I nod. “He got in touch this morning.”
I hope you’re holding the fort there, son. Keep Antoine under control. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
Antoine scowls. He’s Papa’s right-hand man in the family business. But right now, for the time being, I’m the trusted one. That must hurt. But that’s the way it’s always been, our father pitting the two of us against each other in a struggle for scraps of parental affection. Except on the few occasions we unite against a common enemy.
Seventy-Two Hours Earlier
She watches through the shutters as he is carried from the building. Just as she watches everything in this place. Sometimes from her cabin in the garden, sometimes from the recesses of the building where she can spy on them unnoticed.
The body in its improvised shroud is visibly heavy. Already stiffening perhaps, unwieldy. A dead weight.
The lights in the third floor apartment have been on up until now, blazing out into the night. Now they are extinguished and she sees the windows become dark blanks, masking everything inside. But it will take more than that to expunge the memory of what has occurred within.
Now the light in the courtyard snaps on. She watches as they set to work, hidden from the outside world behind the high walls, doing everything that needs to be done.
Seeing him, she thought she would feel something, but there was nothing. She smiles slightly at the thought that his blood will now be part of this place, its dark secret. Well, he liked secrets. His stain will be here forever now, his lies buried with him.
Something terrible happened here tonight. She won’t talk about what she saw, not even over his dead body. No one in this building is entirely innocent. Herself included.
A new light blinks on: four floors up. At the glass she glimpses a pale face, dark hair. A hand up against the pane. Perhaps there is one innocent in this, after all.
Jess
I’m hunting through Ben’s closet in case there’s an outfit an old girlfriend left behind, something I could borrow. Before Theo hung up on me I was going to tell him that I don’t have anything smart to wear this evening. And no time or money to get something—he’s barely given me any warning.
Just for a moment I pause my riffling through Ben’s shirts and pull one of them against my face. Try, from the scent, to conjure him here, to believe that I will see him standing in front of me soon. But already the smell—of his cologne, his skin—seems to have faded a little. It feels somehow symbolic of our whole relationship: that I’m always chasing a phantom.
I drag myself away. Choose the one of my two sweaters that doesn’t have any holes and brush my hair: I haven’t washed it since I arrived, but at least it’s less of a bird’s nest now. I chuck on my jacket. Thread another pair of cheap hoop earrings through my earlobes. I look in the mirror. Not exactly “smart,” but it’ll have to do.
I open the door to the apartment. The stairwell’s pitch-black. I fumble around for the light switch. There’s that whiff of cigarette smoke, but even stronger than usual. It smells almost like someone’s smoking one right now. Something makes me glance up to my left. A sound, perhaps, or just a movement of the air.
And then I catch sight of something out of place: a tiny glowing red dot hovering overhead in the blackness. It takes a moment before I understand what it is. I’m looking at the end of a cigarette butt, held by someone hidden in darkness just above me.
“Who’s there?” I say, or try to say, because it comes out as a strangled bleat. I fumble around for the light switch near the door and finally make contact with it, the lights stuttering on. There’s no one in sight.
My heart’s still beating double time as I walk across the courtyard. Just as I reach the gate to the street, I hear the sound of quick shuffling footsteps behind me. I turn.
It’s the concierge, emerging once more from the shadows. I try to take a step away and when my heel hits metal I realize I’m already backed right up against the gate. She only comes up to my chin—and I’m not exactly big—but there’s something threatening about her nearness.
“Yes?” I ask. “What is it?”
“I have something to say to you,” she hisses. She glances up at the encircling apartment building. She reminds me of a small animal sniffing the air for a predator. I follow her gaze upward. Most of the windows are dark blanks, reflecting the gleam of the streetlamps across the road. There’s only one light on upstairs, in the penthouse apartment. I can’t see anyone watching us—I’m sure this is what she’s checking for—but then I don’t think I’d necessarily be able to spot them if they were.
Suddenly she snatches out a hand toward me. It’s such a swift, violent action that for a moment I really think she’s going to hit me. I don’t have time to step away, it’s too fast. But instead she grabs a hold of my wrist in her claw-like hand. Her grip’s surprisingly strong; it stings.
“What are you doing?” I ask her.
“Just come,” she tells me—and with such authority I don’t dare disobey her. “Come with me, now.”
I’m going to be late for meeting Theo now but he can wait. This feels important. I follow her across the courtyard to her little cabin. She moves quickly, in that slightly stooped way of hers, like someone trying to duck out of a rainstorm. I feel like a child in a storybook being taken to the witch’s hut in the woods. She looks up at the apartment building several more times, as though scanning it for any onlookers. But she seems to decide that it’s worth the risk.
Then she opens the door and ushers me in. It’s even smaller inside than it looks on the outside, if that’s possible. Everything is crammed into one tiny space. There’s a bed attached to the wall by a system of pulleys and currently raised to allow us to stand; a washstand; a minuscule antique cooking stove. Just to my right is a curtain that I suppose must lead through to a bathroom of some sort—simply because there’s nowhere else for it to be.