Chapter 19 Dysfunction
DYSFUNCTION
*Samantha*
Approximately thirty hours after I hugged my grandfather, I was sitting in a Paris hotel room, regretting every time I’d ever fantasized about waking up on another continent.
The suite itself was another world. Two bedrooms, each with a king bed and a bathroom bigger than my undergrad dorm room.
A private sitting room with a view of the Eiffel Tower so close it looked fake, like one of those Instagram filters that superimposes the Taj Mahal behind your backyard barbecue.
In any other circumstances, I would’ve been thrilled.
I spent the first five minutes after arrival in a sort of fugue state, staring at the pair of black dresses that had been left on the bed in my room.
Both in my size, both with designer tags.
One was a Givenchy, the other a Chanel. And I was supposed to pick one for the will reading, which made me feel like a paper doll dressed by a particularly chic god.
The next ten hours were a blur of attempts to sleep (fail), attempts to eat (triple fail), and increasingly desperate attempts to locate Andreas, who had not so much as texted since leaving for his father’s funeral.
Earlier this morning, around 6:00 AM, Tara had claimed that his flight should have landed, and that he was probably “handling things,” but as the minutes wore on and the silence grew, I became concerned something terrible had happened.
What if Henrik had done something? Or Tobias had arranged for an unfortunate accident?
By 8:00 AM, I’d given up on checking my phone and moved to the sitting room, where I sat cross-legged on a cream brocade settee, clad in the less threatening of the two dresses, my hair styled and makeup applied.
My gaze strayed to the bundle wrapped in paper under the oval coffee table.
For some reason, I’d brought Andreas’s Christmas gift with me to Paris, the set of signed Bobby Fischer books.
Now I felt strange about it. But Christmas was just days away.
Even if we didn’t celebrate while in Paris, I’d thought maybe I could give them to him, something to cheer him up.
Rolling my eyes at myself and how inadequate of a girlfriend I might theoretically make some day, I refocused my attention on my computer.
I should have been reading over my father’s files, aka Kaitlyn’s gift to me.
Instead, I’d been sitting with my laptop open, scrolling through the PDFs in a cycle of diminishing comprehension, never reading more than half a page before scrolling to the next.
Then, there was a knock on the door.
It was not a soft, French-hotel knock, but the kind you’d use if you were serving a warrant or delivering news of a tornado. I startled upright, staring at the door.
From inside the other bedroom, Tara called, “I’ll get it. Stay put.” She appeared in the corridor two seconds later, already in a black suit and boots, her light brown hair slicked back.
She opened the door.
I leaned to the side, peering around her, and saw Andreas standing in the hallway. My heart did an actual, audible restart. I set the laptop aside and bolted to the door, nearly tripping on the corner of an antique rug.
Tara started to say something, but I didn’t let her finish. I shouldered her out of the way, which was sort of like shoving an iceberg, then threw my arms around Andreas’s neck.
For a split second, his body went rigid. Eventually, he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me tight, so tight I thought maybe I’d never breathe again, and honestly, I was fine with it.
I kissed his neck because it was the only part of him I could reach without letting him go.
“I am so sorry,” I said, and the words came out in a rush, unplanned.
“Let me know what I can do. I am sorry.” I rubbed his back, which was taut and hard as a carved statue, and he shook his head, as if to say, There is nothing.
I heard Tara say, “I’ll be in the next room,” just before a door closed quietly behind us.
She was gone before I even registered the words, a true professional.
I pulled away and took Andreas’s hand. He let me.
I led him toward the sitting area, then shut the door behind us for privacy.
I looked at his face for the first time and saw that the skin under his eyes was gray and bruised, like he’d spent the last thirty hours awake.
There were faint white lines at the corners of his mouth, the kind that only appear when you’ve been frowning for days.
“When did you get in?” I asked, my voice soft so it wouldn’t break.
He didn’t answer at first, just stared at our hands like he was counting the bones. Then, all at once, he dropped my fingers and took two steps back, shoving his own hands in his coat pockets. “We need to go,” he said, voice scraped raw. “Are you ready?”
Something about the way he said it—so flat, so unlike him—made me go stiff. But then I reminded myself that his father had just died. I told myself to be patient. Be normal. Don’t make this about you.
“Yes. Let me put on my shoes and get my coat,” I said, and went to fetch them. I could see him, reflected in the antique mirror above the fireplace, standing there like a dark pillar, unmoving.
I pulled on the shoes, leaving the straps at the ankles dangling, and I found the matching wool coat, shrugged it on, and turned to face him.
“Is there anything I should know?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “About the will reading? Anything I should be prepared for? Or is there anything I can do to support you and make this easier?”
He stared at the carpet, then at the chandelier, and then, finally, at the wall behind my head.
He spoke without emotion. “Tobias has a child. A daughter, by a woman he was involved with a few years ago. He tracked them down. He believes this daughter is the oldest and first grandchild.”
I blinked, processing. “Wow.”
Andreas continued, “He will be very surprised and unhappy when I show him your adoption papers. Henrik, likewise, will be unhappy, since Tobias has always taken care of Henrik, in a way. I will encourage the woman and the child to leave the room before Tobias or Henrik lose their temper, but I need you to not intervene.”
I nodded, feeling sick for the woman and the girl who would have to be present for what was about to happen. “Understood,” I said. “I won’t intervene. But if you need me to do something, you just have to look at me.”
He didn’t reply, but his jaw unclenched, and I took it as a win.
Then, for the first time since he’d entered the room, Andreas looked directly at me. His eyes were cold and bright, but his expression was grave. “It is imperative that you stay close to Tara and the team. No matter what is said, or what my brothers do, or what I say, stay with Tara and the team.”
I nodded, matching his seriousness, and bent to fasten the ankle straps of my shoes. “I will.”
Some of the tension drained from his face, but not all. There was still something else, a thick, invisible layer of ice between us, and I didn’t know how to melt it. Be patient.
I finished with the last strap of my shoe and straightened.
Only then did I realize that every single item I was wearing—dress, coat, shoes, even the tights—had been bought for me by Andreas.
And every piece fit perfectly. He’d chosen everything so that I would look the part, and now, walking toward him, I felt a bit like an accessory, one he’d designed for today’s purpose.
“Tara. We are leaving,” Andreas called, turning away from me.
Tara exited her room seconds later, but she hung back, her face a mask of professionalism.
Andreas opened the suite door for me, not meeting my eyes. I walked past him into the hallway, feeling the heavy thud of each heartbeat, and heard him let the door close behind us after Tara exited.
He walked in front, not beside me, setting the pace. I thought about reaching for his hand, then decided against it. Tara and four other guards who’d been waiting outside fell into step around me, a human wall.
We walked, the seven of us, through the silent, perfect corridors of the hotel. I wondered, not for the first time since reading his text message on Friday, what it would be like if I just ran away with Andreas to a place where none of this could reach us. But that wasn’t reality.
Reality was a will, and a company, and two sinister brothers who would likely be blindsided, and therefore unpredictable.
Tara nudged me, a tiny, invisible reassurance, and I squared my shoulders. It was time to play my part.
As we reached the elevator, I looked once at Andreas, hoping to catch his gaze. But he was focused forward, jaw set, eyes fixed on the future.
* * *
In the back of another Mercedes, this time a limo, I tried not to sweat through my dress.
Not because it was hot—it wasn’t, it was very cold—but because I was so nervous.
Tara sat next to me along with the four security guards from the hotel.
The Parisian sky was the exact shade of the mother-of-pearl buttons on my coat.
I’d assumed I’d be in the same car as Andreas, that we’d go to the will reading together, but apparently not.
Logistics had been handled with the same precision as a hostage exchange.
Two identical cars, two sets of bodyguards, two separate routes through city traffic to the lawyer’s office in the 16th arrondissement.
Through the window, the city unspooled in wet, gray ribbons—cyclists hunching past, children in wool coats dragging parents toward boulangeries, impossibly thin women chain-smoking under the eaves of apartment buildings.
I didn’t know if it was the jet lag or the situation, but the city looked haunted.
Every block was like a different timeline, each building a monument to some secret history.
It made New York look like a freshman attempt at culture.