‘The paperwork I didn’t want to look at. I was keeping it until I told Rose about the shares. About everything. What a fuck up that would’ve been.’
‘Not your finest plan,’ he agrees. ‘But I say again, want to explain?’
‘It seems as though, as a young girl, Rose’s mother, Noorah, worked for the Hayes family as an au pair.’
‘’Oh, fuck.’ He forces his hands through his hair, obviously intuiting where this is going.
‘Presumably, her Lebanese heritage would’ve meant she spoke fluent French. She would’ve been on a Lebanese passport, too.’ Not living in the US. Not travelling on a US passport.
‘It seems she met my father in Nice, at a time he was an up and coming hotelier.’ And that is as much as the investigator seemed to discover about their relationship. ‘She lived in France for two years before going home before she turned twenty.’
‘And there the story would end, if it not for the small issue of intimidation,’ Rhett says.
‘But I wasn’t the first Durrand to have that bastard Hayes over a barrel. Emile got there first.’ But as for my involvement, my intimidation of Carson Hayes senior and my plans to crush his company, several months ago, while in the midst of an audit, a certain recording was found. Carson Hayes labouring over the body of an unconscious woman.
‘The girl in the video,’ Rhett asserts. ‘She was Rose’s mum.’
‘Rose’s mother and my father’s girlfriend. And the year she left France is the year Wolf Industries was born.’
Created from the proceeds of my father’s blackmail.
Born and built on her suffering.
Suffering I used once again to blackmail Hayes.
‘Fuck.’
‘That about sums it up.’
He doesn’t have time to absorb the information as his phone buzzes with a text. His eyes flick over the information contained.
‘What is it?’ I demand. ‘Is it Rose?’
He nods tersely. ‘CCTV at the house shows her in the driveaway just after four this afternoon.’ His head rises, his eyes hard. ‘Ben was driving.’
‘Ben?’
‘She was in the passenger seat. He parked at the side of the house, in the courtyard.’
‘Where the CCTV coverage is poor.’ He nods again. The orange trees growing near to the house have partially obscured the view of the camera there, including leading in and out of the house. ‘I should’ve gotten the tree surgeon out earlier. I’m sorry, Remy.’
I wave away his apology as unnecessary at this point. ‘What else?’
‘Footage shows him leaving via the driveway ten minutes later. Just him, though. There was no sign of Rose. He even stopped to talk to the gardener on the way out. The bloke says there was no one else in the car. Just him.’
‘Or that’s what he wants us to think.’
‘Yep. Then, at four thirty, a taxi pulls up. Same place. Drives out again, soon after. The windows were tinted to it’s hard to say if there was anyone else in it but the driver. We ran the plates. They were fake.’
‘Ben? I can see him helping her to leave.’ And yet I don’t really believe she has. ‘But this level of fucked up? It’s beyond him.’
‘You’re blind to Benny-boy’s antics. You think because you knew the knobbly kneed kid, you know the man. You don’t know half of what he is.’
‘And you do?’
‘I’ve been keeping an eye on him long enough. You might say he’s been a side project. Kind of a hobby.’ His expression twists, though he knows he has my attention. ‘You wouldn’t have listened if I’d told you I found out that he’d he recently bought a crowbar on his Amex card.’
‘If you knew, why was Rose not receiving around the clock security?’ The ice in my voice matches the drop of my temperature, my blood running instantly cold.
‘Because he had a hard-on for you, not her. If I’d thought for one minute—’
I wave away what’s coming next. Recriminations. Blame. None of this is of interest.
‘What next?’
‘Apart from the crowbar,’ he muses, scratching the stubble on his cheek. ‘Fuck!’ His spine straightens, the soldier in him suddenly very obvious. ‘As far as suspicious shit goes, how about this? Last month, his shell company completed a sale on a tumbledown shack a few kilometres outside of Menton.’
I release a volley of French curses that just aren’t enough. ‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!’
‘Watch the rims,’ he complains as I lash out with my feet.
‘Fuck the rims!’
‘For all your language capabilities, there’s nothing quite like fuck. Is there?’
‘There will be nothing quite like Everett soon.’
‘You can try, but you’re too angry to be much more than a happy place for my fist. Cool head, boss man, if you don’t want things to go tits up. Get in the car.’
I throw him the keys.
Tits up is not an option.
* * *
ROSE
‘Can I have more?’ I hold out my plastic glass. Please, sir. This little waif would like a drop more wine. At least, I hope that’s what my expression says as I channel a little Oliver Twist.