Suspects(4)

The police had told her at the time that her son’s death was an “unfortunate accident of the event” and proved that the kidnappers were amateurs. Professionals would have negotiated more efficiently, and come to some agreement with her rapidly, and neither Matthieu nor Axel would have gotten hurt. French, British, and other European authorities as well as a network of informants had been looking for answers, underground information, and the culprits for the past year, to no avail. No one knew who the kidnappers were or where the fifty million euro she’d paid them had gone. They had wanted a hundred. The only motive that seemed likely to the police and DGSE was one of vengeance for a business venture that had gone wrong. Matthieu had long been leery of opening stores in Russia. Their economy was too unstable, and their business practices too unreliable and often shady. Despite his misgivings, a Russian investor had come along, offering to put up a hundred million euros to help defray the costs of setting up two flagship stores in Russia, an idea Matthieu had begun to like increasingly, and finally agreed to, against his initial better judgment. The investor, Dmitri Aleksandr, was a billionaire himself and knew the Russian market. It was no secret that there was a great deal of money there, and people eager to spend it.

Setting up the two stores had rapidly become a nightmare, with people squandering money on bribes, delayed construction, and the cost being multiplied beyond all reason, with quality building materials being substituted with inferior ones. Matthieu had finally lost patience and abandoned the project before the stores ever opened. It appeared to be the wisest decision, rather than continuing to throw money at the project and losing even more than the two hundred million he had already put in. Matthieu had lost a vast amount of money but was relieved once he decided to get out. Their investor did not accept his losses with equanimity. He lost the hundred million he’d invested, and a little more. Matthieu graciously accepted his own losses, and could afford to. His investor claimed he couldn’t, and said the loss would ruin him, which Matthieu did not believe.

The motive the French authorities felt was the correct one for the kidnapping and subsequent murders was that whoever had instigated it wanted to punish Matthieu severely for pulling out, and to recoup the bulk of their losses with the ransom. As far as the police were concerned, they considered it a business deal meant to put the money back in the pockets of the principal investor, Dmitri Aleksandr. He had powerful underworld connections, which protected him and kept him out of reach. According to informants, Matthieu and Axel were supposed to be useful pawns and nothing more. They were leverage to get the money back to Aleksandr for the failure to complete the two stores. But no one had been able to prove the theory. It was all guesswork. And the angry, disgruntled investor was a rich, successful man, who was considered untouchable.

The news of Axel’s and Matthieu’s deaths had shocked the world and crushed Theo, but the story had slowly faded from the press, with no news since. The money still hadn’t shown up, nor had the criminals who had killed her husband and son been caught. There was no justice in the story, nor any consolation for her, having lost a husband and son.

Coming back from it over the past year had been an agony beyond measure, but her CEO had finally been able to convince her to go to New York and oversee the installation of three high-end pop-up stores of her brand in the States. No one understood their business and their customers as she did. She hadn’t been seen in public or heard from for a year, and he convinced her it was time to venture into the world again. She wasn’t enthusiastic about going, but she realized that she couldn’t hide forever. Jacques said that if she wanted to keep her business, she had to take control of it again. Her first days back had been a painful flood of vivid memories.



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There was to be a big, splashy party organized by a major New York PR firm to launch the opening of the New York pop-up, which would be open for two weeks. Theo had no intention of going to the event, but she was eager to see that the store was properly set up, and the decor and atmosphere exactly right for their image. Similar events had been planned in L.A. and Dallas in the weeks following, and she intended to oversee them too. No promises had been made that she would attend the events. And there was no one in New York she wanted to see. Her parents were dead now, and she had lost track of old friends there. The brand and the business had been running smoothly without her being seen in public for a long time. Matthieu’s business was continuing to function efficiently too, managed by the same people who had worked for him when he was alive. His business was too large and solid to flounder, even once he was gone. She stayed in touch with their top management and sat on the board. She was active behind the scenes, particularly since she was the owner of Matthieu’s business now, although it interested her far less than her own brand, where her input made a real difference since it was smaller than Matthieu’s empire and rested on her image as well as the products they sold.

The fact that she was going to New York to oversee the opening of the pop-up had not been announced, and she had no intention of being seen by the public before, during, or after the event. She just wanted to make sure that the large store they had rented for a fortune for two weeks on Madison Avenue would look spectacular. It felt both exciting and terrifying to Theo to be out in the world again. She had lived in the shadows for months now. She wanted to see the action again, but not be in it. She wanted to be invisible.