Discretion

by Halle, Karina

  “We should probably go for coffee,” I tell Seraphine, wanting to get her out of this office. “Or a drink. Several drinks.”

  “We aren’t going anywhere without him,” she says.

  “Why are we his babysitters?”

  “We’re not done talking,” she says in a deliberate staccato, leaning in close to Blaise.

  I run my hand down my face, not understanding any of this and knowing it won’t become clear anytime soon.

  “This office is probably bugged,” she says to me, as if that was something obvious. She kicks the leg of Blaise’s chair. “Isn’t that right?”

  Blaise folds his arms and looks away, not saying anything.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to turn around and go,” I say, “because, believe me, this office is the last place on earth I want to be. If you want to come meet me for a drink and talk, that’s fine, but I’m not standing around here getting tangled in whatever game you guys are always playing.”

  “Father was murdered,” Seraphine says in a low voice.

  I almost laugh, but her tone was so stone-cold serious that it made my stomach feel like ice. I turn to face her, and that same severity is in her eyes. She’s not joking.

  Which makes things more difficult.

  “What?” I manage to say. “What are you . . . Come on. Don’t go down this road.”

  “That’s what I said,” Blaise says quietly.

  “Shut the fuck up.” She sneers at him. “You’re the one behind it all.”

  His head jerks back, and he stares at her with pure animosity. “Do you honestly believe that? That I murdered your father? My uncle? That I would do that to you?”

  Do that to you? That’s an interesting way of putting it, as if the two of them are supposed to matter to each other.

  I shake my head. The whole thing . . . I can’t even entertain the thought.

  “Seraphine,” I say slowly, stepping toward her with my hands out like I’m about to trap an injured dog, “please, what are you talking about?”

  “Why should I even tell you? You’re acting like I’m already crazy.”

  “Because you are fucking crazy,” Blaise says.

  “Fuck you!” Seraphine yells, and then lunges at him with her fist. He’s fast enough that he catches it in his grip and holds it tight.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” I yell, coming around the desk and placing myself between them. “Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell is going on here?”

  There’s a knock at the door, and we all freeze.

  The door opens silently, and we all hold our breaths. Only one person barges in here without announcing himself. Well, one person other than me.

  It’s Gautier, eyeing us all warily. “Is everything all right in here?”

  I clear my throat. “Just a sibling quarrel,” I say at the same time Seraphine says, “Work stuff.”

  “Do you know where Pascal is?” Blaise asks tiredly. “He was supposed to be in today.”

  Gautier gives an ever so imperceptible shrug. “I don’t know. Not here.”

  “Okay, great,” Blaise says sarcastically, waving his father away. “We’re good, thanks for checking in.”

  Gautier stares at us all for a moment, and then the door slowly closes.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I ask them after a moment. “Tell me what you’re nearly fist-fighting over, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “I told you,” she snaps. “But now I really don’t trust talking about it here.” She grabs her purse from the back of her chair. “Come on. Blaise, you’re coming with us too. I’m not done with you.”

  “Why, so you can torture me somewhere?”

  To my surprise, Blaise actually gets up and follows Seraphine out the door, with me coming up behind them.

  Gautier isn’t anywhere to be seen, which I take as a good sign. I’m sure he already thinks Blaise is fraternizing with the enemy, or perhaps he was sent in as a spy.

  And then there’s this talk about . . . murder?

  He wasn’t murdered.

  He had a heart attack.

  I saw it happen right in front of my fucking eyes.

  Seraphine only came over after he was already dead.

  The image is burned into my memory, and I’m so lost in it I barely hear Seraphine asking me if I’m okay.

  I nod, trying to bring my mind back to the here and now, even if it’s not much better.

  The rain has let up to a soft drizzle as Seraphine leads us outside to her car—a small burgundy Fiat—and then unlocks the doors.

  I’m about to sit in the front seat as I usually do when Seraphine says, “You’re in the back, Olivier.”

  Blaise passes by me and opens the door, avoiding my eyes.

  Maybe he wasn’t too far off with that whole torture thing.

  With a sigh I resign myself to the back seat and buckle in, completely confused and wishing I hadn’t promised Sadie I’d come here to talk to Seraphine today. My goal was to avoid these offices for as long as I lived. Without my father here, and with Gautier in charge, I’m just making things worse.

  “In the future, you’re meeting me at a café,” I tell Seraphine as she swings the car onto Avenue Charles de Gaulle, heading toward La Défense. “Where are you taking us, anyway?”

  She doesn’t answer. Her hands just grip the wheel harder.

  “Seraphine?” I say. “I don’t even think you should be driving right now.”

  “It’s fine,” she says quietly, and I meet Blaise’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He still looks a little shaken, which makes me wonder exactly what they were talking about before I arrived.

  “So does someone want to explain why you were talking about murder?” My face scrunches up as I say that. I can’t even fathom it. I feel like we’re betraying our father just by saying the word.

  “Why don’t you ask Blaise?” Seraphine says. “He’s the one who knew all about it.”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up,” Blaise says. “Do you even know how insulting that is?”

  “Why would Blaise murder our father?”

  “I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “I agree,” I tell him. “And you need to stop using that word. Look, I know you’re upset and looking to blame someone, Seraphine, but this isn’t the answer. Father had a heart attack. I saw it happen.”

  “You saw him die. He was poisoned. Heart attacks don’t work like that.”

  “Actually, I think they do.”

  “He was in perfect health. He just had his checkup the week before. He’s never had high blood pressure or heart disease or cholesterol or anything like that. Why on earth would he just—no, it doesn’t make sense. Someone poisoned him that night.”

  “And you think it was Blaise?” This is getting more and more ridiculous.

  “No,” she says. “Maybe. Yes. I think Blaise at least knows.”

  “I’m not even going to talk about this with you,” he says, crossing his arms and staring out the window.

  “Fine, I’ll talk about it with Olivier,” she says, eyeing me. “I know this sounds crazy to you, but it’s something I feel and believe, right in my heart. Don’t you feel that something was so wrong about that ball? About the way the company merged? How easy it all was once father was out of the picture? Everyone benefited.”

  “Except for Olivier,” Blaise says quietly.

  “Right,” Seraphine says as she eyes me intently, “except for you. And me. And Renaud. But you look at Blaise and Pascal and Gautier, and they all moved up and over and now have complete control. If I wasn’t in the picture, they’d have everything.”

  “You’ll stay in the picture if you do your job right,” Blaise says, but even as he says it, he looks uncomfortable.

  Seraphine takes a left turn just as the light turns red, the Fiat skidding slightly on the wet roads, pulling onto the D1 and racing along the Seine, parks and tennis courts whizzing past us.

  “What are you doing?” I ask her. “You just ran a red light.”

>   “I thought I was being followed,” she says.

  “Followed?”

  Oh, now my sister has really lost it. Even Blaise looks over his shoulder at me, brows raised, as if to say we’re screwed.

  “Yes,” she says tersely, paying constant attention to the cars behind her. “It was a black Land Rover with Polish plates. It followed us all the way from the office.”

  “Which wasn’t very far.”

  “It looked like it waited to pull out only when we did. I noticed the driver. Bald, with glasses. Watching me.”

  “Honestly, Seraphine,” I say to her, leaning forward and putting my hand on her shoulder, “I’m just looking out for you as your brother. But you need to drive yourself home. Blaise and I will find our own way back. First this talk about father being murdered; now you think we’re being followed. I hate to—”

  “Look out!” Blaise yells, and I whip my head around to see a black SUV come barreling out of a side road by a polo field, heading across the lane of oncoming traffic right toward us.

  Seraphine has the reflexes of a cat. She yanks the car into the far lane and steps on the gas at the same time, the car hydroplaning on the wet road before correcting itself.

  I fall back into the seat and manage to turn around in time to see the Land Rover right on our ass and getting closer.

  “What the fuck!” I yell.

  “That’s him!” she yells.

  “Fucking hell,” says Blaise. “Who the fuck is that? What does he want?”

  Suddenly, the Land Rover comes at us full speed and smashes into the back of the Fiat. All of us are propelled forward, the car spinning out of control, knives of pain stabbing my neck from the whiplash.

  Seraphine is screaming but manages to get control of the car.

  “Fuck, drive, drive, drive!” Blaise yells.

  Seraphine makes a garbled cry and steps on the gas, briefly veering into the opposite lane and almost smashing into a car head-on before she swerves back. Meanwhile, I’m holding my neck, trying to watch the Land Rover copying our every move and gaining on us.

  This guy isn’t just following us.

  He doesn’t want us to pull over either.

  He means to kill us.

  “Where the fuck are the police?” Blaise yells, his voice ripped by panic as we whir past traffic, trying to get out of the way. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” He brings out his phone, about to dial when it starts ringing.

  It says Father on the screen.

  Blaise stares at it for a moment, as if he’s not sure he should answer, as if he’d rather let it go to voice mail, as if we aren’t being fucking chased down the streets of Paris by a maniac.

  “Blaise!” I yell at him, but it’s like he’s in shock.

  Actually, he probably is in shock.

  “I’m taking this exit,” Seraphine says and guns it up the ramp onto the bridge heading over the Seine into Hauts-de-Seine. There’s traffic on the bridge, but it doesn’t slow Seraphine down. She just maneuvers between the cars and the concrete side of the off-ramp, clipping the mirror on Blaise’s side.

  But the traffic doesn’t slow the driver of the Land Rover down, either, who is hot on our trail, plowing through traffic just the same until we’re both racing over the bridge toward the other side.

  “Well, are you calling the fucking police or what?” I yell at Blaise, trying to fish out my own phone. Just as I do, the Land Rover speeds up, darting to the left of us into the opposite lane of traffic and then bringing the car right into our side.

  Seraphine screams, and I duck as the side of the Land Rover collides with our Fiat, the side windows shattering and sending a spray of glass all over me.

  The car spins around, and, somehow, before I can even lift my head, I can feel the car gunning it the opposite way.

  I sit up in time to see Seraphine driving as fast as she can, her arms and cheeks dotted with glass and bits of blood, and the Land Rover doing a sharp U-turn and coming around after us.

  Relentless.

  “Are you okay?” I manage to ask just as Blaise’s phone rings again.

  Seraphine nods, but her lip is trembling, and it’s clear she’s surviving on just adrenaline and instinct now, much like I am.

  I look over at Blaise, and he’s answering his phone.

  “Father,” he says, his voice slow and methodical, “you have to call the police. There’s a man on the road trying to kill us. He’s driving a . . .” He pauses. “Yes, I’m with Seraphine and Olivier. I don’t know, I came along for the ride, I—” He removes the phone from his ear and stares at it. “He hung up on me. He must be calling the police.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to arrive in time,” Seraphine says grimly as the Land Rover gets closer again. It’s almost as beat-up as this car, and yet it keeps coming, even faster now since I think either the Fiat or Seraphine is losing their energy.

  I stare back at the car, trying to absorb the look of the driver, and then notice him answering his phone. In the middle of a high-speed chase, trying to kill us, he answers a call.

  And then, just like that, he hangs up.

  And he slams on the brakes, turning the SUV around and taking off in the other direction.

  Leaving us alone.

  Like he had never been there at all.

  “What the fuck? He left!” I yell.

  “What?” Seraphine yells, frantically looking over her shoulder.

  Blaise turns around in his seat, frowning, watching with me as the Land Rover disappears over the hump of the bridge.

  “Tell me you got that license plate number,” Seraphine says.

  “I did, but I bet it doesn’t exist.”

  “And I bet that car will be turned into scrap in about five minutes,” Blaise says slowly. “Maybe even sooner.”

  “We have to go to the nearest station,” I tell them. “Then the hospital. Fuck, I’m surprised that we didn’t have news vans and helicopters for that . . . chase? What the fuck was that?”

  “It stopped as quickly as it started,” Blaise says in a strange voice, staring blankly out the window.

  I look at him closely. He’s way more shaken up than I thought. “Hey, you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”

  He shakes his head no. Then he blinks, as if snapping out of a trance, and looks at Seraphine. “You’re bleeding,” he says, horror rising in his throat.

  “I’m fine,” she says. “It’s just a bit of glass.”

  “Pull over, right here,” I tell Seraphine, and she pulls off onto a narrow road that curves through a wooded park, stopping on the gravel on the side.

  Except there’s no relief.

  The car feels claustrophobic.

  I climb out of the other door, the one that isn’t smashed in, and get to my feet. I only manage a few steps before I’m putting my hands on my thighs and trying to breathe.

  None of this makes sense.

  Who was that man?

  Why was he trying to fucking kill us?

  Why?

  In broad daylight, without a care in the world, as if he could never get caught?

  And why did he stop, just like that?

  It’s like whoever was on the phone told him to quit.

  I take a deep breath, trying to put it all together, trying to figure out our course of action.

  We have to report this to the police.

  We have to go to the hospital.

  We have to figure this out before it gets buried.

  I walk back to the car and open Blaise’s door.

  He looks up at me with pained eyes, but whether it’s from actual pain, being scared, or something else, I don’t know.

  “What did your father want? Why was he calling you?”

  “I don’t know,” he says softly. “I told him . . . I told him I was with you, and he sounded so shocked. He hung up . . .”

  I don’t want to say my next words. “And right after that, the driver behind us got a call. You saw that. And you saw him quit
. Just like that.”

  He swallows uneasily. “What are you saying?”

  “He’s saying that you weren’t supposed to be in the car,” Seraphine says quietly as she gets out of the car, taking a few steps and leaning on the hood. “That’s what it means.”

  “Are you saying my father orchestrated that? That he just tried to kill us all?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know he was trying to kill us. Maybe just scare us.”

  “He was trying to get rid of me,” Seraphine says. “Perhaps poison was too subtle for him. Perhaps he has experience with it. You know, I never wanted to accuse your father, Blaise. I always assumed it was a Pascal thing to do, to kill someone, to get rid of them, considering who he knows and hangs out with. But now . . . now maybe your father is just as fucking sick as I feared he was, to murder his own brother. To try to off his niece next.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Blaise says, but there’s something in his eyes that’s telling me it all does make sense to him. It’s just he doesn’t want to believe it.

  “It’s quite the coincidence,” I tell him, “if that’s what you want to believe. But I can tell you know the truth. We have all the reasons, Blaise.”

  “No,” he says. “No, they would never go that far. I mean, they’ve done some fucked-up shit, believe me. They’ve done things . . . things to you, Olivier. But not to Seraphine, not to Ludovic. This doesn’t fit. They’re bad, but they aren’t this bad.”

  “What do you mean they’ve done things to me?” I ask him.

  His eyes dart to Seraphine, and she frowns. He looks back at me. “You know.”

  And I do know.

  So Blaise knew about the blackmailing too.

  “Were you always in on it?” I manage to say, feeling anger swirling up through me. “Did you always know? All this time? All these years?”

  A ripple of fear goes through his eyes, then shame.

  His head hangs just a little lower. “Only recently. I’m always the last to know.”