Page 88 of Happily Ever After

Dieter really should have asked why they didn’t. It might have led him to suspect Basch Favre’s bratva connections before he’d betrayed them. “They went to the Zurich police.”

“Oh.”

“Océane, if you don’t want to be implicated, you need to talk to people now, starting tomorrow morning.”

“Are you sure this is real?” she asked, frowning hard. “If I would’vegone to the Geneva police, they would have made the report disappear, and then the Ilyin Bratva would have made my kids disappear.”

“I’m sure. I’d trust the guy with my life. He’s come through for me before,” Dieter said, though he didn’t mention Magnus Jensen by name.

“And the Zurich police?” she asked.

“If he says they’re clean, they’re clean.”

She glanced down the wide hallway that leddeeper into the house. “I’ll contact them tomorrow morning.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded, though she swallowed hard. “We’ll have to go into hiding, won’t we?”

“I’m not sure,” Dieter told her. “The Ilyin Bratva should be in chaos after what happened. I shot Piotr Ilyin.”

“He’s dead. So is father.”

Dieter had known that in his gut.“Elands.”

“Kids!”she whispered and gestured to the door.

“He was pointing a gun at me. He would have shot me,” Dieter explained, though shame flooded him.

Océane nodded, though she stared at her feet. “Yes, our father would have shot you. You had no choice.” Her voice was almost a monotone.

“It sounds like you knew this.”

She nodded again, and when she looked up at him, her gray eyes brimmed with tears. “I know what he was, and I know exactly howhe would have handled such a thing. He has threatened my kids for years, though subtly, obliquely. I’m glad he’s dead.”

Dieter’s mouth dropped open.“Jesus,Océane.”

“Well, he had to control all of us, right? With me, he determined that if he had someone show up at one of my kids’ kindergarten classes and take them outside, hand them a flower, and then have the child give that flower to me,I would do absolutely anything he wanted, no questions asked.”

Dieter’s chest clenched at the memory of Valerian threatening Alina. “All this time?”

She nodded. “All these years. The kids don’t understand what was going on, really. I’ll have to tell them.”

He wrapped his arms around her again, and Océane buried her face in his chest. She said, “I’ll do whatever the police say.”

“That’s best.”

She shook him off. “Where will you sleep tonight?”

“I don’t know. We’re just surviving.”

“Scheisse,Raphael!”

“Kids?” he asked, pointing into Océane’s house.

“Go get Flicka,” Océane demanded. “You have to stay with me.”

Dieter didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t trust Océane, his sister, but so many betrayals made him wary. “We’ll be all right.”