I had to do something. I loved him. Ben had betrayed me. He had destroyed my whole world. But I loved him.
I reached for the nearest thing at hand. And then I ran down the stairs so quickly it felt as though my feet weren’t even touching the ground. The door to Ben’s apartment was open and Papa was standing over him and I just had to make him stop—I had to make him stop and at the same time maybe there was a little voice inside me saying: he’s not really your papa, this man. And he’s not a good man. He’s done some terrible things. And now he’s about to become a killer too.
Ben was on the ground and his eyes were closed. And then I was behind Papa—he hadn’t seen me, hadn’t heard me creep into the room—and I had my canvas cutting knife in my hand and it’s small but the blade is sharp, so very sharp, and I raised it above my head . . .
And then nothing.
And then the blood.
Later, I thought I heard the sound of voices in the courtyard. I heard the scrape of shovels. It didn’t make any sense. Maman likes to garden, but it was dark, nighttime. Why was she doing it now? It couldn’t be real: it had to be a dream. Or some kind of nightmare.
Nick
Second floor
I remember leaving Papa’s study after I had told him what Ben had been up to, what he was writing about. I had called him home, told him there was something he needed to hear. As I descended the staircase I thought about the look on his face. The barely controlled rage. A charge of fear that returned me to childhood; when he wore that expression it was time to make yourself scarce. But at the same time I felt a frisson of perverse pleasure, too. At bursting the Benjamin Daniels bubble. At showing Papa that his famous judgment wasn’t always as sound as he thought, tarnishing the golden boy he had briefly seemed to hold closer than his own sons. I had betrayed Ben, yes, but in a much smaller way than he had betrayed me and my family’s hospitality. He had it coming.
Any feeling of triumph soured quickly. Suddenly I wanted to be numb. I went and took four of the little blue pills and lay in my apartment in an oxycodone haze.
Maybe I was aware of some kind of commotion upstairs, I don’t know—it was like it was happening in another universe. But after a while, as the pills began to wear off, I thought perhaps I should go and see what was going on.
I met Antoine on the stairs. Could smell the booze on him: he must have been passed out in yet another drunken stupor.
“What the fuck’s happening?” he asked. His tone was gruff, but there was something fearful in his expression.
“I have no idea,” I said. This wasn’t quite true. Already, an unnameable suspicion was forming in my mind. We climbed to the third floor together.
The blood. That was the first thing I saw. So much of it. Sophie in the middle of it all.
“There’s been a terrible accident.” That was what she told us.
I knew in an instant that this was my fault. I had set all of this in motion. I knew what kind of man my father was. I should have known what he might be driven to do. But I had been so blinded by my own anger, my sense of betrayal. I had told myself I was protecting my family. But I also wanted to lash out. To hurt Ben somehow. But this . . . the blood, that terrible, inert form wrapped in the curtain shroud. I could not look at it.
In the bathroom I vomited as though I could expel the horror like something I had eaten. But of course it did not leave me. It was part of me now.
Somehow I pulled myself together. Ben was beyond help. I knew I had to do this, now, for the survival of the family.
The terrible weight of the body in my arms. But none of it felt real. Part of me thought that if I looked at Ben’s face it would make it real. Perhaps that was important, for some sort of closure. But in the end I couldn’t bring myself to do it. To undo all that tight binding, to confront what lay beneath.
So you see, this is what happened. Three nights ago Ben died—and we buried him.
Didn’t we?
Sophie
Penthouse
From the moment I saw her, covered in blood—my husband’s blood—I acted so quickly, almost without thought. Everything I did was to protect my daughter. It is possible that I was in shock too but my mind seemed very clear. I have always been single-minded, focused. Able to make the best out of a bad situation. It’s how I ended up with this life, after all.
I knew that if I were to have the cooperation of his sons, their help in this, Jacques would have to be alive. I knew that it had to be Benjamin who had died. Before I wrapped the body I had held Jacques’ phone up to his face, unlocked it, changed the passcode. I have kept it on me ever since, messaging Antoine and Nicolas as their papa. The longer I could keep Jacques “alive,” the more I could get out of his sons.
After I had done what I could for Benjamin—stemming the blood with a towel, cleaning the wounds—the concierge and I brought him up here to the chambres de bonne. He was too concussed to struggle; too badly injured to try and free himself. Here I’ve been keeping him alive—just. I’ve been giving him water, scraps of food: the other day a quiche from the boulangerie. All until I could decide what to do with him. He was so badly wounded that it might have been easier to let nature take its course. But we had been lovers. There was still that reminder of what we had briefly been to each other. I am many things: a whore, a mother, a liar. But I am not a killer. Unlike my beloved daughter.
“Jacques has gone away for a while,” I told my stepsons, when they arrived. “It is best that no one knows he was here in Paris tonight. So as far as you know, should anyone ask, he has been away the entire time on one of his trips. Yes?”
They nodded at me. They have never liked me, never approved of me. But in their father’s absence they were hanging on my every word. Wanting to be told what to do, how to act. They have never really grown up, either of them. Jacques never allowed them to.
I think of the gratitude that I’d felt to Jacques in the beginning, for “rescuing” me from my previous life. I didn’t realize at the time how cheaply I had been bought. I didn’t free myself when I married my husband, as I’d thought. I didn’t elevate myself. I did the exact opposite. I married my pimp: I chained myself to him for life.
Perhaps my daughter did the very thing I hadn’t had the courage to do.
Jess
I grip the knife, ready to defend Ben—and myself—should either of them come closer. Strangely, they don’t seem so threatening right now. The air feels less charged with tension. Nick is looking from Sophie to Ben and back; his eyes wild. Something else is going on here, something I can’t understand. And yet still I grip the knife. I can’t let my guard down.
“My husband is dead,” Sophie Meunier says. “That is what happened.” At these words I watch Nick stagger backward. He didn’t know?