Maybe it just comes down to hunting. I am forever the predator when it comes to Seraphine, not just in body but in spirit. I want to possess her heart and her thoughts and her soul the same way that she’s taken ownership of mine. I want to seek out what I want and need for survival and call it my own. That’s the kind of lust I’m talking about on a larger scale. The lust of craving someone’s very being, of needing every single molecule that created them at some point.
Maybe I beat around the bush for too long when I was younger, maybe because I didn’t know what I wanted.
But now I do know.
I know very well.
She’s right beside me.
And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure she stays there.
This part of the 18th arrondissement isn’t the best neighborhood, so it’s no wonder that the Uber is pulling over outside a park as per Seraphine’s instructions.
At this point, I’m lying low in the back seat, and she’s given me but one glance as she gets out of the vehicle.
The glance said Stay out of trouble.
Wish I could say the same to her.
It’s too late for both of us.
Somehow the Uber driver is used to weird nonsense and doesn’t so much as blink when I tell him to circle around and then drop me off on the street on the other side, nearest the train tracks that lead into the Gare de l’Est.
A park beside train tracks—great location for late-night dealings.
I keep low and run quickly through the darkness until I can see Seraphine, standing around the entrance to the community garden. There is only one light above her, illuminating her and the gravel beneath her feet a faint orange color.
Smart, Seraphine. Stay where you are. Don’t step out of the light.
I’m about fifteen meters away, far enough to stay hidden behind the tree line but close enough to get involved in case something goes wrong. She’s looking around, up at the apartment buildings across the street, which should be a comfort, but they also look dilapidated and abandoned. If anyone lives in them, I bet they’re the type to turn a blind eye to anything happening in the park across the street.
She’s nervous, tapping her boots against the ground, clutching her purse, which holds the money I gave her. I wish I could trade places with her and do the deal that way, but I know that if I show my face, there will be hell to pay.
I’d venture to guess that a lot of the thugs, hit men, criminals, and dealers in this town all have connections to my father. Growing up, there always seemed to be an “acquaintance” of my father’s, as he would always explain it, and they’d disappear into his study. Sometimes they would be there for a few minutes, others a few hours. Even when I was young I knew there was something off about these meetings. The men were rarely charming; they all had hard, scarred-up faces that didn’t know how to smile. They looked at me like I was a cockroach and they were the shoe; all they needed was a signal from my father and it would all be over.
As I got older, as I became more privy to the goings-on in my father’s life, I realized that he was involved in something far reaching. He had power beyond just being Gautier Dumont. His whole life, he’d been in his brother’s shadow—the brother who had it all, was beloved by all, had the brains and the drive for the business. My father had some brains, but more than that, he had the drive for dominance and a distinct lack of morals. He couldn’t compete with his brother on the business scale, but he could grow his own power through every legal and illegal channel known to him. He was born with money, and he used that money to amass more money, blood money, and then created an underground empire to rival anyone else’s.
I keep out of my family’s business. I always have. I know that a variety of terrible things have probably been done by my father, and perhaps Pascal too, but I’ve turned a blind eye. Even when I joined the company, looking and hoping for a chance to feel like I belong, I still kept out of the darkness, and they willingly kept me out.
They see me as an outsider, just as they see Seraphine as one. They don’t trust me, and I don’t trust them. But that willful ignorance can only go on for so long.
I know now, as I stay crouched behind these bushes, the bare branches of a maple tree above me, that I’ve drawn a line in the sand. I won’t stand by and let my father frighten Seraphine to death, or whatever it is he planned to do through Jones. I won’t pretend anymore that he’s a man not capable of murder, because I know he is. Life is pretty good at throwing things you instinctually want to ignore, just to preserve yourself, preserve the life you’ve carved out for yourself, your way of seeing the world. Change is scary, and when it’s time to confront something big, most of us pretend it doesn’t exist.
I can’t do that anymore.
And if I can’t help Seraphine prove that my own father murdered his own brother, then I want nothing to do with this family anymore. I don’t want to be a Dumont. I don’t want to add to the legacy. I want to throw my name away, quit my job, start again.
I want to do that with her.
Somewhere far, far from here.
In fact, the longer that I’m watching her waiting in this darkened park, the more I know what our next steps are. She has to pay Jones, there is no question about that. If she doesn’t, there will be consequences that I can’t help her with. But after this, my life in Paris is over. And with any luck, I’ll convince her of the same.
Jones approaches her from the left. His footsteps on the gravel are so silent that Seraphine doesn’t hear him coming.
She spins around at the last moment, and I can tell it takes all of her not to scream.
“Do you have the money?” he asks, holding out one hand.
Seraphine nods anxiously and reaches into her purse, pulling out the wad of bills and quickly placing it in his hand. “It’s all there.”
He glances at it. “If these turn out to be counterfeit . . .”
“Surely you can tell right now from glancing at them whether they are or not.”
She’s getting attitude in her voice.
Not a smart move, Seraphine. Keep it meek.
“Hmmphf,” Jones says, tucking the bills into his jacket pocket.
Then he continues to stare at her, legs in a wide stance, hands clasped at his stomach.
“What?” she asks. “Do we have some other business?”
“I want to know what you have planned next.”
“What do you mean?”
Just then a cry rings through the air, enough to give me a heart attack. But it’s just some drunken bum on the sidewalk between them and the road, pushing a cart down the street and yelling at no one.
Jones jerks his head toward the trees, in the direction I came from. “Let’s step away for a moment.”
She stiffens, doesn’t move. “We’re done.”
“We aren’t,” he says calmly, but the intensity in his eyes says something else. “We aren’t done until I say we are, you understand? Now come here, away from the road. You want people to know that you just paid me fifty thousand euros to try to off your uncle?”
Her eyes bug out. “That’s not what it was for,” she cries out softly. “You know it wasn’t.”
“I’m just saying, it’s easy to twist things around. I’m very, very good at it, among other things. And believe me, you don’t want me to prove any of it.”