Dree said, “A few months? That’s fast.”
“She was right to leave him.” Max’s mind recoiled. His mouth could not articulate what had happened, nor could he give voice to his horror at not being there to stop it or at least beating the living shit out of Pierre that night. “A few days ago, the day before I came to Paris and met you, Pierre sent me up to Geneva to try to convince her to reconcile with him. He told me it was all a misunderstanding and I should try to convince Flicka to return to Pierre and the marriage.”
Dree shrugged. “I don’t think avoiding divorce is a bad thing, unless there were some pretty extenuating circumstances.”
Maxence flinched inwardly. “There were extenuating circumstances. After I heard her side of what happened, I think she was right to leave him.”
“So, you heard her out. No harm, no foul.”
“I don’t think she was safe where I left her.”
“Look, Augustine,” Dree said, shaking her head. “Did she get herself into another abusive situation? Some women like abusive men. It breaks your heart, and it has made me so angry at people sometimes. I don’t want to say more than that, because we promised not to tell each other the important things. There have been times when I’ve tried to counsel women not to go back to an abusive man, but I couldn’t convince them not to.”
“I didn’tsayPierre had abused her.”
“You didn’t need to. It was obvious.”
“I’m not sure what was going on with Flicka three days ago. I asked her to leave with me. I told her that if she stood up and walked out with me right then, I could get her to safety. She wouldn’t do it.”
Dree took both of his hands and held them, and Maxence held on as tightly as he could without hurting her. Everything about Flicka had been dragging him down for days.
He said, “I got word about where she was to her older brother. He raised her and has always protected her. Pierre knows where she is, too. Either Wulfram or Pierre could get her out if they wanted to or if she wanted them to. I don’t have the resources to order a rescue like that. Neither one of them has done it yet. The only thing I can figure out is that she told them not to or there’s some other reason why they’re not.”
Dree gripped his hands more tightly, and she looked straight into his eyes like this was a very important question. “Is there anything else that you can think of that you can do now?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “I could go back to Geneva and take her hand and walk her out of there.”
“You said you tried that before, and she said no.”
“But she might’ve changed her mind, or she might say yes this time. Maybe I can do something differently so that she’ll come with me this time.”
“I cannot tell you how many times I have said something exactly like that, how many times I thought that if I just argued longer or said something better, that they would leave an abusive man.”
“I don’t think she was in danger of abuse there. Indeed, where she was, she was safe from my brother, who is a damn sociopath. I’m just not sure what was going on.”
“So, just to clarify, she was not with your brother, the sociopath. She was somewhere safe from the actual sociopath.”
“I’m having trouble explaining, but I think she was being kept there against her will.”
“Was she in jail?”
“No, she was in a mansion on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland.”
“Sounds like a pretty fancy place to be kidnapped to.”
“It did seem a lot better than the usual kidnapping prisons, like a rusty tanker ship out in the Mediterranean somewhere.”
“That seems oddly specific. Whose house was it?”
“The Mirabauds. They’re an old Swiss banking family.”
“Swiss bankers? No wonder they wouldn’t tell you anything. Swiss bankers never tell anyone anything, right?”
“Her ex-bodyguard, who guarded her since she was a little kid, was there with her. He was her older brother’s best friend. Her brother, Wulfram, raised her. Wulfram had legal custody of her since she was five and he was fifteen. I’m pretty sure Mirabaud was the guy she was in love with all her life. That’s why when we were dating, I never really had a chance with her.”
“She’s in love with her older brother’s best friend, the best friend of the older brother whoraisedher? Does this not screamdaddy issuesto you?”
“They even look appallingly alike: tall, blond, and Teutonic. The bodyguard looks a little more French than German, but not a lot.”
