Read Chapter 3: The First Taste

The first sound was like gravel shaken in a tin can. Camille froze mid-stride in the Bellevue courtyard, her secateurs half-raised over a dying cluster of Cabernet Sauvignon. The sky had turned a sickly green, the kind of color she’d only seen in old photographs of the 1982 storms.

Then the hail came.

Not the gentle pattering of spring showers, but jagged fists of ice that tore through the air and thudded against the vine rows like drumbeats of destruction. Camille sprinted for the stone archway of the chai, shielding her head with her forearms. Around her, leaves shredded, canes snapped, and the precious, shriveled berries that had survived the drought were pulped where they hung.

She pressed her back against the cool stone wall, chest heaving. For thirty seconds—an eternity—the storm raged. When it passed, the silence that followed was worse than the noise. It was the silence of ruin.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, screen cracked from a stray piece of ice, and saw a message from a number she hadn’t saved but knew by heart:

*Bellevue roof took a hit. Your vines?*

Étienne Laroche. Of course he’d message her first. Not out of concern, she knew, but out of a farmer’s instinct to assess the damage to the shared valley. The storm had a front that ran east to west. It wouldn’t have stopped at the property line.

She typed back: *Scattered. Yours?*

*Cellar roof caved near the old press. Water tower’s fine. You should come see it before you panic.*

She didn’t panic. She seethed. He had no right to tell her when to panic. But her feet were already moving toward the ridge line that separated the two estates.

---

The Laroche water tower stood at the highest point of the valley, a rust-streaked concrete monolith that had been there since the 1950s, when both families had still shared irrigation rights. Camille arrived to find Étienne standing at its base, running a hand over a long, fresh gouge in the metal siding where hail had struck.

“It’s cosmetic,” he said without turning. He’d heard her footsteps crunching on the gravel. “The interior tank is intact. But we both need to inspect the connection valves. If the seal’s cracked, we lose pressure.”

Camille stopped a few paces from him, her arms crossed. “You called me here to check your plumbing?”

“I called you here because your pump is still broken, and this tower feeds both properties. If it’s compromised, neither of us survives the week.” He finally turned, and she saw the fatigue in his eyes—real fatigue, not the smugness she was used to. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and there was a small cut above his brow. “Hail doesn’t care about your family’s pride, Camille.”

She wanted to retort, but the words died in her throat. She looked past him at the damage: his own vines had taken a beating too. The Laroche harvest—already threatened by the drought—was now a fraction of what it might have been. This was no longer a game of who had the upper hand. Both of them were bleeding.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s check the valves.”

---

Twenty minutes later, they’d confirmed the tower’s integrity and patched a small leak in the lower pipe. It wasn’t elegant work, but it would hold. Camille wiped her hands on her trousers, feeling the grit of rust and grease under her nails.

“You know this won’t be enough,” Étienne said, crouching by the valve pit. “One tower, two properties, and a drought that’s not letting up. We’ll have to ration.”

“Then we ration.”

He looked up at her, a strange expression crossing his face—not contempt, not pity, but something closer to grudging respect. “You’ve been in my cellars before, haven’t you? The old ones, I mean. Before the fire.”

Camille stiffened. The fire. She hadn’t thought about it in years—the blaze that had gutted the Laroche chai back when they were teenagers, the one that had been blamed on faulty wiring, though no one had ever quite believed the official story. She’d been forbidden from going near the Laroche property after that.

“Why do you ask?”

Étienne stood, brushing off his knees. “Because I remember you down there. That summer we found the 1961 bottle in the rubble. My grandfather’s stash. You knew what it was before I did.”

Camille’s breath caught. She remembered that afternoon—the heat, the smoke still curling from the blackened beams, and Étienne pulling a dust-caked bottle from a collapsed shelf. He’d been about to toss it aside when she’d stopped him. *That’s the Margaux,* she’d said. *The one they talk about like a miracle.*

He’d looked at her then like she was a different species. Not the rival he’d been raised to hate, but someone who understood.

“I never saw what happened to it,” she said quietly.

“It’s still down there,” Étienne said. “In the crawl space. I couldn’t bring myself to drink it after my grandfather passed. Too many ghosts.”

Camille’s mind raced. The 1961 bottle. The one her father had always insisted was lost in the fire. She’d heard him lament it a hundred times over the years, going on about how it had been the last great vintage of the old alliance, the one that had been meant to seal a partnership between the two families back before everything had soured. If that bottle was real, if it was still intact—

“Show me,” she said.

---

The crawl space beneath the ruined Laroche chai was a tomb of dust and forgotten things. Étienne led the way with a flashlight, his broad shoulders scraping against the low ceiling. Camille followed, her heart pounding.

And there it was. Tucked behind a collapsed beam, covered in a patina of grime but unmistakable: the long, slender neck of a Bordeaux bottle, its label faded but legible. *Château Bellevue–Laroche,* the paper read, the name of a winery that no longer existed. The 1961 vintage.

Camille reached for it, her fingers trembling. She didn’t know why she felt so shaken. It was just a bottle, just a piece of history. But her father had spoken of it like a lost child. And now, here, in this dark space that smelled of rot and old fire, it felt like a key to everything.

She slipped it into her jacket without thinking. She told herself it was to protect it, to make sure it didn’t get damaged during the cleanup. But as she felt the cool weight of the glass against her ribs, she knew the truth: she wanted it for herself. She wanted to know what her father had been so desperate to forget.

Étienne didn’t notice. He was already backing out of the crawl space, his voice echoing. “We should talk about the water-sharing terms. Short-term, until the next rainfall. I’m not asking for forever, just until the harvest.”

Camille emerged into the pale light, dust clinging to her hair, the bottle hidden close. “What are your terms?”

“You get access to the tower on a schedule—Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays for Bellevue. I take the other days. You split the maintenance costs, and you don’t introduce me to your négociants yet.”

Camille blinked. “You’re dropping your condition?”

“For now.” He met her eyes, and for the first time, she saw something vulnerable there. “I’m a pragmatist, Camille. We kill each other off and we’ll both be selling our estates to developers by spring. This week, water matters more than pride. Deal?”

She should have felt triumphant. She’d gotten the water without giving up her contacts. But the weight of the hidden bottle pressed against her chest, and all she felt was a rising unease. Because if this bottle was real, if it was the one her father had mourned, then there was a story here that neither of them had been told. And she was suddenly terrified of what it might be.

“Deal,” she said.