All In (17 page)

“I care just as much about Investum and Svenska Banken as anyone else here at the table,” Natalia said. “I know what it means to you, Daddy. It's just as much in my blood and genes as yours and Peter's and Alex's.” She smiled to take the edge off her words.

Åsa blinked and raised her glass in a silent toast, but Natalia's father wouldn't look at her, and Natalia was dangerously close to losing her composure if he kept ignoring her so blatantly. She should have known it was a bad idea to come here.

“I talked to the Danish chairman of the board,” her father said to Peter. “He assured me personally that everything is going well. I'm not worried.”

“So you didn't talk to just J-O over my head?”
How the fuck could he undermine her like this?

Even Peter had the sense to look pained. If she didn't have Gustaf's support, at least outwardly, no one was going to trust her. She squeezed her wineglass.

“The last time I checked, I didn't need to ask your permission about anything,” her father said, smirking, as if the conversation were a joke. Natalia was used to his domineering tactics, used to meeting men like him and dealing with them. But when it was her own family, it always brought up a bunch of emotions.

“No,” she said. “But it is my deal. I am leading the project, and it's a little strange for you to go over my head.” With one of the biggest efforts in her life, she gave him a friendly, albeit stiff smile. “What did you promise him?”

“Stop it. There's nothing more to discuss.”

“Darling, can't you talk shop after we gals have left the table?” Mother pleaded. She looked at Natalia. “All of this, really, I think it's gone too far.”

“All of this?” Natalia said sharply.

“Women have to be women,” her mother said. “Everyone can't be the same, that's all I'm saying. Don't you see how you're blowing this all out of proportion and disrupting our dinner? Women's rights have gone too far.”

“Seriously, Mother, how can women's rights have gone
too
far?” Natalia asked. “Too much equality, Mother? For whom?”

“Am I somehow no longer entitled to my own opinion?” Ebba De la Grip asked, looking around. “Everything used to be so lovely. The men dealt with the business world, went hunting, and got to be men. And women were women. I don't understand why things can't continue that way.”

Natalia had hated this her whole life, that the men stayed at the table and talked shop while the women retired to the living room to discuss caterers and preschools. It was like living in the 1800s.

“It's a lovely tradition,” her mother continued.

Louise leaned forward and patted Ebba's hand.

Natalia didn't say anything else; there was no point. She'd been fighting this battle her whole life. She looked over at Peter, but he avoided making eye contact. He would never defend her against their father. Louise sneered and mumbled something that Ebba nodded to. Ebba and Louise were in complete agreement that women quite simply were not biologically suited for business.

Natalia waited while the table was cleared. Åsa had sunk into introspective silence. Mother and Louise talked in subdued, feminine voices. Father was saying something that Peter was listening to attentively. Natalia glanced at her brother and then at her sister-in-law. They were seated far apart, as if they didn't really belong together. Natalia thought Louise had blossomed after her marriage to Peter. It was as if Louise had been waiting her whole life to become a lady of the manor, to organize hunting and fishing trips, to supervise the art collection, and tend to the cultural heritage. But Peter looked tired, worn-out. As if he were always trying to keep up, but wasn't quite up to it. He worked in the city with Father, commuted all the way back out to Gyllgarn in the evenings. They had a lot of social obligations, their home often appeared in prestigious lifestyle magazine spreads, and Louise was known for her dinners and parties. Louise was living her dream, but sometimes Natalia wondered if Peter were paying the price for her keeping up appearances.

“David Hammar is in town again,” Peter said suddenly, and Natalia paid closer attention. Peter tugged on his tie and said, making a face, “I saw him the other day.”

Father furrowed his brow but didn't say anything.

Natalia's heart did an uncomfortable summersault. It wasn't by any means the first time David Hammar had been discussed in the family home, but before he'd always been just one of a crowd of nouveau-riche upstarts who were despised and bad-mouthed. Not a person Natalia had slept with. Not a man she'd been so nakedly intimate with. She glanced over at Åsa, who just shrugged.

“God, he's so vulgar,” Louise said.

“A damned parasite,” Father said. “He has never known his place.”

“Darling, didn't we go to Skogbacka with him?” Louise asked Peter, her face twisted in spite. This was what David had encountered, every day, at the boarding school, Natalia thought. Scorn and innuendo.

“He was there on a scholarship. A charity case,” Peter said.

“His mother worked at some bar,” Louise said. “And she was sleeping with the headmaster.” She sniffed scornfully. “So horribly low class.”

Peter shook his head. “He never grasped the rules.”

“He's done quite well for himself,” Natalia said sharply. She flashed Louise a poisonous look. “And surely he's not responsible for what his mother did or didn't do.”

Louise raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything.

“He lines his own pockets on the backs of decent people,” Father said. “Even worse. He plunders companies that other people built.”

“He operates on the same terms as everyone else,” Natalia pointed out. “And he's good at what he does.”

“He's unscrupulous and shortsighted. You don't have to be particularly good at anything for that.”

“Some people aren't worth wasting your energy on,” her mother said. “That beastly man is one of them. Let's not sully this lovely dinner that Louise has arranged any more now.”

“But . . . ,” began Natalia.

“That will do, Natalia,” her father interrupted tersely.

Natalia blinked. But it wouldn't help to get angry—she never won. And it was her against them all. Not even Åsa got involved in these types of debates.
Screw them all.

“It's sad when people like him are allowed to come in and ruin things, that's all I mean,” Louise said in her insipid voice. Feminine and vapid. The way women were supposed to be, if you asked upper-class men. Harmless fools who froze out the people they didn't like and never took a stand for anything important. Natalia couldn't help thinking of how David had talked business and gender equality with her.

“As usual, you don't know what you're talking about, Louise,” Åsa said suddenly and loudly. She shook her head, as if she'd had enough. “I don't understand how you can stand to be so dense.”

“I'm just saying out loud what we're all thinking,” Louise said, red blotches appearing on her neck. Her eyes darted around; she moistened her lips but didn't back down. “Some people have no style, no finesse. And I think that's clear from the beginning. That's just the way it is. It's inborn. There's a difference between proper folk and, well, people like him.”

Peter looked down at his plate, his facial expression impossible to interpret. Natalia wondered if he was as weary to the core of these conversations as she was. But she never knew what Peter thought; they hadn't been close to each other for many years.

When she was little, she had hung the moon on her big brother. He was six years older, and she had looked up to him a lot as a child. Alex had been born only a year after Natalia, and in a way she and Alex had become allies as Peter disappeared more and more with each passing year, until it felt like they were more strangers now than siblings.

Father's face was expressionless, as usual. But he didn't need to say anything. No one needed to say anything. Natalia still knew what they were all thinking. Sometimes all this silent communication was so uncomfortable that she just wanted to scream. Her mother sat motionless, just waiting for them to return to the pleasantries. Louise smiled, Peter cleared his throat and praised the food, and then they did what they usually did: carried on as if nothing had happened. Natalia gave up.

After dinner, coffee, and brandy, Åsa decided to spend the night, but Natalia wanted to go home. She said good-bye, hugged Åsa, took one last look up at the beloved yellow façade, and then started her car. It would take her a while to recover from this family dinner.

 

David was restless. He had spent his entire Saturday with Carolina, taken a valuable day and seen her. She'd been happy, and he felt a little less guilty. Now he was back in the office again, trying to make up for lost time, even though it was Saturday night and, honestly, there wasn't much he could do now. Michel was out with his parents at their suburban villa, and the office was totally empty.

David glanced at the phone but didn't have any messages. Or at least none from Natalia. But he hadn't been expecting one either. He'd been intentionally short with her, and it was probably all over now, he presumed, just as he'd planned. It just felt so incomplete, so damned unsatisfying. He scrolled through his contacts. Dialed her. He decided that if she didn't answer after three rings, he would hang up.

“Damn it, hang on, let me plug in my headset,” he heard. And then, “Yes?”

“Natalia?”

Long silence. “Hi, David,” she said as if she couldn't decide if she was happy, surprised, or something else. “Sorry, I thought you were my boss.”

David glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven. “You did? Does he usually call you this late on a Saturday night?”

“Well, you know J-O,” she said sarcastically. “What do you think?”

“You're right. Did I wake you?”

“No. I'm in my car. I was with my folks. Although actually we were at my brother's place.”

David pictured the yellow building, remembered his helicopter trip. “The castle?”

“Yeah, although we don't call it a castle. We call it an estate.” Short silence, quiet laugh. “Sorry, I can't believe how arrogant that sounded. I mostly go there to ride my horse. My family is just a part of the deal.”

Outwardly the De la Grip family was known for their unity, but something in Natalia's voice told David that their relationships were more complicated than that.

“You ride?” he asked, although he knew she was an expert equestrian. There was something about the thought of Natalia in high, shiny boots and spurs that made his blood flow faster.

She laughed, a low laugh that made him remember how she had writhed beneath him, gyrating under his body, so amazingly hot.

“Yes, David. I ride.” Her voice was low, and the double entendre wasn't lost on him.

“I don't know if this is the wrong thing to say, but the idea of you in riding boots turns me on. Do you have some of those tight pants, too?”

“Very tight,” she said slowly.

He pictured her long, strong legs, her round, full buttocks. “What are you wearing?” he asked in a deep voice.

“Fuck,” she muttered.

“What happened?”

“I'm going 85 mph. I can't have phone sex.”

He sat up, suddenly thinking very clearly. “That's over the speed limit. Could you slow down a little?”

“It's fine, you just took me by surprise is all.”

“Have you been drinking? Do you want me to come pick you up somewhere?” The worry was so automatic that he didn't think, just spoke.

“I wasn't drinking, and I'll be home soon.”

“Okay,” he said. “Drive safely.”

“Oh, David, I do everything safely,” she said, her voice like a soft, seductive melody. God, he loved it when she flirted with him.

No more now. Hang up.

“I just wanted . . . ,” David began, but couldn't think of anything sensible to say. He shouldn't have called. He knew that. “I was thinking about you,” he finally said, quietly and honestly.
Dumb, so dumb.

It went completely quiet.

“David?” She almost exhaled his name, and David could sense her pressing the phone to her ear.

“What?”

“I'm not so used to this stuff, so I don't know if I should say this, but I'll be home soon. I've had an awful evening. Do you want to come over?” She breathed quietly, and he thought he heard the faint rumble of her car engine. “I want that,” she said. “No matter what is or isn't going on between us, I want you to know that. I want to see you. Again.”

Oh, fucking hell. Of all the things she could have said, that was the worst. He debated with himself. And lost by a mile. “I'll be over in an hour,” he said.

21

P
eter lay awake for a long time after Natalia went home. After Åsa and his parents had said good night and withdrawn. Long after Louise had fallen asleep next to him.

He couldn't shake the feeling of unease.

The feeling of impending doom had begun when he saw David Hammar during rush hour the previous Friday.

He stared at the antique stucco ceiling, not knowing if it was his imagination. It scared him, how little he could rely on his feelings, how he mostly didn't feel anything.

Although that wasn't true either, he thought, rolling over. It was a hot, stuffy night, and of course the house didn't have any air-conditioning. He did feel some things. The problem was just that everything was so darned uncomfortable and he did what he could to avoid it. Unfortunately, he couldn't choose which feelings to suppress, so he lost them all.

He remembered when he'd started at Skogbacka. He had thought it would work out, that he would land on his feet, that he would get to start over, leave the misery of elementary and middle school behind him and finally fit in.

But he'd never had an easy time making friends, and that hadn't changed just because he started at Skogbacka. There was hazing from the older students. Even though that was just a part of it, it had been tough. You were on your own in those situations. Everyone had to go through that humiliation on their own. “You have to bite the bullet, Peter,” his father had said the one time he'd made the mistake of calling home, crying. “Don't cry like a fucking girl.”

After that, Peter just put up with it, did everything that was expected of him. Strangely enough, you could get used to anything.

And then it had been his turn.

New students came, and he wasn't the youngest anymore. David Hammar had been one of the new ones; even back then he'd been tall, with angry eyes, a childhood unlike anyone else's, and those rumors about his mother sleeping around. David didn't stand a chance from the start. The initiation rites had begun, and even today it startled Peter how quickly his cohort, who had been victimized the previous year, became the agressors. Especially him.

But that was all just part of boarding school, he thought, explaining it away in his head, apologizing just as he'd done his entire life. It didn't make you a bad person. Everyone understood that.

Except for David Hammar, of course.

That outsider never had the sense to just bear the humiliation and shut up. David had refused to follow all the social codes that Peter observed to the letter. And Peter remembered how angry and deceived he had felt, almost personally violated. Who did David think he was? A charity case, a working-class boy attending the school on a scholarship—how did he have the balls to think he was better than anyone else? Peter didn't remember how it had happened, but he had decided he was going to break that guy, not least because the girls at the boarding school were crazy about him.

Even Louise.

Peter glanced at his sleeping wife. Even in her sleep Louise was the perfect woman: tranquil, quiet, and fresh.

Louise probably didn't think Peter knew it, but he'd overheard her talking about David at a party. He'd seen her eyes beam with arousal as she spoke about that tall working-class boy.

And Peter had seen how mortified she'd been when her approaches had been rejected.

Strange that he hadn't thought about that before. He'd forgotten the whole thing, but the memory had resurfaced when the subject of David came up at dinner, as he listened to how Louise poured her scorn over David Hammar.

Peter had never been sure he was good enough for Louise, so he had been astonished when she chose him in the end. She had been with some of his buddies before the two of them got together. Everyone had considered Louise a catch, and he'd proposed without reflecting on anything other than the fact that he had been tremendously lucky to land a woman like that: blond, cool, and with exactly the right pedigree. He had always been awkward around women. He didn't really get them, just knew that you needed to earn a lot of money and be successful; otherwise they would look down on you.

He moved a little in the bed, ran his hand over his pajama bottoms. It had been a long time since they'd had sex, but honestly he just hadn't wanted it as much. Could that be age already? He was only thirty-five, and he wasn't particularly happy in his marriage. Maybe he ought to care about that more, but ultimately Peter wasn't really sure he deserved to be happy, not after what he'd done. He pulled his hand back, didn't even feel like jerking off. And if Louise should wake up . . . She would probably vomit.

He sighed. His thoughts returned to David Hammar again.

He'd attacked David with all his strength at Skogbacka, with all his bitterness and envy and frustration, hadn't even known he had that much emotion inside.

The consequences had been disastrous.

Oh, how they'd harassed David, how it had escalated.

And then . . .

No, he wouldn't think about that. He couldn't; it would make it almost impossible to breathe. That's why it was better to try to forget. Actually he wanted to get up, light a cigarette, and smoke, but he wasn't up to explaining that to Louise.

He blinked, trying to urge sleep to come, but there didn't seem to be any chance. Maybe this was just about the merger? As soon as the deal was done, his father would retire, withdraw, and turn everything over to Peter, the eldest, the dutiful son.

Then he would be the CEO. That would be the crowning achievement of his career, proof that he was good enough. Everyone who had ever whispered that he only got his job because of his name would be silenced. Everything would be better then.

Peter turned and stared out the window.

Maybe inner peace was too much to hope for. But he really wanted to be rid of the baggage he carried around all the time, all the memories he could never share with anyone, all the stuff that sometimes made him feel like he was losing it.

It would start to get light out in a few hours. Sweden had so many hours of daylight in the summer. Maybe that was why he couldn't sleep?

Louise mumbled in her sleep, and he studied her. He decided he would talk to her if she woke up. But she didn't, and he knew that he could never undo what had been done. The best he could hope for was to forget. He'd been trying to forget for almost two decades.

He would try even harder.

Eventually it would have to get easier.