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We don’t talk on the way home. I keep holding onto Zoe’s hand, feeling her tense as we turn through the gates of my property forty-five minutes later. The house stands on an acre of land on the outskirts of Cassis. It’s built on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the sea.
Alexis parks in the front but doesn’t get out. “Welcome home, brother. I’m not going to hang around for the victory drinks.”
Ignoring his mocking tone, I get out and open Zoe’s door. A guard rushes over from his post by the entrance to take our bags from the trunk. Zoe looks up at the two-story mansion with its double chimneys, shutters, and ivy-covered walls. I try to look at it through her eyes, try to see what she sees. It’s a typical southern French design, the house dating from four centuries back. I went to great pains to restore it, as well as with the design of the formal garden and its maze. It must be unfamiliar and strange, not what she’s used to.
The front door opens just as Alexis pulls off. My mother exits, wearing her cooking apron over a Chanel dress. As always, she’s impeccably groomed, her white-gray hair styled into a bob and her makeup cleverly invisible. Despite her age, her face is youthful, a lucky trait she’s inherited from her long line of purebred aristocracy.
“Max.” Her features light up with a smile that freezes when she notices the woman at my side. Her mouth draws down. It’s minute, quickly replaced with a friendly expression, but I noticed. I know her too well.
She pulls herself to her full petite height, her spine going stiff. “I cooked. I reckoned you’d be hungry. God only knows what you had to eat in that godforsaken country. I didn’t expect you to come home with a guest.” She looks at Zoe. “There won’t be enough food.”
“Never mind, Maman.” I kiss her cheeks. “We’ll make do.” I switch over to English. “This is Zoe. Zoe, this is my mother, Cecile.”
My mother doesn’t kiss Zoe’s cheeks, but offers her hand, a gesture that demeans Zoe for a lower class but that someone not familiar with our culture won’t grasp.
Zoe glances at me. I give a small nod, a warning, at which she shakes my mother’s hand. My mother isn’t up to speed with the grittier details of our business, even if she knows how we conduct it is shady. My father prefers to keep her in the dark, to protect her as he claims, not only from the blood on our hands, but also from his mistresses. If my mother knows, she’s never given on, but her reaction to Zoe tells me she may be less ignorant about my father’s infidelity than what I’ve thought, or, for her sake, hoped.
“Well,” my mother says in English, her accent worse than mine, “you better come in.”
She steps aside for us to enter. The guard follows with the suitcases.
“Where must I put this, sir?” he asks in French.
“In my bedroom.”
My mother purses her lips. Her gaze flicks over Zoe’s pleated coat and killer heel boots with distaste.
As I help Zoe from her coat, my mother, reverting back to French, asks, “How long is she staying?”
I put the coat on the stand by the door before removing my own. “A while.”
Her silence communicates her displeasure.
“You didn’t have to come out all the way here to cook for me,” I say.
She pinches my cheek. “I’m your mother. That’s my job.”
“In English, please.”
She irons out her apron and switches back to English. “Go freshen up. Lunch will be ready when you’re done.”
I show Zoe to the guest bathroom downstairs and wait outside.
When she exits, I take her arm, squeezing harder than necessary. “Not a word to my mother or anyone for that matter. Say anything out of line, and Damian pays the price. Understand?”
She stares at up me, her big, blue eyes shimmering with apprehension and a twist of hostility. “Yes.”
“Good.” I kiss the top of her head just because I can and lead her to the dining room.
Her arm brushes against mine as we walk. I’m overly aware of her, my usual business-focused mind distracted. I don’t know many twenty-one-year-old virgins. I never could’ve guessed. The knowledge surges in me with heated satisfaction. Her innocence suits me even better. I’ve never liked to share my toys as a child. That hasn’t changed once I turned into an adult. If anything, the trait became more imbedded in my making. I guess Alexis is right. I am a selfish bastard.
My mother waits at the table, her apron removed and the rings she takes off for cooking back on her fingers. The five-carat emerald surrounded by diamonds is a family ring, passed on for generations from mother to daughter. We don’t have a sister. Alexis and I are the only children. As the first-born, the ring will be passed on to my wife, and I know exactly what my mother is thinking as she twists the ring on her finger while studying Zoe with a tight expression.
