Read Chapter 2: A Toast to Ruin

The phone buzzed against the marble counter like an angry insect. Camille glanced at the screen—Papa, for the fourth time in an hour. She let it ring. The kitchen of Château Bellevue smelled of cold coffee and lemons, a brightness that mocked the scorched fields outside. Through the French windows, she could see the vines curling at the edges, leaves going crisp and brown in the afternoon glare.

She had exactly eleven days before the Merlot needed to come off the canes. Eleven days, and no water.

"I said I'd call him back," she muttered to no one. The house was empty except for her and the heat. The staff had been sent home early—there was little for them to do but watch the vineyard die.

The phone buzzed again. Camille snatched it up. "Papa, I told you—"

"Camille." Her father's voice was thin, reedy in a way she hadn't heard since her mother's funeral. "I need you to come to the library. Now."

She frowned. Henri Delacroix hadn't left his room in three days—not since Camille had told him about the pump failure. The same pump his father had installed in 1962, the one Henri had sworn would outlive them all.

"I'm on my way."

The library smelled of old paper and dust heat-baked into the spines. Henri sat in his leather chair, a glass of water untouched at his elbow. He looked smaller than she remembered, his shoulders curving like the dry canes outside. But his eyes were still sharp, tracking her as she crossed the room.

"Sit down."

Camille sat. "Papa, we don't have time for—"

"We have exactly eleven days." He spoke over her, his voice gaining strength. "I did the math while you were out. If we can't get water in three, we lose the Merlot. The Cabernet might survive another week. But the Merlot—" He shook his head. "That's our vintage. That's Bellevue."

"I know what's at stake." Camille's jaw tightened. "I was the one who stood in Laroche's kitchen and watched him smile while he held all the cards."

Henri was quiet for a long moment. Then he leaned forward and pushed a sheet of paper across the desk toward her. A map—she recognized the faded contours of the property lines drawn in her grandfather's hand.

"The old water-sharing agreement," she said. "Grandfather tore it up."

"The paper was torn." Henri's finger traced the boundary line that ran between Bellevue and Château Laroche. "The aquifers don't. The water table under both our properties is the same. What Étienne Laroche has in his reservoir, we have beneath our feet. Except his pump works, and ours doesn't."

"Then we fix the pump. I can source parts from—"

"We can't afford the parts." Henri said it flatly, without shame, which was worse. "I've been going over the books. The last three harvests. The tariffs on the export market. I should have told you months ago." He finally looked up at her. "We have six weeks of cash left. Maybe eight if we skip the bottling line."

Camille felt the floor tilt beneath her. Six weeks. She'd known the numbers were bad, but she'd been so focused on the daily fires—a broken labeler, a sickly rootstock, a négociant who suddenly wanted to renegotiate—that she'd missed the roof caving in around her.

"Which is why," Henri continued, "I called Paul Laroche this morning."

"You what?"

"Étienne's condition was introductions to your contacts. But Paul and I—" Henri's lips pressed into a flat line. "We go back further than you two. Before the fight. Before your mother and his wife stopped speaking. There was a time we shared a press, a crusher. A time we thought of ourselves as brothers."

"That was fifty years ago."

"Forty-eight." A ghost of a smile crossed Henri's face. "And Paul still remembers. I asked him to consider a temporary truce. A shared-water arrangement, struck between the old men, so the young ones don't have to swallow their pride."

Camille stood up so fast her chair scraped the floor. "You went behind my back."

"I went *around* your back, Camille. Because I know you. You'd rather watch Bellevue burn to bare earth than ask a Laroche for help. But I've watched my father watch his father—"

"Don't." She raised a hand. "Don't give me the history lesson. I know the history. The funeral. The fight over Grand-père's land. The way they've undercut us at every auction for the last twenty years."

"And yet Étienne offered you water." Henri's voice was quiet. "At a price you found insulting. But he offered."

Camille turned away, staring out the window at the brown fields. The silence stretched until her father began the painful process of rising from his chair—legs shaking under him in a way that made her heart lurch. He crossed to her, placed both hands on her shoulders.

"Paul called back fifteen minutes ago," Henri said. "He's agreed to meet. Both of you. At the Café de la Fontaine. Neutral ground. You talk about terms, and maybe you don't come to an agreement today. But you walk in the door." He squeezed her shoulders. "That's all I'm asking."

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The Café de la Fontaine had been serving Bordeaux wine to two families of grape-growers since the First World War. Its pale-blue shutters and wrought-iron tables had seen generations of Delacroix and Laroche negotiate everything from land swaps to wedding arrangements—and, on one memorable occasion in 1987, a fistfight that had sent two elderly patriarchs to the same hospital room, where they'd made up over shared antibiotics.

Camille arrived at four. Étienne was already there, sitting at the corner table with a glass of water half-drunk in front of him. Not wine. Water. The gesture was not lost on her.

He rose as she approached. "Mademoiselle Delacroix."

"Laroche."

"I ordered you a Perrier." He gestured to the sweating bottle on the table. "Thought it was fitting. Negotiating over water we can both drink."

Camille sat down, not touching the bottle. "Your father spoke to my father. I'm here because of that. Not because I've changed my mind."

"Same." Étienne's voice was clipped, his shirt collar dark with sweat. He looked like he hadn't slept. "But since we're both being dragged here by our elders for the sake of family diplomacy, let's make it quick." He slid a folded paper across the table—a list, she recognized the négociant names scrawled in his hand. "These are my contacts. You get me introductions. I'll release enough water each week to keep your Merlot alive."

Camille read the list. Étienne had done his research—he'd picked her three most valuable buyers, the ones who'd been the hardest to court. "This is extortion."

"This is business." He shrugged, but there was something in his eyes—a flicker of discomfort that made her lean in.

"You're running out of water too, aren't you?" she said quietly. "Your reservoir's low. I checked the satellite images of the water table. You're not offering me help out of generosity. You need the introductions because your buyers are sniffing around for other supply. You're losing them."

Étienne's jaw tightened. "I'm not losing anything."

"Then why do you need mine?" She pushed the list back across the table. "You have your own. You've had twenty years to build them. Except we both know your father burned his bridges with the big exporters back in '98, and you've been scrambling ever since." She stood, her chair scraping loud in the quiet café. "Bring me a better deal. One that doesn't require me to hand you my family's future on a plate."

"Your family's future?" Étienne rose too, voice rising. "Your family that stole our grandfather's southern slope when he was too weak to defend it? Your family that—"

"What?" Camille's voice cracked. "Say it. You've been holding it in since we were children. Say whatever you think we did."

A rumble of thunder rolled overhead, distant but unmistakable. Both of them looked up at the darkening sky—the first clouds they'd seen in forty days, bunched on the horizon like hidden fists.

Étienne's nostrils flared. "The funeral in '97. Your father gave a speech about respect. About honoring the dead. And then he bought the Château's reserve stock from under us at auction the next week. My grandmother couldn't even light a candle for my grandfather without—"

"The auction was *legal*," Camille shot back, stepping closer. "Your grandfather left debts. Bellevue paid them. Your family's been spinning that into a betrayal ever since because you can't face what your own grandfather did to his vineyards with his gambling and—"

"Don't." Étienne's voice went low and dangerous. "Don't speak of him."

"Then don't pretend you're innocent." She pointed at the dark clouds. "That storm won't reach us. It's going to break in the mountains, like every other one this summer, and pour water on trees that don't need it while our land dies. So unless you have something real to offer, Laroche, get out of my way."

He didn't move. For a long moment, they stood inches apart, the air between them thick with heat and history.

"You want real?" Étienne said finally. "The pump you say you can't fix. I know who's selling the parts. And I know a mechanic who owes my family a favor. We can have it running in three days."

Camille blinked. "Why would you—"

"Because if Bellevue's vines die, the disease pressure spreads. The leafhoppers, the mildew. It doesn't stop at property lines." He looked past her, at the roiling clouds. "I'm not saving you, Delacroix. I'm saving my own harvest. And that's the only mercy I'm willing to offer."

The first fat drop of rain splattered on the café's awning. Then another. Then a dozen, drumming a sudden staccato that made both of them freeze—the impossible sound of water falling from a sky that had been bone-dry for months.

Camille looked at Étienne. Étienne looked at the rain.

"This changes nothing," she said.

"Rain never lasts," he agreed.

But the drops were already slowing, already fading. False relief, like everything else between their families. Camille grabbed her bag and walked past him, leaving the unsettled water on the table between them. When she looked back from the doorway, Étienne was staring at the sky with an expression she couldn't read—and something in his stance made her think he hadn't told her everything.

The storm passed without another drop.

At home, Camille went straight to the library. Her father was asleep in his chair. She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher—cool, clean, precious—and stood over the desk looking down at the old peré map.

"The parts," she murmured. "How would he know what parts we need?"

She pulled out her phone and typed a query: Château Laroche irrigation system repair records. The search returned nothing. But at the bottom of the screen, an obituary from 2016 flickered up: a mechanic named Marcel Ouvrier, who'd worked for *both* families for forty years before his retirement. His daughter still ran a repair shop near Libourne.

Étienne had a plan within a plan. And Camille suddenly knew the water was only the beginning of what he was trying to secure.

She set the glass down and began to make her own list of what she knew about the Laroches. What they owed. What they loved. What they'd buried so deep they thought no one remembered.

The rain had dried on the windows. Eleven days remained.

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