Chapter 24 The Tower

Augustin Castellane's tower rose from the edge of the lake like a blade of glass, and from its top floor you could see the whole of Geneva the way the old kings had seen their cities, as a thing to be owned. The elevator ride was silent and fast, and the man who met them at the top was not the man Seraphine had expected. She had expected a monster, something with sharp edges and visible teeth. Castellane was none of that. He was tall, thin, immaculately dressed, with white hair and a face that had been handsome in the 1980s and had kept the memory of it. He smiled when they entered, and the smile did not reach his eyes, but it did not need to. The smile was not for them. It was for the room, for the furniture, for the occasion. Mr. Drake, he said, and his voice was soft, cultured, the voice of a man who had never once had to raise it to get what he wanted. And Mrs. Drake. I confess, I expected to see the papers signed before you flew three thousand miles. Some negotiations, Seraphine said, are best done in person. Castellane's eyebrows rose, just a fraction. You have trained her well, Lucian. I trained myself, Seraphine said. He is just the man I practice on. There was a silence. Then Castellane laughed, a small, dry sound, like stones shifting at the bottom of a well. I see, he said. This will be more interesting than I expected. He gestured to a seating area by the window, and they sat, and a woman in a black dress brought coffee in cups so thin they were almost translucent, and Castellane folded his hands on his knee and regarded them the way a chess player regards a board. I have held your debt for a year, he said to Drake. I have been patient. I let you marry. I let you be happy. I even sent a gift to the wedding. A photograph. So that you would remember, on the happiest day of your life, that happiness has a price. That was not a gift, Seraphine said. That was a threat. Castellane inclined his head. The difference, he said, is a matter of framing. But let us not quibble over words. The terms are simple. You sign the documents. You give me the ledger. I burn it. The buyers remain anonymous. The Drake name becomes mine, cleanly and permanently, and you, Lucian, become what you always should have been: my asset. And if we do not sign? Seraphine asked. Then I will be forced to become less patient, Castellane said. He reached into his jacket and produced a document, old, yellowed, held in a plastic sleeve. He set it on the table. Chloe Vale. A beautiful name. A name that does not belong to her. The papers my family and yours signed twenty-five years ago, when a baby was given to a prosecutor and his wife, so that she could grow up believing she was theirs. She knows now, of course. Your husband told her, or you told her, or she worked it out herself, and it does not matter. What matters is that the world does not know. And there are people, Castellane said, people who lost loved ones to your mother's business, people who were convicted because of your father's book, people who believe the Drake family owes them a debt, who would be very interested to learn that there is a Drake who got away. A Drake who is out there, alive, innocent, writing novels at a desk by the window. He tapped the document. I am a patient man, Mr. Drake. But my clients are not. And if you do not sign your papers, my clients will learn where Chloe Vale lives. Seraphine felt the room tilt. She kept her face still. She had learned, in a courthouse and a tunnel and a house by the sea, how to keep her face still when everything inside her was screaming. Drake's voice, when he spoke, was flat and cold, the voice of the man in the obsidian room. If you touch her, I will spend the rest of my life taking you apart. Castellane smiled, the first real smile of the afternoon. There, he said. Now you sound like a Drake. That is what I am buying, Lucian. Not your shipping companies. Not your holdings. Not even your book. I am buying the last man who could ever have been a threat to me. I am buying you. And he knows it, Seraphine thought. He knows it, and he has known it since the beginning, and that is why he has never once worried about us. She looked out the window, at the gray lake, at the city below, and she thought about Dana Hart, and the Swiss judge, and the package that had landed on a desk somewhere in this city that morning. She needed time. She needed to keep him talking until the machinery she had set in motion had time to move. I have a counter-proposal, she said. Castellane raised an eyebrow. I am listening. You say you are buying Lucian, she said. But you have never met me. You have never met the woman who took down Elena Drake with a book and a year of her life. You have never met the woman who married your asset because she chose to. If you want Lucian, you are going to have to take me with him. And I am not for sale. Castellane studied her. His eyes were old and pale and utterly without warmth. You misunderstand, Mrs. Drake, he said softly. Everything is for sale. The price is just a question of finding the right currency. He leaned forward. I will give you until midnight. You will sign the documents, you will hand me the ledger, and you will walk away from this tower with your life and your sister's life intact. Or, at one minute past midnight, Chloe Vale will learn who she is, and the people who want to hurt a Drake will learn where she lives. The choice, he said, is yours. He stood. It was a dismissal. Seraphine stood, and Drake stood, and they walked to the elevator in silence, and Castellane watched them go with the patient, satisfied stillness of a man who has just laid down an unanswerable move. The elevator doors closed. Seraphine's knees nearly gave out. Drake caught her arm, steadying her, and she looked up at him and saw that his face was gray, the color of the lake, the color of ash. He does not know, she said. About Hart. About the judge. About the package. He thinks we came here to surrender. We did not come here to surrender, Drake said. She heard it, the thing underneath his voice, the thing he was trying to keep from shaking. I know, she said. We came here to win. The elevator reached the ground floor, and the doors opened onto the marble lobby, and a woman in a black suit was waiting for them, holding a phone. Mrs. Drake, she said. Special Agent Hart is on the line. It seems there is a Swiss federal prosecutor who wishes to speak with you. Seraphine took the phone. Her hand was steady. That was the important thing. Her hand was steady. Agent Hart, she said. I am listening. And across the lake, in a tower made of glass, Augustin Castellane poured himself a coffee and smiled at the city he owned, and did not know that the woman he had just dismissed had already taken the first piece of it away from him. ---