Perrine followed the crowd of clueless American bourgeois sheep into the arena. He was sitting on the left side of the cavernous theater, as far away from his friend Angel Candelerio as possible. He knew his old friend Angel was smart and loyal and discreet, but there could be no room for risk now. Perrine would hear his daughter’s speech and be gone. His waiting car would take them directly out to Teterboro, where the jet was gassed and ready. He’d be back in Quebec City by dinner, and Marietta would be back in her white Armani, showing off those legs. For a little while, at least. Until he tore the dress off his brutal, beautiful bodyguard.

As the lights of the dark, wide theater dimmed, and “Pomp and Circumstance” began to play, Perrine allowed himself a moment of long-awaited pride. Though he had money and was intelligent and well read, he had no illusions about the fact that the nature of his work and the general hypocrisy of mankind would always cause him to be seen as a thug. Daisy would rise above all that, he knew. With all his resources at her command, she would ascend above all the savage but necessary things he had ever done, just as a butterfly rises from a swamp. She was his one pure and sure thing.

Sitting here among the American-educated elite, he couldn’t help but note what a far cry it was from his hometown, Kourou, near Devil’s Island, the place made infamous by the film Papillon. Some said his mother’s people were actually descended from Henri Charrière, the famous escape artist, Papillon himself.

Perrine secretly liked the idea of being a descendant of Charrière, a French navy veteran and criminal like himself, who never took anything from anyone. He even liked the American actor Steve McQueen, who had played Charrière in Papillon. Like Perrine, and unlike almost any American after him, McQueen had had some style.