maybe a couple of moments--when the temptation had reared its ugly head. She had thought about how it had felt when Olivier had pushed her out, how unfair he’d been, and how good the good times with Clint had been, back in the days before her parents had ever been disgraced. They had had good times, hadn’t they? But somehow the knowledge that Clint had been involved in making sure her parents went to jail instead of him tainted all that, even if she could put a finger on what precisely had been so good about being with Clint.
It was far, far easier to remember what had been so good about being with Olivier, even though it had only happened once. Gen shivered at the memory of how his touches had felt, how good it had been when he had been inside of her. She pressed her lips together, remembering— almost against her will— how good the kissing had been. With Clint, while he wasn’t bad exactly, there had been something missing; and not just because he had tasted like wine in a less-than-pleasing way. After all, she and Olivier had been drinking wine when they’d started kissing too, and there hadn’t been that awkwardness to it.
“Ugh, stop doing this to yourself,” Gen said out loud, shaking her head and trying to dispel the memories of her night with Olivier. That had been where everything had gone downhill, hadn’t it? She thought about her soon-to-be former boss’s reaction to the idea of her having sex with Clint, and wondered just how much of the rule that he’d set had been about protecting his business interests and how much of it had been because he’d liked the sex they’d had more than he’d expected to. Indeed, she’d liked it more than she had expected to.
So was he angry with her for prying into his affairs, or was he angry because he thought she had been playing him all along— or was it some combination of the two? And if he did heed her advice and take care of his liabilities in his deal with Clint, could she expect him to admit some measure of how wrong he’d been, and maybe take back her firing? It was apparent that he hadn’t told Mathilde that she would be leaving them. There were too many questions to focus on one for long enough to puzzle out an answer.
Genevieve decided that she needed to do something productive, and got off of the couch to go to the kitchen. Mathilde would be hungry when she woke from her nap, and whether or not Olivier had come home by then, it would be a good idea to have a snack ready for the little girl. She browsed the pantry and the fridge, seeing and not seeing, her mind working away on the complicated problem of her ex, her current employer, and the child she had made a commitment to. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t Clint have picked some other patsy for his new scheme? Why couldn’t Olivier have decided to work with someone else? And why did he have to run another scheme anyway?
She had pieced together what Olivier thought he was going into based on what she had learned from the various sources, including her former fiancé’s emails. He had known that there was going to be money laundering involved, and he had been willing to bilk a few investors in France with the understanding that a few in the US would be getting bilked as well. There had been no indication to him that he was going to be the fall guy for the whole plot, or even that there was going to be a fall guy at all. Clint stood to make more money on the deal by implicating Olivier Laurent since there were rewards for whistleblowing. He was going to enrich himself at Olivier’s expense, just as he had done at her parents’ expense. There was more to it than that, of course— Clint stood to make a killing, all told— but the practical matter was that Olivier would be thrown in jail to take the heat off of the people laundering their ill-gotten financial gains.
That brought Gen’s mind back around to the subject of her parents, and the role Clint had played in their disgrace. She didn’t know how she was going to use the information she had gathered, but from what she had been able to discover, her parents hadn’t been fully aware of what Clint had been doing. Through proxies they had sensed things were sketchy and had been okay with that— Gen thought wryly that her parents had always generally been fine with shadiness that benefited them— but they hadn’t been aware of the fraud being committed, nor of the extent to which it was all being done in their name. After all, Clint would soon be married to their daughter; they had no reason not to trust him. They had gotten too confident in their previous less-than-fully-legal operations, and hadn’t seen the clear warning signs that they were going to be screwed.
Genevieve finished cutting up fruit and vegetables and cheese for Mathilde’s snack and sat down, pondering the situation she’d found herself in. Even if Olivier managed to avoid getting caught, even if things worked out for him, where did she have to go from there? What was she going to do about her work visa, and about her life? How was she going to get revenge for her parents— and more to the point, was there any wisdom in trying? Gen shook her head, reminding herself that there was still too much up in the air to begin making decisions.
She had just decided to check in on Mathilde when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Gen frowned, confused at the prospect of a call, but took the phone out, more out of curiosity than any kind of expectation. The name flashing on the screen was Clint Humphries, and Gen thought wryly that if nothing, the call meant that Olivier’s lunch meeting with the man was over and done with; but she couldn’t think of why Clint would want to call her. Genevieve decided that it was better to know than to wonder. She unlocked her phone, tapping the icon to accept the call through Skype.
“Hey, Clint, I’m sorry I dashed off like that, but I had a train I needed to catch,” Genevieve said, trying to fill her voice as much as possible with charm. She had gotten rid of the headache she’d woken up with, but she wasn’t sure what Clint had thought of the fact that she’d departed before he’d woken up.
“Gen, you can stop playing around with me now,” Clint told her. His voice was firm, but not quite cold, and Gen felt her heart beating a little bit faster.
“What do you mean?” Clint chuckled on the other end of the line.
“Well, I’ve figured out what you’ve been doing since you ran away from Manhattan,” he replied. “And I gotta say, it takes a lot of fucking balls to pull off what you did.”
“I don’t think it takes that much nerve to become a nanny,” Gen said, reasoning that Clint wouldn’t have been able to find out that much.
“But it does take a hell of a lot of nerve to become the nanny of the guy I’m about to go into business with, and then spy on me on his behalf,” Clint said. Gen’s heart dropped to her knees and she just stood there for a moment in the kitchen, at a loss for what to say.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
On his way to meet with Clinton in person for the first time since they had made contact online, Olivier’s scrambled thoughts and roiling emotions regarding Genevieve began to settle. He had always approached business deals like the one he was poised to make as a kind of poker game; one where you had to have nerve, something he had always excelled in. Olivier considered everything that Genevieve had told him and shown him as Louis made his way towards Rouen, and decided that if nothing else, there was no reason not to examine what his employee had accused Clinton of— at least a bit.
By the time he’d arrived, Olivier had his strategy more or less figured out. Of course, he couldn’t ask the man outright whether he intended to screw him over, but maybe he could get Clinton to open up on the subject of other deals
he had made, other business enterprises he had worked through, and get some confirmation that way. He spotted the man standing outside of L’Espiguette, the restaurant he had recommended. Clinton was dressed in a suit that had a more casual look to it, and Olivier thought idly to himself that nobody stood out more than an American man in France. He had kept his own outfit simple. It was the same one he had worn to confront Genevieve; he’d seen no reason to change out of his dress pants, shirt, and sweater.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Humphries,” Olivier said, holding out his hand to shake the man’s.
“From the smells coming out of this place, I can see why you recommended it,” Clinton said, giving him a polite smile. Whatever had happened between him and Genevieve the night before, the blond, blue-eyed man still looked a bit worse for the wear, and Olivier was reasonably sure that a good bit of wine had been involved.
They seated themselves after looking over the menu board, and Olivier made his recommendations based on what was available for the day. The waiter came to the table and, glancing at Clinton for permission, Olivier gave their orders: a charcuterie platter for their starter, the steak-frites with shallot sauce for Clint since that was one of the restaurant’s best dishes, and the rabbit for himself.
“Do you want wine with our meal? They have several good ones,” Olivier asked Clinton.
“I think I’m good on wine for a few hours,” Clinton said, giving him the kind of smile that Olivier recognized from his own bouts of too much drinking. So he ordered a carafe of water and a beer for himself and settled into the discussion that they needed to have.
“I believe we can discuss business in broad strokes here, in English, without too much risk,” Olivier told Clinton. The other man nodded, and they started in on their conversation. Olivier didn’t move to try and confirm any of the details that Genevieve had shared with him right away. He knew that if Clinton had any kind of doubts in his mind, he would jump to the conclusion that Olivier knew something he shouldn’t. Instead, Olivier let the conversation flow, sharing a bit of his history in vague terms to encourage his partner to do the same. He learned that the man he was going into business with was not very different from many he had done business within France: born into privilege, family money that came from finance, used to winning. Olivier had succeeded in business on his own terms mainly by being willing to take risks that others wouldn’t, and he knew the value of what it was he was gambling in a way that he had always suspected his cohorts didn’t.