Emile said nothing, so Greg, bent Emile’s fingers back.
“The money comes from Elodie’s parents,” he grunted. “She had an inheritance and a trust. She ask me to look after it.”
“Emile flaunts his intellect to our wives by talking about his papers and bragging about how he is being referenced in the academy. He is a fraudulent academician. His claim to fame was his critique of Éliane Grimaître Taïeb. This was considered so fresh and innovative at the time, that it was published in hardcover and it is where almost all of his references come from. Guess what? He didn’t write it! He bought it from the woman who actually wrote it, a fellow-student who had a heroin problem. He’s been paying her hush money for years to keep that a secret.”
Greg, put a slight twist on Emile’s wrist. “Tell us her name– the woman who wrote your dissertation.”
“Marie Cellier-Anouilh,” he said, grunting in pain. “We were in school together. We dated until she developed that habit.”
This brought gasps from the table.
“Emile also flaunts his social position, making sure your wife knows that he is her boss, that he is an aristocrat, and that he has an important and extensive network of friends and connections that make him an amazingly powerful being. It’s all horseshit. He was never an aristocrat. He was the son of a man who owned a tobacco shop in Grigny, France. Tell everyone, Emile, how your dad lost his Tobacco shop. Go on.”
Greg twisted Emile’s wrist again and said, “He sold it to get me on the tour.”
“Which tour?” asked Greg.
“The pro tennis tour,” said a very clearly exasperated Emile.
“The only legitimate claim he makes is that he was a tennis pro. He was briefly on the tour in the late eighties,” said Greg. “I managed to have a conversation with his old coach. He said he was good enough to be on the tour but would never be good enough to win anything. He was essentially known only for his good looks. He was the male version of Anna Kournikova. What was your highest finish at any tour event on the tour?”
“Twenty fourth,” he said.
“Tied for twenty fourth,” corrected Greg.
“So, Gentlemen, to land this plane and tie it back to my little biology lesson from before, this piece of shit was leveraging hypogamy and hypergamy deceptively to make a run at our wives.
“He artificially presented himself as being a higher status male looking for mating opportunities further down the hierarchy. They all, to one extent or another, bought it. I know every woman here. They are neither stupid nor foolish. What this tells me is that Emile was exceptionally good at it. ‘All of the people some of the time’ is a pretty high bar. He’s one of the better con men any of us have ever run across. Unfortunately, he is, at the end of the day, just a charlatan.”
Greg looked around the table. The faces showed varying degrees of anger, disgust, and humiliation.
“Elodie,” continued Greg, “You have my deepest apologies that you had to find out what he did to you this way. I did not want to do this publicly, but my hand was forced. I do have something for you. It is a Christmas gift that I beg you to accept.”