The place also had that strange perfection of houses where there are no children, the slightly melancholy coolness of homes that do not pulse with the very substance of life: kids’ laughter, stuffed toys, pieces of Lego everywhere, food crumbs stuck all over the table…

“Clearly, people in your family have a habit of walking into the lion’s den.”

I spun around to find Alexis DeVille standing ten meters away. I had seen her the day before, at the fiftieth-anniversary ceremony for Saint-Ex. She was simply dressed—jeans, striped blouse, V-neck sweater, Converse sneakers—but she was the kind of person who had a naturally commanding presence whatever the circumstances. A presence emphasized here by the three large dogs behind her: a Doberman with cropped ears, a black and tan pit bull terrier, and a Rottweiler.

I regretted having come without any means to defend myself as soon as I spotted the dogs. I’d rushed out of my parents’ house on impulse, driven by sheer rage. And I had always thought that my most effective weapon was my mind, a lesson I’d learned from my teacher Jean-Christophe Graff. But as I thought about what Alexis DeVille had done to my mother, to Francis, and to Maxime, I realized that I had been wrong to be so impulsive.

Now that I had traced the truth back to its source, I felt helpless. In the end, I did not expect Alexis DeVille to tell me anything new. I already understood. But I could well imagine the exhilaration these two intelligent, liberated, beautiful women must have felt at the time. The intellectual intimacy, the physical intoxication, the feverish feeling of transgression. Although the idea troubled me, I realized that Alexis DeVille and I were not so different. We had both fallen in love with the same girl twenty-five years ago, and neither of us had ever gotten over it.

Tall, slim, with smooth skin that made it impossible to guess her age, Alexis DeVille had pinned her hair into a chignon. She seemed convinced that she was in control of this situation. The dogs did not take their eyes off me, but Alexis nonchalantly turned her back to me and studied the countless photographs on the walls—the famous glamour shots of Vinca that Dalanegra had told me about. His work was equal to the beauty of his model. He had perfectly captured the troubling, enthralling beauty of Vinca. The ephemeral nature of her youth.

2.

I decided to go on the attack.

“You’ve convinced yourself that you still love Vinca, but you’re wrong. We do not kill those we love.”

DeVille tore herself away from the photographs and turned her icy gaze on me, looking me up and down contemptuously.

“I could easily counter that by telling you that sometimes, killing someone is the ultimate act of love. But that’s not the issue. I didn’t kill Vinca—you did.”

“Me?”