Antoine Vallier gave him a sharp smile right back. “I paid for my own education.”
Damn it. If France would only make its universities more expensive, the Rosiers would have a lot more leverage in some of these cases. Matt pressed his hands on the edge of the desk and leaned in. “Vallier, explain to me in small words so that I can understand. What exactly did you have in mind for your long-term career here when you decided to align with a ninety-six-year-old woman against, well…me?”
Antoine very delicately snorted. “Colette Delatour is going to live to be one hundred twenty-three, just to beat the Provençal record. I wouldn’t count her out yet.”
That anxious squeeze around Matt’s heart whenever he had to think about his great aunt’s age eased a little, at Antoine’s conviction. Naturally he didn’t tell the idiot that.
“I think your own life expectancy needs to be what you’re worrying about right now, Vallier.” He flexed his hands in a show of size and power. “You’ve dug yourself a very deep hole, and this would be a good time to start digging yourself out of it. Talk. Who is this woman, and why did Tante Colette give her that land? And are there any more surprises waiting for us? Any other descendants of someone I’ve never heard of that you’re tracking down on her behalf?”
Antoine gave him a thin smile that was mostly designed to show off how tightly his lips were sealed.
“Vallier. I know you’re fresh out of your internship and you probably have a lot of ideals. Do yourself a favor. Break them.”
“I can’t do that,” the lawyer said regretfully. “You know I’d love to, but…I have to think about my long-term career prospects.”
Matt leaned his weight a little more against the desk, letting big shoulders cross well into the other man’s space. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Vallier.”
Antoine Vallier pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
Merde. Matt straightened. He had a very sensitive nose. The Rosiers were, in fact, quite famous for that sensitivity, even if Tristan was the only one of their generation to become a top perfumer himself. Everyone in Grasse knew not to light cigarettes immediately next to the Rosiers.
Even, surely, idiot lawyers fresh out of school?
Antoine Vallier very politely blew his cigarette smoke toward the open window, but the breeze coming up from the sea blew it straight back in, against Matt’s face. Matt tried to make his nostrils pinch together as he held his ground.
“The thing is, Matthieu. May I call you Matt?”
“No,” Matt said incredulously.
“Monsieur Rosier, then,” Antoine Vallier said. “Although that gets a little confusing, considering how many of you answer to that name. Your grandfather, your uncles, the four of you cousins…”
“Five.” Matt didn’t count Lucien out, no matter how long the second eldest of them had been gone.
“Fuck, I have two more of you to deal with before the day is done?”
“Right now, just worry about surviving me.”
“Enfin.” Antoine Vallier waved his cigarette. The stink of it washed over Matt as if he was back in Paris, stirring up the last lingering hint of nausea and headache from that morning’s hangover. “The thing is…now imagine that I break client confidentiality and tell one of you thugs all you need to know.”
“‘Thugs’?” Matt figured he and Raoul could almost take that as a compliment, but he was kind of offended on Damien’s behalf. Damien didn’t do thug. He did lethal, elegant assassin.
“What do you think will happen to my long-term career here if I do?”
“You’ll live to see it?”
“I’ll never have another Rosier client, or a Delange client, or anyone you Rosiers know as long as I live. And you know a lot of people.” Antoine Vallier gave that thin smile again and tapped his cigarette into the ash tray right under Matt’s nose.
Matt brought a hand briefly over his mouth to try to wave the air away, then caught himself revealing the weakness and turned his hand back into a fist on Antoine’s desk.
“But imagine that I stand up to you and keep my client’s confidentiality, no matter how much you threaten to destroy me,” Antoine said. “What do you think will happen then?”
“I’ll destroy you?”
“Maybe,” Antoine Vallier said. “But I bet the next time you want something done that needs to remain absolutely confidential no matter how much pressure is brought to bear…you’ll come to me.”
And he oh-so-politely blew his stream of cigarette smoke out the window—right into the breeze that blew it straight back into Matt’s face—and smiled. Without showing a single tooth.