I close the email and stare out the window. My heart beats so fast my chest hurts. The inevitable has happened. Today is the first of July, and after six months of virtual threats, my blackmailer is about to show his face. It could be her face, too, but I have a hunch it’s a man.

Will I recognize him? What will he want in exchange for his silence?

Last time I checked my bank account, I had twenty-five hundred euros. It’s the richest I’ve ever been, but will it be enough to get him to destroy whatever “proof” he claims to have? I doubt it. I can only hope it’ll be enough to keep him from posting it until his next visit.

Thankfully, today is quiet at work, so I can get away with just staring at my screen for the next three hours. Even more auspicious, Delphine and Barbara are super busy, which means no coffee-and-chat break this morning. I couldn’t chat right now. And I don’t think I could swallow anything without throwing up.

At five to noon I leave the DCA offices and enter the sandwich place. It’s still empty, given that the Parisian lunch break starts around one. The only customer in the eatery is a man wearing a bright green T-shirt and nursing a beer in the back of the room. He gives me a hard stare and then beckons ominously.

I plod to his table and sit across from him. “Who are you?”

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“I wouldn’t’ve asked if I did.”

“We started the same year at the Ecole des Sciences Sociales,” he says.

“So you were at that party?”

He nods.

“And you filmed it.”

He nods again.

“Prove it.”

“Sure.” He pulls out his phone, taps the screen, and turns it toward me.

What I see on the screen is what I’ve been trying to forget for six years.

I peer at him, my mouth a hard line and my hands clammy.

“I zoomed in on your face in this sequence,” he says. “See?”

I take a glance at the screen and then turn away. “You’ve made your point. What do you want from me?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“I have two thousand five hundred euros,” I say.

He sneers. “I don’t need your money, Mia. I want you to be my plaything, my personal… petite pute.”

My little whore.

Suddenly, a light bulb goes off in my head. “I remember you! You’re Gaspard—the creep who followed me everywhere in my freshman year in Strasbourg!”

His nostrils flare. “I worshipped you.”

“No kidding.”

“I thought you were an angel, with that elfin face of yours and those eyes…” He sneers. “And then I overheard you calling me exactly that—a creep—in front of your girlfriends.”

“You deserved it! You snuck up on me everywhere, and you stared.” I search his face. “Can’t you see how an eighteen-year-old girl would feel in that situation? Put yourself in my shoes. You stalked me in the canteen, in lecture halls, in the dorm… I even spotted you in the ladies’ room a couple of times!”

“Big deal.” He shrugs. “I didn’t touch you, did I? I just looked.”

So much for getting him to relate.

“You disappeared in the second year,” I say. “I thought you’d dropped out or transferred. I forgot all about you.”

“Of course you did.” He purses his lips. “But I didn’t go anywhere. I just made myself more discreet after you ratted me out to the administration.”

I survey him for a long moment.

He holds my gaze, his eyes filled with lechery so revolting it makes me gag. Just like it used to eight years ago, every time I caught him leering at me from behind a tree or a pillar.

“So, Mia,” he says at length. “Do we have a deal?”

“No, we don’t.”

“You’re being stupid.”

“Why come forward now?” I ask. “You sat on this video for six years. What pushed you to take action?”

He smirks. “I went to Sydney for my third year, graduated, landed a job, and a girlfriend—Sandy. A genuinely good girl, unlike some.”

I ignore his meaningful glance, keeping my expression as impenetrable as I can.

“But you ruined my relationship,” he says.

“Me? How?”

“That video… I couldn’t stay away from it, couldn’t stop watching you getting banged.” He shakes his head, his expression bemused. “I had the wildest fantasies about you, Mia. The things we did in them!”

Panic fills my chest, but I do my damnedest not to show it.

Gaspard leans forward. “It became a bit of an obsession.”

“You don’t say.”

He glares. “I tried to get Sandy to be more like you… I asked her to dye her hair auburn. Then I bought her green-tinted contact lenses. And then I began to push her sexually where she didn’t want to go.”

“Let me guess—she ditched you.”

I shouldn’t have said that! But I couldn’t help myself.

He nods. “I could’ve made her stay if I had leverage. But I didn’t—unlike with you.”

The gleam in his eyes is borderline deranged.

Oh God.

Gaspard sits back. “After Sandy left, I wasted some time hooking up with prostitutes and all kinds of trash. They did everything I asked them to do, no problem, but… I felt shortchanged. You know?”

He bares his teeth in a sickening smile.

I turn away.

“That’s when I realized I didn’t have to use cheap substitutes. I could have you. Mia Stoll, my fantasy, the haughty slut of my dreams, was within my reach if I played my cards right. All I had to do was to find you and—”

“Blackmail me,” I cut in.

“Exactly,” he says without a hint of discomfort. “It took me a while to locate you, though, seeing as you’re not on social media or in the phone directory.”

“But you managed.”

“Yeah, I did.”

I force myself to look him in the eye. “I won’t be your plaything.”

“Listen,” he says, his tone conciliatory. “It won’t be as bad as you think. I won’t humiliate you in public. I’m a reasonable man.”

“Reasonable?” I choke back a bitter laugh. “You’re a raving lunatic.”

He glares. “Why don’t you drop the innocent act? I was at that party. I filmed it, remember?”

“People change,” I say.

“Oh please.” He makes a face. “Do yourself a favor and accept my terms.”

“No.”

“Mia, darling,” His tone becomes softer again, and even creepier than before. “All I’m asking is that you put your sweet little body at my disposal, just like you did for three other men at that party, once or twice a year when I’m in France. The rest of the time, you’re free to fuck whomever you want.”

“No,” I say again.

He frowns. “You’ll risk your academic career? Your job? Your pastor mom cutting you off?”

Those prospects are terrifying, indeed. Especially, the last one.

“Tell you what,” he says with a saccharine smile. “Why don’t you sleep on it? Actually, take the entire weekend. I’ll be visiting with some family in the countryside, and then I’ll be back on Monday.”

It’s tempting to tell him he can go to hell, but I bite my tongue.

“I can totally see how my offer may seem daunting at first.” His smile grows increasingly sickening. “Especially since you expected to just pay your way out of this.”

I refuse to look at him.

“But you’re a big girl. You’ll survive.” He stands up. “Until Monday, chérie.”

And then he marches out.