Discretion (The Dumonts, #1)(78)

“You don’t mind?”

She laughs dryly. “Mind? I’ll miss the hell out of you, but if you’re worried about leaving me on my own, don’t be.”

“I’ll make sure she’s okay,” Blaise says.

Seraphine looks at him, eyes wide in surprise. He just holds her gaze, and in that moment I know he’s telling the truth. For what it’s worth, she’ll be okay without me. Maybe she’ll even be better. Maybe we’ll all become better versions of ourselves once we’re left alone to figure out who we really are.

And what we really want.

And what I want is about to board a plane and fly thousands of miles away, across an ocean, to another land.

And I know I’m about to follow her there.

“I think I have a flight to catch,” I tell them, heading into my bedroom to grab my passport. When I come back out, Blaise and Seraphine are passing the bottle of brandy back and forth between them. “Can I trust you guys in my apartment?”

“You think we’re going to start fist-fighting?” Seraphine asks.

Not particularly.

“Fine. Can I trust you guys to get yourselves to the hospital at least?”

“I’ll take her,” Blaise says. “You just get the hell out of here.”

For a split second, I’m hit with the feeling that I’m doing exactly what they want, that my leaving Paris would only benefit Gautier and Pascal, as well as Blaise.

But that doesn’t mean I’m turning my back on any of this.

I’m just moving forward.

There’s just one stop I have to make on the way to the airport.



Gautier’s house is located just outside of Paris in a peaceful part of the country where rolling hills meet oak forests, a place I know like the back of my hand. All those summers I spent there as I was growing up, my days at that house and running around their property, rotating with all the days my cousins spent at my house.

On the surface, the memories seem pure. Untainted. Maybe that’s the way it is for so many people. Your childhood is full of sunshine and the smell of fresh grass, the taste of ice cream, the feel of nostalgia. You remember everything good and bury the bad.

Until recently, I believed that my interactions with my uncle and aunt and cousins were as innocent as they could get.

I’m starting to realize that I was wrong.

That even through the rose-tinted glasses of childhood, things were already set in motion. Gautier and Camille used their children and us against each other like chess pieces, all in an effort to undermine the family bond.

And now, as I’m driving down the wooded road toward Gautier’s estate, the memories slam into me. The real memories—the slices of nastiness that cut through all the smiles and the laughter and the games.

I remember seeing my mother crying in the bathroom after an altercation with my uncle. I remember my aunt telling Pascal he wasn’t as handsome or as smart as I was, which then made Pascal lash out at me. I remember Blaise pushing me down one day, telling me I wasn’t welcome. I remember my uncle continually comparing me to his sons, using me as something to measure up to, even though I was just a boy and hadn’t done anything wrong. I remember he used fear to drive them into doing anything he wanted, and when things didn’t go his way, he’d turn into a violent beast.

I remember seeing Blaise with a bruise on his cheek.

Pascal crying after his father locked him in the basement during his own birthday party.

Camille trying to get my mother more and more drunk.

My uncle telling me that I come from a line of liars.

Now I remember all those dark moments I had tried so desperately to hide away, and they’re creeping through like that dying summer light through the lines of oak trees.

I pull up to his house, and with all the shadows and new memories, the sprawling three-hundred-year-old estate looks especially sinister.

It also looks like no one is home. There is only one car parked outside. I would have thought at least Pascal would be home since he lives here most of the time, but I’ll have to do with my uncle.

He’s the one controlling Pascal at any rate.

I park and get out of the car, looking up at the top windows of the house. I see my aunt’s shadowed figure as she peers down at me and then disappears.

I knock on the door, and there’s only silence for a long time. If this were a horror film, there would be big demonic dogs barking from somewhere in the house, but Gautier and Camille have a hatred for most animals.

The memory hits me hard, just a flash of when we picked up a kitten named Felipe from the shelter, thanks to Seraphine’s wish for one. Pascal was so in love with that cat, every time he was over at our estate, he would spend hours with it.

He’d kept asking for one from his parents, but they were adamant that they would never have filthy animals in their house. The most Pascal could do was save up enough for a hamster. He bought the cage and the animal from money he’d saved, and I remember when he brought me up to his room to brag about the fact that he had finally gotten a pet too.

Except the hamster was gone. The cage was empty.

And after we spent a good twenty minutes frantically searching the room for it, his mother appeared and told him she flushed the hamster down the toilet.

Pascal changed after that moment. It’s like whatever boyish innocence he possessed at that age was snuffed out, and something cold and impersonal took over. I remember feeling all the shock and horror and disgust at what his mother had so casually done to a living creature, but, most of all, I recall being afraid of Pascal after that, as if the one good side of him was flushed away too.