Page 84 of The Expat Affair

On the carpet by my feet, Ollie is traumatized, too, or at least he senses my own trauma, the way my body is still vibrating with residual fear. He sits up straighter at the sounds of Thomas in the hallway, but his body stays glued to my legs. He hasn’t left my side since Sem and I got home, now a couple of hours ago.

Thomas appears in his coat and scarf, looking around the room for Sem. When he doesn’t find him, his eyebrows draw together in a tight pucker.

“Sem’s upstairs.” I point to the ceiling, where the floorboards creak above my head. “He’s fine. Playing video games with Rayna up in his room. I told her she could stay the night. She’s keeping him busy so we can talk.”

Thomas nods. He hasn’t met Rayna yet, but he knows what she did for me and Sem. He collapses on the opposite end of the couch, the tails of his coat bunching up on the cushion beneath him, and looks at me across the approaching darkness. He’s only a few feet away, but there’s so much distance between us. Too much for us to bridge.

“I want a divorce.”

“What?” His gaze whips to mine, and he genuinely seems unable to comprehend, but it’s an act. Just because he doesn’t have the balls to say those words out loud doesn’t mean he disagrees. His hands are tight claws on his knees.

“A divorce, Thomas. And not just because of Cécile. Because you never should have married me in the first place.”

He doesn’t deny either, which is a surprise at the same time it’snot. Deep in his heart, Thomas knows whatever we had has lost steam. I was supposed to be a fun little diversion on his business trips through Atlanta. He was supposed to be an occasional holiday from the monotony of my life, a sex-filled all-inclusive stay in his suite at the St. Regis. Thomas and I, we’ve never been some great love story. We’ve both known this for a while now.

He lets his head fall back, staring up at the ceiling for the span of a few breaths. “I’ll give you a divorce. I’ll give you anything you want. Just please.” His voice breaks on the last word, and he pauses to pull himself together. “Please don’t take Sem back to the States.”

This is the place where I could make my demands. Where despite the prenup I willingly signed, I could pressure him to buy me a house down the street, fill it with fancy furniture, cover all the utilities and bills—and knowing Thomas, he’d agree. Fleur wasn’t that far off when she called me Thomas’s pet project, someone for him to pluck out of poverty and mold into something pretty enough to belong on his arm. But he never would have bothered if it hadn’t been for Sem.

“I don’t want anything from you, Thomas, except for you to be the best, most loving father you can be for our son. Sem is a Prins. He belongs here, in Amsterdam, withbothhis parents.”

Relief smooths out his brow. “So you’re staying?”

I nod. “I’m staying.”

He gives me a silent but searing look, and something passes between us that I can’t quite put into words. Gratitude, certainly, but also regret, resignation, a jumble of emotion between two people who never should have gotten married in the first place. He reaches out his hand, and I drop mine into it.

“I’m staying.”

Even if one day down the line, the suspicions start to niggle in Thomas like they did his sister. If a month or a year or a decade from now, Thomas decides to pluck a hair from Sem’s head ordrop his toothbrush into a plastic bag and send it off to a lab. Call me delusional, but I really don’t think Thomas will ever do that. I don’t think he’ll take that chance. It’s his sister I worry about.

He gives my hand a squeeze then releases me to wriggle out of his coat. “I guess the good news is, I’ll be a much more present father now that I’m unemployed. I handed my resignation to the board today.”

“You quit the House? Why?”

“Come on, Willow. You know why.” He tosses his coat over the armrest and relaxes into the couch. “I never wanted the CEO role. Fleur is right; I’m not cut out for it. Especially after the events of today, it just seems pointless to spend all day doing something that makes me so miserable. I’d have been much better suited on the creative team with the designers and marketing staff. It’s where I wanted to be all along, where I always thought I was headed.”

I think of the bracelet in the vault upstairs, all the details and thought he put into the piece, even if the sentiment was lacking. Thomas is right; creative would be a much better fit. If jewelry design is what he wants to do, the other houses will be fighting over him, a Prins, heading up the design department.

“Good for you. How did your father take it?”

“Not well. He yelled. Alot. As usual, he’s only worried about the optics of a Prins walking away from the House. Fleur, however.” He shrugs. “I’m sure she’s popping open a bottle right about now.”

I’m sure she is. The big corner office, the title of CEO. The House of Prins at her fingertips.

Even though, deep inside her heart, she knows she’s not truly in charge, not as long as Willem is alive. I saw her face when Detective Boomsma said the Polish contract killer was paid with diamonds, the way it went white with shock. The diamond payment was news to Fleur, and it led to the same conclusion I came to: that her father has been keeping her in the dark about some things, too.

Willem, who saw the lab-growns coming from a mile away and read the writing on the wall. Who watched all the other big houses cave like the pearl titans once did, after a couple of Japanese assholes figured out how to seed their own pearls and took a blowtorch to the prices. Who uses his children like chess pieces, bending them to his will, moving them around to suit his needs.

Five generations of House of Prins, a multibillion dollar house of cards, and it’s about to fall. Maybe not immediately, but at some point in the not-too-distant future. Willem knows he can’t stop the industry from toppling, but he can safeguard his fortune, preserve the Prins family legacy for generations to come. Willem is ruthless that way.

Look in your own house.Jan’s words, beating inside me on repeat.Look in your own house look in your own house look in your own house.

I sat in that freezing, dusty kitchen, listening to Fleur spinning a story for the detective, and it occurred to me she’s just as much a pawn as Thomas. Better trained, perhaps, and definitely more willing, but a pawn nonetheless. That diamond payment may have been a surprise, but I watched the realization sink in her head at the same time it did in mine.

The answers came to me like a flash in that freezing metal chair, Sem clinging to my chest like a monkey. All the little puzzle pieces that never quite added up, never made much sense, they all clicked into place. For Fleur, but also for me.

“About the Cullinans,” I say. Unlike Thomas and Fleur, I’m not that easy of a pawn. “I think I know where they are.”

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