‘You should listen to Hayes, the younger.’
‘And you should kiss my ass. You chop up companies and feast on their bones before swallowing them down. And for what? Just to say Remy Durrand owns the South of France?’
Why stop at just the South of France?
‘You don’t have the funds to pay for the shipment of steel,’ I continue, examining an invisible tear in one of my fingernails. ‘Your workforce is about to put down their tools and walk away because they know, as well as you know yourself, as well as the industry knows, you will struggle to pay them this coming Friday. The media will circle like sharks. Your share price will plummet and along with it, your good name.’ A good name with a dirty past. A past that is entwined with my own, as it turns out.
‘We only need a couple of million to see us through ’till the end of the month and your friends at the bank have nullified our line of credit. You’re strangling us, Durrand. I hope your father is turning in his grave.’
‘I hope so, too.’
‘We were friends, him and me!’
‘I very much doubt that.’
Carson Hayes is proof that God has a sense of humour. Wizened and bent, the man is riddled with cancer and has been for years. Yet my father, as fit and as sleek as a racehorse, was struck down by a common illness in his prime.
I’m sure God is the only one laughing.
‘We had an agreement.’ The old man’s voice shakes with ill-suppressed anger. ‘We shook on it.’
‘I also shook my dick last time I took a piss.’ Next to me, Pelletier stiffens. ‘It doesn’t mean I’m making friends. And then there is the matter of the documents I have in my possession.’
‘What documents?’ His grandson’s gaze volleys back and forth between us, though neither of us pay him attention in return.
‘Photographs. Unsavoury photographs, along with a video, I’m told. One from my father’s vaults. It looks like it was recorded sometime in the late eighties. Maybe the nineties?’ My attention swings to his grandson. ‘It’s hard to tell from hairstyles alone. There wasn’t a lot to go on in terms of fashion, if you catch my meaning.’
‘What’s this about, Grandfather? Blackmail? What does he have on you?’
‘That snake. He gave me that film, and I destroyed it, but not before I paid him well for it!’ His grey eyebrows pull down as his grandson’s hand retracts slowly from his arm.
‘Tell me what he’s talking about,’ he demands. But the older man doesn’t respond. He has eyes for no one. No one but me as I sit on the opposite end of the long table with my legal counsel, who has no idea what I’m talking about but the good sense to pretend otherwise.
‘Those things happened a long time ago.’
‘Did they happen before Monaco created laws? No, I didn’t think so. Pelletier, the paperwork.’ I’m already pushing back my chair as I reach in to the inside pocket of my jacket for my phone. As I leave the room, I spare no time for the thought of the poor girl in the video, splayed out and comatose under a younger version of the old man. Not because I’m heartless but because it happened a long time ago.
Your wealth was built on her suffering. I acknowledge the thought as something beyond my control, pushing it away clinically.
Tell the steel company they can call off their dogs, I type out. Hayes Construction belongs to Wolf Industries now.
D’accord, Everett types back. Congratulations on eviscerating another of the competition. His sarcasm rings loud and clear. He liked the idea of blackmail much less than myself and would’ve preferred to hand the evidence of the young woman’s abuse over to the authorities. But men like Carson Hayes rarely face justice, especially thirty years after the fact. And while I would welcome any attempt to expose my father as the conniver he was as opposed to the paragon of success and philanthropy he sought to portray, blackening the Durrand name would not serve my purpose. Ruining the Hayes company, absorbing it into my own, does.
There’s something poetic about it.
And the girl? Hénri, my security for today, holds open the elevator door and I step in.
Correctly, Rhett intuits the topic has moved on. Already situated on the twelfth floor, according to the dragon.
Good.
You must feel like the dogs bollocks manipulating two people before lunchtime, eh?
What can I say? Today already feels like a good day. I’m just about to slip my phone back into my pocket when my gaze happens on Carson’s grandson and his haughty disdain. Once upon a time, I might’ve been like him. Entitled. Wet behind the ears. Possibly feral. The difference is, I knew what my father was capable of.
Carson Hayes’ grandson, I type out as the elevator doors close. Get me all you can on him. Just in case.