him. Jean-Marc came from a proper family. I think I may have even been falling in love with him.
“Then one night I came down from my rooms and was waiting for Jean-Marc on the street when I saw him getting out of a car about two blocks away. He leaned back down and was talking to someone through the window. I wondered about that and drew back into the darkness of the doorway as the car drove past. I recognized the man as someone I’d once seen with my father.
“Jean-Marc walked up shortly after and pretended that he’d come on foot all the way from his parents’ apartment. You should have heard the load of garbage he tried to feed me about his walk over! I told him he was despicable and that I never wanted to see him again. Without another word, he just turned on his heel and left. That was last week.”
Regina looked silently out at the rolling countryside for several minutes, trying to regain her composure. I spent the time accelerating past a long line of cars.
“Better slow down or you’ll get pinched,” she said. “Next morning, I got on the first plane to New York. This was it! I was through having my life stage-managed!
“No one had any idea I’d left Paris. You should have seen the expression on the maid’s face when she answered the door!”
“‘Where is my father, Consuela?’ I demanded.
“‘Your father is in a meeting. You must not disturb him.’
“‘The hell with that!’ I said, pushing her out of the way.
“I stormed down the hall to his study, where he holds all his business meetings, and burst through the doors. There were a lot of people in the room. Some of my cousins and an uncle. Angelo was there. They looked totally stunned to see me.
“In the middle of the room was a man tied to a chair on a big sheet of plastic. He’d been badly beaten up. His face was covered in blood. Papa...my father was standing next to him, holding a gun against the man’s head.”
I almost lost control of the car. “What?”
“I have no doubt they were going to kill him, and only my walking in had prevented it. My father handed the gun to Angelo, grabbed my arm, and dragged me up to my room, where he practically threw me in and locked the door. The very strange thing was that Papa didn’t look angry. If anything, he looked, I don’t know, scared.
“Papa returned about an hour later with a dazed expression on his face and sat down heavily on my bed. ‘The day that I have dreaded has arrived.’
“I’d had enough time to figure out a few things for myself. All those years of lies! Pretending he was simply a businessman. It was easy to see what had been going on now that the blinders were off. So many strange things suddenly made sense.
“He broke down! The only other time I’d seen him cry was when Mamma died. He begged for my forgiveness. He had sworn on the grave of my mother that I would never know, never be a part of his real life. I saw how easy it had been to fool stupid, naïve Regina! Ship me off to school. Keep me away from the house. Never for an instantlet on where the money was really coming from. No wonder my cousins have always seemed so tentative around me. They knew! They were obviously part of it.
“I told him I wanted to be left alone. He went out like a whipped dog. It was a very strange thing. Angelo came in soon after and talked to me for a long time, telling me that Papa had only deceived me to protect me and to honour the dying wish of his wife. ‘Your father is what he is, and your mother knew that when she married him. She thought she could change him, at least that’s what your father says,’ Angelo told me. ‘We all told him you would find out someday anyway. Now it’s happened, and your father is afraid you hate him, Gina.’
“Angelo tried to turn on that old charm, but I knew his hands were as bloody as my father’s. ‘What happened to that poor man downstairs?’ I demanded.
“Angelo said, ‘We were only asking him some questions. We needed to frighten him. I know it looks bad, but I swear he answered our questions, and we cleaned him up and sent him home.’
“‘Liar!’ I screamed, completely losing control. ‘I can see it in your eyes, Angelo! This is nothing but a house of lies! I am such a fool! How could I have been so incredibly blind all these years?’
“I stayed in my room for three days. I wouldn’t see anyone. Consuela left my meals on a chair in the hall. In the night I could hear Papa pacing the hallway outside my door. Finally, I decided what I would do.
“Next morning, I went down to the sun room where Papa always has breakfast, acting as if nothing was wrong. Papa’s expression when I walked in was a mixture of fear and hope. It broke my heart to see it. In many ways, he had tried to be a good father. It didn’t change anything, though.
“Sitting down at the table, I looked out at the grounds, pretty with some freshly fallen snow, and asked Papa how he was feeling. Consuela hurried in with orange juice and coffee for me. I ordered a big breakfast with all my favourite things. Everyone seemed very relieved.
“We made small talk, never referring to what had happened. I spoke of returning to my job in Paris and told him I wanted to pick out some new clothes to take back with me. He asked where I wanted to shop, and I told him Bloomingdales in New York City. Angelo could take me. Papa agreed right away.
“It was easy to convince him that I didn’t have my credit cards with me, because I’d left Paris in such a hurry. Papa reached into his pocket and peeled off five one-thousand-dollar bills. I pouted and said I wanted to buy some special things. He gave me ten thousand in all.”
I whistled. “Ten grand out of his pocket?”
Regina nodded. “He is always doing things like that. He once gave a thousand-dollar bill to a parking lot attendant just because he bowed when Papa got out of his car. You’ll laugh to hear it, but I thought that was the way everyone behaved. He can be so, I don’t know, courtly is the best way to describe it.
“Angelo arrived about an hour later, and we drove down to New York. He asked me what made me change my mind about things, and I told him that I couldn’t change the way my family was, but they were my family, and that was that. He seemed really relieved.
“It wasn’t hard to lose Angelo. He’s a sucker for a pretty face, and I found the cutest salesgirl in that store to help me pick out dresses. Angelo was so busy chatting her up, he didn’t notice me slip out of the dressing room. I’ll bet he got hell from Papa!
“I took a cab to the airport and boarded a plane for London with only the few things I’d bought at Bloomies. When we landed, I hopped the first train for Birmingham—don’t ask me why—and there you have it. I’d booked the B&B online and thought I’d just stay there until I figured out what to do. You know what happened next, although I don’t know how they found me.”
“The computer. If you looked up anything on the internet, you left a trail.”
“But Papa hardly knows how to turn one on!”
“You are naïve,” I said, and she bristled a little. “Your father may not know how to use a computer, but he doesn’t need to. I’m certain his organization has men who know how to use them very well indeed. Nobody can survive in business these days without major computer skills—even the kind of business your father is involved in.”
“I
