Nick

Nick

Second floor

“You animal,” she says. “You did this to her? Who the fuck are you?”

I put up my hands. “It—it wasn’t me. I just found her.”

It was Antoine, of course. Going too far, as usual. An old woman, for God’s sake: to shove her like that.

“It must have been a . . . a terrible accident. Look. There are some things I have to explain. Can we talk?”

“No,” she says. “No, I don’t want to do that, Nick.”

“Please, Jess. Please. You have to trust me.” I need her to stay calm. Not do anything rash. Not force me to do something I’ll regret. I’m also still unsure whether or not she has a phone on her.

“Trust you? Like I trusted you before? When you took me to meet that shady cop? When you hid from me that you were a family?”

“Look, Jess,” I say, “I can explain everything. Just—come with me. I don’t want you to get hurt. I really don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

“What,” she gestures to the concierge. “Like her? And Ben? What have you done to Ben? He’s your friend, Nick.”

“No!” I shout it. I’ve been trying to be so calm, so controlled. “He was not my friend. He was never my friend.” And I don’t even try to keep the bitterness at bay.

Three nights ago my little sister Mimi came and told me what she had found on his computer.

“It said . . . it said our money doesn’t come from wine. It says . . . it says it’s girls. Men buying girls, not wine . . . this horrible place, this club—ce n’est pas vrai . . . it can’t be true, Nick . . . tell me it’s not true.” She was sobbing as she tried to speak. “And it says . . .” she fought for breath, “it says I’m not really theirs . . .”

I suppose we always knew about Mimi, Antoine and I. I suppose all families have these kind of secrets, these commonly agreed deceptions that are never spoken of aloud. Frankly, we were too afraid. I remember how, when we were little more than kids, Antoine made some comment that our father overheard—some insinuation. Papa backhanded him across the room. It has never properly been mentioned again. Just another skeleton thrown to the back of the closet.

Ben had clearly been very, very busy. It sounded as though he had discovered more about Papa and his business than I even knew myself. But then I haven’t wanted to know all the deplorable particulars. I’ve kept as much distance, as much ignorance, as possible over the years. Still, it was all tied up with the thing I had told him in strictest confidence ten years before in a weed café in Amsterdam. The confession he had promised me, hand on heart, never to share with another soul. The secret at the very heart of my family. My main, terrible, source of shame.

I can still remember my father’s words when I was sixteen, outside that locked door at the bottom of the velvet staircase. Taunting: “Oh, you think this is something you can just turn your nose up at, do you? You think you’re above this? What do you think really paid for that expensive school? What do you think paid for the house you live in, the clothes you wear? Some dusty old bottles? Your sainted mother’s precious inheritance? No, my boy. This is where it comes from. Think you’re immune now? Think you’re too good for all of it?”

I knew all too well what Mimi had felt, reading about it on Ben’s computer. Learning about the roots of our wealth, our identity. Discovering it was sullied money that had paid for everything. It’s like a disease, a cancer, spreading outward and making all of us sick.

But at the same time you can’t choose your blood. They are still the only family I have.

When Mimi told me what she had read, all of it—Ben’s casual text message months ago, our meeting in the bar, the move into this building—suddenly revealed itself to be not the workings of happy coincidence, but something far more calculated. Targeted. He had used me to fulfil his own ambitions. And now he would destroy my family. And in the process, he apparently didn’t care that he would also destroy me.

I thought again of that old French saying about family. La voix du sang est la plus forte: the voice of blood is the strongest. I didn’t have a choice.

I knew what I had to do.

Just as I know what I have to do now.