Chapter 37
Emma
Stella and Lucie glide toward me in a mint-green motorboat, cruising across the murky canal outside Amsterdam’s main train depot. They shimmy the vessel through the pea-soupy fog to collect me on the wharf.
It’s been five days since we broke into the Orsay. Five days since my mother died and was resurrected.
We haven’t spoken much, except a long-distance phone call to tell them I was heading to Amsterdam. Maybe it was my despondent tone, but they didn’t ask questions and I didn’t offer answers. I said I would explain everything when I arrived.
Both of them are wearing massive fur coats—white for Lucie, deep brown for Stella, who resembles a deceptively fancy bear with her black-sequined turban crowning her head like a royal diadem.
They wave, their smiles bright and victorious.
They have no idea what I’m about to tell them, or the white-hot anger at Stella rising inside me.
I begged Caroline to let me speak to them first, and she agreed.
“I’m not going to run away,” I argued, the desperation in my voice so obvious it embarrassed me.
But I wasn’t the cowering, pathetic mess I was when I was first thrown in the vault.
Once I had my wits about me again, I was able to chastise Caroline for her overly dramatic kidnapping, for throwing me into the bunker and essentially leaving me to starve.
“Couldn’t we have just met for a drink?” I’d said, attempting nonchalance while my heart hammered against my ribs. “Maybe a manicure.”
“Would you have agreed to my terms?” Her voice was ice, her gaze steel.
Her terms aren’t that complicated. She wants to ambush Stella.
“I don’t see any outcome here where you don’t get exactly what you want,” I’d countered, the words bitter on my tongue.
“Your family always does. You’re not just the queen on this chessboard; you’re the entire royal army in one piece.
You can make any move you want. We are the ones with vastly limited options. ”
“That’s not true,” she argued. We had finally left the bunker and returned to the grand chateau, empty of everyone but the two of us.
Our voices echoed through the stone halls, the sound amplifying my sense of insignificance.
It finally hit me just how absurd it was for one family to have such an insane property, to have so many insane properties, to have so damn much.
And then I remembered that everything I’d been doing for the past two months had been in service of making millions of dollars. Who was I to judge?
Caroline was a new person with me. Not warm by any stretch, but personable, less mechanical. I attributed it to our shared history with Pascal, and the fact that she was getting her way. I promised her I’d lead her to Stella.
The back of my skull still throbs where Caroline’s henchman struck me, a dull percussion that intensifies when I take a small jump onto the boat.
“I could have taken the tram,” I say to them, my voice hollow.
“We deserve to travel in style.” Lucie wraps me in one of her monstrous hugs as we bob up and down in the canal, the boat rocking precariously beneath us.
My stomach lurches, and it has nothing to do with the waves.
“And you deserve to be comfortable right now. We are here to take care of you. How was…everything?”
“Not yet,” I murmur.
I’ve never been to Amsterdam, and despite the current circumstances, I’m charmed by the winding canals bordered by crooked row houses that look like they could tumble into the water at a moment’s notice.
“Is boat the best way to get around here?” I ask, desperate for something normal to discuss.
“By far,” Stella says with authority. “Door-to-door service. We rented this one for the week.” Her confidence is unwavering, which only irritates me more.
Lucie expertly spins us around, the vessel bucking slightly beneath us. We head into the center of the city, zipping beneath dainty arched bridges with people whirring across them on bicycles.
“It’s lovely here,” I say, the words sticking in my throat.
“Isn’t it,” Stella says. “So happy we had an excuse to come.” As if the excuse were as basic as a family reunion or wedding.
Two of the experts Stella recently paid to help her prove the Swanson family fraud live and work in Amsterdam.
They preferred to meet here rather than travel to Paris.
I’m still not sure they believe anything Stella has told them.
Pascal didn’t. But these experts know more than he did.
They know she’s still alive and she’s compensated them enough to humor her and keep her confidence.
“I’ve been thinking the Netherlands could be a good place for me to disappear.” Stella sighs with pleasure.
“Not somewhere warmer?” I shiver slightly in my thin jacket.
Making small talk feels impossible when all I want to do is blurt out what I came to tell them and demand answers from Stella, but I need Colette here.
She always steadies me and I don’t want to have to repeat it all in a confusing game of telephone.
No one notices me shaking slightly. The fog on the canal is the sort that seeps into your bones and brings the chill from the inside out.
“You don’t want to go to Cyprus, Malta, the Amalfi Coast? ”
“My hedonistic bikini days are behind me, thank the lord. I want to wear large sweaters and sip whiskey while looking at a canal. But who is to say for certain? I could change my mind tomorrow.” Stella titters.
Within ten minutes we’ve zipped under three more bridges and found our way into a new canal. My legs wobble as I climb out of the boat and up onto the sidewalk across from a fanciful four-story black building with bright red shutters.
“Welcome home,” Stella announces, her arms spread wide.
“We’re not staying in a hotel?” I ask.
“We needed more privacy, and space.”
The inside of the row home is compact but elegant, with a small front room, a well-equipped kitchen leading into a garden, and a winding staircase up to the next floor.
“Built in 1639,” Stella says appreciatively.
“And still standing. Incredible.” She runs her hand along the slightly crooked mantel.
“Sit, relax. The girls can fill you in on all the things that have been happening here if you like or you can rest. I can’t imagine how hard this week has been on you. ”
I sink into a low-slung leather couch beneath what looks like an original Vermeer.
“I could use something to eat,” I say, stalling, though I’m starving. “And then we need to talk.” I notice shopping bags all over the room, clearly from expensive boutiques. They’ve been celebrating what they believe is a success.
Colette arrives with a tray of small sandwiches and cookies, instantly tuned in to the tension radiating from me.
“Darling. I can’t believe you’re even still standing.” She hugs me and doesn’t let go as we curl into one another on the couch.
Lucie forces a tiny sandwich my way. “Everything in Amsterdam seems to come in miniature. Little houses, petite sandwiches. Even the drinks come in itty-bitty glasses, though they’re incredibly strong. It’s still early or I’d take you out to my favorite bar.”
“You’ve been here less than a week and already have a favorite bar?” I say, attempting a lightness I don’t feel.
“I always find a new favorite. I collect favorites. You know that about me.”
Stella giggles at Lucie through a yawn, stretching like a cat after a satisfying hunt. “I could use a nap.”
“Wait—” I start, but she interrupts.
“I’ll lie down for just an hour. Maybe two.
Go explore the city. Rembrandt’s house is right around the corner, and they have some of his paintings in their original stained black frames, which is absolutely something to see.
The Rijks isn’t too far either. The good shopping is on the Nine Streets, and don’t forget that ‘coffee shop’ doesn’t mean coffee here, so stick to the boulangeries unless you want some terrible marijuana.
” She’s slowly climbing the steep stairs before I can protest.
“How has she been?” I ask the girls, watching Stella disappear.
“She was spectacular when we first arrived, but I can tell her battery is draining.” Concern shadows Lucie’s face.
“Are you worried about her?”
“Trying not to be.” She shrugs, but her eyes betray her.
I yawn then too because talking about exhaustion makes it contagious. Lucie joins me on the other side and rubs small circles on my back. Being flanked by my people undoes me.
“How are you?” Colette asks. “Really?”
Before I know what’s happening, I burst into tears, fat, ugly droplets rolling over my cheeks as I gasp for air. The dam breaks, and there’s no holding back the flood. She’s asking about my mother, who she believes is dead, but I have to tell her something else first.
“It’s all a mess.” My voice cracks.
“I know. It’s completely fucked.”
“No. Not in the way you think. Stella’s been lying to us.” Colette’s hand freezes on my back, her body tensing beside me. Lucie sits up straighter.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Maybe not lying, but keeping things from us.”
I draw in a ragged breath before I continue.
“It’s Caroline. She knows everything. She ambushed me when I was on my way back to the apartment.
She tricked me. My mother…It was all a lie.
Caroline wanted to get me alone. She kidnapped me.
” The words sound absurd as I say them, despite their truth.
“She knows what we’re doing. Or maybe not all of it.
The one thing I don’t think she knows is about the painting—the Van Gogh and you selling it, Colette, but she knows Stella wants to go after the Swansons.
She knows we’re meeting with experts, and she knows we’re here. ”
I can’t even bring myself to describe the torture of being locked in the bunker, because none of it seems real. But I do it anyway.
“How did Caroline know?” Lucie cuts me off when I stop, gasping for breath, my lungs burning.
“Pascal.” I whisper his name like a poison I need to expel.
“Your Pascal?”