Mist

Lucien Martin has spent most of his life building Valmont. He bought the old water factory when few people saw anything worth saving and spent the next twenty years turning it into a successful family business. Now he and his wife, Violette, are finally ready to step away. Their children will take over, and Lucien intends to do something that has never come easily to him: leave the company behind and let them run it their way. Then, over a family dinner, he learns about the offer. Eight million euros for Valmont. The buyer is Alexis Vardakis, a Greek businessman who wants the company and is prepared to keep both of Lucien's children in management. Marius believes the offer deserves serious consideration. Lucien isn't so sure. At first, it seems like the kind of disagreement any family business might face: a father who spent decades building something, and a son who wants the freedom to decide what happens to it next. But there are things about the offer that don't quite make sense. Vardakis seems unusually interested in the water source, the company's technical history, and records that go back long before Valmont became what it is today. Then Lucien discovers that part of the archive is missing. Looking for answers takes him back through the history of the company and his own life: the abandoned factory he once risked everything to buy, the people who helped him when he had very little, the ones who tried to take Valmont from him, and three pallets of water that disappeared during the Milan Expo in 2015. At the time, the missing shipment seemed like an isolated incident. Eleven years later, Lucien begins to wonder if it was something else entirely. The more he looks into the past, the harder it becomes to separate what he knows from what he has always assumed. Marius thinks his father is letting old battles shape the way he sees the present. Julienne wants facts before accusations. And Violette, who has been beside Lucien from the beginning, knows better than anyone what each of those battles has cost their family. Lucien has always trusted his ability to read people. Much of what he built came from knowing whom to trust, when to take a chance, and when to walk away. This time, he may have missed something. If you enjoy the novels of Harlan Coben, Lisa Jewell, and Robert Goddard, MIST is the beginning of AQUA, a four-book psychological thriller series about family, loyalty, ambition, and the secrets that survive long after everyone believes the past is over. For Lucien, it begins with a simple question: Why would anyone pay eight million euros for Valmont? Before long, he will find himself asking a different one. How much did other people know about the water beneath Valmont before he ever owned it?