Page 83 of The Expat Affair

“Maybe it’ll help if I tell you that Polish police have reported a huge influx of diamonds hitting the black market there. Uncertified. Untraceable. We’re operating under the assumption that it’s how the assassin was paid, with diamonds.”

That shuts Fleur up. She shakes her head, and I see it then—the tiniest flash of a realization before she blinks it away. A contract killer, paid in diamonds. Hired by someone she knows, someone close.

Meanwhile I’m thinking:What are the odds?A contract killer creeping through the penthouse mere minutes before Lars did, murdering Xander with a zip tie while I slept in the next room, using his sawed-off finger to empty the safe down the hall. Two thieves, two close brushes with death while I was unconscious.I know the bedroom was dark. I know I didn’t make a peep. But wouldn’t a diamond thief look in every cabinet and drawer and nightstand? Wouldn’t a trained killer think to sweep all the rooms for potential witnesses?

Or maybe this, too, is one of the detective’s plot holes. Maybe I’ll never know why the killer missed me, but for now, I only know it’s too much. Information overload. I can’t keep straight what I’m supposed to know and not know.Stick to the story, Fleur insisted over and over,and I’m telling you,no one butus will know. I clamp my mouth shut, too terrified to say another word.

Because I’m not going to be the one to let slip what really happened here. I’m not going to accidentally admit that we’re on the hook for larceny, possession of an illegal weapon, conspiracy to murder,murder, and probably a bunch of other charges we haven’t even thought of yet. This story we’re spinning is both a cover and a pact: if one of us goes down, we all do. Lying to a police officer is the least of our worries.

Fleur sighs, and she arranges her expression into something softer. “Detective, I know you’re doing your job here, but can we continue this conversation tomorrow? As you can see, my nephew is traumatized, and honestly, so am I. I would very much like to get home to my family.”

The detective stares at the back of Sem’s head, and I can practically hear him turning our story over in his mind, looking for cracks where the pieces don’t quite line up—and there have got to be plenty. There’s no way we’ve thought of all the things that could trip us up in those thirteen panicked minutes. Yet again, Fleur is right; we need to get out of here, to regroup and go over things with a calmer, less hurried mind. We need more time to sort through the facts, pick at the evidence, weave the loose ends into our reality.

I see it on his face, his decision to let us go for now settling in. “I’ll want to talk to you again. All three of you. Separately.”

The last word is both a weapon and a warning. This isn’t over, only a reprieve. The detective wants to talk to us separately.

“Of course. I’ll have my attorney reach out first thing tomorrow.” Fleur rises from her chair, and the rest of us follow suit.

We file down the stairs and out of the building, and it’s all I can do not to sprint to Fleur’s car, parked a block away, a dark Range Rover with leather seats as soft as butter. She starts the engine and cranks up the heat, flicking the buttons for the seat warmers, pressing the gas pedal until the air in the vents turns warm. And all the time, none of us says a word.

“Papa will call Arthur,” Fleur says finally, her voice loud in the quiet space. She nods at me in the front seat next to her, at Willow and Sem huddled behind. “He’ll push him to close the investigation for the House’s sake. Arthur will do it for Papa.”

“The police chief,” Willow offers up before I can ask. She reaches around Sem for the seat belt and gives it a generous tug. “The two of them are friends.”

Willow’s father-in-law is friends with the police chief. Of course he is.

Still.

“But what if—”

“Papa will handle it.”

“Okay, but the detective won’t—”

“Papa will handle it.”

She says it with so much vehemence, so much conviction, that I don’t waste any more breath arguing back. I don’t know Fleur very well, but I know her type. She’s the female version of Barry, all arrogance and blustery entitlement, and why wouldn’t she be? Fleur is a Prins. Her father is friends with the chief of police. If he saysArthur will close the investigation before the detective can crack open our lies, then he’ll close the investigation. Period, end of story.

Fleur shoves the car into Drive and pulls into traffic, and I sink into the warm leather of her passenger’s seat, watching the scenery fly by. Maybe it’s because she’s telling me what I want to hear, or maybe I was with Barry long enough to believe in the Prins power of persuasion, but for the first time in what feels like months, I take a breath big enough to reach the bottom of my lungs.

It’s good to be a Prins, even if only by association.

Willow

I’m seated on my favorite couch in the sunroom, waiting for Thomas to get home. Martina is gone, sent home early so I can have this moment with him alone, even though I’m not—alone, that is. The floorboards creak above my head; Rayna and Sem playing in his room upstairs. She and I haven’t talked about what happened yet, but I saw the way she looked at me at thehouthavens. Rayna is angry, but not angry enough that she refused my offer to stay here tonight. I need to make amends with her, but first I need to talk to Thomas.

Outside, it’s getting dark, the bottom of the sky glowing orange with the sun’s last gasp. I look out over the pretty backyard, the relentlessly blustery wind shaking the trees and the tiny lumps of dirt that in a few weeks I know will be crocus buds, and it hits me then. I’m going to miss this place. I’m going to miss this house and this view and Martina bustling around the kitchen.

But I’m not going to miss being a Prins.

On the other side of the house, the front door swings open and shut, followed by a familiar thud, Thomas’s briefcase hitting the foyer floor. It’s followed by the chink of metal in the china bowl where he always drops his keys. He comes down the polished marble tiles, the same tiles he and hundreds of other men have walked down for more than a hundred years.

“Willow?”

“In the sunroom.”

When I called him earlier to tell him what happened at thehouthavens, I repeated the same story we told the detective. He was too traumatized by Sem facing down a gun to notice all the plot holes or ask why his sister had a bag of fifty diamonds, but I know those questions are coming at some point. What I don’t yet know is how much I’m prepared to tell him.

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