Page 8 of A Diamond Deal
He was the devil.
And tonight he’d come to collect.
He rang the gold bell, and within seconds the black iron doors of the six-storey French mansion in the seventh arrondissement of Paris opened.
It was a unique property with generations’ worth of history engraved into the high gold-leaf ceilings, into the ornate cornices of the Haussmann architecture and buried deep into the herringbone floors.
‘This way, sir.’
He strode inside and swept past the straight spine and the dipped head of the butler without greeting. He knew the way, but he also knew who he’d find inside the formal dining room when he arrived… Léon was changed.
It wouldn’t be the same as their meeting three years ago. Laughter wouldn’t be heard above clinking glasses.
His Adam’s apple dragged heavily up and down his throat.
He didn’t let his eyes linger on the portraits of those loved and lost lining the walls, but a stillness only attributed to the forever sleeping, and those they left behind wide awake, hung in the air like a sickness.
On leather-cushioned feet, he entered another corridor.
His gaze stalled on the adaptations not in keeping with the décor. The stairlift, customised to encircle the spiralling staircase. The solid wooden ramp leading up the short three steps to a closed door.
Another bowed head greeted him at the end of the corridor. A white-gloved hand pressed down the gold handle to open an ornate door expanded to allow for a wider gait.
He stepped inside.
The panelled windows, the palest of pinewood adorned with ornate gold rims, let in the view and the orange light of a setting sun over the heart of Paris. Clear vases full of white blooms with overly long green stems adorned every polished surface. The chandelier roared with the tiny flames of dozens of thin church candles above the table. An oval top made of rosewood, dressed with silver cutlery, and crystal glasses, held the central piece. A bigger vase held longer stems, bigger blooms.
The smell of death didn’t live here.
It was floral.
It was Poppy.
His wife.
He clenched his teeth.
She was everywhere and nowhere.
The ghost of her had walked beside him on every street for a year. She’d sat beside him—distracted him—in every meeting, on every plane ride across the ocean to see for himself if his team had the right woman this time. If they’d found her. And each time, it hadn’t been her.
She’d simply stopped existing. And yet, she was in the very air he breathed.
He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
He’d thought they were the same. Level-headed.
He’d never wanted to marry. He’d thought his actions would be enough to prove to the world he was nothing like his father, but when the articles had turned into a frenzy after his award for providing a work-life balance for his employees and their families, the mock outrage that he had no family, thathewasn’t married… It became front-page news.
He’d known there was one way to end the speculation he was anything like his tyrant of a father.
He’d known he could do it with Poppy. A marriage of convenience. A marriage based on sex, but in public they’d be the epitome of a healthy relationship. Childless, but still whole. A couple who respected each other.
His father had never respected his mother, buthehad respected Poppy. Respected her boundaries set into place because of her childhood. As she respected his.
Never emotion.
Never love.
