Natasha wondered, as Vladimir’s plane flew her to Paris, if the crew onboard knew that they were serving her for the last time. Had someone told them? Had they been warned? Did they know why she was going? She had on a dress to wear out to dinner when he told her, and she looked like she was going to a party as they landed at Le Bourget airport in Paris. She thanked them, although she hadn’t said a word on the flight, and had sat staring out the window, wondering what would happen now, how she would manage, where she would go. She didn’t know what she had in her bank account or how long it would last. She had to look into all of it, and she would have to get a job. She hadn’t had one since the last factory she worked in, and she knew she wouldn’t go back to Russia. Maybe she could find something at a gallery in Paris. And her heart snagged for a minute when she walked into the apartment on Avenue Montaigne. She had loved putting it together for them nine months before. She had chosen each item and fabric so carefully to make it feel like a home to both of them, and it had. But no more. All she could allow herself to think of now was what she was taking and what she was leaving. Vladimir had been very clear. Only her clothes and her jewelry belonged to her, and none of the art. Except Theo Luca’s portrait of her, which Theo had given her as a gift. Vladimir had never given her art, since he considered it an investment. And she wouldn’t have dreamed of taking anything he didn’t want her to. She knew she was fortunate that he had left her what he had.
She never went to bed that night. She kept walking around trying to absorb what had happened. He had said he could no longer trust her after betraying him, if she had, since he said he wasn’t sure. But she could never have trusted him again either, once she discovered he was a thief and had stolen a hundred million dollars’ worth of art. She wondered what he had been planning to do with it before he changed his mind and returned it. She would never know now. All she did know for certain was that he had had it stolen and concealed it on the boat. It was shocking and a revelation of who he was, in a way she had never understood before.
She kept opening cupboards and closets in the apartment all night and realized that his suggestion to sell what she had had been right. There was no point keeping all the fabulous couture, furs, and evening gowns, the alligator Birkin bags with the diamond clasps. She had nowhere to wear them, and couldn’t imagine herself in that kind of life again. It was the only one she had known for eight years, but she wanted a simple life now, a life where she depended on no one but herself. And she could use the money to live on, after whatever she had in her bank account ran out. She had to call the bank and look into that in the morning.
She was still up when the maid came in at eight, and she asked her to get boxes when the stores opened. She asked no questions, so Natasha knew that someone had warned her that Natasha was moving out. Ludmilla was very quiet as she made a cup of tea and set it down in the bedroom while Natasha went through drawers. And she asked her to set up racks in the long hallway to her dressing room so she could divide things up between what to keep and what to sell. She knew there would be a lot more of the latter. It was like being deported from the life she had known, and becoming a refugee overnight. Ludmilla said nothing to her as Natasha began dragging clothes out of her closets and putting them on the racks. She tried to think in an organized way, but every few minutes she had to stop just to catch her breath, or sit down. She was trying hard not to panic, and not to remember his face and his words when he banished her, standing on the dock in Antibes.
The golden life was gone forever, and she didn’t know if she’d miss it or not. She was about to have the freedom she had longed for occasionally to do what she wanted, that she had given up when she accepted being his mistress. She could get to know people as someone other than the woman who lived by his schedule and waited for his commands. But in many ways, she thought it had been a good life, and a safe one. Or maybe she’d been wrong. She wondered now. She thought of the two women who had been murdered the year before while they were in Sardinia, women like her, whose only crime was that they lived in servitude to the men who kept them and paid their bills. Just being his woman had its risks. She saw that now, but she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on it as she made order in her life, or tried to.
She hung all the gowns on a rack and divided them by designer. They were all haute couture, and she realized quickly that there were far too many for one rack. She filled six racks with them, all with their numbered tags to identify them as haute couture, and she had the presentation drawings to go with them, which she had kept as souvenirs, and the photographs from the fashion shows they were in, with famous models wearing them, before they were handmade for her. She had gone through only the evening gowns by noon, and took a break to lie on her bed for a few minutes and then got distracted by what was in the drawers in her bedroom, mostly papers, and costume jewelry, and some nightgowns, which were all satin and very sexy, the way Vladimir liked them. As she looked at them, she saw them for what they were for the first time, the costumes of a sex object, who wore them to arouse and entice the man who paid her bills. In the end, she had not been so different from her mother, just luckier and better dressed. Now she wanted that to change. She was no longer going to trade sex for protection and a lifestyle. She could see now why Theo Luca had asked her the questions he did, and realized what he must have thought of her. But it hadn’t stopped him from wanting to paint her, and talk to her. She had liked him when they met and would have liked to be friends with him. She thought about calling him at the restaurant to tell him she was glad they had gotten the paintings back, but it didn’t feel right. She had no part in it really. She had informed the police, but Vladimir had had them returned himself, by the same people who had taken them in the first place, without ever being caught by the police. It had been brilliantly done, without a hitch. As revenge for the painting he couldn’t buy, or the one of Natasha. He had proven his point, that he could do whatever he wanted.