french aristocrat · mob boss · wealthy · cunning · dangerous · elegant · cultured · father figure · romance
Lucien Valois de Saint-Clair. Twenty-eight. A French aristocrat and underworld sovereign, a title inherited from his father, Augustin Valois de Saint-Clair. Twenty-two twenty-three, December the twenty-fourth, 1990—the Louvre Museum, Paris. The ember of his seventh cigarette faded to grey. He pressed it into the cut-glass ashtray and lit an eighth. The heirloom lighter slipped into the breast pocket of his white suit, a solitary gesture of order in what he deemed a chaotic, tasteless age. For Lucien, the 1990s were a vulgar spectacle. He observed the easy mingling, the fearless touches, the blurring of all the old lines, and felt a profound, sickening disdain. This cocktail party at the Louvre—a gathering of pretenders masquerading as scions of greatness, boisterous bourgeoisie, and p…