Read Chapter 10: The Rival's Offer

The knock came at ten in the morning, just as Camille finished tallying the frost damage in her notebook.

She found Vasseur on the step in a charcoal suit that cost more than her father's funeral. Behind him, a black sedan idled in the gravel circle, engine running. Two men in sunglasses sat in the front seats, faces forward, like they'd been told not to look.

"Mademoiselle Delacroix." He extended a hand she didn't take. "I was in the region. Thought we might talk."

"About what?"

"The future of this estate." He smiled, all teeth and no warmth. "May I come in?"

She wanted to close the door. But her father's ledger sat open on the kitchen table, and somewhere in the cellar was a wall that had been freshly mortared and would not survive scrutiny. Better to keep him in the light, on her ground.

"Five minutes," she said, and stepped aside.

He walked through the château like a man appraising a horse at auction — eyes flicking to the water stain on the ceiling beam, the crack in the plaster above the fireplace, the worn flagstones underfoot. He didn't sit when she gestured at the kitchen chair. Instead he stood at the window, looking out at the vineyard.

"Lovely view," he said. "Shame about the frost."

"News travels."

"News always travels in Bordeaux, Mademoiselle. Wine is a small world. A tight one." He turned. "I heard about your father, of course. And your uncles' interest in the property. And the note that came due."

Camille kept her face still. "You read the will?"

"I read the registry at the bank. Standard practice when one holds paper against an estate." He reached into his jacket and produced a document, folded once, and laid it on the table. "The note is mine, as I'm sure you've guessed. Five hundred thousand euros, principal and interest. The full term expires in six weeks."

She didn't pick it up. "My father paid you. The day before he died, he paid off your debt."

Vasseur's eyebrows rose a fraction. "Did he?"

"The bank records show a transfer. From a private account."

"A transfer to a holding company." He smiled again. "Which is mine, yes. But the debt your father carried was not the only debt on this estate. He borrowed against the 2020 harvest, and the 2021, and the 2022. Rolls, barrels, bridge financing — I've been patient for thirty years, Mademoiselle. Patience has a price."

Camille felt the floor shift beneath her. She'd seen the numbers in the ledger, but the ledger had been about wine, about chaptalization, about 1982. Not about Vasseur. Not about money owed for decades.

"Your father was a good man," Vasseur said, softer now. "A flawed man, but good. He made mistakes, and he spent his life trying to correct them. I respected that. I am not an unreasonable man."

"What do you want?"

He gestured at the window. "This. The château, the vineyards, the name. I'll give you one million euros — enough to clear the debts, pay off your uncles, and walk away with something to start over. The note disappears. The frost damage becomes my problem." He paused. "You've done everything you could, Mademoiselle. No one would fault you for selling."

The offer hung in the air between them, clean and reasonable and wrong in every way.

"Why now?"

"Because now is when you need me." He spread his hands. "That's how these things work."

Camille thought of the photograph in her mother's room — Elise, Vasseur, Jean-Marc, all of them smiling in October 1982 with the harvest behind them. She thought of the ledger, of the April frost they'd chaptalized their way through, of a letter her mother had written and then vanished. Vasseur wasn't here to buy a château. He was here to bury a secret.

"The 1982 vintage," she said.

Vasseur's face went still.

"That's what this is really about, isn't it? You want the property because the property comes with the story. And the story, if it ever got out, would be very bad for certain people."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." She stepped toward him, feeling the heat rise in her chest. "My mother knew. She knew before she left. And you've been trying to control this estate ever since, waiting for the right moment, waiting for the family to fall apart." She stopped. "I won't sell. Not to you. Not to anyone."

Vasseur regarded her for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its polish. "You have six weeks to pay a debt that exceeds the value of next year's harvest. You have no buyers, no investors, and a frost that will cut your yield in half." He picked up the document from the table and tucked it back into his jacket. "Pride is a luxury, Mademoiselle. I'll be in Bordeaux until Sunday. If you change your mind, my number is the same as it was for your father."

He walked to the door, then paused. "One more thing. I knew your mother — quite well, actually. She was a remarkable woman. Headstrong. Brilliant. And she made choices that cost her everything." He looked back. "I would hate to see you make the same ones."

The door closed behind him. Camille stood in the kitchen, heart hammering, and watched through the window as the sedan pulled away down the gravel drive.

Six weeks. The harvest was nine weeks out. The numbers didn't work. They hadn't worked before the frost, and they were impossible now. Her uncles wanted the deed. Vasseur wanted the property. And somewhere in her cellar, behind a cooper's room that had been sealed for thirty years, her mother had hidden something that might explain all of it.

Camille grabbed her keys and walked to the cellar stairs.

The cooper's room had been abandoned since before she was born — a low stone chamber at the far end of the vaulted cellar where barrels had been repaired and racked in her grandfather's time. She'd played there as a child, remembered the cool darkness and the smell of damp oak. Now it was empty, swept clean by time, the wooden bench rotted to splinters against the far wall.

She stood in the center and turned slowly, trying to see what Jean-Marc had described. Notes. Earnings. A record of everything Elise had known. A hollow space behind the stone, he'd said. But which stone? The walls were rough limestone, centuries old, each block its own shade of gray.

Camille ran her hands along the mortar. Some stones were newer than others — she could tell by the tool marks, the slight difference in color. But there were hundreds of stones. It would take days to tap each one, listening for a hollow echo.

She thought of Lucas. He knew something about her mother that he hadn't shared. Maybe he knew about the cache too. But Jean-Marc had said to trust no one. And Bernard had suggested Lucas had his own reasons for being here.

The sound of footsteps above made her freeze. She listened, heart pounding, but it was only the wind, or an old timber settling. Still, she didn't move until the silence felt solid again, and then she climbed back up to the kitchen and called the only number she trusted.

Lucas answered on the second ring. "Camille. Everything all right?"

"Vasseur was here."

A pause. "What did he want?"

"The estate. He offered a million. Said the debt is bigger than I think — that my father borrowed against multiple vintages, not just one."

"That's not in the ledger I found," Lucas said slowly. "The one he kept from—"

"The 1982 ledger? No. But maybe it's in the other one." She took a breath. "My mother kept records. Jean-Marc told me she hid them in the cellar, in the cooper's room. I think I know what Vasseur is actually trying to buy."

"He can't buy what he doesn't know exists," Lucas said. "You found the cache?"

"Not yet. The room is empty. But there's something else." She hesitated. "Jean-Marc said she claimed to have proof of something worse than chaptalization. Something about Vasseur, days before she vanished."

The line went quiet. When Lucas spoke again, his voice was careful. "Camille, there's something I need to tell you. About why I came here. About what I was looking for before I even met you."

Her hand tightened on the phone. "What?"

"I don't want to do this over the phone. Can I come to the château tonight?"

She wanted to say no. She wanted to hang up and work alone, the way she'd done her whole life. But she had six weeks and no answers, and Lucas was the only person who seemed to have pieces she didn't.

"Tonight," she said. "The cellar door will be unlocked."

She ended the call and stood in the empty kitchen, looking out at the vineyard where her mother had once stood on a cold April morning, watching the frost settle over the buds, knowing what she would do to survive it. And for the first time, Camille wondered if her mother had disappeared at all — or if she'd found out something that made leaving the only way to stay alive.