Page 14 of The Expat Affair
That same night, Thomas and I are seated at a table at Willem’s business club on Dam Square when his finger taps my knee, a silent signal to stop my bobbing leg from rattling the table and his nerves. The board room is far too big for just us four—Fleur and a bored-looking Roland sit in the chairs across from us—but at least the decor snuffs out the noise from the bustling Dam, the navy silks and wood paneling sucking up most of the street sounds. I shove both heels into the thick carpet and clamp my teeth together to hold back a scream.
How do people do this? Smile and kiss their husband when he returns from the business trip that wasn’t? Live with someone who’s lying about where he is, who he’s with, acting like there’s not another woman banging around his brain but who’s sneaky enough to not leave any clues?
Because I spent the entire afternoon searching the house. I turned the place upside down, and there’s nothing there. No more ugly necklaces tucked away in a drawer, no notes or crumpled receipts in his pockets from stores or romantic restaurants, nothing at all to indicate Thomas has been unfaithful or even dishonest.
I glance at him now, his handsome profile as he downloads the newspaper on his phone, his body as relaxed as if he’s lounging on the couch at home. Whatever Thomas’s secrets are, he’s obviously skilled at hiding them.
Roland pushes back his chair, patting his jacket pockets for his pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and Fleur shoots him a look that says don’t you dare.
“What? I’ll step outside.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t miss Papa. He’ll be here any second.”
Will he, though? I check the time on my cell, 7:49, which means we’ve been sitting here for a good twenty minutes. It’s just like Willem to do this, too: summon us here with a come immediately text smack in the middle of dinner, then once we arrive, making us wait.
I stare out the wall of windows at the Royal Palace, lit up and looming over the square, and I wish I was one of those tourists outside, tipping their heads up at the imposing architecture and wondering what kind of shiny, happy people are sitting inside. I look at Fleur and Roland studiously ignoring each other, at Thomas pretending to be engrossed in the news. They’re certainly shiny, but are they happy? Am I?
“A bunch of dusty old rocks.”
Xander’s voice fills my head. We were at some stuffy diamond function, crowded like sardines in a hotel ballroom filled with old-money types, when he shout-whispered the comment in my ear.
He wasn’t referring to the diamonds.
The door swings open and in breezes Willem, Anna close on his heels. They’re dressed for the club in custom silks and designer tweeds, both of them holding fresh drinks because this is cocktail hour and heaven forbid their glasses run dry.
Willem catches Anna’s eye, and she doubles back and shuts the door. The noise from the club below and the square outside dampens to a low murmur, like a faint and distant humming of bees.
“I spoke with Arthur tonight,”
he says as soon as we’re alone. “A security company in Munich specializing in low-light video surveillance systems received an order last spring for a system that’s essentially a carbon copy of the one in the vault.”
At that, Thomas tosses his cell to the table and sits up straighter in his chair, and so does everybody else. The vault means we’re talking about the Cullinans. Willem has our full attention now.
He stretches the moment with a slow sip of his drink, ice chinking in the crystal glass. Without warning, Patrick says to SpongeBob in my head, pinky up!
Willem puts down his glass and leans with both hands on the table, polished to a shine so glossy there are two of him as he stares us down from the head. “The buyer was a front, a fake name attached to a shell corporation, with a PO box address here in Amsterdam. Guess who owns that PO box.”
“Xander,”
Thomas says, and it’s the first name I thought of, too. Across from us, Fleur looks like she agrees. Roland just looks bored.
But Willem shakes his head. “No, it was Frederik Albers. Police found the surveillance system invoice when they searched his house.”
Frederik Albers, the trader Thomas fired after a security guard caught him smuggling in a thumb drive—an unforgivable offense in a company where computers are bolted to the desks. Where no one is permitted to work from home after hours, where there’s a fully stocked cafeteria so that no Prins employee has to worry about a lunch bag. They don’t want employees to bring anything in, mostly so they can forbid them from taking anything out. The drive was empty, but it was hidden in a secret compartment in his water bottle. Thomas fired him on the spot.
Now his face brightens in a way I haven’t seen since the Cullinans disappeared on his watch. “This is excellent news. What did Frederik say? I assume police also questioned him.”
Fleur snorts. “From a jail cell, I hope.”
“They’ll have to find him first.”
Willem sinks into the chair at the head of the table, folding his hands on the table. “Apparently, Frederik has gone underground.”
Thomas frowns. “Since when?”
“Since around the time Xander was killed.”
The board room falls into silence, hot and meaningful. Police have evidence connecting Frederik to the Cullinan theft, but no Frederik. He’s been in hiding since Xander was killed. A diamond trader and a gemologist with a sneaky supply of lab-growns. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out the two were connected by more than just their employment history.
“They were working together,”
Fleur says, getting there quicker than her brother. “If Frederik is spooked enough by Xander’s murder to go into hiding, then that means they were partners somehow. Moving lab-growns, I bet.”
Willem gives her a good-girl nod. “It seems likely, yes. But Arthur also told me something else. A few weeks ago, a woman in Blaricum took a ten-carat solitaire ring her husband gave her for their anniversary in for an appraisal. Apparently, their insurance company required a second assessment for any piece valued at over a million euros. Her husband paid one point four.”
Thomas leans onto an elbow. “I remember that stone. Internally flawless, D color. One of the finest stones I’ve seen in a while.”
“Do you remember who sourced it?”
Thomas frowns, shakes his head. “I only ever spoke to the jeweler.”
“The jeweler who sourced the stone via a trader.”
Willem doesn’t say who, but we all know: Frederik. Frederik was the trader.
“The jeweler did everything right. He tested the stone, had it independently certified, put it through all the correct verification processes. But somewhere between the purchasing of the diamond and getting the ring on the customer’s finger, the stones got switched. The one in the ring the customer received was lab grown, but to the specifics of the original mined stone. Same size, same cut and color, same GIA certification number engraved on the girdle. An identical twin.”
He gives us a moment to process the news. A lab-grown diamond. An exact match to a certified Prins stone including the certification number, a phony copy grown with the intention of fooling the customer and making off with the original diamond. If the insurance company hadn’t insisted on the second appraisal, no one would have ever known.
I have to admit, it’s a pretty brilliant scheme. By the time a stone lands on the consumer’s finger, it’s been touched by dozens of people. The traders, the polishers, the jewelers and who knows how many of their employees. Try proving which one of them made this switch.
And more to the point, this has Xander written all over it.
Thomas blinks. “So where’s the original stone?”
Willem lifts his hands in a silent shrug, but I’m pretty sure he’s thinking the same thing I am: lining the pockets of Xander’s killer. Millions of euros of diamonds missing, and this ten-carat flawless Prins diamond is one of them.
And it won’t be the only one. There would have been a bunch more just like it, mined stones switched out for a lab-grown copy while the customer remains clueless, the stolen stones stuffed in Xander’s safe.
My phone buzzes with an incoming text, and I dig it out of my bag, a familiar worry gathering in my chest. This afternoon, the school sent out an alert that a boy a few years ahead of Sem was diagnosed with fifth disease, a virus that’s not serious unless your name is Sem.
It’s not Martina on the other end, but an unfamiliar number.
That necklace I’ve been seeing all over the news. I want those diamonds too.
And then, right on its heels.
Or would you prefer I ask Thomas?
My skin goes hot then icy cold, and I drop the phone in my bag like it sizzled my fingers. I knew that asshole would be back.
Next to me, Thomas’s breath is sharp and loud, and his hands curl into tight fists on the table. “For Frederik’s sake, he better be deep, deep underground. When I find him, I’m going to murder him.”
Later, much later, I carry my phone into the hallway bathroom and flip the lock, then awaken the screen. The two texts are still sitting at the top of the string.
That necklace I’ve been seeing all over the news. I want those diamonds too.
Or would you prefer I ask Thomas?
For the past couple days, I’ve managed to distract myself with thinking Thomas’s secret was more scandalous than mine. I focused all my energy on his betrayal because it was easier than thinking about how mine came first. I pretended by ignoring the threats and the demands, convincing myself they were finished, even though I’ve always known there would be more coming down the line.
And now, here he is.
My thumbs tap out a reply.
I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I’ve already given you everything we agreed on. I don’t have the necklace, and I can’t get you more diamonds. Stop contacting me on this number.
I hit Block and delete the string, even though the same applies here: I’m well aware it won’t be the end. This man is not going to stop firing off texts just because I tell him to, and I can’t block what seems to be an endless supply of burner numbers. I’m going to have to come up with another way to appease him, and quickly.
He’s already killed for Xander’s diamonds. I have zero doubts he’d do the same to me.
November 17th, 10:54 p.m.
The tour ends in Xander’s study, a dark and moody man cave decorated within an inch of its life. He points me to his sleek desk and I step to one of the chairs, but I don’t sit down. Not yet. The bracelet Thomas gave me weighs heavy on my arm.
Nice bling—that’s what Xander said when he slid into Thomas’s chair at Ciel Bleu, the restaurant on the top floor of the Hotel Okura. Thomas and I were halfway through the fish course when the call came in—yet another after-hours summons from the factory, yet another diamond emergency that no one could handle but him. As usual, Thomas obliged, but not before clasping on my anniversary gift, a platinum cuff smothered in diamonds, including the last surviving Cullinan.
Two minutes later, in walked Xander. Almost like it was planned.
Which it was, of course. I knew it the second his gaze zeroed in on the bracelet.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen one of them in person,” he said.
Them, as in a Cullinan, the eleven-carat whopper that served as the bracelet’s centerpiece. It was like one of those rotating spirals, hypnotizing him, drawing him in. Xander couldn’t keep his eyes off it. He still can’t. All the friendly chitchat, all the flirting and teasing—it was leading to this, to getting the bracelet off my arm.
I cover the bracelet with a palm. “You could have just asked Thomas. I assume he’s been working with the stone for weeks now.”
Not one of the House’s designers. Thomas. He made the bracelet himself, with his own hands. A labor of love. His words, not mine, and a fifth anniversary calls for something special. Inscribed in his handwriting on the inside. For my wife on the occasion of our fifth anniversary.
All that effort, and the best he could do was for my wife. Not for the woman of my dreams. Not for the woman who holds my heart. Not even for . For my wife, which I can’t help but assume he thought would be mighty convenient if he ever wants to find a different one.
Xander shrugs. “The Cullinans are a bit of a sensitive topic with the Prinses these days. No one who isn’t a Prins is allowed within fifty feet.”
An exaggeration, maybe, but he’s probably not all that far off base. Now that the other Cullinans are gone, the value of the one on my wrist has quadrupled. Even here, in the safety of Xander’s penthouse at the top of a well-secured building, the thought makes me jumpy.
“I want to feel the weight of the stone, to look at it under a scope with lights, optical scanners.”
“You gemologists and your rocks,”
I say now with a roll of my eyes. It’s a fascination I will never understand. “And here I thought your thing was lab-growns.”
“It is. They are. I want to lab-grow the shit out of that Cullinan.”
He settles onto the chair across the desk, quirking a brow. “Are you going to sit down?”
I ignore his question, answering with some of my own. “Can you do that? Grow a close copy?”
“No. I can grow an exact one. Exact same weight, exact same cut and color, exact same microscopic occlusions. If I engrave the Cullinan’s cert number on the girdle, not even your husband would be able to tell the difference, not unless he put the stone through a diamond detector, and even then . . .”
He trails off, bobbing a shoulder.
It’s one of the industry’s dirty little secrets, that despite machines meant to identify the origins of the stone, lab-growns still slip into the mined supply all the time. Depending on who you believe, as much as thirty percent. That’s one third of all those buyers shelling out two months of their hard-earned salary for what they think are mined diamonds, getting duped with rocks grown in a lab.
“You don’t have to take the bracelet off, , but do sit down. You’re making me nervous.”
In hindsight, this is the moment that could’ve changed so much. Before all the craziness started, before I added yet another secret to the stockpile. Before I took a step down a road I couldn’t return back from.
But then I think about the phone call that interrupted our anniversary dinner, of Thomas running off and leaving me all alone, of him choosing diamonds yet again over me, of the hurt and the champagne still bubbling around in my veins.
Of Xander, a man on a mission that could complement mine.
I sink onto the chair.