The paris widow, p.24
The Paris Widow, page 24
Margot may be Italian, but her French is just as effortless, and I don’t miss the way she leans on the words, the way her lips curl down with a sneer. She wants to wound me with them, but I don’t give her the pleasure.
“It’s boat. In English we’re in the same boat.” I lift an unaffected shoulder. “And without the ring, I’m not handing over the SIM.”
I’m taking a chance to argue this point, because I already know that Margot did it on purpose—positioned her hand just so the gold would glint in the light, made it impossible for me to not notice the ring. She wanted me to not just see it, but also grasp the implications of the ring being on her finger. That band is both a prize and a threat. Margot murdered Kat for that ring. Why wouldn’t she murder me for the SIM?
She leans forward, her friendly smile gone. “You’re just as stubborn as Kat was, do you know that? Even at the end, she was such a righteous bitch. Do you know what she called me? The Veruca Salt of plundered artifacts.”
I can’t help myself—I laugh. Veruca, the spoiled little girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. An overindulged heiress who wanted things for the simple sake of owning them. Kat was right. The comparison is perfect.
Margot points at me with a manicured finger. “Careful. Kat laughed, too, and you see what happened to her. Did you know she and Adam were working together?”
“I know she was an art detective. That she chased down stolen artifacts and returned them to their rightful owners. She was supposed to take the ring back to the Oscar Wilde Society at Oxford University.”
“Not just the ring. Other pieces, too. An Avar treasure, a fifth-century Greek bust, a Byzantine mosaic of an adolescent Jesus Christ. They were fakes, just like all the others.” She tilts her head, studies my expression. “Oh, you did not know? Your husband sells forgeries, dear. Excellent ones, but forgeries nonetheless. He has made a lot of money this way, but this is not a good way to do business. This is a good way to get yourself killed.”
Forgeries. The word is like the click of a teakettle, spreading heat through my veins. All these treasures Adam is selling, they’re forgeries?
I think about all the lists and pictures he stored on the SIM card, the statues and the masks and the icons decorated with ancient pigments and gold leafing, all those exorbitant prices. Is that what Adam’s been doing in his workshop all day every day, constructing replicas good enough to fool collectors like Margot? Is his staff in on it?
“What about Kat? Did she know?” From everything I’ve read about her, she’s one of the good guys. A hero in the art world, not a forger.
Margot’s lips purse in a pretty sneer. “Kat was his partner. She helped him come up with the scheme. I would have never known if not for Antoine. Do you know Antoine, dear? He has a lovely shop in the 18th.”
I nod. “Yes, I know Antoine.”
“Anyway, Antoine is the one who alerted me to their scheme. Apparently, he and Adam had a huge row about the ring. Adam offered to split the profit, but Antoine was a better man. He took the ring and was going to return it to me, the rightful owner. I’d already paid your husband handsomely for that ring. That makes it mine.”
“No. That makes you complicit in their crimes.”
“Look around you, amore. Do you think these artifacts come with origin paperwork? Do you think vendors like your husband have licenses to sell these things to me? Or to anyone, for that matter. If I didn’t own these antiquities, they would have been burned, or destroyed, or hacked into a million pieces in their countries of origin. I am the reason these antiquities still exist, because I have the money and the means to bring them here. To cherish them and keep them safe. Every piece in this apartment is one I saved from the rubbish heap of history. One day the world will thank me.”
“Except they won’t, because you’re holding these pieces hostage, locking them away for only you to see and enjoy. People can’t go to visit them in a museum. Artists and historians can’t study them. None of these things belong to you. They belong to their own culture.”
Margot rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. Stop pretending to be so noble. As I recall, you are part of this world, too.”
“Was. I was part of this world, but only once, and it was a stupid, stupid mistake. Twenty-six nights in a French prison helped me see the error of my ways.”
“Yes, and from what I understand, you were much more trustworthy than your Dutch friend. Luckier, too.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. I don’t know how to respond to any of this, because this is how Margot sees herself, as a hero. As a protector of the world’s historical beauty. I’m trustworthy because I took the hit without dragging Sully’s or her name into it. I didn’t try to pass off fakes as genuine artifacts like Adam and Kat. They are the guilty ones in this scenario. Not Margot.
Behind me, the elevator dings.
Margot’s gaze doesn’t stray from mine. “In a weird way, I suppose it makes sense. That you and Adam would have found each other, I mean. Does he know about your history?”
A week ago, I would have said no. Hell, just yesterday I would have said no. But now, after my text conversation earlier today with Katie, I’m guessing the answer is yes, though I still don’t entirely understand why Adam sought me out. I shrug. “I don’t know. We haven’t discussed it.”
Margot’s brows twitch upward, the Botox version of feigned surprise. “No?”
“No.”
She smiles, and her gaze flits away from mine, focusing on something just beyond my head. “Let’s ask him, then, shall we?”
Something about the way she says it, with satisfaction and an almost giddy glee, catches my next words in my throat. I whirl around, and my fingers lose their grip on the glass. The flute slides from my fingers and hits the carpet with a dull thwunk, splattering icy champagne on my legs, but I barely feel any of it because there he is.
There’s Adam.
Thirty-Three
Adam
Msida, Malta
Sixteen days earlier
The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly,
terribly deceived.
—Oscar Wilde
Stella stops in the middle of the two-lane street. “Where the hell are we?”
In a somewhat questionable neighborhood of Msida, a tiny fishing village on the northeast coast of Malta—though Stella already knows this. We’ve just come from exploring Lookout Point with its ancient Manoel Fort in neighboring Valetta, until Stella announced she was hot and hungry, not a good combination on the best of days. It doesn’t help that she only got a few hours of sleep last night, thanks to a hotel air conditioner that makes an ungodly noise to produce barely tepid air. All day today, she’s been grumpy as hell, and I hate to tell her, but it’s adorable.
I show her the GPS map on my phone, the little blue dot that indicates we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. “We’re not lost, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She takes in the empty storefronts that line the road, the dingy apartments and long stretches of unmarked buildings. “Really? Because I don’t see this Nono place anywhere.”
“It’s Noni.” A four-star restaurant, chosen not because Yelp assures me it serves the best octopus Bolognese in town, but because of its location, right next to a plain brown door with a man waiting for me behind it, holding an envelope containing two shiny new passports. One for me, one for Stella.
I check my phone, then point farther up the street. “Noni is just up ahead.”
Stella does an about-face, turning back from where we came. A dusty road lined with even dustier parked cars. “That can’t be right. Check the map.”
“I just checked the map. I’ve been checking the map all this time. Seven minutes. Less than a kilometer. We’re on the right track.” I point to my phone as if to prove it.
“Then let’s choose another lunch spot. Or better yet, let’s go back to the one we saw in the harbor. That one looked good.”
“The harbor is a mile back. Noni is only a few more blocks.”
I bite back the rest of what I want to say—that she’s being unreasonable, that I’m hot and hungry, too, that this is our last day in Malta, and I’m not leaving this island without those passports. Just because I haven’t seen the Aphrodite IV lurking in the harbor doesn’t mean Aljazaar isn’t here on this island, watching. Waiting to strike. Wherever he is, he’s like a time bomb, ticking down in my ear. New names. New identities. Those passports are my insurance policy, a plan B for when—not if, but when—things go sideways.
I step closer, hook an arm around Stella’s neck. “Babe, please. Let’s keep walking for just a few more minutes, okay? I promise you, we’re close.”
She crosses her arms, huffs a sigh. “You always do this, you know.”
Her cheeks are shiny and flushed an unnatural color, two hot-pink circles as bright as her shirt, rumpled and damp from the heat. She looks miserable but beautiful, her hair in tight red ringlets around her face.
“Do what?”
“Make me think I’m the unreasonable one when look around, Adam. This is not a nice neighborhood.”
Stella is right about that. But what she doesn’t know is that I was here not all that long ago, in the week before she arrived, and so I know that only a block from here, the landscape changes. This dusty road gives way to a pedestrian street, vibrant and spinning. Music. Bars. Shops and cafés packed with people spilling out onto the sidewalk. And Noni sparkling in the hot afternoon sun, next to that plain brown door.
She juts out a lip. “Adam, please. All I want is a mountain of pasta and a glass of bubbly water with more than two ice cubes. Is that too much to ask?”
“I’ll buy you every ice cube in the freezer when we get there. I promise.” I smile, nudging her along. “Now come on. It’s only a little farther.”
She caves with another sigh and lets me lead her down the empty block, which is already starting to improve. Up ahead, a flash of purple flowers tumbles from a stone planter, and just beyond, a pair of pedestrians linger on the corner. She trudges ahead in silence, veering to the sidewalk to catch a little shade.
I click off the screen, slide the cell phone into my pocket. “A little fun fact about Malta,” I say, only partly to take her mind off the heat. “They’re one of the few countries that sells passports.”
Stella nods, wiping her brow. “They call it a golden passport, and it costs a fortune. Malta is part of the EU, which means their passport is like a winning lottery ticket.”
Free to travel in the European Union without visas or passport checks at the border. Free to live and work in any of the twenty-seven EU countries. Free to travel visa-free to countries all over the world, even for dual citizens of countries like Russia and China and the Middle East, which are not always welcomed. For people like them, for people like me, these perks are well worth the hefty price tag.
“One-point-three million a pop,” I say, grinning like I’m kidding, “though we’ll need to act quick. I think I read somewhere that the EU is trying to put an end to the program.”
Stella snorts. “Yeah, because it’s a magnet for money launderers and criminals.”
She’s not wrong about that, either. Even though Malta claims to vet all the applicants. Even though they impose a “strict” residency requirement of a year, plus a minimum amount of capital applicants must invest in the country via government bonds and housing to prove they’re building a life here.
But every rule comes with a loophole or two, and money launderers and criminals spend plenty of dough to find them. I should know. It’s how I skirted the rules myself, by throwing money at the problem until poof—it went away. Like magic.
“Still, you have to admit, Malta doesn’t suck. A tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean filled with palaces and prehistoric temples, World War II shelters and war rooms. If I had 1.3 million to spare, I’d pay it to live here. Wouldn’t you?”
At the corner she stops, eyeing me from the sidewalk. “Live here. With all the money launderers and criminals?” She can’t tell if I’m serious or not.
“Why not? We could buy a charming farmhouse overlooking the sea. I’ll restore it and fill it with art and antiques. I’ll panel the walls and put in a claw-foot tub big enough for two, in front of a bay window with the prettiest view. And on weekends I’ll bring you here and stuff your belly with pasta. I hear the Maltese chefs make a mean octopus Bolognese.”
I take her by the shoulders and turn her ninety degrees, and there it is—the pedestrian street with, at the far end, Noni. A dozen or so tables topped with white linen and crystal, shaded under a striped awning.
She turns back, tapping a finger against her chin, pretending to think. Humoring me. “The beaches here aren’t bad, I suppose, but what about me? How would I while away my days while you putter around the house?”
“By filling the house with babies. I was thinking at least five. Maybe six.”
Her face brightens, her brows inching up her forehead. “Seriously? Babies, do you really mean that?”
Up to now, Stella and I have only spoken about babies as a vague possibility in a very distant future. Stella thinks my hesitation is because of Babs, because I was there when the doctors told Julia what she was in for and it scared the living daylights out of me, and I’ve always let her believe it. I let Stella think that I couldn’t bear to relive that moment because it was easier than explaining the real reason.
“There’s nothing I’d love more than making a whole bunch of babies with you.” And maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I do mean it. For an instant, just for a split second, I let myself go there. I imagine a whole squadron of kids, little redheaded boys and girls who look just like Stella, before I pull myself back. The passports. Margot and Aljazaar. First things first.
“I can’t make all those babies by myself, you know. You’re going to be a very busy man.”
I grin. “I think I’m up for the job.”
“Okay, fine. I’m in.” She nods, wiping her face with the hem of her shirt, revealing a slice of her flat stomach. “But can we please make all these babies in Paris? Or maybe in a pretty stone house in the South of France? Malta is just so fucking hot.”
I laugh and wind my fingers through hers, and I tell myself I still have time to fix this. That once we get to Paris, I can find a way to placate Margot and her Moroccan lapdog, and we won’t need those passports waiting for us behind the wooden door. That we can board that homeward plane, fall back into our old life with Stella none the wiser.
So maybe I don’t tell her the whole truth—not yet, but soon—but I do tell her the truest thing I know.
“I don’t care where on this planet I end up, as long as it’s with you.”
Thirty-Four
Stella
Paris
Adam stands at the edge of the room, wearing clothes I’ve never seen before. Faded jeans and a gray shirt over plain white sneakers, almost as white as his face. The jeans hang low on his hips and his cheeks are sunken, his bones prominent like he dropped ten pounds in a week, which it’s quite possible he has. His jawline is scruffy like he needs a shave.
My body wants to run to him, but my feet stay planted on the carpet. “What are you doing here?”
Of all the millions of questions beating through my head, that one seemed the most pressing. It’s been six days since he disappeared down that alleyway for his sunglasses, six days filled with grief and terror and a constant struggle to make sense of all these new parts of him. Is he here to apologize? To retrieve the SIM and whatever other clues I haven’t found yet? Is this the last time I’ll see him?
He steps into the room, then stops at the carpet. “Lucas called me from your phone. He told me you were here.” His gaze flicks to Margot, and I hear the words he didn’t say: Lucas told me you were in danger. That’s why I’m here.
I glance at Lucas, still standing in the hallway by the lift, and dammit. Why did I not anticipate he’d set up a trap? Lucas would know how to get past the lock screen on the Android. He would know who’s hiding behind the name John Doe. I think about my text string with Adam on Signal, the one with Katie on the burner, and I try to recall if there’s anything in there he can use against me, because for sure Lucas has read those, too. I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure.
“I broke the heart.”
Adam nods. “Where?”
“Not here.”
“And the white card?”
“Same place.”
Margot and Lucas listen intently, and though they may not fully understand the meaning behind our words, Adam and I do. He knows I found the SIM card. He knows I know what’s on it and have stashed it somewhere safe along with the white card. He knows that’s why I’m here, to trade it for our lives.
“I’ll give you everything,” Adam says, turning to Margot. “The evidence, your money, every cent of it back with interest. Just let Stella go. She’s innocent. She has nothing to do with this.”
Margot scoffs at the word money, just like Sully predicted. Margot owns jets and mega yachts. She owns houses all over the world, coveted real estate in the most expensive cities, ones she’s filled with priceless artifacts. However much money Adam tricked her out of with those forgeries, a few hundred or a few million, it’s a drop in Margot’s diamond-encrusted bucket. Selling fakes is not a good way to do business. It’s a good way to get yourself killed. There’s no amount of money that will result in us walking out of this place alive.
But that SIM might. I’m counting on it.
My gaze flits to Lucas, and the gun he’s still wearing strapped to his hip. One swipe of his arm and it’ll be pointed at me and Adam. I keep him in my sights, directing my next words to Margot. “I’ve already said I’ll give you the SIM.”
