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“You seem to admire him,” Dries mused.

“More than I admire you, obviously. What happened? Why didn’t Mom give you the Cullinan in the end? Her notary told me that in her letter, she said she had made a mistake, that she wanted to make things right.”

A flicker of sadness shimmered in his eyes, and for a moment Dries seemed almost human. “I’m going to disappoint you. I’m not entirely sure. I thought Léa and I were working toward the same goal, building the same dreams, but she grew distant, and by the time we left Pretoria she seemed to have stopped trusting me entirely. She even tried to talk me into returning the Cullinan to the Board, to smooth things over with them. I think . . . I think she believed the Board would kill you too if she was caught, and she didn’t trust that I would protect you,” he recalled, his gaze a little unfocused, as if my mother’s distrust still gnawed at him more than a decade later.

“She was right.”

He nodded. “Indeed. There’s business, there’s pleasure, and you were none of those. I wouldn’t have risked losing the Cullinan for your sake.”

I fought the lump in my throat. “I think she really loved you, you know. Did you ever—”

“Love her back?” Dries’s lips moved, as if he had been about to say something else, but then he seemed to think better of it and paused. “No. She knew that, and she never expected me to. I doubt you can understand this, but I was offering more than love.”

“Power?”

“You understand, after all.”

Oh yes, I understood . . . I understood everything. I looked at his hazel eyes, mirrors of mine, the little moles here and there on his face and hands, the slight gap-tooth. I closed my eyes and remembered his shadow, standing in my doorway, mere feet away from my bed.

The scent of sandalwood, floating in the bedroom.

“Are you my father?”

“No. Simon Halder is the father Léa chose for you.”

I felt a prickling sensation in my rib cage upon hearing his words. I pondered their meaning as he left the sofa to answer a phone call.

The father Léa chose . . .

Was Dries implying that he would have preferred being chosen over my dad? I didn’t want to ask him that. I wasn’t certain I could handle the answer to that question.

Meanwhile, he had hung up and turned to me with a predatory smile. “Dear little Miss Chaptal, didn’t I tell you that you could trust the instinct of an old Lion?”

THIRTY

The Toy

“Destiny knew that Colt would take his revenge against the cartel when they expected it the least, and he would leave nothing but ruins in his wake.”

—Natasha Onyx,
Muscled Passion of the SEAL

Let me tell you this. I had no idea what the expression “conflicting emotions” truly meant until after that disastrous first lunch with my biological father. Did I hate Dries? Yes. Did I wish that, in another life, he had been a real father to me and loved my mom? Sadly, yes. Was I mad at March for having concealed the truth about his involvement in the Cullinan affair? Yes. Was my unhealthy crush on him getting worse now that I knew he had been my mysterious rescuer? God,
yes
.

I was in shambles.

Dries’s guards and Cue Ball started exchanging little hand signals and gripped their guns in anticipation. With good reason: March was coming up. He had called Dries back to accept his deal—me, with all
four limbs in working order, against the genuine Cullinan—and every single pair of eyes in the room was locked on the penthouse’s entrance.

There was a faint click, and the doors opened. March was here, flanked by two guards on each side, with a third one following him for good measure. Over his bloody shirt the navy-blue jacket I was still wearing had been replaced by a black corduroy one, which I assumed possessed the same properties. I felt myself melt a little at the thought that even with his badass bulletproof jackets, March still managed to dress with a flair that rivaled only my grandpa’s.

He walked down the stairs and into Dries’s living room with a nonchalant, confident stride, his poker smile in place as if the men pointing their guns at him weren’t there. In his right hand, my mom’s metal case swung with each of his tranquil steps. On March’s right, a burly man with dark skin nodded at Dries. “He’s clean. No weapons.”

I cast March a worried glance. Did this mean no weapons that these guys had been able to detect or no weapons at all and butt-naked?

Dries opened his arms wide and walked to March with a warm smile on his face. He then pulled him into a heartfelt bro hug, the kind that had me wondering if I was going to discover these two had been working together from the start. God, I hoped not.

After March had returned Dries’s embrace, they broke the contact, and Dries patted him on the shoulder affectionately. “It’s been too long! My best disciple, my
brother
.”

“Far too long, indeed—” March smiled, but there was no joy in his eyes. Then he finally looked at me. “Are you all right, Island?”

“Yeah . . . great,” I murmured.

“Good.” His eyes traveled back to Dries, a hard gleam in their depths. “Brother, I take it this is what you were looking for.”

With this, March handed the case to Dries, who walked with it to the glass table we had lunched on, laid it down, and opened it. As Dries stared at “his” Cullinan the way a pedophile stares at a five-year-old,
March took a few steps forward until he was standing by my side. I looked up at him, trying to decipher his expression, to no avail. A leather-gloved hand crept around my waist, and he glanced at his watch. As he did so, his grip tightened a little.

Then a little more.

Until it almost hurt.

Across the room, I saw Dries freeze and straighten slowly. His eyes met March’s, his brow twitched, and something changed in his expression, like a sense of realization. I barely had the time to see him move away from the table: I remember a deafening noise and flying behind the
Star Trek
couch in March’s arms, shielded by his body as Dries’s living room was blown to bits.

Men were moaning somewhere amid the dust and smoke surrounding us. The
Star Trek
couch had protected us well, but it was ruined, and one of the armrests was on fire. I couldn’t see much, but most of the area where Dries’s glass table had once been seemed completely destroyed. Since he was nowhere to be seen, I assumed he had been blown to bits. Still intact, the Cullinan was sitting in the debris, a few feet away from us.

I could tell my shoulder had been bruised upon my landing on the concrete floor, but the most difficult part was remembering how to breathe. I realized I was gripping March’s jacket manically, and he was trying to unclasp my fingers, one by one, so he could move. I had no idea what he planned on doing next, but he was indeed going to need both his hands. Around us, Dries’s men were recovering—well, the ones who were still alive, anyway, since I could make out several still figures resting on the floor. Ominous clicking sounds suggested that they were arming their weapons as they struggled to find their bearings in the smoke.

“Take a deep breath and relax. Everything is going to be all right.”

I cast a frightened look at March, who seemed entirely focused on his watch and kept pressing the chronograph buttons quickly. I realized
that the glass had in fact lit up and turned into a small LCD screen. I managed to make out the word “GO” before March tapped on the screen once, apparently sending his laconic message. Why—or more exactly
who
—was he texting in a moment like this? Placing one of his hands on my head, he forced me farther down. “Thirty seconds, biscuit.”

Thirty seconds to what? God, not
another
bomb!

I heard gunshots coming from the hallway that led to the penthouse, and a new explosion made the living room tremble again, prompting me to hold on to March as small pieces of plaster and glass fell on our heads. He threaded his fingers into my hair, caressing it as he kept my head down. “Fifteen seconds. We’re going to be fine.”

Dries’s remaining men seemed to have taken cover, and we all waited—for different reasons, I suspected.

“Now.”

My head jerked at March’s confident whisper, and before I could ask what we were waiting for, something big flew across the living room in our direction that one of the men tried to shoot at. It landed behind the couch and into March’s welcoming hands. My immediate thought was that it was a grenade, and that I was going to be horribly maimed and die; I screamed. March’s black-gloved hand covered my mouth, and he pointed at the object.

His magic suitcase.

Someone had blasted Dries’s living room twice and thrown March his magic suitcase.

“I’ll let you take care of the rest,
Sudafricano
!” a cheerful voice called from the hallway.

A voice I knew. Against every single safety instruction March had ever given me, I raised my head from his chest where it had been buried and took a quick peek at the smoky hallway. My initiative was met by a round of bullets fired into the couch by Cue Ball, who was still standing near the French doors. March’s strong hands pulled me down again, and before he could complain that I needed to stay still, I beamed
at him. “Antonio! Antonio is here!” I hissed excitedly at the memory of the killer who had almost taught me how to steal a Lexus.

Indeed, in the destroyed door frame stood Antonio, clad in a classy black suit, his sharp, tattooed features contorted in a sneer, and carrying a . . . bazooka. At least that explained why Dries’s living room looked like Ground Zero, and I was pretty sure that this was in fact the mysterious purchase March had made in Minas’s shop. More gunshots echoed in the hallway, and I gathered Antonio was making his escape. A new round of bullets was fired into the couch, and hurried footsteps could be heard around us. Now freed from the bazooka’s threat, Dries’s remaining men intended to take care of us.

Allow me to turn what will follow into a cautionary tale: if you’re pursuing a successful criminal career, and one day you find yourself aiming your M16 at a mints-munching guy who looks super pissed and has a magic suitcase, run away. Fast.

March opened the case and retrieved two scary-looking, suppressed black guns from the top layer, armed them, gobbled a mint, got up from behind the couch . . . and taught Cue Ball and his rifle a lesson about never hesitating before pulling the trigger. I covered my ears with my hands as bullets flew in all directions, some right over my head and into what was left of the penthouse’s tall bay windows. I popped my head once or twice to check March’s cleaning progress. Four . . . three . . . two guys still standing. One of them seemed more skilled than the others, forcing March to take cover because he couldn’t use his favorite hey-you’re-slow-I-shot-first technique.

They dueled for a good minute until March seemed to grow tired of wasting bullets and used his little black knife, throwing it between the guy’s eyes when he moved to shoot again. I winced as I caught sight of the dead man’s reflection in one of the last windows that were still intact. His eyes were wide open, as if he hadn’t expected it, which I suspect was precisely the reason March’s approach had worked. The last man standing was a young Japanese guy whose aim wasn’t so great,
and he ran toward March in desperation, firing haphazardly until his magazine was empty.

I’ll never forget the look on that young guy’s face when he kept pulling the trigger and all that echoed in response were faint clicks indicating there was nothing left to fire. I squeezed my eyes when March shot. The idea of him killing a helpless guy made my chest heave unpleasantly, even if part of me knew that, had the tables turned, that man would have killed him without hesitation.

The Japanese guy fell, and I knew it was over. March walked back to the couch and helped me get up. I thought I had been pretty relaxed throughout this new gunfight, but in truth, I hadn’t. Once I stood up, I realized my legs were trembling so badly I couldn’t walk. We stood in front of each other for a few seconds in complete silence, surrounded by broken glass and destroyed furniture, still bodies, and the unmistakable smell of gunpowder. I was still a little shaken, and I could read in March’s eyes a mixture of tenderness and guilt. He couldn’t know what Dries had told me, but he must’ve gathered that the lies had come to an end.

“You and I . . . are gonna have to
talk
,” I gritted out. “But not now.”

He nodded once as the poker smile returned to his lips. “Understood. Are you good to go?”

“Yes.”

With this, we turned to the area where Antonio’s first rocket had struck, scanning for Dries and the Cullinan among the wreckage. It was a strange sensation: I expected to see his body, and at the same time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. After a few seconds spent inspecting the half-burned, empty case and the various debris surrounding it, I turned to March, a cold sweat dampening my back.

“March . . . I can’t see—”

His eyes narrowed. There were bodies, there was glass . . . but two things were missing from the ruins of that Blofeld-style living room: Dries and the diamond.