The Butler(11)
An old friend of his who was high up in the police volunteered to do some investigating and told Joachim a few days later that a police contact he had called in Colombia said that they thought Javier was alive, and deeply embedded in a very dangerous network of drug dealers. It wasn’t reassuring to hear that, and the friend told Joachim to stay well away from his brother, that he might regret it if he finally reached him. In that world, family ties and loyalties by blood didn’t exist. Their only family was the group of highly dangerous men they worked with, and Joachim could be at risk, now that he was in Buenos Aires. Joachim had trouble believing that Javier would be a danger to him, but he had no way of reaching him anyway. The drug world was entirely removed from Joachim’s life, he had no access or connection to it, nor did his friends, who had grown up to be wholesome men.
He left Buenos Aires with regret after a week there. It was still a beautiful city and held a warm place in his heart and memory, but it wasn’t home anymore. He had ties to France because of his mother and had lived and worked in England for seventeen years. Buenos Aires was the home of his childhood, but he had left so long ago, he no longer had a strong bond there.
He had nothing concrete to tell his mother when he went back to Paris, except that somewhere, in a very dark underworld, Javier might still be alive, but he was no longer the same person, and lost to them forever, which they had suspected anyway. It didn’t come as a surprise.
He was heading back to Paris to stay with his mother and figure out the next steps in his life. He closed a door behind him in Buenos Aires, and in the world he’d left behind was the twin he had loved so much, who was a stranger to him now. Too much time had passed, and Javier had drifted too far on the tides that had carried him away. It was almost as if Javier had died. Joachim felt a strange sense of freedom when he left Buenos Aires. He was glad he’d gone to say a final goodbye.
Chapter 3
Olivia White stood looking around her mother’s apartment, not sure where to start. Everything about it seemed sad and faded to Olivia now. It was all tidy and in order, but the familiar surroundings thinly masked an unlived life. Olivia was a beautiful, vibrant woman, with dark hair and green eyes. Forty-three years old, she had focused on her career, and shied away from marriage and long-term relationships all her life. Her mother, Margaret, had been beautiful once too, a tall willowy blonde. Margaret had grown up in Boston in a genteel family that had slowly lost their money over several generations. She had dreamed of going to New York to become a book editor, and had headed there after graduating from Boston College, as a literature major, and gotten a job as an editorial assistant with a major book publisher. Her parents thought it was respectable. She could barely eke out a living on what she made, and had found a small walk-up apartment in a tenement on the Lower East Side, but was determined to become a senior editor one day. She did freelance editing on the side to supplement her income. She worked in a tiny office at a major publishing house and took manuscripts home at night. Her parents couldn’t help her financially and were austere people who expected a great deal of their only child.
Two years into her fledgling career as a junior editor, she stepped off the elevator after lunch one day and collided with George Lawrence, the star bestselling author of the publishing house where she worked. He looked like he’d been hit by lightning when he saw her. She blushed and backed away. Margaret was twenty-four years old, and George was fifty, a handsome, dashing man with a powerful personality, a racy reputation, and an appetite for young women. His career was legendary, and his books at the top of the bestseller list every time he published a new one. He had a wife and four children, and his socialite wife was from an important New York family. They made a dazzling pair, and their image as a couple contributed to his charisma and success. They had a star quality about them and were often in the press.
It took George several days to track Margaret down. He showed up in her office one morning and filled the doorway of the tiny room with his presence. He took Margaret to lunch at the “21” Club that day, and she was as impressed as he’d hoped she would be. Startled by him, excited, flattered, she had no idea how to decline his invitation and didn’t want to. He pursued her relentlessly after that, roses, dinners, lunches, funny gifts that made her laugh, little essays and poems he wrote for her. She was breathless with his attentions, and then he showed up at her apartment one night. She was mortified when her doorbell on the fifth floor rang, she opened it and found him standing there. He must have followed someone else into the building.
“I couldn’t stay away from you,” he said with a tormented look. It took him less than a month to get her into bed, and after that they met at remote hotels, in houses or luxurious apartments he’d borrowed from friends. He hated her apartment, and said it pained him to see her living in such squalor. It was all she could afford. He didn’t want to meet her there.
Their affair took off in a white heat. He was honest with her and told her he could never get divorced. His father-in-law would destroy him, his wife would take everything he had. He would lose his children, and his public image would be tarnished forever. He said his marriage was something they would have to work around, and somehow Margaret got swept away on the tidal wave of his attentions. She was fearful and meek, in love with him, and enthralled by who he was. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the sheer power of a man like him. He made her laugh, and feel beautiful and special, and almost forget that he was married. Almost. But not quite. He wanted her to forget and she hoped he would get divorced one day, but she never asked him to. She did whatever he wanted. She was unable to resist him.