Chapter 8 - CAMILLE’S LAST CALL
Adrien did not speak for almost a minute.
Julian lay motionless beneath the blankets, breathing shallowly.
Mara could hear the monitor beside him counting seconds nobody trusted anymore.
Finally Adrien said, “Tell me everything.”
Julian looked exhausted.
“Camille called at eleven forty-three the night before the crash. She said she found the amended estate papers in Vincent’s office.”
“What papers?”
“Instructions transferring trust assets to Victor if Lucy died before seven.”
Mara frowned.
“That sounds illegal.”
“It was.”
Julian looked at her.
“Vincent planned to challenge Camille’s trust using a family control agreement. Peter Sloane refused to draft it, so Vincent used another attorney.”
Adrien’s voice hardened.
“Name.”
“Harold Beck.”
Roman immediately sent the name to his team.
Julian continued.
“Camille said she was leaving the state with Lucy. She had copies of everything Samuel found.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?” Adrien asked.
“She wanted to.”
“Then why didn’t she?”
Julian’s eyes filled.
“Because I told her not to.”
Adrien stared.
“You told my sister not to trust me.”
“I told her you would confront Vincent before she got Lucy somewhere safe.”
Adrien laughed once without humor.
“You were probably right.”
“That doesn’t make what happened right.”
“What happened?”
Julian swallowed.
“Vincent learned she was leaving.”
“Through you?”
“No.”
Julian looked toward the ceiling.
“Through the car service. Nathan reported the route.”
Mara thought of Nathan bleeding in the glasshouse.
Adrien’s jaw tightened.
“Vincent ordered the brake line damaged.”
“Yes.”
“To scare her.”
“Yes.”
“And Camille survived.”
Julian nodded.
“I reached the crash before police.”
“Why?”
“Camille called me from the ditch.”
Adrien’s face broke.
Just slightly.
But Mara saw it.
“She called you.”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She said Lucy was hurt. She said men were coming.”
“Did you find her?”
“I found Lucy.”
“And Camille?”
Julian’s breathing changed.
“No.”
Adrien stepped closer.
“You just said she survived.”
“I heard her alive.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Three years, Julian.”
“I know.”
“You let me bury her.”
Julian closed his eyes.
“Voss produced a body. Vincent said Camille was dead. Celeste told me if I questioned it, my son disappeared next.”
Adrien stared at him.
“You chose your son.”
Julian’s face crumpled.
“Yes.”
The honesty was unbearable.
Mara thought of Lucy behind the wall.
Of Samuel’s letter.
Of Mrs. Delgado’s husband.
Celeste’s system did not require loyal people.
Only frightened ones.
Roman’s phone buzzed.
“Harold Beck died two years ago.”
Adrien looked toward him.
“How?”
“Heart attack.”
Mara said, “Convenient.”
Roman nodded.
“He left a storage unit.”
“Search it.”
“Already requested.”
Adrien turned back to Julian.
“If Camille lived, why has she never contacted me?”
Julian shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
Lucy’s voice came from the doorway.
“Mommy tried.”
Everyone turned.
Mara’s heart jumped.
Dr. Patel stood behind Lucy looking apologetic.
“She woke and insisted on seeing Mara.”
Lucy walked into the room.
Adrien crouched.
“What do you mean Mommy tried?”
Lucy looked at Julian.
He began crying.
The child seemed confused by that.
Mara sat beside her.
“Tell us what you remember.”
Lucy held Mara’s hand.
“Blue room.”
“Yes.”
“Mommy came one night.”
Adrien froze.
“When?”
Lucy looked scared.
Mara squeezed her hand.
“You’re safe.”
“She had short hair.”
Mara looked at Adrien.
“How old were you?”
Lucy held up five fingers.
Roughly a year ago.
Adrien stopped breathing.
“Your mother visited you one year ago?”
Lucy nodded.
“She said we were going home.”
“What happened?”
“Dr. Voss came.”
“And?”
“Mommy yelled.”
Lucy’s eyes filled.
“Lady Celeste came too.”
Adrien’s face turned white.
“What did Celeste do?”
“I don’t know.”
Lucy began crying.
“They made me sleep.”
Mara wrapped an arm around her.
“When you woke up?”
“Mommy gone.”
Julian whispered, “Jesus.”
Adrien looked at him.
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
Roman’s phone rang again.
This time he answered immediately.
“Mercer.”
He listened.
Then looked toward Adrien.
“We found Beck’s storage unit.”
“What’s inside?”
“Copies of Vincent’s estate amendments.”
“And?”
“A safe-deposit key.”
“Bank?”
“Hudson Private Trust.”
Peter Sloane looked up.
“That’s Camille’s trust bank.”
Adrien’s face sharpened.
They drove to the bank with a court order before closing.
The safe-deposit box was registered to Harold Beck under a client trust number.
Inside were original signed documents, a voice recorder, and a sealed envelope addressed to Victor Saye.
Adrien opened the recorder first.
Vincent Blackwood’s voice filled the private conference room.
Older.
Impatient.
“If Lucy is legally dead, Victor becomes the only remaining eligible descendant under the legacy agreement.”
Another man—Beck—answered.
“Not while Adrien is alive.”
“Adrien will control operations. Victor will control Camille’s block.”
“And Celeste?”
“She gets what she always wanted.”
“What is that?”
Vincent laughed.
“A son with the name she thinks he deserves.”
The recording continued.
Then Celeste’s voice appeared.
“Camille will never agree.”
Vincent replied, “Camille does not need to agree.”
Mara looked at Adrien.
His face had become stone.
Then came the sentence that changed everything.
Celeste said, “And if she survives the accident?”
Vincent paused.
“Then make certain she cannot speak.”
Adrien shut off the recorder.
No one moved.
His father had ordered the beginning.
Celeste had been given permission to finish it.
Mara looked at the envelope addressed to Victor.
Inside was a letter from Vincent confirming paternity and promising Victor a future place inside Blackwood Holdings.
Victor was not merely Celeste’s secret son.
He was a planned heir.
Peter looked sick.
“This is enough to freeze every contested share.”
Adrien nodded.
“And enough to destroy the public family trust.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Peter stared.
“You understand what that means?”
“It means we stop protecting the name.”
Mara looked at him.
That was the first moment Adrien Blackwood sounded free.
They spent another hour reconstructing Camille’s movements from the records in the safe-deposit box and Samuel’s RED BIRD archive. A neurological clinic in Pennsylvania had billed a shell company for a patient called C. Miller beginning six weeks after the crash. Eleven months later, the same initials appeared at Saint Anselm.
Mara traced the dates across the table. “Someone moved her through at least two facilities.”
Roman nodded. “Possibly more.”
Lucy sat on the carpet with colored pencils. She had been drawing while the adults talked, quiet but listening in the way children always did when adults pretended they were not.
She held up a picture. A woman with short dark hair wore a red scarf beside a large blue square.
“Mommy,” Lucy said.
Adrien crouched. “Is that the blue room?”
Lucy nodded.
“Who came with Mommy?”
Lucy reached for a gray pencil and drew a tall figure beside her. She pressed so hard the tip snapped.
“Grandpa.”
Adrien went completely still.
Vincent had been alive a year after the crash. If Lucy remembered correctly, he had seen Camille alive long after declaring her dead.
Mara watched the realization settle over Adrien. It was one thing to learn a father had ordered an act of violence in panic. It was another to understand that he had later stood in a room with the daughter he had harmed and chosen not to bring her home.
“He knew,” Adrien whispered.
Roman did not soften it. “Looks that way.”
Adrien walked to the bank window. Snow had begun collecting along the stone ledge outside.
“My father died in my house,” he said. “I sat beside him for three days.”
Mara joined him.
“He told me he regretted being hard on Camille. I thought he meant the arguments.” Adrien laughed once, without humor. “He was confessing and I thanked him for trying.”
“You did not know what he meant.”
“No.”
“That matters to what you do next.”
Adrien looked at Lucy’s drawing. “Next, I stop translating the dead into better people than they were.”
Peter opened one more envelope from Beck’s box. Inside was a receipt from a private ambulance company dated nine months earlier. The destination field had been blacked out, but the vehicle number matched a van in the lower-house surveillance archive.
Roman photographed it. “If we pull the company’s GPS backups, we may find where Camille was taken after Saint Anselm.”
Lucy looked up. “The place with the stage?”
Everyone turned.
“What stage?” Mara asked.
“Mommy said she woke up where people used to sing.”
Adrien and Roman exchanged a look.
An old theater.
The same place Celeste was about to name.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
Celeste’s voice came through.
“You found Vincent’s recording.”
Adrien’s expression did not change.
“How do you know?”
“Because your father never trusted dead men to stay useful.”
“Where is Camille?”
Silence.
Adrien’s hand tightened around the phone.
“Where is my sister?”
Celeste laughed softly.
“You still think this is about where.”
“What is it about?”
“Whether she remembers who she is.”
Mara’s stomach dropped.
Adrien went still.
Celeste continued.
“Tuesday is Lucy’s birthday. Bring the trust package to the old theater at nine.”
“We don’t have it.”
“You will.”
“And Camille?”
Another pause.
“If you want to see your sister alive, come without police.”
The line went dead.
Mara stared at Adrien.
He looked at the recorder containing his father’s voice.
Then at Lucy.
Three years after burying Camille, Adrien had finally received the thing grief had never allowed him to imagine.
May you like
Not closure.
A deadline.
