brother?” he asks, and the blunt way he admits it makes whatever I was feeling before fly out the window.
He’s never said as much to me before.
Now it’s just out there.
That can’t be good.
“I killed him because he was disloyal,” he goes on when I can’t form the words to ask. “He was a traitor to his own blood. Sure, I never liked him. My parents always favored him to the point that it was cruel. They would pit us against each other all the time, kind of the same way we pitted Blaise against you. But I was always curious who would be hungrier for our love. The more my mother loved Ludovic, the more I hated her and him. If she hadn’t died early, I would have killed her myself and had no remorse. Same goes for my father.”
He sighs and gives me a half smile. “I wouldn’t have felt a thing if I killed them, Pascal. I didn’t feel a thing for Ludovic when I slipped that cyanide into his drink. He deserved to die. Do you know why?”
It hurts to swallow, and I’m barely able to say, “Because he was disloyal.”
“Do you know why, though?”
I shake my head.
“Because your uncle, the sacred saint of the Dumont family, slept with my wife. Your mother. They had an affair for years. Thought I didn’t know. They thought I was too stupid and vain to pick up on it, too obsessed with my own problems. They didn’t realize that it’s my job to watch everyone closely, so closely. That’s how you get ahead, you know that. Or I thought you did. It doesn’t matter, though.” He lets out a tired sigh while my mind is now trying to grapple with the fact that my mother and my uncle had an affair. “Ludovic got what was coming to him. He smiled to my face and stabbed me in the back. Took what I had even though it belonged to me. Sounds a lot like you, doesn’t it?”
And there’s the threat. Laid out for me to pick apart. To know exactly where I stand with him. He killed his own brother over the betrayal. He felt nothing. Now he thinks I’ve betrayed him.
The blood between us runs very thin.
“What about Mother?” I ask. “It takes two to have an affair.”
“You’re concerned about her? Never took you for a mama’s boy, Pascal. Don’t worry about your mother. She has to stay married to me. I think that’s enough punishment for now, don’t you think?”
He leans forward on the desk, staring right at me. “As for you, you’re my son. You’re my flesh and blood more than my brother ever was. You have my blood in your veins. You have all the potential to be a great man, but you waste it on women and fast cars and clothes and food and drugs and whatever else you do with yourself when you claim to be running the most important company in France.”
Now the blood is pounding in my head, and I know I’m turning red, that there is a vein pulsing on my forehead.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he says in a low, guttural voice. “But I know exactly how to make you suffer.”
Suddenly there’s a knock at the door, making my heart leap from my chest, but my father stays characteristically cool, slowly straightening up.
“Yes?” I call out, voice cracking.
The door opens, and my mother pokes in her head. “Sorry, boys. Gautier, honey, there’s a man to see you.”
“I’ll be right there,” he says, flashing her a cheap smile. He waits until she’s walked away to turn back to look at me. “I have to go. I have an appointment with an old friend. I hope you enjoyed those sloppy seconds of mine while they lasted. Gabrielle really did have the best pussy I’ve ever had.”
And then he leaves.
All feeling inside my body runs out of me, my blood turning from hot to cold, my stomach filling with dread, the kind of dread that stuns. The kind of dread that drowns you in disbelief, like concrete blocks around the ankles.
Sloppy seconds?
He slept with Gabrielle.
When did he sleep with her?
Oh God.
Oh God.
I’m going to be sick.
I hunch over, holding my stomach, trying to keep the bile from rising in my throat.
I know I have to move, but everything is happening slowly. Somehow I manage to make it out of the office, and from the upper windows of the hall, I see him