WORTHLESS SON-IN-LAW IS THE KING OF DYNASTY

Chapter 2

He went to Olivier Marchand's office building the next morning. He had found the name easily enough — Céleste's phone, left unlocked on the bathroom counter while she showered, told a story that required very little interpretation. The building was in the 8th arrondissement, a glass-and-steel tower that expressed wealth without charm, which seemed appropriate.

He did not go inside immediately. He stood across the street with a café crème he wasn't drinking, watching the lobby through plate glass, wondering if he was wrong, hoping he was wrong, knowing he wasn't.

He crossed the street. Spoke to the receptionist. Said he was there to deliver something personal for his wife, Céleste Beaumont, who he believed was in a meeting with Monsieur Marchand — he smiled apologetically as he said it, the smile of a slightly hapless husband with a forgotten anniversary gift. The receptionist, bless her, took him straight up.

The office was on the fourteenth floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a view of the city that spoke of ownership rather than appreciation. Olivier Marchand was perhaps forty-five, silver-templed and broad-shouldered, the kind of man who had learned to occupy rooms as though they'd been built for him.

Céleste was there.

They were not in a meeting.

The silence that followed the door opening was the particular silence of a secret that has just become a fact. Céleste went pale, then a specific, calculated shade of angry. Marchand, to his credit, did not flinch. He looked at Lucas with the appraising calm of a man who has been in difficult rooms before and always emerged intact.

"You must be the husband," he said.

"I was," Lucas said. He heard the past tense in his own voice and found that it surprised him — not with grief, but with how steady it sounded.

"Lucas." Céleste stood, adjusting herself with the efficiency of someone moving from one scene to the next. "This isn't what — "

"Don't." He said it quietly. Not with heat. "Please don't do that."

She stopped.

"I came to give you the option of telling me yourself," he said. "You didn't take it. That's — that's fine. That tells me what I needed to know."

"You're going to be very alone," Céleste said. Her voice had recovered its composure. She had a talent for that — for pivoting, mid-scene, from caught to righteous. "You have nothing, Lucas. You have no money, no connections, no real prospects. You've been living in my family's house for three years —"

"Your family's house," he agreed. "That part is accurate."

"— and you're going to walk away from that and do what, exactly? Tell me. What is the plan?"

He picked up the café crème he'd carried all the way up in the lift, took one sip, and set it on the edge of Marchand's glass desk.

"I'll figure it out," he said. He turned to leave.

"Lucas." Marchand's voice, behind him. Surprisingly not unkind. "For what it's worth — she talked about you. More than she probably realises."

Lucas paused. Did not turn. "That doesn't help," he said. And left.

* * * *

The divorce papers were on the kitchen table when he got back to the townhouse, which meant Céleste had called ahead. He had to admire the efficiency, if nothing else.

Margaux was standing in the kitchen, arms folded, wearing the expression of someone who has rehearsed this confrontation and is now slightly disappointed that the target has arrived looking calm rather than broken.

"She told me," Margaux said. "About the divorce."

"Good."

"You don't seem devastated."

"I'm not," Lucas said. He picked up the papers, scanned them quickly — his lawyer's training had never materialised into a career, but the three years of his degree had not entirely gone to waste — and found nothing he would contest.

"Where will you go?" Margaux asked. Not with concern. With the particular curiosity of someone watching a small animal navigate an obstacle.

"That's not your business." He picked up a pen from the holder beside the fruit bowl.

"This is still our house."

"For approximately four more minutes," he said pleasantly, and signed.

Gérard appeared in the doorway, drawn by the architecture of a scene. He looked at the papers, at Lucas's hand on the pen, at Margaux's folded arms, and opened his mouth.

"You'll regret this," Gérard said. "Walking away from a family that took you in, that gave you — "

"Three years of unpaid domestic service and daily commentary on my inadequacy?" Lucas handed the papers to Margaux. "Consider it repaid."

He went upstairs. Packed what was his, which was less than he expected. A bag of clothes, his laptop, the small leather folder that contained his degree certificate and a handful of old correspondence. He carried it all to the front door, put on his coat, and stood in the entrance hall for a moment.

The beeswax smell. The white flowers, slightly past perfect, about to be replaced.

"You'll never amount to anything," Margaux called from the kitchen. "It's not the market, Lucas. It's you."

He opened the front door. The evening air was cool and smelled of rain.

"We'll see," he said, and stepped outside.

* * * *

He had walked perhaps three blocks, no destination in mind, when the rain started in earnest. He stood beneath the awning of a closed pharmacy, his bag at his feet, and permitted himself exactly sixty seconds of despair. He counted them.

Then the black Bentley pulled to the kerb.

The man who stepped out was perhaps sixty-five, silver-haired, wearing a dark overcoat with the quiet precision of someone who had dressed correctly every day of his adult life. He held an umbrella — not over himself, but extended toward Lucas, as though this had all been arranged in advance.

"Monsieur Lucas Moreau," the man said. It was not a question.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Sébastien Rault." A brief inclination of the head. "I am the legal counsellor and family steward to Henri Moreau. Your grandfather. He has been searching for you for fifteen years, monsieur, and he would like very much to see you."

The rain drummed on the umbrella between them.

Lucas looked at the man. Looked at the car. Looked back at the street behind him, where nothing was waiting.

"He sent you away," Lucas said. "When I was fourteen. He told my father I was — " He stopped. The word his grandfather had used. Surplus. A family problem rather than a family member. He had heard it through a closed door and carried it for fifteen years.

"He did," Sébastien said. He did not flinch from it. "And he has regretted it every day since. I will not insult you by minimising that, monsieur. I am simply telling you that he is dying, and he is asking."

A long moment. The rain.

"If I get in that car," Lucas said, "I am not doing it for him."

Sébastien nodded slowly. "You may do it for whatever reason suits you, monsieur. The car and the offer are the same regardless."

Lucas picked up his bag and got in.