Discretion (The Dumonts, #1)(79)

I take a deep breath, about to knock again, when finally the giant doors open, and Charlotte, the young, petite maid, appears.

“Hello?” she says in her soft voice.

“Charlotte,” I say with a nod. “Is Pascal home?”

She shakes her head, looking fearful.

“Is my uncle?”

She swallows, and from her body language I can tell she’s getting ready to close the door on me.

Then from behind her, “It’s quite all right, Charlotte, let him in.”

Gautier’s voice.

She opens the door wider and moves out of the way. I stride inside to see Gautier by the entrance to his library, holding a glass of sherry.

“Good to see you, Olivier. Come, join me.”

He turns and walks off, disappearing into the room.

Charlotte gives me a worried glance and then scurries off down the hall, disappearing into the dark bowels of the house.

I go into the library, trying to control the anger rushing through me, the impulses that make my fists clench and unclench.

Gautier stands in the middle of the room, dressed in a suit—though I think it’s Gucci, not Dumont. The man doesn’t even wear his own fucking label.

“To what do I owe this impromptu visit, Olivier?” he says, taking a casual sip of his sherry.

“Where is Pascal?” I ask. I’ve stopped where I am, just inside the room. I don’t want to get close to him. I’m afraid of what I might do.

He shrugs. “I haven’t a clue,” he says. “I don’t keep tabs on my sons.”

I smirk, letting out a dry laugh. “Yes, you do. You sent him today. You sent him today to harass Sadie, just as you sent that driver to have us killed.”

Gautier raises his brows. He doesn’t look surprised. “Sadie? Have you killed? Are you sure you’re all right there, Olivier? You haven’t been drinking? Because you’re not making any sense at all.”

“You can pretend all you want,” I seethe. “It won’t make a difference. I know what you did. I know your plan. I know you wanted us out of the picture today, not to just give us a scare. Well, it worked. It worked on Seraphine and me. It worked on Blaise too.”

His eyes narrow. “Don’t mention my son.”

“Why not? You almost had him killed today, do you know that? How do you think that made him feel?”

He wants to take the bait. He wants to know how Blaise feels. He wants to know if he’s okay. But he reels himself back in. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And Sadie. You had Pascal threaten her, do your dirty work. You thought that if you got rid of her, that would weaken me. That it would lower my resolve and I would flee with my tail between my legs. You were wrong.”

“Olivier, please. I don’t even know who this Sadie is. Some new whore of yours?”

I don’t know how it happens, but I fly across the room and lunge at my uncle, knocking him to the parquet wood floors, the sherry flying through the air.

All logic and restraint have left me, and I’m punching him, a blast to the cheekbone, to the nose, to the jaw. I think I might just beat his head into the floor until it resembles ground beef.

My uncle is yelling for help; he’s trying to fight back. He’s strong for his age, and through the blood on his face I can see the anger in his eyes and the fear that I might just kill him, or maybe the shock that he’s losing. Loss of pride is a dangerous thing in this family, especially for him. It’s the thing he fears the most.

And I won’t stop delivering it.

Not even when my knuckles are raw.

Not even when Camille and Charlotte are trying to hold me back, and Camille says she’s calling the police.

Not even when I’m standing over Gautier’s bruised body, panting hard, feeling more animal than man, and I know that I’ve won this one small round.

“I know what you did, Gautier,” I snarl at him, very aware that Camille is trying to get the cops, aware that they’re in Gautier’s pocket and will do their worst to me. “We all know what you did. You might think for now that you’ve gotten away with it, but you haven’t. When your guard is down, when you think no one is looking, that’s when your own world is going to collapse, and you’re going to wish that all you got from me was this beating.”

Then I strike out with my leg, kicking him in the side. In English, they say don’t kick a man when he’s down. But they also say karma is a bitch.

With Gautier groaning and swearing at me, I shrug off Charlotte’s and Camille’s half-hearted grasps, and I leave. I get out of there before the police have a chance to do anything to me.

I get out of there knowing that I’ve damaged his pride in front of his wife.

I get out of there knowing exactly where I’m going next and who I’m going to see.





CHAPTER NINETEEN

SADIE

I’m not sure if it’s because of everything that’s happened, or if it’s the way the jet stream and the world work, but the flight home from Paris seems to take a million hours longer than the flight I took there.

I spend all eleven hours writhing in my seat, chewing on my nails, and downing glasses of wine until the flight attendant kindly suggests I’ve had enough, and the person next to me is convinced I’m the world’s worst flier.