Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nathalie
The house is completely still at two in the morning.
I listen to it for a moment from the doorway of my room before I pick up my keys and I walk down the stairs and I slip out through the side entrance that the night security rarely watches because it leads to the kitchen garden that nobody uses after dark.
My car is parked on the street. I parked it where no one would notice it.
I pull out slowly and I drive but I know I am being followed.
My father has eyes on me these days, twenty-four seven.
He isn't taking risks with his relationship with the Senator this time.
It's been a week since I said I was going to marry James and he wasn't going to have me ruin things for him again.
The car tailing me picks me up within two minutes.
It's a black sedan, hanging back at a respectful distance, which tells me that his men have been doing this long enough to know how not to be obvious about it.
I drive normally for several minutes, taking the route toward midtown, and I watch the sedan in my mirror.
I take a left and then a right and then another left and I pick up speed gradually through a series of turns that have no logical destination.
I watch the sedan match each one and then I turn into the covered parking structure on West 47th.
I go down two levels and I take a right into the maintenance lane at the back and I cut the lights and I wait.
In the mirror I watch the sedan drive past the entrance, slow down, and keep going.
I get out of the car and I begin to walk until I get to a bar.
The bar is the kind that doesn't have a sign outside, just a door that knows what it is and expects you to as well. I find a stool at the far end and I order water and I wait and three minutes later someone sits down beside me. I look sideways at the cap pulled low and the jacket collar turned up.
"I still have no idea why I agreed to this," Renzo says to the bar top.
"Would you prefer a pat on the head or a treat?" I ask.
He turns and looks at me. "When did you get such a sharp mouth?"
I smile. When I whispered in his ear. "I want to get rid of my father. Help me."
I expected a no, or flat-out silence. Looking back, I don't know where I got the courage to ask, maybe because I knew that deep down, he wouldn't say no, because of Luca.
"Did you bring it?" I ask.
He reaches into his pocket and produces a flash drive, small and unremarkable, and he sets it on the bar between us without looking at it.
"It's a grade A intrusion software," he says quietly.
"You plug it into any computer on the target network, it copies everything and transfers it without a trace. "
I take it from him. "When I get the information I want everything linking Luca to my father gone. Every file, every record, every correspondence, erase. Everything else comes back to me."
"Ai suoi ordini, signorina," he replies, with exaggerated formality. At your service, Miss.
I almost smile.
"How is he?" I ask.
Renzo picks up his drink. He takes a sip and sets it down and he looks at the bar and he says, "He is working eighteen-hour days and pretending that's a personality." He glances at me sideways. "You could tell him about this. He would help you. You know he would."
"I know," I reply.
"I don't know how much longer I can hide this from him, Nathalie. He's not an easy man to keep things from."
"I don't want my father to make trouble. I barely got him to believe that Luca had nothing to do with James and his condition and I doubt he fully believes it," I answer.
"Ah, no wonder he stopped raising dust," Renzo said.
He turns on his stool to look at me properly. "I don't understand you," he says. "You made him feel like you hated him and yet here you are protecting him by erasing his history with your father. Why?"
Men like Luca, who spend their lives being the ones who protect and never the ones who are protected never take being protected well. It was best I did this my way.
"It's my fight," I say. "And he needs to stay out of it."
Renzo shakes his head slowly. "The second thing," I say.
He nods and he stands and he tilts his head toward the back of the bar. "This way."
The room we enter is underneath the bar. It's a tiny hidden room, under a flight of stairs and when the door opens, the light falls on the two figures seated against the far wall.
Alana and her father. Alana sees me first.
I watch their faces go through several things in quick succession.
"You?" she says. "You kidnapped us?"
I shrug. "No, I am here to rescue you," I answer dryly.
Her father turns his head and takes me in. "What is the meaning of this, Nathalie? Release us immediately, do you understand me? How did you even do this? Does your father know?"
My father had wanted them out of sight after the Hartley scandal and had sent them abroad himself, which had made Renzo's job almost easy.
His men had simply collected them at the airport before they could board, and locked them up here for three days now.
When they sat in this room I had called my father using a voice scrambling app and an old voicemail of my uncle's, told him Switzerland was lovely, and he had said good and hung up within thirty seconds.
I look around the room, and against the wall, there is a metal rod. It was probably left behind by construction workers. I walk over, I pick it up and I feel the weight of it. I flex my wrists and I turn back to Alana's father, dear Uncle Michael.
"I need the evidence," I say. "Everything you did for my father. Every arrangement, every job, every trouble that you made disappear for him over the years. I need all of it."
Michael's face closes off. "I don't know what you're talking about," he says, looking away.
I walk over to him and I strike his shoulder with the rod. He couldn't even dodge. He lets out a groan of pain, a tough man regardless.
Alana screams. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Is he alright? Dad? Dad, answer me!" Tears are running down her face. "You monster!"
"My father thinks you're abroad," I tell Michael, while he recovers. "I could make both of you disappear and he wouldn't know for months. Maybe longer."
Alana goes very still.
"What?" she says.
"No one is looking for you," I confirm.
"That's—" her father starts. "That's impossible, your father would never—"
"He received a call three days ago," Renzo says pleasantly, from the doorway. "It was your voice, telling him you had arrived in Switzerland and were going off grid for a while. He sent his regards."
"That's not possible," Michael says. "He would have known it wasn't me."
"You'd be surprised," Renzo replies, "what voice scrambling software can do these days."
"You're a problem for him. You both are. He wanted you out of sight after the scandal with Alana and her fiancé." I say. "He doesn't care much, honestly."
"He wouldn't—" Alana starts.
"I showed him the video. One of you is kissing James," I say, turning to look at her.
The color leaves her face completely.
"What?" Michael asks.
"Dad," Alana says immediately, her voice cracking, "don't listen to whatever she's about to—"
I take out my phone and I press play and I hold it up and Michael watches his daughter passionately kissing James.
When it ends, he laughs. It's a short painful sound.
"He sent us abroad," Michael says slowly, the pieces assembling themselves behind his eyes. "After she was found with the Hartley boy." He looks at the ceiling. "Not to protect us. To get us out of the way."
"To protect the campaign," I agree.
Michael is quiet for a moment. Alana is crying softly beside him with her eyes on her father's face.
"The hard drive," Michael says then, ignoring Alana's sharp intake of breath beside him. "It's in my study. Behind the painting of the lake. You'll need the code." He pauses. "Seven four two nine. It has what you need. Let us go."
"Dad—" Alana says.
"Enough," he tells her, without looking at her.
I stand up.
"I'll arrange for you both to leave the country," I tell him. "I never want to see either of you again."
Alana laughs. It comes out slightly unhinged. "Who do you think you are?" she demands. "Do you think you can just— do you know your father killed your mother? He planned the whole thing, he—"
"Alana," Michael says sharply.
"She should know," Alana says, looking at me with bright furious eyes. "She should know what kind of family she's so desperate to impress. Your father killed your mother, Nathalie. He planned the whole—"
"I know," I say.
Alana stops.
She looks at me. "You know," she repeats.
"I know," I confirm.
She stares at me. "And you're just—" She looks around the room and sees Renzo in the doorway, and then back at me. "You're pathetic," she says, but her voice has lost its conviction. "You've always been pathetic. Always running after people who don't want you, always trying so hard for people who—"
"I'm better than you," I tell her.
She stops.
"I have always been better than you," I continue pleasantly. "Richer, prettier, more competent, and now I'm the one sending you off too." I look at her. "So."
"Fuck you!" she screams. "Fuck you, go to hell, go to hell you dirty—"
I turn and I walk to the door. Renzo and I go back through the bar and up the stairs and out into the cold night air and he looks at me and he says, "I need you to retrieve the hard drive from the address and get everything sent to me," I say.
"What about your uncle and cousin?" he asks.
"Then put them on a ship. The slowest, most uncomfortable route you can find."
Renzo makes a sound that is almost a laugh. "You are genuinely evil, you know that?"
I stop walking.
I reach into my pocket, I take out an envelope and I hold it out to him. He takes it, opens it, and looks at the wedding invitation inside that was printed the very evening that my wedding with James was agreed on.
"For you and Luca," I tell him. "Tell him I want him there. He owes me that much."
Renzo looks at the invitation for a long moment. "You are evil," he says again, but differently this time.
"I need a few people," I add. "Preferably women who can pass as domestic staff. I need them dressed as maids."
Renzo looks at me. "Should I ask why?"
"'No," I tell him.
"Fine," he says. "Done."
"Thank you, Renzo," I say.
He sighs and looks at the invitation. "You're welcome, but damn."