All In

The 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 Båstad, 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.

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

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