Page 72 of The Expat Affair

Like luring me to lunch so she can tell me about Thomas’s gun. Like pretending she was worried about his well-being. I wonder now if any of what she told me that day was true.

“So you kidnapped my son?” I cast a lightning glance at Sem, who still hasn’t noticed me yet, and I’m starting to think maybe that’s a good thing. Until I know what Fleur wants, it’s probably better he doesn’t listen in.

“I’m not going tohurthim. I’m not a monster. But this does concern Sem, too.” She shrugs.

“Concerns him how?”

“We’ll get to that, I promise, but first I need to know I have your full and utter attention.”

My hand grips the mug handle, and it’s everything I can do to not hurl it, hot tea and all, at her head. When I’m sure my voice is controlled, I say, “You have a lot more than just my attention, Fleur.”

She gives me a smile that might as well be an eye roll. “Do you know what it’s like to grow up in a family like mine? What am I saying? Of course you don’t. You and I, we are not the same. We are nowhere close.”

“That’s not the insult you think it is, FYI. But do go on.”

It’s like I didn’t even speak. Fleur keeps talking right over me. “I was told which clubs to join, which schools to go to. Which friends I should surround myself with becauseYour network is your net worth, Fleur. Choose wisely.Being a Prins is a full-time job, and it started the day I was born.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“My whole, entire life, I’ve done every single thing my father expected of me. I studied the subjects he told me to and got the degrees he said would help mecement Prins’s role as the premier diamond house worldwide. I graduated first in my class in high schoolanduniversity, brought home perfect grades because my father accepted nothing less from me than to be the very best. I was back behind my desk four days after giving birth to twins—twins, Willow—because I was taught that nothing and no one was more important than the holy House of Prins. My birthright. My destiny. All my life, I’ve done everything right, while Thomas Prins can do whatever the hell he wants to do.”

Ah. Understanding clicks like a light flipping on. “This is about Thomas’s job.”

“It’smyjob. Mine.” She stabs a thumb at her chest with so much force, tea sploshes over the mug and onto the floor. “I was promised that CEO role. I’m the firstborn. It belongs tome.”

Suddenly, it occurs to me that any woman who would take a child wouldn’t hesitate to spike a cup of tea. I lean over to put my mug on the floor, keeping my eyes on Fleur and beyond, Sem still staring at the iPad. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it. I can’t control Willem, or even Thomas for that matter.”

“Oh, come on, Willow, you’re smarter than that.”

“Just a minute ago, you called me uneducated.”

“Let me ask you this. What do you think Thomas sees in you?”

Fleur’s jab is sharp, and it hits harder than she knows. WhatdoesThomas see in me? Not that much, apparently, especially now that there’s Cécile.

“God, do you remember Mama’s expression when he brought you home that first time? Your hair and your accent and your clothes. Yourclothes. You were like a caricature of yourself, the poor little Southern girl straight out of the trailer park.”

It wasn’t a trailer park, but it was close. A dilapidated duplex on the wrong side of town, pressed between a grocery store and a highway. It had bars on every window and jammers on every door, and every night I fell asleep to the sound of shootings and drag races and a constant hum of tires slapping the pavement.

But Fleur is right about one thing: that skirt was awful.

I lean a shoulder against the wall, knocking loose a mini avalanche of dust. “Give me at least a little credit, Fleur. No, I didn’t have the kind of luxury you and Thomas do, but when I met Thomas I was making it work. I’d figured out how to take care of myself. Maybe that’s what Thomas saw in me, that I’m a survivor.”

“You were aproject, Willow. Someone for Thomas to save. Something for him to design and make shiny and pretty so he can hang it on an arm and show it off to the world.”

Again, Fleur is not wrong. Thomas’s love isn’t for the business side of the House. He doesn’t really care about market trends or revenue streams unless it gives him an excuse to work with the master jewelers on the factory floor. That’s the job Thomasreallywants, sketching and coloring and casting the next House piece, making something spectacular out of heat and pressure and air.

Like the bracelet. Like the new, lab-grown line. Like Cécile.

And like me, once upon a time. Somewhere along the way, though, I lost my shine.

“Can you just get to the point?” I say because Fleur doesn’tdeserve my truth. She doesn’t deserve to know how close she is to poking my sore spot. “Tell me why we’re here.”

“The point is, Willow”—she pauses to give me a sweet, closed-lipped smile—“I need you and Sem to leave.”

“You lured me all the way over to thehouthavensso you could tell us to leave?”

“Yes. Get on a plane and fly back to wherever you came from. Georgia, Florida, another Podunk town in one of those redneck states, I don’t care which. Just take Semmy and go. You can file for divorce from there.”

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