Disavow

by Halle, Karina

“You’re awful,” I manage to say.

  He glances at me and raises his glasses. His eyes are curious, but I’m not sure I see any remorse in them. “I never said I wasn’t,” he says, his tone low. “If you believe I have an ounce of good in me, that’s on you.”

  “You don’t seem to even care.”

  “Add that to your list of adjectives.”

  “Is that the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

  Please say yes. Please don’t tell me you’re exactly like your father.

  “Yes,” he says after a beat. “I’ve broken up a few marriages. I’ve lied, cheated, stolen. I’ve committed fraud and embezzlement. I once hit a parked car, and I kept driving.” He gives me a long, steady look, long enough to make me wish he were looking at the road. “But I’ve never taken candy from a baby, and I’ve never killed anyone.”

  “Were you an accessory?”

  “Not knowingly.”

  I’m not sure I believe that. I’m not sure he believes it either. “So what about Marine, then? You said she was a suspect too.”

  He gives me a sheepish look. “You’re not going to like this part either. After she had her affair with Olivier, I divorced her, citing her affair as cheating and proof that she didn’t deserve a dime. She didn’t get anything from the settlement.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I swear.

  “Watch your language, it’s a Sunday,” he chides.

  “How could you do such a thing? To your wife, to your cousin?”

  “Because I’m a Dumont,” he says simply. “And I was raised to believe that it mattered more than anything else in the world. Money, power, greed. A legacy. All those things belonged to me; all those things were owed to me. And if I didn’t succeed, I wasn’t worthy of my name.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what I associate the name Dumont with,” I tell him.

  “You don’t need to. I know. But if I’m not a Dumont, who am I?”

  “You’re you. You’re Pascal. Your name doesn’t dictate what you do or don’t do. Your will does.”

  “And what does your will dictate, my little sprite?” he asks me, his eyes piercing me to the core. “What do you stand for? If money, power, greed don’t mean anything to you, what does?”

  “Justice,” I blurt out. I don’t even have to think.

  Revenge.

  Shit. Maybe I’m not much better than he is.

  “Is that all?”

  Love.

  Freedom.

  A home.

  Someone who has my back.

  Security.

  Safety.

  And love again.

  “That’s all,” I confirm.

  I can tell Pascal doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t press any more. Perhaps because I’ll just turn it around on him, and he’s tired of talking.

  Honestly, I’m surprised he was so forthcoming. He told me his deep, dark secrets, the worst of the festering bunch, like I was a long-lost friend and trusted confidante. This had nothing to do with the NDA; this was just him showing himself to me, every horribly gruesome bit.

  He trusts me.

  And now it’s starting to bother me.

  Because I don’t want to hurt him.

  You’re getting attached to him, I remind myself. Nearly one week working for him and it’s already happening. You need to keep your head clear.

  Focus on Gautier.

  Besides, the only reason at all I even feel this way is because Pascal is the person I am closest to in the house, and that doesn’t mean a thing, not with him, not in that house.

  We drive in silence for the rest of the ride into Paris. I have no idea where Pascal is taking me, and I don’t particularly care until he parks around the corner from the Rodin Museum.

  “Rodin?” I ask as I get out of the car. The air is both smoggy and sweet, the sun beating down on us from above and making waves on the pavement. Tourists are everywhere, and though they used to annoy me when I was young—purely because I was jealous that they were on a vacation, something I had never known—now I’m caught up in their infectious energy.

  “Tell me you’ve been,” he says with a charming smile, tucking his sunglasses into his shirt pocket.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think you understand how I grew up.”

  “That’s because you don’t ever talk about yourself,” he says and holds out his arm for me. “Take it. Pretend I’m not a monster while we look at the pretty art.”

  I hesitate and then walk over to him and hook my arm around his.

  He leads me into the museum, this sprawling grand hotel from the 1700s that now houses much of Auguste Rodin’s art. It’s light and airy, with large windows and marble floors and even with all the tourists, it still feels special, like we’ve stepped back in time to some hushed, soft place.

  “What do you think?” he asks, peering down at me.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I tell him truthfully. “I would have loved to come here as a child.”

  “You didn’t at least come with school?”

  “Not here. We went to the Louvre, I remember that day very well. But other than that and some others, I was pretty much kept at home.” I give him a quick smile, wishing I could say more, but I don’t particularly want to talk about my shitty childhood here.

  “Just wait until you see my favorite part,” he says. He leads me through the halls, past art that I recognize, a large marble statue called The Kiss, in which a man and a woman are in a very passionate embrace. I’ve seen it in books before, but in person it’s breathtaking and impressive. Rodin’s skill was supernatural.

  “You can feel the chemistry coming off them, can’t you?” Pascal says thoughtfully as he studies the statue. “As if they’re flesh and bone, not marble. The strain of their muscles, the deep need and desire. It’s palpable.”

  I look at him agape.

  He gives me his crooked smile. “This surprises you.”

  “Didn’t peg you for a deep art guy.”

  “I know you didn’t. But I can be all those things that I am and still be this person too.”

  He has a point. I keep trying to put him in a box, good or bad, but he defies that.

  “Are you even looking for redemption?” I ask him as he leads me outside and into the back gardens.

  He lets his hand slide down my arm until he’s holding my hand, taking me by surprise. “I don’t know what redemption looks like. Maybe I’ll know it when I see it.”

  I stare at our intertwined hands like it’s an apparition. “Well, it isn’t holding my hand, I can tell you that much.”

  He gives me a quick, slightly melancholy smile. “I know.”

  Then he lets go of my hand and walks off.

  I follow. I hate to admit it, but I think I preferred it when he was holding my hand. It was something so harmless and comforting and gratifying all at once. A feeling completely foreign to me.

  I catch up as he takes me past the long rectangular pond, past more statues, until we’re squeezing through hedges at the back of the property. The land here has got to be at least a few acres, and even as far back as we are, there are still wondrous statues scattered about.

  Fewer people, though. In fact, it’s just the two of us in this little glen where there are a couple of benches and tables.

  We sit beside each other on a bench, and he gestures to one of the empty tables. “Sometimes I come here when I need a break from the office. It’s worth the drive over the river. I sit here, and usually there are a few older gentlemen playing chess and this woman reading and knitting at the same time. It’s nice to just . . . forget for a moment. About everything.” He nudges my arm with his elbow. “So when are you going to tell me all about your childhood? About your life? I opened up to you earlier, it’s only fair. And you do believe in justice, don’t you?”

  “I will. I promise.” I swallow and nod. I can tell him about growing up here in Paris, living a very different life from the one he lived. I can tell him some things about New York. I can t
ell him about boyfriends and school.

  But I can’t tell him everything.

  If he knew what happened, how I really felt about his father, Pascal would see through me, see through this whole thing. He’s smart enough to figure out the truth right away.

  The truth of why I really came back.

  Not just for my mother.

  I came back to kill his father.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PASCAL

  I can’t remember the last time I was nervous (oh yes, it was when Blaise had a gun to my head during a rather intense workplace negotiation), but I’m feeling it as I dial Olivier’s phone number.

  Get over yourself, you prick, I scold myself.

  I’m not even sure if it’s still his number. He’s been in California for the last year with his fiancée, Sadie; he probably has an American number now. My mother and father haven’t kept tabs on him, or at least, my father hasn’t talked about it. I have no doubt he knows exactly where Olivier is at any given moment, but if I were to ask for his information, my father would wonder why, and I don’t want to get into it.

  I also know that it ended on very bad terms between us, which isn’t a surprise at all and was entirely my doing. I did threaten his girlfriend and her mother. I also threatened him. Some stalking was involved. I may have recorded them having sex as a way of extortion. And then there were all the years of blackmailing before then.

  Suffice to say, I’m expecting Olivier to hang up on me.

  The phone rings and rings, and I’m starting to think that either he’s not around, or maybe he’s sleeping, or even his number did change. It’s Tuesday evening here; I haven’t a clue off the top of my head what time it is in California.

  “Hello?” a woman’s voice answers in English, a thick American west coast accent.

  “Hello,” I say, trying to make my voice warm and my English as fluent as possible. “Is Olivier there?”

  There’s a pause and then a muffled sound as if she’s holding the phone away from her. “Who is this?”

  “I need to speak with Olivier,” I say and then revert back into old ways. “I promise you it’s nothing bad, Sadie. I just have some questions.”

  A heavy pause. “Pascal?”

  “Ah, I’m flattered you remember who I am.”

  “Fuck you, you piece of shit.”

  Well, I suppose I deserve that.

  “I understand I’m probably not the most popular person right now or any time, but if you could be a dear and hand the phone to Olivier, that would be great.”

  “I’m going to hang up,” she threatens.

  “Who are you talking to?” I hear Olivier’s voice floating in the background.

  Sadie sighs angrily and says to him, “You’ll never believe it. It’s Pascal.”

  She says my name as if I were the devil himself.

  “What?” he asks, and then there’s another muffled sound.

  “Pascal?” he asks into the phone.

  “Bonjour, cousin,” I tell him, switching to French. “How are you?”

  “How am I?” he repeats both in English and in disbelief.

  He doesn’t take the bait. As far as I know, Sadie doesn’t speak French (though maybe she does at this point), and our conversation in French would have been private.

  “It’s a question,” I tell him with a sigh. “You don’t have to answer it.”

  “Why are you calling me?” His voice is on edge. Guess I can’t blame him.

  “I just have some questions for you, and then I’ll leave you alone.” Though even this far into our conversation, I’m getting the feeling that Olivier didn’t send the letters. He had as much reason to believe that his father’s death wasn’t an accident as his siblings, but he never pursued it the way Seraphine did.

  “What is it?” he asks testily. “I’m rather busy. We’re late for lunch.”

  “Ah, well, I’m glad I didn’t wake you.”

  “You wouldn’t have given a shit.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’m going to hang up now.”

  “Wait, wait,” I tell him, wishing I knew how to play nice. He is family in the end, even if I’ve ostracized him and everyone else. “Just give me a second.”

  I hear an impatient huff of air. “What. Is. It?”

  “Have you sent me any letters lately? Or should I say, have you gotten anyone to send me letters?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  I take that as a no.

  I lick my lips, trying to put this in the right terms. “I think someone’s blackmailing me.”

  There’s a pause, and then Olivier bursts into laughter. It seems to go on forever.

  “You done?” I ask, not amused.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says, still laughing. “Someone is blackmailing you.”

  Now I hear Sadie screech, “Oh my God!” like some bimbo, and now she’s laughing too.

  “Yes, so obviously I have to wonder if it’s you,” I tell him, losing my patience at what a joke this is to them.

  “Ah. Really? You can’t be seriously thinking it’s me? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Pascal, but I don’t give a fuck about you or what you do. I have my own life here, and it has nothing to do with the life I had back there.”

  “You have to come back to Paris at some point.”

  “I have come back to Paris,” he says. “On business. Surprised you weren’t tailing me.”

  “I didn’t know.” Though I wonder if my father did. “Have you talked to your sister?”

  He grows silent for a moment. “I have. I know everything you did, Pascal.”

  “Me?” I exclaim, squeezing the phone in anger. “I didn’t do shit!”

  “We both know your father doesn’t work alone. You’re his little clone.”

  “His Mini-Me!” Sadie pipes up in the background.

  This phone call was a mistake.

  “Seraphine is happier now,” I tell him. “She got everything she wanted.”

  “Our father was murdered,” Olivier seethes. “And whether you did it or not, you deserve to have whatever is coming to you. If this means blackmail, so be it. I hope this chases you for the rest of your goddamn life.”

  For once I’m speechless.

  “And if you thought you could just phone me and confide in me and treat me like a long-lost friend, you’re even more fucked-up than I thought. You have no one, Pascal. Not your brother. Not your cousins. Everyone hates you, and you only have yourself to blame. If you want to dig a little deeper, I think you’ll find that even your mother and father would sell you out to the highest bidder. You’re alone in this world, and it’s exactly what you deserve. And the way it will stay. Au revoir.”

  The line goes dead, and I stare at the phone in my hand for a moment, trying to process what happened. Normally I just shrug it off, let it slide. Any kinds of insults or conflict are brushed away because it’s not important, it’s just background noise.

  But this cuts deeper, far deeper than it should. I don’t know if Olivier knew the sword he was wielding today, but it did some damage.

  That hurt.

  It shouldn’t have.

  It was nothing new, nothing I hadn’t heard before.

  It was the truth and nothing else.

  But the truth hurts this time around.

  I truly do have no one. No one has my back, not a soul would stand by my side.

  And I never thought that would be a problem, but now I’m thinking otherwise, a tiny seed of truth that’s sprouting in the depths of my brain.

  What am I even doing with my life?

  I can feel the existential crisis pushing at me from all sides, the downward spiral that wants to open up and swallow me whole.

  I think it’s been waiting my entire life to take me.

  I get up from my desk and head over to the bar in the corner of my office. I haven’t been drinking much lately because when I get home, it’s usually so late, but it’s about
half past eight now, and there’s no time like the present.

  I grab the bottle of Japanese whiskey and am about to sit back down at my desk, but the room is starting to feel stifling.

  I peer out the window down at Gabrielle’s room. Her curtains are open, and the light is on. I see her profile, sitting in bed cross-legged and bent over a book, her long hair in her face.

  I feel a strange pain in my heart.

  Olivier was right. I don’t have anyone.

  But maybe I could have her.

  I know she’s mine in the loosest sense. She’s bound by contract, but she could quit at any minute, taking my secrets with her. She could cut out of this life as quickly as she cut out of it before. It didn’t strike me until now that I would miss her if she were gone, that I’ve grown used to being around her, talking to her.

  Looking at her.

  I want her. Since the moment her big blue gemstone eyes gazed at me through the doorway in that hotel and she looked somewhere deep inside, seeing a part of me I’m not even aware of, that I’m still not, I’ve wanted her. In my bed, in my arms, anywhere. I want to not just tell her that she’s mine, I want my cock so far deep inside her that she feels it. That she knows it.

  That I know it too.

  She’s not your redemption, I remind myself. There is no redemption for you.

  That may be true.

  But if I could even feel it while I’m coming inside her, wouldn’t that be worth it?

  To just pretend, for a moment, I’m not a monster, that I’m more than my bloodline, that I can do more with myself than I do. That I can be a better man. If she can bring me that, even for a second, I think that might be worth everything.

  I finish the rest of the glass of whiskey; then I take the bottle and head out of the room and down the stairs. I leave through my side door and cut across the lawn. I pass right by Gabrielle’s window, close enough so that she’ll see me, but I don’t stop. I keep walking until I hit the gazebo, buried in the back of the yard.

  I remember Blaise telling me once about when he was younger and that on his birthday, he and his friend were getting drunk for the first time in the gazebo. Father caught him, knocked him around a few times. While Blaise was telling me that, I know he was wanting me to say something that he could relate to. He wanted me to tell him that it wasn’t just him, that our father beat me too. But I didn’t say anything at all; I just let Blaise feel all alone, that Father picked on him and only him. That I was better than him. That I was exempt.