Read Chapter 27: The Scheme

The three of them stood in the bakery's small back office, the smell of sourdough and burnt sugar clinging to the air like a judgment. Robert Maurier leaned against his counter, arms crossed, the folder of evidence resting between them on a flour-dusted table like a coiled snake.

Camille's phone was already in her hand. She dialed the number from memory—Claire Beaumont, her former colleague from the prosecutor's office who now ran a private practice specializing in extortion cases. The call connected on the second ring.

"Claire, it's Camille. I need a consult. Blackmail, seventeen years, ongoing until the victim's death. What's the statute?"

"Camille, it's Sunday. I'm at my daughter's recital."

"Then talk quietly. I need to know if we have a case."

Claire's voice dropped to a whisper. "Seventeen years of payments—that's a continuous crime. The clock starts at the last payment, which means you're well within the window. But you need proof. Documentation of the payments, ideally his own words admitting the threat."

Camille looked at Inès, who nodded and held up her phone—she'd recorded every word of Robert's confession on the way over. The audio was rolling before he'd even offered them a seat.

"One more question," Camille said. "If we recorded him admitting to the blackmail and the threats, would that be admissible?"

"Assuming you're a party to the conversation and didn't place the recorder in his private space, yes. You can use it to pressure him into a settlement, but taking it to court would expose your mother's role in the smuggling operation. It cuts both ways." A pause, then the muffled sound of applause. "My advice? Use it as leverage, not as a weapon. You don't want this in the public record."

Camille ended the call and looked at her sisters. Inès was standing by the window, arms wrapped around herself, the morning light catching the tension in her jaw. Sophie had pulled a chair to the corner and was watching Robert with an expression Camille had never seen on her youngest sister's face before—cold, calculating, and utterly unafraid.

Robert laughed, a dry sound that cracked like old bread. "Let me guess. You've called your fancy Paris lawyer, and she's told you I've got you by the throat. Because that's the truth of it. Your mother stole from me for years, and I kept her secret. You want to keep your precious house? Pay me what she owed. All of it. And I'll make this folder disappear."

"The house isn't worth what you're asking," Sophie said quietly.

"It's not about what it's worth to you. It's about what it's worth to her." Robert tapped the folder. "This isn't just embezzlement records. This is a full accounting of the operation—routes, contacts, amounts. If I hand this to the police, they seize the estate and probably open a criminal investigation into your mother's estate. You'll be lucky to keep your grandmother's china."

Camille stepped closer to the table. "Let me ask you something, Robert. Seventeen years of payments. That's a long time to hold a grudge over a bakery that was already going under before Maman embezzled from it."

Robert's face flickered. "The bakery was fine before she—"

"There's no record of the bakery struggling before 2002," Inès said, stepping away from the window. "I went through the town records yesterday. The bakery was profitable. Margins were healthy. You didn't need her money the way you claim."

Robert's jaw tightened. "She still stole from me."

"She stole from the bakery accounts, yes. And you—" Inès pulled out her phone, scrolling to a screen. "You informed on our father to the smugglers, didn't you?"

The words landed like a slap. Robert's face went white, then red. "That's—that's absurd. I never would—"

"You were in Le Havre the weekend he disappeared," Inès said, her voice level. "I found a hotel receipt in your mother's papers when I was helping her organize her affairs last year. You told her you were visiting a supplier. But the receipt is from a hotel two blocks from the port where the smuggling operation operated."

Robert's hands were trembling now. "That proves nothing."

"It proves you were there," Inès said. "And it proves you've been lying about the extent of your involvement. Maman's ledger doesn't just show payments to you, Robert. It shows a payment to you—fifty thousand francs, wired to your account—on the exact date Papa disappeared. A one-time payment, separate from the monthly blackmail."

Sophie stood slowly. "You didn't just blackmail her. You helped them find Papa."

"I didn't—" Robert's voice cracked. "I didn't know what they'd do to him. I thought they just wanted to scare him. He was going to leave, to go to the police. They asked me to tell them when he made his move. I didn't know they'd—" He stopped, realizing what he'd just admitted.

"Didn't know they'd kill him?" Camille's voice was ice. "Or didn't care, as long as you got paid?"

Robert's hands went to his head, fingers raking through thinning hair. "You don't understand. Your mother—she threatened me first. She said she'd ruin me if I didn't help. She said she'd make it look like I was the one who embezzled from the bakery, and I'd lose everything. I was protecting myself."

"You were protecting your profit," Inès said. "You've been protecting your profit for twenty years."

Robert lunged for the folder, but Sophie was faster. She snatched it off the table, clutching it to her chest. "Not so fast."

"You can't do this," Robert sputtered. "That folder is my leverage. Without it—"

"Without it, you have nothing," Camille said. "And we have everything. We have your confession on audio. We have the hotel receipt. We have the ledger entry matching the date of Papa's disappearance. We have seventeen years of blackmail payments. And now we have the folder."

"You'll never use it," Robert said, trying to gather himself. "If you go to the police with that, your mother's name is destroyed. You'll lose everything."

"We're already losing everything," Sophie said quietly. "Our father died alone in a foreign city because of choices you and Maman made. Our mother spent twenty years paying for her sins, and you spent those same years profiting from them. We've got nothing left to lose, Robert. But you—you've got a bakery, a reputation, a life in this town. If we release that recording, you'll be the one everyone talks about. You'll be the one who sold a man to his death for fifty thousand francs."

Robert's face crumpled. He looked older now, small, the bluster drained out of him. "What do you want?"

"We want the house," Camille said. "We want you to sign a document stating that the blackmail payments were restitution for a legitimate business loan, retroactively. And we want you to leave us alone. Forever."

"And if I refuse?"

Inès held up her phone. "Then I release this recording to the town council, the police, and the local newspaper. And I let them decide what kind of man their baker really is."

Robert stared at her for a long moment. Then he sagged, the fight leaving his body in a long, shuddering exhale. "Fine. I'll sign your document. But this isn't over. Your mother's operation didn't end with her. There are people who know about this—people who won't be satisfied with a piece of paper."

Camille pulled a pen from her purse and placed it on the table. "Sign it, Robert."

He signed.

The door of the bakery clattered shut behind him as he left, shoulders hunched, the town's gossip already gathering at the café across the street, watching. The sisters stood in silence, the folder heavy in Sophie's hands, the audio recording safe on Inès's phone.

Camille let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "We did it."

"Did we?" Sophie looked at the folder. "This doesn't clear Maman's name. It just buries the evidence. And Robert's right about one thing—there are other people involved. People who've been quiet for twenty years because she was paying them, or threatening them, or some combination of both."

Inès was staring at her phone, scrolling through the ledger she'd photographed. "He mentioned the operation didn't end with Maman. But who was running it after Papa left? Who did she answer to?"

The question hung in the air, unanswered. Outside, the bells of the village church began to toll the noon hour, their sound carrying over the rooftops and out toward the cliffs where their father lay buried, staring at a sea that would never give up its secrets.