Page 34 of The Expat Affair

I’m seated on my favorite couch in the sunroom, waiting for Thomas to get home. Martina is gone, sent home early so I can have this moment with him alone, even though I’m not—alone, that is. The floorboards creak above my head; Rayna and Sem playing in his room upstairs. She and I haven’t talked about what happened yet, but I saw the way she looked at me at the houthavens. Rayna is angry, but not angry enough that she refused my offer to stay here tonight. I need to make amends with her, but first I need to talk to Thomas.

Outside, it’s getting dark, the bottom of the sky glowing orange with the sun’s last gasp. I look out over the pretty backyard, the relentlessly blustery wind shaking the trees and the tiny lumps of dirt that in a few weeks I know will be crocus buds, and it hits me then. I’m going to miss this place. I’m going to miss this house and this view and Martina bustling around the kitchen.

But I’m not going to miss being a Prins.

On the other side of the house, the front door swings open and shut, followed by a familiar thud, Thomas’s briefcase hitting the foyer floor. It’s followed by the chink of metal in the china bowl where he always drops his keys. He comes down the polished marble tiles, the same tiles he and hundreds of other men have walked down for more than a hundred years.

“?”

“In the sunroom.”

When I called him earlier to tell him what happened at the houthavens, I repeated the same story we told the detective. He was too traumatized by Sem facing down a gun to notice all the plot holes or ask why his sister had a bag of fifty diamonds, but I know those questions are coming at some point. What I don’t yet know is how much I’m prepared to tell him.

On the carpet by my feet, Ollie is traumatized, too, or at least he senses my own trauma, the way my body is still vibrating with residual fear. He sits up straighter at the sounds of Thomas in the hallway, but his body stays glued to my legs. He hasn’t left my side since Sem and I got home, now a couple of hours ago.

Thomas appears in his coat and scarf, looking around the room for Sem. When he doesn’t find him, his eyebrows draw together in a tight pucker.

“Sem’s upstairs.”

I point to the ceiling, where the floorboards creak above my head. “He’s fine. Playing video games with Rayna up in his room. I told her she could stay the night. She’s keeping him busy so we can talk.”

Thomas nods. He hasn’t met Rayna yet, but he knows what she did for me and Sem. He collapses on the opposite end of the couch, the tails of his coat bunching up on the cushion beneath him, and looks at me across the approaching darkness. He’s only a few feet away, but there’s so much distance between us. Too much for us to bridge.

“I want a divorce.”

“What?”

His gaze whips to mine, and he genuinely seems unable to comprehend, but it’s an act. Just because he doesn’t have the balls to say those words out loud doesn’t mean he disagrees. His hands are tight claws on his knees.

“A divorce, Thomas. And not just because of Cécile. Because you never should have married me in the first place.”

He doesn’t deny either, which is a surprise at the same time it’s not. Deep in his heart, Thomas knows whatever we had has lost steam. I was supposed to be a fun little diversion on his business trips through Atlanta. He was supposed to be an occasional holiday from the monotony of my life, a sex-filled all-inclusive stay in his suite at the St. Regis. Thomas and I, we’ve never been some great love story. We’ve both known this for a while now.

He lets his head fall back, staring up at the ceiling for the span of a few breaths. “I’ll give you a divorce. I’ll give you anything you want. Just please.”

His voice breaks on the last word, and he pauses to pull himself together. “Please don’t take Sem back to the States.”

This is the place where I could make my demands. Where despite the prenup I willingly signed, I could pressure him to buy me a house down the street, fill it with fancy furniture, cover all the utilities and bills—and knowing Thomas, he’d agree. Fleur wasn’t that far off when she called me Thomas’s pet project, someone for him to pluck out of poverty and mold into something pretty enough to belong on his arm. But he never would have bothered if it hadn’t been for Sem.

“I don’t want anything from you, Thomas, except for you to be the best, most loving father you can be for our son. Sem is a Prins. He belongs here, in Amsterdam, with both his parents.”

Relief smooths out his brow. “So you’re staying?”

I nod. “I’m staying.”

He gives me a silent but searing look, and something passes between us that I can’t quite put into words. Gratitude, certainly, but also regret, resignation, a jumble of emotion between two people who never should have gotten married in the first place. He reaches out his hand, and I drop mine into it.

“I’m staying.”

Even if one day down the line, the suspicions start to niggle in Thomas like they did his sister. If a month or a year or a decade from now, Thomas decides to pluck a hair from Sem’s head or drop his toothbrush into a plastic bag and send it off to a lab. Call me delusional, but I really don’t think Thomas will ever do that. I don’t think he’ll take that chance. It’s his sister I worry about.

He gives my hand a squeeze then releases me to wriggle out of his coat. “I guess the good news is, I’ll be a much more present father now that I’m unemployed. I handed my resignation to the board today.”

“You quit the House? Why?”

“Come on, . You know why.”

He tosses his coat over the armrest and relaxes into the couch. “I never wanted the CEO role. Fleur is right; I’m not cut out for it. Especially after the events of today, it just seems pointless to spend all day doing something that makes me so miserable. I’d have been much better suited on the creative team with the designers and marketing staff. It’s where I wanted to be all along, where I always thought I was headed.”

I think of the bracelet in the vault upstairs, all the details and thought he put into the piece, even if the sentiment was lacking. Thomas is right; creative would be a much better fit. If jewelry design is what he wants to do, the other houses will be fighting over him, a Prins, heading up the design department.

“Good for you. How did your father take it?”

“Not well. He yelled. A lot. As usual, he’s only worried about the optics of a Prins walking away from the House. Fleur, however.”

He shrugs. “I’m sure she’s popping open a bottle right about now.”

I’m sure she is. The big corner office, the title of CEO. The House of Prins at her fingertips.

Even though, deep inside her heart, she knows she’s not truly in charge, not as long as Willem is alive. I saw her face when Detective Boomsma said the Polish contract killer was paid with diamonds, the way it went white with shock. The diamond payment was news to Fleur, and it led to the same conclusion I came to: that her father has been keeping her in the dark about some things, too.

Willem, who saw the lab-growns coming from a mile away and read the writing on the wall. Who watched all the other big houses cave like the pearl titans once did, after a couple of Japanese assholes figured out how to seed their own pearls and took a blowtorch to the prices. Who uses his children like chess pieces, bending them to his will, moving them around to suit his needs.

Five generations of House of Prins, a multibillion dollar house of cards, and it’s about to fall. Maybe not immediately, but at some point in the not-too-distant future. Willem knows he can’t stop the industry from toppling, but he can safeguard his fortune, preserve the Prins family legacy for generations to come. Willem is ruthless that way.

Look in your own house. Jan’s words, beating inside me on repeat. Look in your own house look in your own house look in your own house.

I sat in that freezing, dusty kitchen, listening to Fleur spinning a story for the detective, and it occurred to me she’s just as much a pawn as Thomas. Better trained, perhaps, and definitely more willing, but a pawn nonetheless. That diamond payment may have been a surprise, but I watched the realization sink in her head at the same time it did in mine.

The answers came to me like a flash in that freezing metal chair, Sem clinging to my chest like a monkey. All the little puzzle pieces that never quite added up, never made much sense, they all clicked into place. For Fleur, but also for me.

“About the Cullinans,”

I say. Unlike Thomas and Fleur, I’m not that easy of a pawn. “I think I know where they are.”

We come into his parents’ living room a half hour later, and Thomas was right. There’s an open bottle of Cristal in a crystal ice bucket on the side table and a triumphant Fleur holding a half-full flute. She raises it at her younger brother, and by her and Roland’s smug expressions, you’d never know she’d spent most of the past year playing second string.

“Did you change your mind? Because it’s too late. I just got off an emergency Zoom with the board. You’ve already been replaced.”

Anna twists around on the couch to face her son, and her pleasant smile dissolves. “Thomas, for goodness sake, this isn’t a barn. Give your coat to one of the staff.”

He ignores her orders, skirting around the furniture to where his father is seated, in his usual wingback chair in front of the roaring fireplace. A glass of brown liquid is clutched in a hand, and this is definitely a celebration. I sink onto a chair at the edge of the room and watch. This is Thomas’s show, and I’m happy to let him have the starring role.

“I want out.”

“Out?”

Anna huffs an annoyed sigh. “Darling, you just got here. Sit down. I’ll get someone to pour you a drink.”

“Mama, please. This is House business. It doesn’t concern you.”

At that, Anna clamps her glossy lips together. As wife of a Prins, she knows her place. Look pretty and sport the bling. Another reason why I won’t miss this family.

Thomas turns back to his father. “I want you to buy me out. Sem, too. My son and I want nothing to do with House of Prins.”

Fleur laughs, a condescending tinkle. “Thanks for your faith in me, little brother, but that would be a very stupid move. Even for you.”

“Stupid and impossible,”

Willem says. “Our stocks hold value, but they’re not made of cash. Profits are constantly being reinvested in the company, not sitting in a bank account somewhere. We don’t have that much money liquid. We don’t have anywhere close.”

“Papa’s right, which you would know if you’d paid even the slightest attention in business school,”

Fleur says, crossing her legs. “Just because a company is worth, say, a hundred million euros doesn’t mean we can get our hands on that much cash. The House is not an ATM. Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not going to buy you out.”

On the couch across from her, Roland rolls his eyes in support.

Thomas points a finger at his sister’s face. “Fleur, and it pleases me more than you will ever know to say this, but fuck you. Fuck you, and you’re wrong.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. The insurance company closed the case. They’re transferring the money next week, which means House of Prins is about to be flush with cash. More than enough to buy me and Sem out, and you will buy us out because of these.”

Thomas fishes three lumps from his pants pocket and tosses them onto the coffee table like dice. Three flawless, knuckle-sized stones. One third of the missing Cullinans.

Someone gasps. Roland, I think.

Fleur and Willem are glaringly silent.

Anna settles her drink onto a side table. “Sweetheart, are those what I think they are?”

She sounds genuinely puzzled, and I wonder if it’s because Willem has ordered her to play innocent for Thomas’s sake. To keep both her children in the fold.

Thomas ignores her, focusing instead on his father. “And before you think about finding a new hiding spot for yours, you should know that I’ll take this to the media. De Telegraaf. Financi?le Dagblad. NRC and all the rest, the international papers, too. I’ll tell them you helped Xander and Frederik steal the Cullinans from the vault and had them both silenced, because that’s what happened here, isn’t it? You hired a Polish contract killer, and you paid him in diamonds.”

Willem doesn’t shake his head, doesn’t nod, doesn’t blink, doesn’t open his mouth. This haughty veneer he wears like a shield, this stiff back and practiced nonresponse, and I knew it. Willem is the master manipulator behind everything.

“What about you?”

Thomas says, turning to Fleur. “What’s your role in all this? Did you know the Cullinans were in the mirrors?”

Roland turns to his wife with a frown. “The Cullinans are in the mirror? Which mirror?”

The mirrors Willem gave us this past Christmas, the three antique masterpieces Jan so lovingly restored. One for Thomas, one for Fleur. The third is hanging in this very room, on the wall above Willem’s wing chair, in the place of prestige above the fireplace.

Back at the house, when Thomas and I pulled his away from the wall and peered at the backing, we spotted a tiny slit in the plaster. A compartment at the bottom of the frame of swirling ivy and gilded flowers, a pocket just big enough for three big-ass stones. Once Thomas got over the shock of holding three of the missing Cullinans in his hand, he said he was surprised they gave him his fair share. So am I, honestly.

Fleur stares into her champagne glass, her feckless husband sitting next to her, and I can practically hear the gears churning. I smell the smoke as she peels back the layers. The hired killer paid in diamonds. The Cullinans in the mirror. I see the moment she arrives at the truth, comes to the humiliating conclusion that there’s more than one puppet in this room, more than one pawn in her father’s complexly plotted play. Willem’s face is unreadable, but not Fleur’s. He didn’t tell her about the Cullinans, either.

Which makes me wonder what Willem’s plan was here. What would have happened to those stones if Thomas and I never figured this out? What would have happened if, one day, we’d tired of the mirrors? If we’d sold them or tossed them in the trash?

Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe Willem thinks like many people in the diamond industry do, that their glory days are coming to an end. Maybe not tomorrow, but the end is coming. As Xander loved to say, lab-grown diamonds are a seismic shift in the industry, and prices the cartel has kept artificially high for decades are about to crumble. And it’s not like Willem can sell the Cullinans anytime soon, maybe ever. Maybe he thought the insurance money was a surefire way to save the House.

I look up, and he’s watching me from across the room, an open, unabashed stare that admits but also challenges. So what? his face says. I know what you did, too. The diamonds Xander grew for me, what I was planning to do with them. But Willem’s crimes trump mine by a million, trillion miles.

The Prins family, coming full circle. The giant diamond that was once upon a time pilfered by Willem’s great-great-grandfather from a Praetorian mine and smuggled back to Holland, cut into pieces and stolen again a hundred-plus years later—poof—from the Prins vault. Only this time, for hundreds of millions of euros’ worth of insurance.

For a Prins, everything begins and ends, always, with the Cullinans.

“This is what’s going to happen,”

Thomas says, scooping the three Cullinans into a palm. “I’ve already hired Sebastian’s team at Oaklins to give us an accurate valuation of the House. Fleur said a hundred million. I’m thinking that’s probably on the low end, but Sebastian will be able to tell us for sure. Normally, these things take three weeks, but Sebastian said he could do it in two. Oaklins is world class. They’ll give us a fair price.”

He pauses for their response, but it doesn’t come. The room falls into silence. The only sound is the muted clanging of the staff, bustling around in the kitchen.

Thomas lifts both hands in the air at his sides, turning to Fleur, “Congratulations, I guess. You and the twins will inherit the whole thing. Sem and I don’t want any part in it.”

Fleur pops off the couch. “You know he’s not even yours, right? Sem is not your son.”

Her words fall into the room like a grenade, sucking up all the air, and a surge of something sour rises in my chest like nausea. Every head in the place swings to me, all but Thomas’s. He stands there like a statue, glaring at his sister with such obvious hatred that the breath catches in my throat.

“It’s true! Tell him, .”

She waves an arm in his direction, and champagne sloshes over the side of her glass and lands on the silk carpet with a splat. “Tell Thomas that Sem doesn’t belong to him.”

I stay quiet, because how do I explain that it’s true and it isn’t? I think about Thomas’s face when I told him about the pregnancy, the way he dropped to his knees and kissed my stomach, the way he immediately started making plans. No hesitation. No questioning if there was any possibility this baby couldn’t be his. I wasn’t certain a baby would give us enough steam to sustain a marriage, but Thomas was. From the very beginning, Thomas was sure enough for both of us.

So they don’t share some of the same DNA. Does that make their love for each other any less real? Does that make it impossible for them to be father and son? I look at Thomas, and I pray the answer is no.

“I had him tested,”

Fleur says, not letting it go. “Sem is not a Prins. He doesn’t have so much as an ounce of Prins blood in him.”

Thomas barks a laugh, a thick, meaty sound. “Thank God. I wish I could say the same.”

Thomas and I are quiet on the short drive home. I sit in the soft leather of his passenger’s seat and watch the familiar scenery flash by, the stately villas of the Apollolaan, the empty playground at Sem’s school, and the angry, icy waters of the canal, the shops and restaurants with their glowing windows and signs, the bikers weaving in and out of traffic, and the people out walking their dogs. Sometime in the past few hours, the rain and the clouds have blown off. The night is clear, the lights and the sky twinkling.

It’s true what I said earlier, that I don’t want to leave Amsterdam. No matter what Thomas does next, I want to stay here, to live here with Sem. I want our answer to the question Where are you from? to be Amsterdam. This place is home, and it’s not like I have a better one in the States to return to. I belong here, as does Sem.

In the driveway, Thomas rolls to a stop in his usual spot, and my mind tracks back to me standing in the bedroom window upstairs, watching him text Cécile through the sunroof. Only yesterday, which is something of a shock. It feels like a lifetime ago.

I twist on my seat to face him, taking in his handsome profile in the dark. “How long have you known?”

It’s the piece I’d missed before, back at his parents’ house. The fury on his face when he looked at his sister, the betrayal—it was all directed at her. None of it was for me. He didn’t even glance my way because he knew. Thomas already knew.

His hands are still gripping the wheel, but they’re more relaxed now, not strangling it like they were his knees the first time we talked about Sem tonight. As awful as things were at his parents’ house, as shocking as Fleur’s bombshell was for me, Thomas had a different response: relief. Or maybe he’s like me, relieved that the awful secret is finally out in the open.

“Since Sem was a baby. And I didn’t know know. Unlike my horrible sister, I never had him tested.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because what was I going to say? Hey, this kid I’ve fallen head over heels in love with isn’t mine, so please don’t move with him to the other side of the planet. You have no idea, . For the past four years, I’ve lived in absolute terror.”

Understanding settles over me slowly, then all at once, like watching a building implode and knowing it’s about to fall seconds before it hits the ground.

All this time, I thought Thomas didn’t have the balls to ask me for a divorce, that he was too chicken to say that awful word out loud, to put those wheels in motion.

But that’s not why.

It’s because he was terrified of the consequences. He was terrified that I was holding the secret of Sem’s paternity in my back pocket to use as a bargaining chip or worse, that I would be like the kids at Sem’s school and take my toys and go home, back to the States. That I would blurt out the truth and snatch away his parental rights out of anger or spite. I think of the way his voice broke when he begged me not to move Sem to the US. Thomas thought a divorce meant I’d be divorcing him of Sem.

“I’ve been terrified, too, FYI. Of you finding out and hating me for it, then disowning us both. I can live with your hatred of me, but I couldn’t bear Sem’s heartbreak, or to watch him suffer because he needs a medical treatment that I can’t afford on my own.”

“I would never let that happen. Never. I won’t abandon either of you. I love Sem more than anything, and I love you for making me a father. I just wish I could have loved you better.”

I reach across the console and take his hand. “See? You’re already Sem’s father in every way that counts, and a much better parent than any of ours have ever been. At some point, we’ll have to talk about how to handle this with Sem, but for now, just know that Sem loves you. He needs you in his life, and so do I.”

He lifts my hand to his lips and drops a kiss on my knuckles. “Thank you.”

“Sem wants a bunny for his birthday, by the way. A real one.”

“Then I guess we’re getting a bunny.”

Thomas says it so instantly, so effortlessly, that we ringing in my ear, and that’s when I know we’ll be okay. Thomas and I will figure out how to share our son, how to make sure he is happy and healthy and loved. We will unwind the bonds that tie us together, all but the most important one, and we’ll be better parents for it. I take back what I said before, about Thomas and me not being a great love story. Ours is the greatest love story of all because it gave us Sem.

I think about him sleeping upstairs, his soft little sighs as his lungs rise and fall with breath, about Rayna in the guest room across the hall, still reeling from Xander and Lars and the lies I told that put her life in danger, about the amends I need to make and the truths I need to tell, to Rayna but also to Thomas. He deserves to know the truth. All of it.

I unwind my hand from his and tip my head at the house. “Come on. I want you to meet my new friend, Rayna.”