Page 85 of The Expat Affair

We come into his parents’ living room a half hour later, and Thomas was right. There’s an open bottle of Cristal in a crystal ice bucket on the side table and a triumphant Fleur holding a half-full flute. She raises it at her younger brother, and by her and Roland’ssmug expressions, you’d never know she’d spent most of the past year playing second string.

“Did you change your mind? Because it’s too late. I just got off an emergency Zoom with the board. You’ve already been replaced.”

Anna twists around on the couch to face her son, and her pleasant smile dissolves. “Thomas, for goodness sake, this isn’t a barn. Give your coat to one of the staff.”

He ignores her orders, skirting around the furniture to where his father is seated, in his usual wingback chair in front of the roaring fireplace. A glass of brown liquid is clutched in a hand, and this is definitely a celebration. I sink onto a chair at the edge of the room and watch. This is Thomas’s show, and I’m happy to let him have the starring role.

“I want out.”

“Out?” Anna huffs an annoyed sigh. “Darling, you just got here. Sit down. I’ll get someone to pour you a drink.”

“Mama, please. This is House business. It doesn’t concern you.”

At that, Anna clamps her glossy lips together. As wife of a Prins, she knows her place. Look pretty and sport the bling. Another reason why I won’t miss this family.

Thomas turns back to his father. “I want you to buy me out. Sem, too. My son and I want nothing to do with House of Prins.”

Fleur laughs, a condescending tinkle. “Thanks for your faith in me, little brother, but that would be a very stupid move. Even for you.”

“Stupid and impossible,” Willem says. “Our stocks hold value, but they’re not made of cash. Profits are constantly being reinvested in the company, not sitting in a bank account somewhere. We don’t have that much money liquid. We don’t have anywhere close.”

“Papa’s right, which you would know if you’d paid even the slightest attention in business school,” Fleur says, crossing her legs. “Just because a company is worth, say, a hundred million eurosdoesn’t mean we can get our hands on that much cash. The House is not an ATM. Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not going to buy you out.”

On the couch across from her, Roland rolls his eyes in support.

Thomas points a finger at his sister’s face. “Fleur, and it pleases me more than you will ever know to say this, but fuck you. Fuck you, and you’re wrong.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. The insurance company closed the case. They’re transferring the money next week, which means House of Prins is about to be flush with cash. More than enough to buy me and Sem out, and youwillbuy us out because of these.”

Thomas fishes three lumps from his pants pocket and tosses them onto the coffee table like dice. Three flawless, knuckle-sized stones. One third of the missing Cullinans.

Someone gasps. Roland, I think.

Fleur and Willem are glaringly silent.

Anna settles her drink onto a side table. “Sweetheart, are those what I think they are?”

She sounds genuinely puzzled, and I wonder if it’s because Willem has ordered her to play innocent for Thomas’s sake. To keep both her children in the fold.

Thomas ignores her, focusing instead on his father. “And before you think about finding a new hiding spot for yours, you should know that I’ll take this to the media.DeTelegraaf.FinanciëleDagblad. NRCand all the rest, the international papers, too. I’ll tell them you helped Xander and Frederik steal the Cullinans from the vault and had them both silenced, because that’s what happened here, isn’t it? You hired a Polish contract killer, and you paid him in diamonds.”

Willem doesn’t shake his head, doesn’t nod, doesn’t blink, doesn’t open his mouth. This haughty veneer he wears like a shield, this stiff back and practiced nonresponse, and I knew it. Willem is the master manipulator behindeverything.

“What about you?” Thomas says, turning to Fleur. “What’s your role in all this? Did you know the Cullinans were in the mirrors?”

Roland turns to his wife with a frown. “The Cullinans are in the mirror? Which mirror?”

The mirrors Willem gave us this past Christmas, the three antique masterpieces Jan so lovingly restored. One for Thomas, one for Fleur. The third is hanging in this very room, on the wall above Willem’s wing chair, in the place of prestige above the fireplace.

Back at the house, when Thomas and I pulled his away from the wall and peered at the backing, we spotted a tiny slit in the plaster. A compartment at the bottom of the frame of swirling ivy and gilded flowers, a pocket just big enough for three big-ass stones. Once Thomas got over the shock of holding three of the missing Cullinans in his hand, he said he was surprised they gave him his fair share. So am I, honestly.

Fleur stares into her champagne glass, her feckless husband sitting next to her, and I can practically hear the gears churning. Ismell the smoke as she peels back the layers. The hired killer paid in diamonds. The Cullinans in the mirror. I see the moment she arrives at the truth, comes to the humiliating conclusion that there’s more than one puppet in this room, more than one pawn in her father’s complexly plotted play. Willem’s face is unreadable, but not Fleur’s. He didn’t tell her about the Cullinans, either.

Which makes me wonder what Willem’s plan was here. What would have happened to those stones if Thomas and I never figured this out? What would have happened if, one day, we’d tired of the mirrors? If we’d sold them or tossed them in the trash?

Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe Willem thinks like many people in the diamond industry do, that their glory days are coming to an end. Maybe not tomorrow, but the end is coming. As Xander loved to say, lab-grown diamonds are a seismic shift in the industry, and prices the cartel has kept artificially high for decades are aboutto crumble. And it’s not like Willem can sell the Cullinans anytime soon, maybe ever. Maybe he thought the insurance money was a surefire way to save the House.

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