24. Ryan #2
“You know what the saddest part was?”
“What?”
“He kept writing like love should have been enough.” Henri’s face softens, and I swallow. “And it just wasn’t.”
For a minute, neither of us speaks.
The room feels strange around us, too quiet despite the men with guns and Camille bleeding a few feet away.
Henri leans closer to me. “I think you understand Alberte better than Camille does,” he says.
I make myself smile faintly. “Maybe I just understand wanting somebody to turn out different than they did.”
Henri’s eyes stay on mine.
Good.
Keep looking at me.
Keep thinking I’m grieving with you.
Keep forgetting Camille.
And keep coming closer.
I glance down, just quickly, and see how ashen Camille’s skin has become. I don’t know whether it is the head wound or sheer stress.
Probably both.
“You feeling okay down there?”
His expression turns homicidal. “Excellent.”
“I was just checking.”
“Leave.”
“No.”
“Ryan.”
“Camille.”
Henri watches us, his amusement returning. “How interesting.”
“Nothing about this is interesting,” Camille snaps at him.
“I disagree.” Henri’s attention returns to me. “You care for him.”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m currently pretty pissed at him.”
Henri leans back, humming. “You should not be here.”
I almost laugh. “That’s what Camille keeps saying.”
“I mean France.”
That catches me off guard. “What?”
“Not like this.” His voice remains eerily gentle. “You arrived alone. You took possession of a neglected little house belonging to a grandfather who should have done considerably more for you while he was alive, and no one thought to make proper arrangements.”
I blink. “Proper arrangements?”
“Family.”
Huh? “What family?”
“Me,” Henri states.
Camille jerks upright. “No.”
Henri does not even look at him, but I do, and the alarm on Camille’s face tells me this conversation is going somewhere even he did not anticipate.
I turn back to Henri. “You?”
Henri nods. “You are Alberte’s grandson.”
“I mean, yeah. Technically.”
“There is nothing technical about it, Ryan. You should come with me.”
Oh, holy fuck, what? “Come with you where?” I ask, trying to keep the horror out of my voice.
“Home.”
My eyebrows rise. “H-home…?”
“Oui. My home. Our home.”
The murderous seventy-seven-year-old psycho has apparently decided we are moving in together.
“I have more than enough space,” Henri continues. “You would be very comfortable.”
Camille strains against his restraints. “Ryan, no.”
I keep my eyes on Henri. “Comfortable how?”
His expression brightens slightly at the question, a flicker of warmth that doesn’t reach his eyes. “As you should have been all along.”
“What does that mean? All along?”
“I know something of your childhood.”
Camille stops moving entirely, his breath held.
I steel myself. “How?”
“Alberte,” he answers. “We maintained a certain awareness of one another over the years.”
“That sounds like stalking.”
“Call it whatever you like.”
“I probably will.”
Henri appears entertained, a faint smile touching his lips before it fades into something softer, almost paternal. “I was sorry to learn what kind of man his son became.”
My muscles stiffen, shoulders tightening as if bracing for a blow. “What do you know about my dad?”
“Enough.”
“Which means?”
“That he struggled.” The politeness of it makes my skin crawl worse than cruelty would—the careful, measured tone of someone discussing a regrettable but distant misfortune.
Henri speaks about my father as if selecting each word for a eulogy he never intended to give.
“Drugs,” he continues, the word clean and clinical.
“Money. Instability. A child should never have been subjected to that.”
My fingernails press into my palms, sharp little crescents of pressure against damp skin. I keep my face still, schooled into neutrality even as my throat tightens. Across the room, Camille is staring at me, his gaze fixed and unblinking, as though willing me to look back.
I’m realizing we’ve never actually discussed my family, besides Alberte.
Henri tilts his head. “I apologize.”
“For what?” I ask quietly.
“That you had to live that way.” The apology is so sincere-sounding that it nearly knocks me off balance.
Not because I believe he cares, but because he’s someone older, someone saying I deserved better.
That particular weakness in me has apparently survived everything.
I hate Henri for finding it without even trying.
“Why are you apologizing?”
“Because Alberte should have stepped in,” he says.
“You don’t know anything about that.”
“I know he knew.”
I stare. “What?”
Henri’s expression remains calm. “He knew his son was struggling.”
“You’re lying.”
“No.”
My heart starts pounding. I don’t want to believe him, but, unfortunately, Alberte secretly tracking his estranged family while convincing himself that watching from afar somehow counted as care feels exactly like something Alberte might have done.
Another cowardice born from guilt.
Another decision made because involvement frightened him.
Henri sighs. “It frustrated me.”
I almost miss the sentence. “What did?”
“That he refused to intervene.”
“You were frustrated?”
“Very.”
I stare at him. This conversation has officially crossed beyond insane into some new dimension.
“And what did you want to do?”
Henri looks almost surprised by the question. “I considered intervening myself.”
Camille’s face transforms. “What?”
Henri glances at him. “But of course, that was impossible.”
“Because you aren’t related to me,” I say.
“Yes.” He says it like that was the only obstacle. “As Alberte and I were no longer publicly connected, and I had no biological relationship to you, removing you from your parents would have been viewed rather unfavorably.”
911, hello? “Viewed as kidnapping,” I mumble.
Henri smiles faintly. “If you insist on inelegant terminology.”
“Oh, my God.” I actually laugh—I can’t help it. It is not amusement. My brain has simply exceeded its maximum capacity for insanity and begun producing inappropriate sounds. “You considered kidnapping me.”
“Rescuing you.”
“Kidnapping.”
Henri’s eyes narrow slightly. “You were a child living with an impoverished addict and a sickly mother who couldn’t care for you.”
I want to scream, but hold it back. I feel a hysterical laugh bubbling in my throat. “My mother was sick because of my father, actually,” I say. “He, ah, gave her hepatitis, and that led to liver cancer. She would have taken care of me if she wasn’t so busy, you know, dying.”
Henri just studies me, gaze flicking between my eyes. “Even so,” he says, “a child should have had better.”
I shake my head. “I was fine.”
He smiles, bright and cold. “All parents fail their children. Some more than others.”
The armed men wait, their weapons trained on us but their attention drifting, uncertain whether this is still an operation or something they didn’t sign up for.
Henri’s fingers rest lightly on his cane; he turns to Camille. “You wish to tell me what you did with the documents?”
Camille lifts his head, blood slowly congealing at his temple. “No.”
“Come now,” Henri says, the first hint of impatience in his voice.
“You must see the futility. Distribute as many copies as you like—to lawyers, police, American journalists. In twenty-four hours, the news cycle will move on. The only thing you accomplish is ensuring a few more people die uselessly.”
“That,” Camille says, lips curling, “is more than you accomplished.”
Henri laughs, a sound so dry it strips the oxygen from the room. “You really are your mother’s son.”
Camille’s jaw tightens. He looks at me, and for a second it’s just the two of us against the world, a single current humming between us.
Henri sees it, too.
“You love him,” he says.
Camille doesn’t answer. Neither do I.
“I am a monster,” Henri says, “but you—Camille, you are a hypocrite. You are furious at Alberte for loving me and hating himself for it. You are angry at your mother for disappearing, at your father for dying, but the truth is, you want to become what you hate. Otherwise, you would never have set your sights on Ryan.”
Camille growls, “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Don’t I?”
“You couldn’t even keep Alberte, let alone a child. You destroyed everyone you ever touched, and—”
“And so will you,” Henri says. “Unless you let go.” The words hang, weightless and crushing. Henri shifts, rolling his shoulders, and looks back at me. “Tell me,” he says, “did you ever want to know your grandfather?”
I hesitate. “I don’t know. I didn’t even think about him until recently.”
Henri watches me with an eerie patience. “He was a coward, but he loved deeply and without shame. Perhaps more than any of us deserved.”
Camille shifts, struggling against the tie holding his hands. “Stop,” he rasps.
“I would have provided everything,” Henri says.
“Everything except a legal guardian who wasn’t a murderer,” I mutter.
Henri’s irritation grows. “You make this sound absurd.”
“It is absurd.”
“No. I am offering you what Alberte should have offered years ago.”
“Which is?”
“A family.”
The word hangs between us.
I almost feel sorry for him.
Almost.
Because somewhere inside Henri Voclain’s completely broken understanding of human attachment, he genuinely seems to believe this makes sense.
Alberte belonged to him.
Therefore Alberte’s belongings belong to him.
Alberte’s grandson belongs with him.
The logic is horrifyingly consistent.
“You want me to live with you.”
“Yes.”
“As your… grandson?”
Henri’s expression softens. “As you were meant to.”
Camille whispers, “Jesus Christ.”
I force myself not to look at him.
Henri has leaned even more toward me. Closer than before, but still not close enough.
I need patience.
This whole thing depends on patience.
“So what?” I ask. “I just go with you?”
“Yes.”
“And Camille?”
The warmth disappears from Henri’s face. “He is not your concern.”
I keep my expression neutral. “He seems pretty concerning from where I’m sitting.”
Henri glances down toward him. Camille meets his gaze with pure hatred. “Camille made choices.”
“So did Alberte.”
“Precisely.”