Read Chapter 23: The Double-Cross

Jacques Laroche sat in the conference room of Château Bellevue like a man who had already won. The deed lay on the mahogany table between them, yellowed and creased, its notary stamps gleaming under the chandelier. Camille’s lawyer, Maître Rousseau, adjusted his spectacles and passed his magnifying glass over the document for the fourth time.

“The ink is wrong,” Rousseau said finally, setting down the glass. “Iron gall was standard for the period, but this sample uses an aniline dye that wasn't commercially available in France until 1968. This deed is dated 1962.”

Jacques’s smile flickered. “You’re mistaken.”

“I’m not.” Rousseau slid a second page across the table—a chemical analysis report he’d commissioned that morning. “The paper is also wrong. This watermark matches a batch produced in Bordeaux in 1974. Someone went to great lengths to age it artificially, but they couldn't change the chemistry.”

Camille let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Beside her, Étienne’s knuckles relaxed their white grip on the armrest.

But Jacques didn’t crumble. He leaned back, folded his arms, and smiled wider. “Fine. The deed is a prop. I needed your lawyer to look stupid. Now that he has, let’s talk about what I actually know.”

Camille’s victory evaporated. “What are you talking about?”

Jacques reached into his breast pocket and produced a photograph—grainy, taken from a distance, dated 1987. It showed two men in suits shaking hands outside a warehouse on the Bordeaux docks. One was Henri Delacroix. The other was Paul Laroche. Between them, a man Camille had never seen before held a leather satchel.

“Your fathers,” Jacques said, tapping the photo, “ran a price-fixing ring in the mid-eighties. They colluded with a négociant to inflate en primeur prices artificially while simultaneously flooding the bulk market with low-quality wine from the same harvest. Over three vintages, they made—after fees—approximately four million francs. Split three ways.”

Camille’s stomach turned to stone. “That’s absurd. My father would never—”

“Your father did.” Jacques’s voice was flat, matter-of-fact. “I have the ledgers. I have wire transfer records. I have a signed confession from the négociant, who’s dying of cancer and no longer cares about consequences. And I have this.” He pulled out a bottle, dark glass, no label. “The 1961 vintage. The one that supposedly failed. It didn’t fail, you see. It was deliberately withheld from market to create scarcity, then sold quietly at auction under a shell company. Tell me, does the 1961 Hermitage sound familiar?”

Camille’s mind raced her father’s words at breakfast, how he’d grown quiet whenever the legendary vintage was mentioned. She looked at Étienne. His expression mirrored hers—horror, dawning into a colder, harder understanding.

“You’re not just a disgruntled employee,” Étienne said slowly. “You’ve been planning this for years. Who are you?”

“My name is Jacques Moreau.” The name landed like a slap. “Antoine Moreau was my father.”

Camille felt the world tilt. Antoine—the man from the journal, Henri’s half-brother, the key to everything. “He… died in 1981. A boating accident.”

“He was murdered.” Jacques’s eyes went hard and flat. “Your fathers—both of them—arranged it. He’d refused to participate in their price-fixing scheme for the 1981 harvest. He threatened to expose them, so they made sure he never said another word.”

“The police ruled it an accident,” Camille managed.

“The police investigated a lonely alcoholic with no heirs and no friends. They closed the case in three weeks.” Jacques’s voice cracked for the first time. “My father wasn’t a drunk. He was a broken man who’d lost everything—his vineyard, his name, his half-brother’s respect—and they thought that made him disposable. When he threatened to go to the authorities, they disposed of him.”

Étienne’s jaw tightened. “You can’t prove that.”

“I don’t need to prove murder. I have ledgers proving fraud. I have the stolen 1961 bottle—the real one, not the empty shell in your cellar. And I have the missing signature page from the 1961 will.” Jacques placed the page on the table. Camille recognized it instantly; the tear marks on the edge matched the fragment in her pocket. “I’ll make you a trade. Give me forty percent of Bellevue’s equity, and I never speak again. Otherwise, I go to the tax authorities, the press, and Vanderhoeven—who will happily see his corporate attorneys shred what’s left of both family legacies.”

The room was silent. Camille could hear her own heartbeat, a dull drumming against her ribs. Forty percent. Her inheritance, gutted before she even took control.

“You’re insane,” she said, but her voice came out weaker than she intended.

“I’m patient.” Jacques stood, pocketed the deed, the photo, and the will page—he’d let her touch it, she realized, to prove his power. He left the empty 1961 bottle on the table like a taunt. “You have forty-eight hours. Vanderhoeven’s deadline was convenient, but mine is personal. Give me a stake in what was stolen from my father, or I’ll burn it all down. And this time, the smoke will reach your fathers’ graves.”

He walked out. The door clicked shut.

Camille sat frozen until the sound of his car faded down the gravel drive. Then she turned to Étienne. His face was pale, his hands shaking, but his voice was steady when he spoke.

“He’s not bluffing. He has everything we don’t.”

“We can fight him,” Camille said, but the words felt hollow. “The deed was fake, but the fabricated copy could be argued as evidence of fraud. Those ledgers, though… if they exist.”

“They exist.” Étienne’s eyes met hers. “I remember, Camille. When I was nine, there was a visitor. Belgian. He brought a leather bag. My father locked himself in the study for three hours, and when he came out, he was crying. I asked him why, and he said—” Étienne swallowed. “He said he’d made a deal with the devil, and someday the devil would come for his soul.”

“We need to know the truth before we respond,” Camille said slowly. “The letter. The one addressed to both of us. It’s time to open it.”