Chapter 333: My Stepmother Has a Sugar Mommy

Séverine held out her hand.

It took Aria a second to understand. Damien understood at once. He unlocked his phone, found the photograph, and laid it in her palm.

Séverine looked at it for a long time.

The rain-blurred sign. The black umbrella. Her sister, younger than Aria had ever known her, laughing, with a bouquet of white camellias held against her coat.

Séverine’s thumb moved over the screen and stopped just short of her sister’s face. ℴ

"Elle riait comme ça," she said quietly. "Toujours trop fort."

"She laughed like that," Damien said. "Always too loud."

Aria’s throat tightened. She remembered her mother’s hand cream, and the garden soil, and the hairbrush every night. She didn’t remember the laugh.

Then Séverine’s eyes went to the man under the umbrella, and her face closed.

"Who is he?" Aria asked.

Séverine handed the phone back to Damien.

"Séverine. Who is he?"

"Demande à Madame Aubert."

"Ask Madame Aubert," Damien said.

"Who’s Madame Aubert?"

"La fleuriste. Elle vendait les camélias à ta mère." Séverine paused. "Si elle est encore en vie, elle te le dira. Moi, je ne peux pas."

Damien kept his eyes on her while he translated. "The florist. She sold your mother the camellias. If she’s still alive, she’ll tell you. She can’t."

"Can’t," Aria said, "or won’t?"

Damien translated. Séverine didn’t answer.

Instead, she took Aria’s hand, turned it palm-up, and set the key in it. Then she folded Aria’s fingers over it, one at a time, and held them closed with her own hand wrapped around the outside.

The kitchen went away.

White petals on black soil. Sun on the back of her neck. Two hands around her small one, soft, the nails cut short with dirt under them, pressing her fingers shut.

Someone started to hum.

Then it was gone. It didn’t shatter this time. It closed, like a door in another part of the house.

Aria was back at the oak table with her fist around the key. Séverine was staring at their joined hands.

She let go as if Aria had burned her.

"She did that," Aria said. "My mother. She did exactly that."

Séverine stepped back. For a moment she looked older than Aria had seen her.

Then she picked up the egg basket and turned to the stove. When she spoke, she spoke to the wall.

"Va à Paris. Et ne donne ton nom à personne."

"Go to Paris," Damien said. "And don’t give your name to anyone."

Before Aria could stand, Damien’s arm was around her waist. He pulled her sideways into his lap. She didn’t argue. She pressed her forehead to his jaw and breathed until her pulse slowed.

"White flowers," she said against his skin. "Dirt. Her hands."

"I know."

"I was so close."

"You were." His palm moved slowly up and down her spine. "It’s coming back. Little by little."

At the end of the table, Jade was already on her feet, her phone pressed to her chest.

"I’m coming with you," she said.

Damien made one call.

"Helicopter. The field behind the church. One hour."

***

Ken came up the drive at ten with a stout man in blue overalls and Théo, who had apparently met them at the gate and refused to leave.

"Sir. This is Monsieur Girard. The plumber." Ken lowered his voice. "He speaks English. Some English."

"Stay with him," Damien said.

Ken looked at the plumber. Then down at Théo, who had one fist wrapped around his trouser leg.

"Which one, sir?"

"Both."

Théo glared at Damien and moved closer to Ken.

The helicopter lifted off from a cow field behind the church at 10:17.

Damien buckled Aria in himself. He pulled the shoulder straps snug, tightened the lap belt low across her hips, and checked the buckle twice. His knuckles brushed the inside of her thigh as he adjusted it. He took longer than the buckle needed.

She looked down at his hands, then up at him. "You’re enjoying this."

"Yes."

Across the cabin, Jade had fallen asleep against the window before they cleared the oak trees. Two days without sleep had finally caught her.

Aria leaned in until her lips were near the microphone of his headset, so he would hear her and nobody else would.

"Paris," she said. "A hotel. A real bed."

His eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there.

"After the florist," he said.

"After the florist."

He laced his fingers through hers on the seat between them, and the countryside slid by underneath, brown fields and grey villages, and neither of them looked out the window.

A black Maybach was waiting on the tarmac at the heliport on the edge of the city.

Aria checked her phone as they pulled out into traffic. 11:34 a.m. A little over thirty-one hours.

It rang in her hand. Kai.

She put him on speaker. He didn’t say hello.

"Two things. First, your mother’s gardening book. I ran it through every decryption program I own, and two I don’t technically own. It isn’t a cipher. No pattern, no key."

"I know," Aria said. "It’s a map."

"A map of what?"

"I’ll tell you when I find out."

"Second thing." His voice changed. "Lydia."

Aria sat up.

"You remember when her IRS case got dropped for lack of evidence? And her accounts thawed the same week?"

"I remember."

"Somebody paid for that. A very expensive tax firm in D.C. and a lot of quiet money. Then another wire the week before your auction." Keys clicked on his end. "All of it came through a holding company in Luxembourg."

"Owned by," Damien said.

"On paper, one director." Kai paused. "Rémy."

Jade had woken up. She stared at the phone.

"Rémy," Aria said. "The man locked in our basement."

"Valérie doesn’t exist," Kai said. "Her son does. She put the company in his name."

Aria looked out the window at the grey stone buildings sliding past.

She remembered Lydia at the auction in her green suit, white-knuckled around her paddle, bidding on Vale Entertainment.

’It wasn’t Lydia trying to buy my mother’s company,’ Aria thought. ’It was Valérie.’

"She doesn’t fund Lydia," Damien said. "She owns her."

"I’ll keep pulling," Kai said, and hung up.

Nobody spoke. The Maybach turned onto the Rue de Rivoli. Somewhere a few streets north, on Rue Saint-Honoré, an old woman was selling flowers, or she wasn’t.

Damien’s hand found Aria’s knee.

Her phone buzzed.

Jade saw the name before Aria did. She made a small sound, like someone had stepped on her.

It was Leo’s number.

[Leo: Paris is lovely in October, chérie.]