All In (41 page)

61

T
he conference center was still packed with people all heading out the doors at the same time. There were hundreds of people, forming lines and crowding.

Carl-Erik Tessin was trying to get his bearings in the sea of people. A door opened a little ways off, and he saw Natalia De la Grip come out and hurry past, looking very tense. He'd liked her when they'd met at BÃ¥stad, which was unexpected given who her family was.

Daughter of Gustaf and sister of Peter, two men he had every reason to loathe.

And then Carl-Erik spotted Gustaf De la Grip. He towered above the crowd, like a bird of prey or a vulture, with his sharp features and cold eyes.

Carl-Erik took a step forward, tensing.

This was it. The time had come to confront the past. He
had
to risk it. Now or never, he repeated to himself like a mantra.

“Gustaf!” he called. His voice carried surprisingly well over the crowd, and Gustaf turned around.

Carl-Erik's whole body stiffened as Gustaf looked to see who had called his name, but he forced himself not to step away. Gustaf looked him over. Carl-Erik approached. He tried not to lean too much on his walking stick, didn't want to show weakness.

“Are you speaking to me?” Gustaf asked disdainfully once they were facing each other.

Carl-Erik tried to take a breath to calm himself. But he was jumpy. Gustaf had always been able to strike fear into him just by looking at him. Even though it had been fifty years since their days at Skogbacka, even though they were old men, the memories lingered in his body and maybe in his soul.

Carl-Erik had been sent to the boarding school when he was ten. His parents had believed in harsh discipline, and they'd sent him away, even though he was quaking with fear. Carl-Erik was so homesick he cried at night, and he'd been scared of everything during the day—the teachers, the staff, and the older children. He'd taken so many beatings, and Gustaf De la Grip had been his worst tormentor. The things people wrote about in the newspapers these days, about harassment and hazing at the boarding schools, were just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who'd gone to boarding school knew. Carl-Erik's hand squeezed his cane. “Yes,” he said. “I want to talk to you about David.”

Gustaf scoffed, and it took Carl-Erik some effort not to immediately fall back into the roll of victim. He hated conflicts. Sometimes it felt as if he'd been afraid his whole life: first of his own parents, then of Gustaf and the other students at boarding school, then of his wife, and then—like some nightmarish repetition of the past—of Gustaf again.

Even today he remembered the conversation from so many years ago. It would be exactly seventeen years on the Santa Lucia holiday this year. December thirteenth, he never forgot the date, and he had hated the holiday ever since. Helena had called him in a panic. They hadn't spoken for many years; Helena had refused to see him since the day she'd realized he was never going to be brave enough to leave his wife. And she had forbidden Carl-Erik to have any contact with David or Carolina. He'd sent letters but never heard anything back. The years since then had been desolate, cold, and lonely, but he'd done what he'd done his whole life: given in.

And then Helena had called late that night, the panic audible in her voice and the words tumbling out of her as she told him about Carolina being raped, David being assaulted, and the threat against all three of them. She must have been beside herself to have called, he realized today. She'd punished him for so many years by refusing to take his calls, but she'd called when the children were in danger. Helena was a proud woman—David got that from her, Carl-Erik thought—and it must have really cost her something to make that phone call. He'd taken the call in the middle of a formal dinner with counts and barons and his wife's parents. With his heart thumping, he'd answered when the mother of his two out-of-wedlock children, and the only woman he'd ever loved, had called to ask for help.

And then he'd done what remained the most shameful thing in his whole life: he'd let her down. Sure, he'd given her money for Carolina's treatment for a few paltry years, but otherwise his failure had been complete.

Not anymore, he thought, straightening his back and looking Gustaf in the eye, never again.

“I want to talk to you,” he repeated.

“Oh? And what makes you think I'm going to listen to anything you have to say?” Gustaf said with a sneer.

“They're my children,” Carl-Erik said.

“What are you going on about?”

“David and Carolina are my children,” Carl-Erik said, his voice not trembling. “I am their father.”

Carolina and David had paid the price for his cowardice for all these years, and they had both suffered abysmally. And yet they'd turned out so well. He was so proud of them. The least he could do was to fight an overdue battle with Gustaf, to try to make up for his past failings.

“All of this is your own fault,” he continued.

“You can't seriously mean that?” Gustaf said.

“David is my son. What you and Peter and that headmaster did to him and to Carolina . . . At some point you have to take responsibility.”

Gustaf took a step closer. “Keep quiet, for fuck's sake.”

Carl-Erik blinked. It had always been so easy for him to smooth things over, to take a step back, be the diplomat. He'd always thought that made him a likable person, but the fact was that it just meant he was a coward. When he thought about how David, his son, had taken up the fight in there, it made him stand tall.

“You should be aware that I know why David is doing what he's doing,” Carl-Erik said. “And he has my full support.”

Gustaf's eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that?”

“I will make sure he has the support he needs. And I will not put up with your attacking him, not again.” On some level Carl-Erik saw that David hardly needed his support. David was strong in a way he had never been. But he was not insignificant, not in the circles Gustaf moved in.

“Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?” Gustaf took a step toward him, but for the first time in his life Carl-Erik did not back down. He couldn't change the past. He would always have to live with that. But he could fight for the future, a future for
all
his children.

He glanced coldly at Gustaf. “It's not a threat. It's information,” he said.

Gustaf stared.

And then, for the first time ever, Gustaf backed down.

It was a small victory. But, damn, did it feel good.

62

 

D
avid ran backward down the grassy playing field. He didn't take his eyes off the soccer ball.

People were shouting all over the bare-bones soccer field in an underprivileged neighborhood outside Stockholm.

“Over here!”

“Pass it!”

“Would you
pass
already?!”

Michel, who was playing wholeheartedly, passed the ball to a gangly teenager who quickly dribbled it toward the opposing team's goal. Tufts of grass flew as Michel ran and shouted and gesticulated every bit as enthusiastically as the other players. Kids of various sizes and body types followed him loudly.

Michel would have made a great soccer player, David thought as he concentrated on following the game. Michel was tall but graceful, and he had as much of a feel for the ball as any professional player. If his family hadn't decided to send him to college, Michel could have played for one of the best teams. David was plenty good, but he was refereeing the game, which ended their practice.

He and Michel were out here every week, year-round, and he genuinely loved it—the kids, the joy of the game, and the competition. He despised most of the sports rich people indulged in—golf, hunting, and sailing. He skied occasionally, and he was an adequate if not very enthusiastic tennis player. But he liked playing soccer with his and Michel's kids best, outside the city, away from Stureplan and the financial sector. Here they were just David and Michel, and the sum of their worth was determined by how well they moved the ball.

 

After the game, everyone helped gather up all the balls and cones. They chatted with the kids, asked how their parents were, heard about their siblings and cousins and girlfriends, and then finally waved as they biked off home to their apartment buildings.

“That kid is totally out of control,” Michel said, nodding toward a big, tall teenager who was swearing at his little brother. “He cusses and hits.”

“He's young,” David said dismissively. He liked the boy, knew that he was being beaten at home, and hoped he would make it to adulthood intact. David wished he could do more. Maybe they could start some sort of mentoring program . . .

“Is that some kind of excuse for acting like an asshole?” Michel dribbled a ball over and stuffed it into the cloth sack. “That he's young and stupid?”

“Maybe not an excuse,” David said. “But it makes sense. Everyone makes mistakes when they're young.”

“Mistakes?” Michel scoffed, collecting the last ball. He tossed it to David. “A mess of idiotic screwups more like.”

“But didn't you screw up a bunch when you were young?” David asked with a laugh.

Michel shook his head gloomily. “Not as much as I would have liked.”

“Oh, he's just a teenager,” David maintained, not quite getting what Michel was all worked up about. He picked up a plastic cone. “Give him a chance. A guy that young shouldn't have to be out of the game for good just because he did a few dumb things when he was young, right? Keep your eye on him. He acts tough, but he's just a big kid.”

“You think he could change?” Michel said.

“I think it's important that people's lives aren't ruined by things they did when they were young and stupid. Forgiveness has to be possible. Why are you taking this so personally?”

Michel kicked a ball hard to David with a somber look. “On a scale of one to ten, how dumb are you actually?”

David caught the ball. “What do you mean?”

Michel shook his head and handed him a bottle of water. “You have to figure out some things on your own,” he said, as they set out for their cars.

Michel got out his key chain and unlocked his car with a soundless click. David studied their shiny cars, the baby-blue Bentley and Michel's menacingly black BMW, status symbols of how well they'd done. Their flashy cars stood out here on the playing field below the projects like Hollywood wives at a bowling alley. It was a miracle that nobody had messed with them.

“I'm going,” Michel said, opening his door and tossing in his bag and the sack of soccer balls.

David didn't ask where Michel was going—Michel had made it clear that he didn't want to discuss his relationship with Åsa—but David was sure that Michel was going to see her now as he hurried off.

For some reason it really irked him.

 

A while later, David pulled onto the highway.

Soccer usually cleared his mind, but not today. He just felt hot and irritable.

He glanced at the time and decided to go home. No one else was still at the office. It was seven-thirty on a Friday night, and even Malin had gone home this afternoon, saying that no one should call her unless it was a matter of life and death.

Preferably not even then.

David and Michel had been snapping at each other all week. He didn't really know why their relationship was so strained. Maybe all the work on Investum had been more taxing than they wanted to admit. Maybe Michel's relationship with Åsa was causing tension between them.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Rima Campbell, on the other hand, was a real find. She was already running the company with a firm, expert hand. Hammar Capital wasn't really needed anymore, not for day-to-day operations. Maybe that's what was wrong.

But there was something more, something else bothering him. David knew it. As he zoomed along the highway, he sank back into the same thoughts that had been bothering him all week, thoughts of revenge. Strangely enough, he had never seen himself as a particularly vengeful person. Hard-nosed and goal-oriented, yes. Vengeful, no.

He was sure there were some people who probably wouldn't agree.

Natalia, for example.

He pulled off toward downtown and continued on toward Kungsholmen and home. It was hot and muggy the way it got in late summer. Norr Mälarstrand Boulevard was crawling with people just hanging out, making the most of the last few weeks of summer.

He parked and took the elevator up. He tossed his keys and bag aside, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and then went up to his rooftop terrace.

He drank out of the bottle and looked out at the roofs and the sky. It was light out, and the evenings were still warm, but fall was coming even though no one really wanted to admit it yet.

All the buzz in the press had calmed down. Now he was being described as a new-school finance man: a smart, fair man, a visionary.

He sighed.

If there was one thing he did not feel, it was
smart
.

He looked out at the city.

He'd
shaken hands
with Natalia when they'd said good-bye on Monday. That was possibly the stupidest thing he'd ever done, shaking hands with the woman he loved and then letting her disappear from his life.

They hadn't been in touch since then.

Of course not, why would they be?

He lay awake now at night, staring at his ceiling and wondering what Natalia was up to. Summer wasn't over. She was probably off on a well-deserved vacation, licking her wounds, maybe, with some well-heeled patrician guy who would treat her the way she really deserved to be treated, maybe even that stuffed-shirt Jonas Jägerhed, who navigated all the social codes of the upper class so deftly.

David tried to control the nagging uneasy feelings that welled up in him whenever he thought like this. Natalia with another man. But didn't she deserve that? A man who would treat her like a princess, not destroy her family empire, force her father to disown her, and indirectly contribute to her getting fired. No, Natalia De la Grip could probably do with a little laugh right now, he thought.

He sighed again, deeply.

Maybe he should call her. But what would he say? She had every reason to hate him. The things he'd done to her this summer . . .

He'd been so angry for so long. And he'd always thought it was a straightforward emotion, that there was only one way to deal with it, but of course everything was so much more complicated than that.

He leaned over the railing, following the peaks of the rooflines off into the distance with his eyes.

There had been so many possible paths for him to take over the years, so many options. And he'd always chosen decisively, without hesitation. He'd chosen revenge and that had always felt right, given him satisfaction, but this last week had made him question more and more if he hadn't taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

He glanced out at the sky and wondered.

There was something rattling around in his head, something Michel had said. But what was it?

He picked up his phone and called.

“What?” Michel answered tersely.

“I was thinking about what you said,” David said. “If Carolina could let go, then I need to as well. That's what you meant, right? When we were talking about kids being allowed to make mistakes? Obviously what happened at Skogbacka was more than just a youthful mistake, but you have to move on, right? Not forgive, maybe, but still see the mechanisms that made people act the way they did?”

He fell silent.

His mind was racing so fast that he couldn't keep up. They'd been so young back at Skogbacka, he and Peter and the others. The hazing had been ghastly. The humiliation and the brutality—they had acted like animals. It was entrenched at schools like that, it was practically
expected.
It was inhuman. But was it unforgivable?

Could you forgive something like that?

Should
you forgive it?

He didn't believe in forgiveness. But maybe he'd chosen an approach that had forced him to remain stuck in the past. Did he want to stay there?

“Hello?” he said. “Michel? Are you still there?”

Michel exhaled heavily, sort of muffled. “David, I have to hang up. I thought it was something important. I'm really busy right now.”

Michel was gone.

David set down his phone. He stared straight ahead. All the platitudes he'd ever heard about revenge—which he'd thought were just platitudes—swam around in his head.

What had happened at Skogbacka, the physical abuse and the rape, that had been . . . He actually didn't have any words. It had quite simply been the worst thing that had happened in his life: His memory of Carolina when they'd found her, knowing that the rape was revenge for his not falling into line. The guilt, which had almost destroyed him. The hatred. That was what had come to define his life. He'd been someone out for revenge, someone who liked the feeling of getting even. That's what had made him who he was today. A man who for the first time didn't like himself. A man who had destroyed the woman he loved.

He pulled a hand over his face, wondered if he ought to get himself another beer, take a shower, read a book—do
something
—but he just stood there.

Caro had moved on and he
hadn't
.

She'd been mad at him all week. It felt weird having Carolina mad at him. She had coolly congratulated him on his takeover. Then she'd chewed him out because she was tired of carrying the burden of knowing he was taking revenge on her behalf, and she'd told him to take his controlling nature and shove it. She had refused to talk to him about Peter De la Grip, and then she'd had coffee with Carl-Erik before going back to Denmark and her
boyfriend
.

But she was right. It had never occurred to him before that his not being able to let go of what had happened was a burden for her. He would stop now, quit being controlling and quit living Caro's life for her.

Weird how hard but also nice it felt not to carry the responsibility for another person on his shoulders anymore. Of course, he should have realized it a long time ago. Carolina had said it—she was an adult.

He stared out at the view.

No, he wasn't particularly smart.

After his talk with Peter, a completely different question had been bothering him: had his takeover of Investum been about more than he'd thought?

Damn it, this was hard to think about.

Strangely enough, he related to Peter, to his struggle to earn his father's approval. What was this takeover about—if not that David wanted to show his own biological father what he was worth? How had he never realized that? He had seen Peter's internal struggle and suddenly realized that it was the same battle he was waging.

And he was so sick of living in the past, so tired of being ruled by old demons. Carolina was right. Natalia was right. Nothing good came from revenge, not in the long term anyway. The short-term triumph and relief were all too quickly replaced by emptiness. If Carolina could move on, then he really ought to be able to as well. Eyes on the future, quit mucking around in the past. Become a better man and person. Find some other purpose in life.

And
if
he could let go . . .

David took a long, shaky breath.

If he could put what had happened behind him, if he could maybe not
forgive
Peter and the others but at least understand. If—and this was almost the biggest if—if he could forgive himself and come to terms with the teenager he'd been, then . . .

David stood up from the railing.

If he could do all that, then he could try to win back Natalia.

Suddenly it was so clear. He wanted Natalia, for real, not as a date or a fling. He loved her in a way he'd never loved anyone before, maybe hadn't even been able to love. His desire for revenge had drowned out everything else. There hadn't been room for other people, and that had left him alone, even though he'd never felt lonely. But when Natalia came into his life, it was like discovering a new dimension of existence. He
wanted
her. And he wanted her to want him, for real, as a man, as
her
man.