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.”