24. Ryan
Ryan
Camille looks at me like I have just personally invented stupidity.
Considering he is kneeling on his own damn floor with his hands restrained behind his back, blood all over him, while three armed men stand around him and a seventy-seven-year-old psychopath holds a cane like he is contemplating whether to crack Camille over the skull with it again, I do not feel particularly inclined to accept criticism regarding my decision-making.
His face goes pale beneath the blood. “Ryan, what the fuck are you doing?”
The sheer panic in his voice does something strange to my anger, warping it into a hotter, sharper thing that crawls beneath my ribs and makes me want to cross the room, grab him by the shoulders, and shake him until whatever part of his enormous brain thought “Je t’aime” was an acceptable thing to say before volunteering himself for death rattles loose.
I glare at him. “What does it look like?”
“Leave,” he pleads.
One of the armed men takes a step closer, his gun never straying from me. I hold still and put my arms up.
Camille tries to do this backward-headbutt move against the man restraining him, but it doesn’t really do much more than aggravate the guy.
“Put your weapons down, gentlemen,” Henri suddenly says, watching the scene before him with obvious interest.
He has lowered the cane, although only enough that its end rests against the floor again.
He looks exactly like the photographs and nothing like them at the same time.
Age has hollowed his cheeks and softened the hard structure of his jaw, silver replacing the dark hair I saw beside my grandfather in those old photographs, but his eyes are disturbingly alive—alert, assessing, possessive.
That last one makes my skin crawl because I know, even without understanding all the French I heard through the door and then down the hall while I worked up enough courage to leave the lab, what they had been talking about.
Alberte.
Camille.
Me.
Henri holds out a hand towards me, smiling. “Ryan. Come, come. Sit with me.”
Camille makes a strangled noise somewhere between irritation and terror. “Ryan, don’t. Run. Go. Fucking go,” he hisses.
I look at him.
Blood streaks the right side of his face, matting his hair at the temple before running in a crooked line along his cheek, and one of his eyes is narrowed almost shut against it.
I think his nose might be broken from how swollen and angry it looks.
His wrists are still restrained behind him.
He’s on his knees with a man standing directly behind him, one hand planted on his shoulder.
“Sit.” Henri’s voice is low, almost conversational. He gestures toward the sofa beside him with an open palm—not a command, but an invitation. Like I’ve arrived late to Thanksgiving dinner, and he’s making room for me at the grown-ups’ table.
Every survival instinct I possess screams not to go near him, not to step within reach of that cane still flecked with Camille’s blood.
I go near him anyway.
Camille’s expression shifts from panic to raw disbelief as I cross the room. “Ryan.” His voice is strained. I ignore him. “Ryan.” Still ignoring him. “Ryan, for fuck’s sake—”
One of the men drives the heel of his hand between Camille’s shoulder blades, forcing him forward with a choked gasp.
I stop dead. My entire body goes rigid, fists clenched at my sides. “Don’t—don’t do that.”
The man looks toward Henri with a questioning gaze.
Henri gives the smallest shake of his head. “Il n’est pas nécessaire de le malmener davantage.” There’s no need to rough him up any more.
I don’t know exactly what he says, but the meaning is clear enough when the man removes his hand.
Henri turns back to me, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Please.” He indicates the sofa once more, his fingers elegant and steady.
This is fucking bizarre.
I sit. Not beside him exactly—there’s a respectable cushion and a half between us, which feels like the appropriate amount of personal space to maintain when sharing furniture with your dead grandfather’s homicidal ex-boyfriend during a home invasion.
Henri seems pleased—actually pleased. He adjusts the lapel of his wool coat, settles the silver-topped cane carefully across his knees, and looks at me with such calm, unnerving interest that I momentarily feel as though I should ask if he wants tea.
Camille looks ready to have an aneurysm. A fresh trickle of blood traces the line of his jaw. “Ryan,” he says carefully, “you do not need to entertain him.”
Henri glances toward him without turning his head fully. “Quiet.”
I turn my attention to Henri, ignoring Camille. “You wanted to talk to me?”
His smile returns. “Yes.”
“Then talk,” I whisper, voice rough as gravel.
Camille emits a furious hiss, nostrils flaring.
Henri’s lips curve in a slow smile, emerald eyes glinting. “There,” he murmurs, each syllable soft as silk. “That is my Alberte.”
A shiver races down my spine; my skin pricks with gooseflesh.
“Pretty sure it’s Ryan,” I counter, folding my arms across my chest.
He inclines his head, tone indulgent. “Yes, of course. But mannerisms survive in families in such interesting ways—even between strangers. The tilt of your chin when you’re irritated, that tension around your mouth.”
He leans forward, studying me as though I were a map of hidden faults. I sit still, allowing him to look all he wants, even if it’s really fucking creepy.
Because I need him looking at me, thinking about me, interested in me. The more interested he is, the less attention he pays to Camille. And maybe the closer he gets.
“Did you know him well?” I ask, heart thudding.
Henri’s gaze softens—a subtle drop in his shoulders. “Yes. For many years.”
Camille scoffs.
Henri ignores him.
“I, uh—he left a journal. I read it,” I say.
“Ah,” he replies, nodding solemnly. “I imagine he did not make me sound very nice. Alberte always wrote when he was upset.”
“You don’t seem bothered by that,” I press hesitantly.
“I can’t deny we had a tumultuous relationship at times,” Henri says, his tone distant.
“It was clear he loved you more than anything,” I add quietly.
Henri smiles before flicking a gloating smirk down at Camille. When he looks back at me, he says, “I am glad that came through his words. I only wish he had loved me enough to stay.”
“I don’t know,” I say after a moment, letting my gaze drop as though I’m weighing whether to tell him something difficult. “Maybe that was the problem.”
Henri’s smile fades by degrees. “What do you mean?”
I drag one thumb slowly across my palm, buying myself a second. Across the room, Camille has gone very still, and I can feel his attention on me even without looking.
“Maybe he loved you too much.”
Henri doesn’t speak.
That lands exactly where I hoped it would.
I glance up, keeping my expression subdued. “That’s how it read to me, anyway. Like he spent years trying to convince himself that if he just loved you hard enough, forgave enough, stayed long enough, eventually everything would go back to the way he remembered it.”
Something shifts in Henri’s face—not anger, but memory.
“He wrote about missing you even while he was afraid of you. About wanting the man he met when he was young, like that version of you was still in there somewhere and he just had to wait long enough for him to come back.”
Henri’s throat works; he looks less like a man enjoying himself and more like someone hearing a voice through a wall.
“He always was sentimental,” he says quietly.
“Yeah.” I let the word sit. Then add, “So sentimental that it followed him all the way to America.”
Henri asks, “What do you mean?”
“Do you know why he picked Virginia?”
Henri studies me. “No.”
I lean forward, lowering my voice as though I’m sharing something private. “He wrote that Americans say Virginia is for lovers.”
Henri freezes. The change is tiny, but I see it. His fingers tighten around the cane.
“He chose it because of that,” I say. “Virginia is for lovers. He thought it was meaningful, I guess. Or reassuring. Maybe both.”
Henri stares at me. “It was in the journal?”
I nod. “He wrote it down when he was planning to leave France.”
Henri’s expression becomes unreadable.
I think of Alberte’s handwriting. The way the entries changed over time, from hope to excuses to horror, and how even at the end there were still sentences that made me want to shake him because he could name every awful thing Henri had done and still write about loving him.
“It was kind of tragic,” I say quietly.
Henri’s eyes lift to mine. “What was?”
“All of it?” I shrug faintly. “He left you. He knew he had to. He knew staying would eventually destroy whatever was left of him, and he still couldn’t stop wishing things had been different.”
Henri says nothing, so I keep going.
“He kept remembering the good parts. The dinners, the flowers, dancing with you in the kitchen. He wrote about choosing each other again like that was still possible. Like maybe there was some version of your life together he could somehow get back to if you both just tried hard enough.”
My chest genuinely aches saying it.
That part isn’t acting.
It really was tragic.
Not romantic.
Not beautiful.
Just unbearably sad.
“He wanted you to be someone else so badly,” I murmur. “Or maybe he wanted you to be who he thought you were in the beginning.”
Henri’s gaze drops. His thumb moves once over the polished head of the cane.
“He never stopped hoping,” I add.
Camille makes a low sound from somewhere near the floor, but we both ignore it.
Henri looks back at me. “And you believe that means he still loved me.” There is something hungry in the question.
I let myself hesitate, then nod. “I think he did.” Henri inhales slowly. “I think that’s what made it so horrible for him.” His expression hardens slightly. I soften my voice further. “Because if he’d hated you, leaving would’ve been easy.”
That gets him; I see it happen.
“He did love me,” Henri says.
It isn’t a question.
I look down at my hands. “I think part of him always did.”
Camille says my name sharply. “Ryan.”