Silver Tears(67)

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “But we were missing home. It was Tomas who wanted to.”



Eventually, it was the reporter’s turn. He wanted to talk to me rather than Sebastian. I probably looked more young and innocent, which would generate greater sympathy from readers. During the interview, the photographer took pictures of me.

“I refuse to believe they’re dead. I hope they find them,” I said, trying to look as unhappy as possible.





Faye walked slowly along Humleg?rdsgatan, her sunglasses a screen between her and the surrounding world. It was surreal. The people, the laughter, the joy. How could they be so unaffected? Her world had just been smashed to smithereens and her future had been thrown away.

David and Henrik were working together. They had managed to conceal it well. But not so well that Ylva—with a little time, stubbornness, and diligence—hadn’t been able to find the traces. And in one way, they had been clumsy. As Ylva had pointed out, Henrik’s weakness was that he was careless. They already knew that he had planned to report several of the acquisitions at the same time, to try to spring his new majority on them and allow him to propose a new board as quickly as possible.

However, what Ylva had managed to figure out even before the new owner of the shares had been made official was that David was one of the investors backing Henrik. That too had been hidden in a slipshod fashion in a Maltese corporation, but following the revelations of recent years, Malta was no longer the safe haven it had once been for companies that wanted to engage in tax planning or hide something. Another mistake by Henrik.

But it didn’t matter. His mistakes had simply allowed them to discover the connection between David and Henrik. It hadn’t offered up anything that would help them prevent the loss of Revenge.



And now Faye realized what had been gnawing at her since the quarrel with Henrik at the office. He had intimated it there and then. He had said that no one could love her.

She didn’t need to search for a motive behind the two men’s actions. Henrik wanted to restore his wounded manhood. Which was ironic, given that you can’t restore something you never had in the first place. And David? It was quite simple: money. And power. For him, she had merely been a way to achieve those two things. She saw that now. Several of the people who had sold to Henrik lately could only have been gotten at thanks to information that David had accessed on her laptop. She felt absolutely hemmed in on all sides.

Faye got out her mobile and sent a text to David.

Can you call me? There’s something we need to talk about.

Everything had gone to shit. She had lost control of Revenge. And she had lost David—or, more specifically, the person she had thought he was. She had lost something that had never even existed, which it should have been impossible to grieve for. But for her, it had become real.

Her mobile vibrated in her hand.

Things have gotten messy in Frankfurt. Have to stay a few days. Missing you.

Faye swallowed and then swallowed again. And then she made up her mind. She was going to sell everything off and leave Sweden for good. Withdraw. Julienne was in Italy. It was there, by her side, keeping her safe, that she belonged. Following David’s betrayal and the fact that Revenge would soon have slipped out of her grasp, there was no reason to carry on.

She would head up to the apartment, fetch her things, and go home to Julienne. She’d leave it to the lawyers to handle the sale of her shares in Revenge. She no longer had to worry about the American expansion. That would be up to Henrik before long. She would never set foot in Sweden again. She didn’t really even want to go up to the apartment, but the photo of Julienne and her mother was in a plastic wallet behind the bathtub. It was proof that her mother and daughter were both alive. She couldn’t leave Sweden without it.



David had left various items in the apartment, but Faye didn’t even have the strength to chuck them into the fire.

And Ylva and Alice? Perhaps they would be disappointed in her, but if she stayed there was a risk they would be pulled down into the mire with her. They’d be much better off without her.

She keyed in the code and opened the door. She had to wait a while for the elevator.

Faye got in and pulled the grille shut. She saw each floor pass by. She readied herself. Just a couple of minutes, then she’d be in a taxi on the way to Arlanda.

The elevator came to a halt.

Faye went straight to the front door, her heels tapping briskly across the floor. She put the key in the lock and turned it. At that moment, she heard a scraping sound behind her and felt the cold steel against the back of her neck.

She turned around slowly. She knew it was Jack before she saw him. Like she always did.





PART FOUR





At least one person lost their life when a summer house outside the town of K?ping was burned to the ground on Wednesday evening. By the time fire services arrived on the scene, the cabin was already engulfed in flames.

“These kinds of older cabins often have inadequate wiring in place. It’s not unusual for short-circuits to lead to these sorts of accidents,” said Anton ?stberg from V?stra M?lardalen emergency services.

The identity of the deceased remains unknown, and it is unclear whether there were other casualties.

“We have just begun an investigation, but there is much to suggest that this was a tragic accident,” said Gun-Britt Sohlberg from K?ping Police.