58

Peter squirmed. The conference room he and David Hammar were in had big windows, and the water was practically below their feet. David was standing by the window, his back to Lake Mälaren behind him, watching Peter with his arms crossed and a frosty stare.

It felt surreal to be in here, just the two of them. Peter was unbelievably uncomfortable, despite having been the one to request the meeting. He and David hadn’t spoken one-to-one since they were teenagers. And even then they hadn’t actually ever really talked. They had fought and argued from the first day David started at Skogbacka.

“I know there isn’t actually anything I can say to make up for what I did,” Peter began. He was forced to speak loudly because the room was long and David didn’t approach him, but remained by the window. Peter cleared his throat and steeled himself, but he still couldn’t look David in the eye. It took all his courage just to dare to be here, to dare to speak. He couldn’t actually look at the man he’d injured so badly.

Peter wondered if he could explain what had happened even to himself: the frustration he’d felt long before he’d ever begun at Skogbacka, the incessant feeling of not being good enough, the jealousy that was so all-encompassing, and, the most shameful of all, the attraction he’d felt for Carolina Hammar. He’d thought she was so pretty, the blond fifteen-year-old with the cheerfully colored clothes and the friendly smile, the working-class girl. She’d been nice to him, and they’d talked to each other a few times, completely harmlessly. It had been like a respite, an oasis. And then people had found out that Peter De la Grip was interested in David Hammar’s weird sister. They’d teased him, and he’d felt ridiculed, so he’d done the worst thing you could do to another person. He and three buddies had gone by her house, had seen her in the window, had rung the bell. It wasn’t planned, it just happened, and it was revolting. Not a day had gone by since then that he hadn’t been ashamed, hadn’t known, to his very core, that he was the lowest of the low.

“But I needed to say that I’m sorry, and I’m grateful that you were willing to meet with me,” he said in a half-choked voice. When he’d been told that Carolina had died . . . Her “death,” oh God, it had almost destroyed him. And now: she was alive. It was like getting a second chance. He felt such gratitude.

“I’m so tremendously sorry for what I did to you and to Carolina,” he said a little more loudly. “That’s why I voted for you and Hammar Capital in there.” He stopped. The words were completely insufficient. “I understand that there’s nothing I can say that would make up for what happened. And I don’t know what I would have done if I were in your shoes.”

David was still standing at the window. He turned away, looking out at the water. His arms were still crossed. The late-afternoon sunlight streamed in, making dust motes visible in the air. Silence swelled between them.

Peter ran his hand over his forehead. He was so tired, so drained after this day—first, the meeting with his siblings at Natalia’s place, and then the tension on the way to the Grand Hôtel, and then the meeting with Carolina. It had been like turning back time. She’d been so like herself, and yet different. Colorful and blond, but grown-up and serious. The conversation in the hotel suite was something he would carry with him for the rest of his life. It still felt like a glowing dream. And then the meeting, of course, where for the first time ever—and very publicly, no less—he had opposed his father and thereby also buried his own future in the world of Swedish business.

He looked at David’s back. He didn’t know what he’d hoped to get out of this meeting. Forgiveness? He didn’t deserve forgiveness, but Caro had forgiven him anyway, and that had been like getting a new life. He’d confessed and his sins were forgiven.

“I talked to Carolina,” he said to David’s back.

David abruptly turned around. “You saw her?” he asked incredulously.

Peter nodded.

“When?” David took a step toward him, and it was like facing a menacing tiger or an attacking lion.

Peter was having a hard time breathing. “We’ve had you both under surveillance,” he replied and forced himself not to back away even though it was like forcing himself to stand face-to-face with a dangerous predator who was preparing to attack. “I knew where she was staying, so I went there.”

“What did you say to her?” David asked, taking another step closer to Peter. Peter tried to keep his fear at bay, but it was hard. David Hammar was not a teenage underdog anymore. He was a powerful, full-grown man. There was nothing, literally nothing preventing him from beating the crap out of Peter right here. Peter glanced around at the walls and ceiling of the conference room and noted that they even looked soundproof.

“If you did anything to her . . . ,” David began. He didn’t need to say any more. Peter realized that David was hardly one to make empty threats. There was nothing civilized about this man, just a thin patina of decorum, beneath which he was completely ruthless except to those he cared about. And Peter had never had any doubt that David really cared about his sister.

He was the big brother Peter himself had never been able to be to his siblings.

Peter held up his hand. “I went there to apologize to Carolina. I’d called her beforehand and she let me come. We just talked.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that she’d forgiven me a long time ago, which obviously I had no right at all to expect. I hadn’t even hoped for that.” Peter’s voice broke, and he struggled not to let his feelings show on his face. If he started crying in front of David Hammar, he would die of shame. “There’s nothing I can say to make up for what I did,” he continued. “Nothing, I know that. But I still wanted to see her and apologize.”

David didn’t say anything, but the worst of the tension in his face began to abate.

“Carolina is okay,” Peter said.

“I know,” David said. “I talked to her by phone just a little while ago. But she didn’t say a word about your meeting.”

Peter shrugged. In his eyes, Carolina was a grown woman, not accountable to David, but he wasn’t so foolish as to mention that.

David eyed him for a long time. It felt as if he were entering Peter’s head and rooting around in there, and it was the most uncomfortable thing Peter had experienced in his whole life.

“You raped my little sister,” he said finally.

Peter gasped for breath, but he replied, “Yes.”

“You and your buddies whipped me like an animal.”

“Yes.”

David looked away. Peter waited.

There was a knock on the door. “The others are coming in now,” David said. “Are you going to stick around?”

Peter shook his head. “I’m leaving. There’ll be enough drama without my father trying to murder me.” He hesitated. For a second it had felt as if David had seen him, really seen the man he was trying to be, but he wasn’t totally sure. He held out his hand. “Good luck,” he said.

David glanced at the outstretched hand for so long that Peter was convinced he was going to refuse to take it. There was another knock. David sighed and finally held out his own hand. Gratitude suffused Peter as they shook hands—not all that warmly, but still.

David quickly pulled his hand back, nodded briefly, and said, “Thanks for your vote earlier.” Peter could hear that David wasn’t completely comfortable saying the words.

“Thanks yourself,” Peter said. And he meant it. He was profoundly grateful that he’d had a chance to acknowledge and take responsibility for his crimes, even if the statute of limitations had run out from a legal perspective, grateful that he’d been given a chance to move on, wherever he was headed now after this. He put his hand on the doorknob and opened it. Michel Chamoun was standing outside. Michel looked at Peter without saying a word and then looked at David with an eyebrow raised. The terrifying man who was in charge of Hammar Capital’s security stood outside like a colossus.

“Should I stall them?” Michel asked.

“No, we’re done here,” David said as Gustaf De la Grip’s voice cut through the air.

Peter steeled himself before meeting his father. He’d managed to avoid him directly after the vote, and he assumed his father’s mood hadn’t improved since then.

Gustaf spotted him and glared at him furiously. “So this is where you’ve been hiding,” he roared. “What the hell did you do? Are you an idiot?”

Peter cowered in the face of his father’s rage, felt the familiar fear, and was ready to be beaten. In some way he regressed, becoming small and vulnerable again in front of all these influential men. Fucking shit.

But then the head of security, dressed all in black, took a step forward. He positioned himself between Peter and Gustaf, slowly shook his head, and addressed Gustaf. “Back off,” he said coldly.

Gustaf, who apparently had rarely if ever been told to back off before, looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He opened his mouth, surely to tell the man off, and it occurred to Peter that this was the man who’d allowed him to believe that Carolina was dead. His father had robbed him of the opportunity to stand up and atone for what he’d done. But it was over now, and maybe he could start to be free. The past didn’t need to control his life anymore. Peter tipped his head and, taking advantage of the tumult Gustaf’s reaction had caused, walked away.

The last thing he heard was the head of security saying, “If you care at all about that finger, I’d stop waving it in my face.”

Peter smiled to himself and left.