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I force myself back to the moment. “What?”
“The shooting. You can’t let them win.”
“Who?”
“Brise de Mer.”
“Is that a gang?”
“The Corsicans. They’ve been at war with my family for years.”
The bartender arrives with our drinks. He serves them with ginger cookies and leaves.
How does Sylvie cope with mafia life? How can she sit there so unafraid, looking so normal? “I don’t know how you can live like this.”
“Don’t worry.” She lifts her cup to her lips. “Our men will take care of us.”
I consider her words. They strike a chord of irony. “It’s funny. I used to have this stupid fantasy of being saved from my miserable life and carried off to a happy ending by a knight in shining armor. Now I don’t like that fantasy so much. I didn’t like being saved.” I make quotation marks with my fingers. I can’t tell her saved is a sarcastic term for kidnapped. “I think I prefer to be in control of my life.”
“Oh, honey.” She makes a sad face. “The women belonging to the family have very little freedom, but we do have control. You just have to be clever about it.”
“You mean manipulation?”
She cocks a shoulder. “Papa wouldn’t let Noelle and me study, so we got depressed.” She chuckles. “We started eating so much Maman told Papa no man would ever marry us if we couldn’t even fit into a wedding dress.”
“That made him agree?”
“Papa’s biggest fear is that we won’t give him grandchildren.”
A life of constant manipulation seems awfully sad, not to mention exhausting, but I’m not going to insult her by telling her so.
“You need to figure out what Max’s weak points are,” she continues. “You, for one, seem to be a pretty strong weakness. Surely, you must have some bargaining power in bed.”
My cheeks heat.
“See?” She wags her eyebrows. “I knew I was right. You need to convince him to let you come visit me in Paris. We’ll go out and do some shopping. It’ll make you feel a whole lot better.”
It’s appealing, but a crazy idea. “I doubt that’ll ever happen.”
“You may be surprised. Max cares about you. He wants you to be happy. I’m sure he’ll do anything to make sure you are. He may come along to Paris and bring an army with him, but he’d do that if you go about it the right way.”
The right way. He’s showed me time and again he’d treat me kindly if I behave, but that’s just another form of manipulation, and I’m so tired of the games. I just want to be free. I want to make my own decisions and determine my own actions. I don’t want to have hidden agendas. I want to give because I care, not because I need something in return. How can I explain that to Sylvie who’s been raised to navigate this world and its myriad of landmines?
“We have to make the best of what we have,” Sylvie says, pushing her empty cup aside. “Accept what we can’t change. Let’s face it, we have it a lot better than many other women.” She gets to her feet. “Do you mind if I have a cigarette?”
“Of course not.”
She grabs her bag. “You’ll have to come with me. I’ll have to smoke in the toilet.” When I frown, she says, “Papa doesn’t know.”
“Oh.” Of course. The people here all know Benoit. That means they all know the family. One of the men will see it as his duty to inform Sylvie’s father if she lights up a cigarette in the street.
When I follow her to the bathroom, Benoit takes up a position by the bar from where he can keep an eye on the door. It’s a unisex bathroom. The space is cramped with a small basin on one side and a toilet on the other.
She locks the door and takes a cigarette from her purse. “I can’t buy a packet, or Papa will know. Every tobacco shop owner in Marseille pays Papa rent.”
“Then how do you get them?” I ask, leaning on the counter.
“Some of the guards are friendly.” She takes a drag and blows out a thin line of smoke. “I know which ones won’t talk. See? You just have to be clever.”
I both admire and pity Sylvie. I pity her lack of freedom and admire her survival skills. I admire her outlook on all of this. I wish I could cope so easily. I study her from under my lashes. Can I trust her? She did open up to me about forcing her father’s hand to let her study and smoking behind his back, and she was kind enough to make time and meet me.
“Can I ask you something, Sylvie?”
She blows smoke from the corner of her mouth. “Shoot.”
“What’s the difference between a mistress and property?”
“Where did you hear about that?” She offers me the cigarette.
