Page 28 of The Expat Affair

I drop the phone into my coat pocket and study the building across the street, a four-story monstrosity of sprawling yellow brick dotted with grimy windows that once upon a time, served as a warehouse for Amsterdam’s lumber ports. The address Fleur texted is all the way north in the houthavens, a miserable spot this time of year, an area pressed up against the IJ River. An icy gale whips up hard enough to almost knock me over. I lean into it and hurry across the deserted street. Somewhere behind those ugly yellow walls, Fleur has Sem.

On the bike ride here, I had almost a half an hour to think about why my sister-in-law would lure me to a sketchy warehouse in an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of town, in secret. I think of the lies she spun to pick Sem up from school, the lengths she went to bring him here so that I would have to fetch him, her warning not to tell Thomas.

Jan’s words beat through my head. Think who had the most to gain. At least three of them go by the name of Prins.

But what do Sem and I have to do with any of it?

I clomp up the metal stairs and push through the plain door, then take a rickety elevator to the top floor. A bright space of exposed brick and filthy concrete, lit up by giant arched windows along the back wall. The air smells of stale dust and something animal.

There’s only one way for me to go: down a single hallway with a door on either side. The first handle I try doesn’t budge, but the door on the left gives way to a bright rectangular room lined with more arched windows, the glass dirty and cracked, the sun lighting up spiderwebs of fissures that stretch up into the building’s eaves. At the far end, a wall of more filthy glass with what looks to be an industrial kitchen on the other side.

And Sem. He sits in his coat at a metal table, head in his hands, staring at a flickering iPad.

And just beyond him: Fleur.

She stands at the stove, pouring steaming water into two mugs and looking like she came straight from work. Dark pants and a slim-cut sweater poking out from her winter coat, a fur-lined Moncler I’ve never seen before. It hangs unzipped despite the temperature in here, as frigid as the air outside. I stare at Sem through the glass—look up look up look up—but his implants are Bluetooth enabled, and whatever he’s watching is keeping his attention on the screen.

At least he doesn’t look frightened. His cheeks are pink from the chill, but he seems otherwise content, engrossed in the winking cartoons.

Fleur turns my way, coming through a door at the end of the glass wall with the two mugs and a bright smile. “You’re fast. Did you come by bike or tram?”

She says it in Dutch and in the same tone she’d use during a Sunday supper, cordial and light, as if this isn’t kidnapping and she called me here for a friendly visit.

“Cut the crap and just tell me what we’re doing here.”

My answer is in English, my mind far too flustered to work through a Dutch translation—not that there is a good one for cut the crap. Some of the best English phrases can’t be translated. “Why all the subterfuge?”

“Subterfuge?”

Fleur says, matching my English. “Such a fancy word for someone who didn’t go to university.”

It’s a cheap shot, and Fleur knows it. I’ve never actually let on that my lack of education is a sore subject, but my sister-in-law is proficient in sensing another person’s insecurities and tucking them away in a pocket until she can use them as ammunition. I blink at the insult, but that’s my only external reaction.

“I’m educated enough to know that you’re changing the subject.”

She hands me one of the mugs, then fishes the tea bag out of her own cup, dunks it up and down a couple of times, then drops it on the floor with a splat. “Like I told you on the phone, I have something I’d like to discuss, and the old ways of doing things weren’t getting me anywhere.”

Like luring me to lunch so she can tell me about Thomas’s gun. Like pretending she was worried about his well-being. I wonder now if any of what she told me that day was true.

“So you kidnapped my son?”

I cast a lightning glance at Sem, who still hasn’t noticed me yet, and I’m starting to think maybe that’s a good thing. Until I know what Fleur wants, it’s probably better he doesn’t listen in.

“I’m not going to hurt him. I’m not a monster. But this does concern Sem, too.”

She shrugs.

“Concerns him how?”

“We’ll get to that, I promise, but first I need to know I have your full and utter attention.”

My hand grips the mug handle, and it’s everything I can do to not hurl it, hot tea and all, at her head. When I’m sure my voice is controlled, I say, “You have a lot more than just my attention, Fleur.”

She gives me a smile that might as well be an eye roll. “Do you know what it’s like to grow up in a family like mine? What am I saying? Of course you don’t. You and I, we are not the same. We are nowhere close.”

“That’s not the insult you think it is, FYI. But do go on.”

It’s like I didn’t even speak. Fleur keeps talking right over me. “I was told which clubs to join, which schools to go to. Which friends I should surround myself with because Your network is your net worth, Fleur. Choose wisely. Being a Prins is a full-time job, and it started the day I was born.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“My whole, entire life, I’ve done every single thing my father expected of me. I studied the subjects he told me to and got the degrees he said would help me cement Prins’s role as the premier diamond house worldwide. I graduated first in my class in high school and university, brought home perfect grades because my father accepted nothing less from me than to be the very best. I was back behind my desk four days after giving birth to twins—twins, —because I was taught that nothing and no one was more important than the holy House of Prins. My birthright. My destiny. All my life, I’ve done everything right, while Thomas Prins can do whatever the hell he wants to do.”

Ah. Understanding clicks like a light flipping on. “This is about Thomas’s job.”

“It’s my job. Mine.”

She stabs a thumb at her chest with so much force, tea sploshes over the mug and onto the floor. “I was promised that CEO role. I’m the firstborn. It belongs to me.”

Suddenly, it occurs to me that any woman who would take a child wouldn’t hesitate to spike a cup of tea. I lean over to put my mug on the floor, keeping my eyes on Fleur and beyond, Sem still staring at the iPad. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it. I can’t control Willem, or even Thomas for that matter.”

“Oh, come on, , you’re smarter than that.”

“Just a minute ago, you called me uneducated.”

“Let me ask you this. What do you think Thomas sees in you?”

Fleur’s jab is sharp, and it hits harder than she knows. What does Thomas see in me? Not that much, apparently, especially now that there’s Cécile.

“God, do you remember Mama’s expression when he brought you home that first time? Your hair and your accent and your clothes. Your clothes. You were like a caricature of yourself, the poor little Southern girl straight out of the trailer park.”

It wasn’t a trailer park, but it was close. A dilapidated duplex on the wrong side of town, pressed between a grocery store and a highway. It had bars on every window and jammers on every door, and every night I fell asleep to the sound of shootings and drag races and a constant hum of tires slapping the pavement.

But Fleur is right about one thing: that skirt was awful.

I lean a shoulder against the wall, knocking loose a mini avalanche of dust. “Give me at least a little credit, Fleur. No, I didn’t have the kind of luxury you and Thomas do, but when I met Thomas I was making it work. I’d figured out how to take care of myself. Maybe that’s what Thomas saw in me, that I’m a survivor.”

“You were a project, . Someone for Thomas to save. Something for him to design and make shiny and pretty so he can hang it on an arm and show it off to the world.”

Again, Fleur is not wrong. Thomas’s love isn’t for the business side of the House. He doesn’t really care about market trends or revenue streams unless it gives him an excuse to work with the master jewelers on the factory floor. That’s the job Thomas really wants, sketching and coloring and casting the next House piece, making something spectacular out of heat and pressure and air.

Like the bracelet. Like the new, lab-grown line. Like Cécile.

And like me, once upon a time. Somewhere along the way, though, I lost my shine.

“Can you just get to the point?”

I say because Fleur doesn’t deserve my truth. She doesn’t deserve to know how close she is to poking my sore spot. “Tell me why we’re here.”

“The point is, ”—she pauses to give me a sweet, closed-lipped smile—“I need you and Sem to leave.”

“You lured me all the way over to the houthavens so you could tell us to leave?”

“Yes. Get on a plane and fly back to wherever you came from. Georgia, Florida, another Podunk town in one of those redneck states, I don’t care which. Just take Semmy and go. You can file for divorce from there.”

“First of all, why would I do that? How does me leaving Thomas help you get his job?”

“It doesn’t. But it does ensure that my girls get everything.”

Fleur’s words that day at the funeral ring through my head, clear as a bell. We were standing in the parking lot, the girls eager to get back to their hockey practices and their lives. They wanted to know why they were required to attend the funeral of a man they barely knew.

Because you and your sister are next in line. The future faces of House of Prins. Because one day, this company will belong to the two of you . . .

When I pushed back, when I reminded Fleur it would also belong to Sem, she said of course it would, but her girls were older and would get there first. That was all she meant by it—or so she said. She was lying to me then, too.

“You wouldn’t be completely starting over, so you know. I’m not that cruel.”

With her free hand, she tugs a bag from her pocket, a velvet Prins pouch. She gives it a little shake, rattling the contents. “Fifty stones. Not anything like what Thomas has in the vault at home, of course, but all Prins quality, all of them loupe clean. According to today’s index, worth a half a million euros, give or take. That is, assuming you know where to sell them.”

I don’t miss the way the diamonds in the vault are Thomas’s, not mine.

“And you think Thomas would be okay with that? Sem is his son. I can’t just pick up and move to the other side of the world. He’d never allow it.”

“He would if he knew the truth.”

A chill shimmies up my spine, shooting a shiver across both shoulders. My gaze flashes to my son behind the glass. His iPad lies flat on the table, but his eyes are on me, watching the interaction between me and Fleur, and for once, I’m glad he has little interest in learning to read lips. I sign an order: Stay there.

Fleur steps closer, the steam from her mug rising in wispy puffs over her face. “Who is Sem’s father, ? Do you even know?”

Yes, of course I know. He’s a musician, a drummer and backup singer I met one night at Northside Tavern when Thomas and I were still in our early days. Sometimes, when Sem cries, I see Rocco’s expression as he leans into the microphone, screwing up that beautiful face in order to hit the high notes. That night at the Tavern, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

“Thomas,”

I say, making sure to hold Fleur’s gaze. “Thomas is Sem’s father.”

“Not according to their DNA, he’s not.”

I always knew this was a possibility, but honestly, I thought those first, niggling doubts would come from Thomas. I figured Thomas would wonder where Sem’s hearing loss came from when more than fifty percent of cases in babies are genetic, or why Sem is left-handed when every Prins in history has used their right. I thought it would be Thomas who’d question all the differences between them, Sem’s cowlick that won’t obey no matter how much gel you slather on or his fat, stubby fingers when Thomas’s and mine are long and thin. If he was suspicious, he never said a word.

And look, it’s not like I actually knew. I didn’t know for sure who Sem’s father was, not until much, much later. By then, the drummer had moved on to some dive on the Florida panhandle, Thomas and I were married and living here, and Sem had held on for twenty-nine whole weeks. He was in neonatal intensive care at Amsterdam UMC, a purple and tiny wriggling thing under a warmer and attached to a heart monitor, and the spitting image of his father.

And at that point, what was I supposed to do? Say to Thomas, Oops, on second thought I guess he’s not yours? I couldn’t do that to him, but mostly, I couldn’t do that to Sem. Sem wasn’t out of the woods, not by a long shot, and my access to Dutch healthcare was dependent on my visa, and my visa was dependent on Thomas and the two of us sharing a home and a bed. If Thomas had tossed me out or worse, put me on the next westward-bound plane, it would have been a death sentence for Sem. I swallowed down the secret, and then pushed aside the nagging worries that Thomas would one day find out. I sacrificed my old life to exist in my new one—a life everyone wanted, but Sem needed. For Sem, being a Prins was life or death.

And no, it didn’t hurt that by then, I knew the kind of wealth Sem stood to inherit. My future has only been as secure as my marriage, but as a Prins, Sem would be set up for life. The best schools, the best lineage, the best medical care for the rest of his hopefully long days. No way in hell I was walking away from all that.

Regardless, Dutch law is very clear. If Fleur shares the DNA results with Thomas and he discovers I’ve willfully deceived him, he can petition the court to revoke his fatherhood, and retroactively from the moment Sem was born. Thomas would no longer be Sem’s father. Sem would lose his Dutch passport, his family, every single Prins privilege.

Maybe Fleur is bluffing. Maybe she doesn’t have the DNA results in her back pocket, but the bigger question is, what will Thomas do? Would he hate me enough for the deception to walk away from Sem?

Thomas, who is too busy making love to Cécile to eat dinner with us or tuck his son into bed. Who wishes he was coming home to her instead of us. Before Cécile, I would have said no, Thomas would never turn his back on Sem, but Cécile has thrown a wrench into things. My gaze wanders to my son, to his misbehaving hair and those pudgy fingers I fear will never lengthen, and the truth is, I just don’t know.

I push off the wall, my gaze returning to Fleur. “Okay, I’m listening.”