Daniel, the bodyguard who had gone to New York with her, accompanied her to her apartment, and went off duty immediately. The three guards she had left in Paris took on their usual shifts, so that she was never alone, at home or in the office. There was a private security guard at the entrance to the building now because of her, and another at the door to the apartment. She had the first two floors of an elegant building in the sixteenth arrondissement. She liked the seventh better, but had never been able to talk Matthieu into it. He wanted to live where his family had lived before they lost everything, which had been two blocks away in a similar building. She loved the idea of buying a small hôtel particulier, a private house, in the seventh, on the Left Bank, but Matthieu thought it was dangerous and more vulnerable to intrusions and burglaries. He thought they were safer in an apartment building, but that made no difference in the end, since he and Axel were kidnapped at the château in the late afternoon on a Friday, when all the servants had left and father and son were alone. The kidnappers knew exactly which day to come, so someone knowledgeable had been paid to inform them. She changed all the staff afterwards, once they were all interrogated by the DGSI and the police, but it was too late to make a difference. She no longer went to the château now anyway. It was too painful for her to even visit, let alone stay there. The shutters were closed and she hadn’t seen it in a year. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back.

Theo got home at nine o’clock that night. The housekeeper had left the lights on for her on the first floor of the apartment, which was the second floor to Americans. There was an imposing marble entrance hall, and the large living room they had used to entertain. Matthieu loved giving grand parties, as he knew his grandparents had done in their days of grandeur. There were billowing satin drapes that framed the long French windows, high ceilings, and beautiful floors. There was a spectacular oval dining room with marble columns, where they could seat up to forty people for dinner, and a big, sunny highly efficient kitchen, an office for Matthieu, which he seldom used when he was at home. She used it for meetings of her own office staff occasionally.

Her office was next to his, lined with books and framed pieces that related to Theo.com, a big antique desk and red leather chairs. It was a room where she was comfortable and liked to work on new ideas she wanted to develop. She had spent many long nights there in the last year.