Page 31 of The Expat Affair

Willow and Fleur whirl around, and their twin masks of surprise would be comical if there weren’t a loaded gun pointed at my chest. They take in Lars and the weapon in his hand, the way he’s positioned himself so he can cover all of us at the same time. Ingrid and me huddled in our winter coats a few feet away, Willow and Fleur in theirs just beyond. None of us move, but Fleur is the first to recover.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

Her voice is all Prins haughtiness and bravado, her question directed at Lars and Ingrid but not at me. Her eyes brush right over mine and keep going. “This is a private meeting. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Before any of us can answer, Willow’s gaze finds mine across the dusty space. “You got my message.”

She’s standing by one of the arched windows by the exposed brick wall, her face lit up with dingy sun streaming through from outside, a beacon for the emotions simmering there: surprise, shock, determination. Her son, Sem, sits like a statue behind a wall of filthy glass.

Not a question, but I nod anyway.

“Did you do what I asked?”

Call the detective. Tell him a child’s life is in danger and to hurry.

I don’t think Sem has spotted the gun in Lars’s fist just yet, but he knows enough to be afraid. His eyes are wide, the skin of his mouth stretched tight. Half hidden behind the flap of her coat, Willow signs words he must understand, because his gaze sticks to her hand while hers sticks to mine.

I look lightning quick to Lars and shake my head, hoping she gets the message behind the gesture. No, I didn’t call the detective. I didn’t get the chance. No one is coming to save us, and perhaps even more pressing, no one but us knows we’re here.

“Well, I did.”

Willow hooks a thumb in the chain strap of her Chanel bag, hanging from a shoulder. “I did what you asked.”

I nod because I understand, too. This is not Willow, one-upping me. This is her, telling me a secret packed in our mutual gaze. Willow has the gun we talked about. It’s in her bag. I just pray she knows how to use it.

Lars has had enough of our back and forth. He raises the gun, stretching his arm long so she’s staring down the barrel. “Stop fucking around and give me my diamonds.”

This is the place where Willow is supposed to look shocked. Where she says something like, What are you talking about? What diamonds?

But that’s not what she says at all.

“You already got your diamonds.”

It shouldn’t sting as much as it does, the realization that Willow lied—or at the very least, concealed her involvement here. Despite what I said to Lars earlier, the two of us are not friends. She owes me nothing, not even an explanation. I tell myself I shouldn’t care.

And yet . . .

And yet.

She meets my gaze, only for a second or two before it flits away.

Lars cocks his head and scowls. “You think I’d be standing here right now if I had those stones? When I said you’d never see my face again, I meant it.”

“And yet here you are.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Willow sounds annoyed.

“Uh, yeah.”

Lars’s eyes go wide. “That’s because they weren’t there. The safe you said would be stuffed with stones was empty. Somebody cleaned it out before I got there.”

Willow flips the clasp on the front of her bag, a move she disguises behind a subtle shift to her right. “Nice try, but I’m not buying it.”

“What, you think I’m lying? I’m telling you, somebody else got there first. They took the diamonds you swore would be there.”

“I swore nothing.”

“Hang on, hang on.”

Fleur holds up both hands, her gaze bounces between them. “You know him? She knows you?”

“Yes, Willow knows me,”

Lars says at the same time Willow says, “No,”

but I don’t know why she bothers. All this talk about diamonds, the cleaned-out safe, the accusations of lying. By now we’ve all figured out that Lars isn’t exactly a stranger.

“I’m the guy she hired to kill Xander.”

Lars’s words fall like a bomb into the room.

I gasp as Willow gives a hard shake of her head. “No. No. I didn’t hire you to kill him. I hired you to clean out his safe.”

Fleur takes a step to the side, putting some distance between them. “You hired a hit man?”

“I just told you, I hired a thief who as it turns out is also a murderer. I never said to kill Xander. I gave him the safe code and said he could have everything in there, and that’s it. I definitely didn’t tell him to cut off Xander’s finger and strangle him with a zip tie. That’s all on Lars.”

Fleur makes a face, and I know she’s picturing it, too, Xander dead and bloody on the floor. For his sake, I just hope he was dead by the time Lars pulled out the knife. I hope he was at least spared that agony.

Next to me, Ingrid releases a long, weary breath. “Do I really need to be here for this? I’m already late for work.”

“Shut up,”

Lars barks, turning to Ingrid just long enough for Willow to sign something to her son, a rapid-fire movement of her hands that I don’t understand, but Sem does. He gives her a slow, solemn nod. Ingrid sees it, too, but she doesn’t let on. She gathers her teddy bear coat snug around her neck and mumbles something in Dutch, her breath sending curls of condensation into the frigid air.

Lars aims his gun back at Willow. “Listen to me, hear what I’m telling you. Xander was already dead when I got there. His safe was already empty. I saw the body and I got the hell out of there.”

“Is this some kind of trick? Because I already paid you plenty. As I recall, twenty thousand euros.”

“C’mon, Willow. You and I both know the diamonds were the real incentive.”

“What diamonds?”

Fleur says, turning to Willow. “You promised this guy diamonds?”

“The diamonds that were in Xander’s safe!”

Willow says, as much to Fleur as to Lars. She shifts her body another step to the right, and I see where she’s going, why she keeps creeping further into the room. She’s aiming for the spot between Sem and Lars’s gun so she can plant her body between the two.

The only problem is, she’s doing more than putting herself in the path of a bullet. She’s dragging Lars’s gaze to the wall of glass. Step by step, little by little. Another meter or two, and it’ll be hard not to notice the little boy sitting behind it.

“Why, though?”

Fleur whirls to face Lars, not willing to let it go. “Why did she hire you to steal the contents of Xander’s safe? What did she tell you was in there?”

Fleur is not the only one here who doesn’t understand. Willow hired Lars to creep through Xander’s apartment, to search the rooms one by one until he found the safe, which Lars claims was empty. So . . . what? He murdered Xander out of fury? For revenge? I don’t understand any of this.

“Did you know I was there? Did you see me sleeping?”

It’s like I didn’t even speak. My words don’t register with Lars, with anyone. They’re all too focused on the missing diamonds, the empty safe.

Ingrid lets loose another sigh. “Can I just go? Seriously. This has nothing to do with me.”

It’s too many questions coming at Lars at the same time, and from too many people. He swipes an arm through the air, poking the gun first at Ingrid, then me. “You two, shut up.”

Fleur is next: “Lady, I don’t fucking know. Willow wanted those diamonds gone. She paid me to make them disappear. It’s not my job to ask why.”

And then, finally, he aims his words and weapon at Willow. “A safe stuffed with diamonds, that’s what I was promised.”

“Not by me! I never promised you that.”

“Twelve diamonds worth a million, assuming you know where to sell them, plus an eleven-and-three-quarter-carat, internally flawless, original Prins-cut diamond that will net you millions—plural.”

He glances at Fleur, lifting a single shoulder. “Probably not a direct quote, but you get the gist.”

“Eleven and three-quarter carats,”

Fleur says, her voice flat. She turns to Willow, watching her through squinted eyes. “Internally flawless. Original Prins cut.”

“The Cullinan is in the vault at home. Ask Thomas. We just saw it.”

“And the other twelve stones?”

Willow juts a thumb in Lars’s direction; her other hand reaches under the flap of her Chanel bag. “You’re going to believe this guy? Honestly, Fleur. I thought you were smarter than that.”

Willow has a point. Lars is a thief. An admitted criminal who doesn’t seem all that opposed to murder. It’s not all that far of a stretch to think he’s a liar, too.

But also, there’s this: What are the chances? Two thieves, both sneaking past locked doors and security cameras to break into Xander’s penthouse on the same day, likely only minutes apart. I don’t believe Lars’s story, either.

But Fleur seems to. She glares at her sister-in-law, her fingers brushing over a lump in her coat pocket, tapping whatever’s in there until it makes a muted chinking sound. “Yes, I believe him, because I know the kind of stones Xander was peddling. I know he was growing matches and switching them out.”

Willow arches a plucked brow. “How, because you were helping him?”

“Helping him? You think I was helping him?”

Willow’s hand fishes around in the bottom of her bag, and what’s taking her so long? Also, what’s her plan here—to shoot Lars through her Chanel bag? To whip out the gun and take him by surprise? I try to catch her eye, but Willow keeps her focus on Fleur.

“There’s no way Xander could have gotten away with it for this long, not without help from someone inside the House. How else would he have known which stones to copy? Which diamonds were headed for jewelers in on the scheme? If anyone found out what Xander was doing, if consumers found out the rock they paid hundreds of thousands of euros for was worth only a tenth of that, it would be the end of the lab-grown line. Thomas’s pet project, destroyed. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.”

Fleur laughs, a harsh, angry sound. “What about the twelve diamonds in Xander’s safe? Tell us about those, Willow. What were you planning to do with them?”

Lars scowls, running his free hand over his chin. “What do you mean, grow a match? A match to what?”

“Xander would have needed copies of the certs,”

Willow says, ignoring everyone but Fleur. “He could have requested them from the grading institutes, but not without raising suspicion. But you could. You could get him those certs, and then he could use them as blueprints to grow stones with the exact same weights, exact same measurements and colors, exact same crystals or clouds or feathers in the exact same spots.”

Willow is yelling now, two bright spots glowing on her cheeks, same as Fleur’s.

Fleur fills her lungs and yells right back, “What about you? You had Xander grow a copy of the Cullinan, and for what? What were you planning to do with it, Willow, and what are those other twelve—”

“OH MY GOD ENOUGH.”

Ingrid’s shriek is loud enough to pierce an eardrum. An icy wind pushes through the cracks in the arched windows on the wall, rattling the glass enough to rain dirt and mortar onto the floor, but otherwise the room is silent.

“You’re both right,”

she says. “Fleur told Xander which diamonds to copy and which traders and jewelers would be willing to switch out the stones for a cut. The mined stones he gave to me, to move on the black market. Willow asked him to grow copies of twelve Prins stones, that rock on her finger, the Cullinan, a whole bunch of others. But Xander got spooked. He was convinced someone was on to him. I’m guessing that’s why she hired Lars to get those stones out of Xander’s safe, before he did something really crazy and told her husband what Willow was planning with those twelve rocks.”

“Which was?”

Lars says, but Willow doesn’t have to answer. The rest of us already know.

We all know that none of that jewelry Willow is wearing, the ring and the studs in her ears and whatever else is under all those layers of cashmere and lambswool, belongs to her.

Same with the money.

She told me as much that day in the café.

I have access to dough.

Not at all the same thing as having it.

I think of her face when she told me about her husband’s affair, her worries about what would happen to her son, to his health, once she no longer has access to a Prins bank account.

Willow’s plans for Xander’s lab-growns were the same as his: to set them in the pieces her husband gave her, to switch them out for the original, mined stones.

Twelve flawless Prins diamonds for her to sell, and nobody but her and Xander would know the difference.

Not unless they put the stones through a machine, and even then, why would they suspect anything? Lab-grown diamonds look, feel, and sparkle exactly like their mined counterparts.

Honestly, it’s kind of brilliant.

The answer clicks in Lars’s mind, too. “Fakes? You sent me there for fakes?”

“Lab-grown diamonds aren’t fake. They’re exactly like mined diamonds in composition and fire and sparkle. They’re still worth a lot of money, especially that copy of the Cullinan. Maybe not millions plural, but still a big nu—”

“They’re fucking fakes!”

he says, cutting her off. “I don’t want lab-grown diamonds. I want the real thing. I want what you owe me, you bitch.”

When she doesn’t respond, he raises the gun and stalks forward, four long strides until it’s pressed against her forehead.

“Here.”

Willow tugs her hand from her bag and wriggles the ring from her finger, holding it out to Lars. “That middle stone is very valuable. I’d give you more, but these and the earrings are all I’m wearing.”

She gives him those, too, then shoves up her sleeves to show him her empty wrists, tugs her coat away from her naked neck.

Lars drops the pieces in his pocket, then swivels the barrel to Fleur. “Now you.”

It takes Fleur a full sixty seconds to peel it all off. Multiple rings, the marble-sized solitaires in her ears, a couple of bracelets and glittery pendants tangled in chains around her neck. “This is it. There’s no more.”

Lars is gearing up for a protest when it happens. His gaze drifts over Willow’s shoulder and locks on the little body sitting stock-still behind the glass, staring at his mother’s right hand. Willow takes a big step to her right, a human wall smack into the path between them, but it’s too late. Lars has already seen.

His face spreads into a smile and he lowers the gun, tucking it behind his big body. “Hey, kid. Come here. Your mom and I want to talk to you.”