Read Chapter 12: The Fraud Exposed

The morning light came sharp through the kitchen windows, and with it, Bernard’s voice carried from the courtyard—loud enough to rattle the glass. Camille set down her coffee and crossed to the door just as Bernard thrust a folded newspaper at her chest.

“You brought a journalist into my house,” he said, the words low and venomous. “Under my roof. Eating my food.”

She didn’t need to open the paper. The headline screamed above the fold in bold black type: *Delacroix Heiress Consorts with Undercover Reporter—Fraud Inquiry Looming Over Château*. Below it, a grainy photo of Lucas—older, sharper-suited, a name caption reading “Lucas Moreau, Investigative Journalist.”

“I didn’t know,” she said, but the words felt hollow even to her own ears.

“You didn’t know.” Bernard laughed without humor. “You didn’t know the man you’ve been sleeping with is writing a book about us? That he came here to expose the 1982 vintage as a fraud?” He jabbed a finger at the headline. “Half of Bordeaux has already called. The appellation committee. Two journalists from *Le Monde*. They want statements by noon.”

Camille’s phone vibrated in her pocket. Then again. Then a third time.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Gone. Packed his things at dawn and drove off before I could call the police.” Bernard crossed his arms. “I found his notes in his room. Drafts of an exposé. Notes about you. About your mother. About the ledgers.”

Something cold settled in her chest. She turned and walked out of the kitchen, across the gravel drive, past the vineyard rows where blackened buds still clung to the vines like tiny fists. She found Lucas at the old stone well at the edge of the property, sitting on its lip, his car idling nearby with the door open.

“You were leaving without saying goodbye?”

He stood. “I was leaving to protect you from the fallout that article is about to cause.”

“Bernard found your drafts.”

Lucas’s jaw tightened. “Then you know why I came.”

“I know you lied to me.”

“I never lied about what mattered.” He stepped closer, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Camille, I came here because I was investigating the 1982 vintage. There was a pattern—wineries across Bordeaux that mysteriously survived the frost that year, producing harvests that should have been impossible. Your father’s château was at the center of it. I needed access. I needed to see the records.”

“And you used me.”

“I met you.” His voice broke slightly. “I didn’t plan to care about you. But I do.”

She laughed, bitter and sharp. “That’s your pitch? You ruined my family’s name to protect me?”

“I didn’t ruin it. Your father did.” He pulled out his phone, swiped through a gallery of photos—ledger pages, date-stamped, magnified. “Look. These are scans of the 1982 production register. Your mother’s signature is on the September entry—the harvest. And then there’s a second page, October, with altered figures. The corrections are in a different hand.”

“My father’s,” Camille whispered.

“Yes.” He held the phone closer, but she wouldn’t take it. “He didn’t just cover up the frost loss. He forged the vintage. He blended inferior wine from other regions and labeled it as Château Delacroix. And when your mother found out, she refused to sign off on the shipment. She wanted to expose it. Instead, she went to the one man who could help her stop it—Vasseur. He funded her in exchange for proof.”

“Proof she hid.”

“Proof someone took.” Lucas lowered his voice. “I have evidence her signature was erased from the final shipping manifest. She was innocent, Camille. She didn’t run from guilt. She ran because she was afraid.”

The wind picked up through the vineyard, rustling the damaged leaves. Camille stared at the phone in his hand—the glowing screen, the damning images, the truth she’d been chasing since she was nine years old and her mother disappeared.

“You’re going to publish it,” she said.

“I have an editor. A deadline.” He swallowed. “But I haven’t filed my final piece.”

“Why not?”

“Because I needed to tell you first.” He met her eyes. “The question is what you do with it. You can continue protecting your father’s legacy—the one built on lies—and let Vasseur take the estate. Or you can stand with the truth, even if it means the château’s reputation collapses. Even if it means the label means nothing anymore.”

Camille looked past him, across the rows of vines her mother had once walked, her fingers brushing fragile leaves, whispering about a sweet secret to come. She had inherited a lie. She had been fighting to preserve it.

“I need to see my mother’s diary,” she said quietly.

Lucas frowned. “What?”

“Jean-Marc told me she kept notes. Hidden. I searched the cooper’s room—I found nothing. But a diary would have pages. Entries. References.” She turned to him, feeling something harden in her chest. “You want the truth? So do I. But I get to decide what it costs. So you’re staying. You’re helping me find that proof before anyone else does.”

He hesitated. Then he nodded—slow, reluctant, but certain.

Camille’s phone rang again. She silenced it without looking.

The wind carried the scent of smoke from the failed frost fires, and somewhere beyond the ridge, she thought she saw a figure silhouetted against the pale sky—watching, waiting, holding something to his ear.

A radio.