Page 85 of Charmingly Obsessed
For some reason, we take the private, staff-only stairs down to the ground floor, bypassing the opulent, tourist-filled lobby.
Every hotel employee we pass, from the stern-looking head of security to a young, fresh-faced bellhop, greets her with an impeccable, almost military courtesy. Some of them, I notice, acknowledge me as well. With a new, almost imperceptible deference.
She leads me to a small, unremarkable, unmarked door in a quiet, forgotten corridor behind the main kitchens. She hesitates for a dramatic, almost theatrical moment before finally switching on the single, bare lightbulb inside.
The room is cramped, cluttered, and smells faintly of dust and forgotten things. It’s as if someone, once upon a time, attempted to organize the chaotic jumble of items stored here, but gave up a long, long time ago.
She guides me towards a secluded, floor-to-ceiling shelving unit at the very back of the room.
“We, at de la Couronne,” she begins, her voice a confidential murmur, “meticulously store all lost and found belongings. Indefinitely. There is no expiration date on memory, you see. Or on… sentiment.” She smiles, a thin, knowing, slightly cruel smile. “I thought,Mrs. Bilova, that you might be interested in… sorting through… what’s been left behind.”
I don’t understand. Not at first.
Something about this, about her tone, about the gleam in her eye, is… off. Wrong.
“Why wouldn’t these… lost items be returned to Mykola?” I ask, my voice carefully neutral. “He stays at this hotel regularly, doesn’t he? It’s his preferred Parisian residence.”
I have never seen a smile appear so slowly, so maliciously, on someone’s face before.
“Oh, these aren’t his personal belongings, my dear,” she says, her voice dripping with a faux-sympathetic sweetness thatmakes my skin crawl. “These are the things… the trifles, the trinkets, the forgotten pieces of clothing left behind by his many, many former companions. His… lady friends.” She pauses, letting the words land, letting them sink in. “By the way,” she adds, her smile widening, “if you should ever happen to forget anything here, you can come directly to the front desk. They’ll let you in the hotel for a moment to retrieve it yourself. No questions asked.”
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Chapter 33 Diana
Idon’t move for nearly a minute. Kelly, having made her point with a surgical, devastating precision, doesn’t need to say another word. My stunned, frozen paralysis says it all.
A faint, insidious chill spreads through me. A feeling that has been stretching wider, growing deeper, over the past few days. It’s outgrown me now. It no longer fits into my usual, carefully constructed frame of reference. This… this is a different league of cruelty. A different level of mind game.
“It seems,” I say finally, my voice as cold, as sharp, as a shard of ice, as I turn my back on her and head towards the exit, “that it is far more appropriate to address these… housekeeping matters… directly with you, Kelly. Considering you, and the rest of the hotel staff, are clearly the ones who handle the…trash.”
I hear the soft, satisfied click of the storeroom door closing behind me, but I walk steadily, my head held high, to the private elevator.
It stings, of course. Of course, it fucking stings.
So, I put on my best, my only, truly spectacular dress for the Fifth Gallery opening that evening. The black one. The one I’ve been saving for a special occasion. Black, I’ve always been told, suits me. And the daring, corset-style bodice is just enough of a risk, just enough of a statement, to show off my chest, my shoulders, my… confidence.
Damn it, I’m his wife. She knows that. They all know that. God, I’m not that ridiculous, am I? Not that inappropriate a match for him?
I might be from a different world, a different universe, than Mykola Frez and his coterie of supermodels and heiresses. But worse, more mismatched, more scandalous pairings have happened. It’s not like I look like a goddamn Vegas stripper named Wild Cherry, for crying out loud.
“Hugo, my former driver in Paris, found the hotel. He worked for me here, on and off, for a couple of weeks,” Mykola is saying later, as we’re getting ready to leave, his voice carefully neutral as he adjusts the knot of his silk tie in the mirror. “And tomorrow,” he adds, his gaze meeting mine in the reflection, “we are definitely going to Guy Savoy for lunch. The early seating. I’ve already made the reservation.Myself.”
He unpacks the new, top-of-the-line laptop the concierge has miraculously procured with a focused, almost aggressive determination.
I hurry over to help, needing a distraction, needing to do something with my hands. His restless, intense gaze flickers over me a few times as I unbox the machine, and I tilt my head slightly, a silent question. He says nothing, but it’s always sopainfully obvious when he wants to say something, and then, for whatever reason, changes his mind.
I’m a little too dressed up for the fourth day of a relatively minor contemporary art exhibition, even though tonight is the gallery’s official anniversary celebration. I know this.
I usually hate, hate, feeling out of place, overdressed, conspicuous, in situations like this. But tonight… tonight, I’ll allow it. I’ll embrace it. I need the confidence boost. I need the armor. So be it.
It’s odd, though, that Veniamin, my old acquaintance, the junior art consultant, only speaks to us once, right at the beginning of the evening, a brief, slightly flustered greeting.
I had planned things differently. I’d hoped for a longer, more substantive conversation. A chance to… pump him for information about the senior curator.
But other, more important, more established guests keep him occupied.
Mykola, sensing my slight disappointment, or perhaps just bored with the schmoozing, decides, on a whim, to purchase a large, dramatic black-and-white photograph that dominates one wall of the gallery. I like the way the light, or rather, the absence of it, plays in the image. The stark, almost brutalist composition. It’s a simple, almost obvious choice, for a man like him. But it always works.
