Read Chapter 24: The Aftermath Turn

The rain had stopped by the time Julien reached the address in the Chartrons district, a narrow four-story building whose ground floor housed a wine merchant that had been shuttered for decades. The windows were grey with dust, but the brass plate beside the door was polished to a mirror shine: *VINEYARD MANAGEMENT CONSULTING SARL*.

He pressed the intercom. A voice crackled through, tinny and bored. “Yes?”

“Julien Moreau. I have an appointment with Monsieur Delage.”

A pause. Then the door buzzed and he pushed inside. The stairwell smelled of old wood and solvent, the kind of smell that clung to offices where documents were destroyed with more care than they were created. He climbed two flights and found a door already open at the end of the hall.

Alain Delage stood at the window, his back to the room. He had aged the way men do when they spend their lives holding grudges—the hair thinner, the jaw tighter, the shoulders squared against an invisible weight. He turned as Julien entered.

“Moreau.” He said it like a verdict. “This is unexpected. I thought you were done with me.”

“I was. Then you started buying up wine estates with my name attached to the paperwork.”

Delage’s mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. He gestured to a chair across from a wide mahogany desk. “Sit down. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

Julien didn’t sit. He placed both hands on the desk and leaned forward. “The Swiss bank. The one holding the Belliveau note. It’s yours.”

“That’s a strong claim.”

“It’s not a claim. I traced the wire transfers. The bank’s parent company is a shell registered in Luxembourg. That shell owns a holding company in Geneva. That holding company is owned by Venatrix Capital. And Venatrix Capital has exactly one shareholder of record.” Julien straightened. “You.”

Delage exhaled slowly, then pulled out the chair behind the desk and sat. He folded his hands on the blotter. “You always were thorough. That was your problem. You couldn’t let anything go.”

“Tell me about the Belliveau debt.”

“The Belliveau family borrowed money they couldn’t repay. That’s not a scheme. That’s called business.”

“They borrowed from a bank that didn’t exist until eighteen months ago. They borrowed against an estate that generates no cash because the market for their wines collapsed when the vintage was exposed as fraudulent. And they borrowed through a financial officer who never once appeared in person, who communicated only by encrypted email, and whose name—Lucien Parmentier—doesn’t appear in any registry in France, Switzerland, or Luxembourg.”

Delage’s smile widened. “You checked.”

“I checked his birth certificate. There isn’t one. Lucien Parmentier is a ghost. My ghost. You built him to look like one of my old contacts, didn’t you? Someone I might have vouched for once, so when the family began asking questions, they’d have somewhere to point.”

“That’s paranoid.”

“That’s accurate.” Julien pulled a folded document from his jacket and tossed it onto the desk. “This is the loan agreement. It was signed by Philippe Belliveau, who was dead by then. The signature is a forgery. So is the guarantee. The entire debt is a fabrication.”

Delage didn’t look at the paper. “And if it is? What do you think happens next? You go to the commissioner? The same commissioner who buried the investigation into your last case? The same one who watched you get stripped of your badge while he said nothing?” Delage shook his head. “You have no allies left, Moreau. You burned them all.”

“I have the truth.”

“The truth.” Delage laughed, a dry sound without humor. “You don’t believe that. If you did, you’d have taken it to the media already. But you haven’t, have you? Because the truth you’re holding isn’t the truth they need. You’re sitting on a hundred-year-old confession that reveals the Belliveaus were founded on murder. You want to use that to destroy me? Fine. But you’ll destroy them first. And you know it.”

Julien’s jaw tightened. Delage was right, and they both knew it. The letters from Auguste Moreau were a weapon, but it was a weapon that would cut down everyone standing near him.

“Why the vineyard?” Julien asked. “You’re a financier. You don’t care about wine.”

“I care about money. And there’s money in that terroir. More than the Belliveaus ever understood.” Delage leaned back. “There’s a group—a consortium—that’s been acquiring underperforming estates in Bordeaux for the past decade. They replant, rebrand, and sell at six times the purchase price. The Belliveau property is the last piece of a puzzle they’ve been assembling for years. Without it, the portfolio is incomplete. With it, they control the entire southern slope of the appellation.”

“A corporate wine giant. You’re their front man.”

“I’m their partner. There’s a difference.”

“Not to the families you’ve bankrupted to get your hands on their land.”

Delage’s expression flickered. For a moment, something older and uglier surfaced behind his eyes. “You think this is about the land?” He stood, bracing his hands on the desk. “This is about you. About what you did to me.”

“I didn’t do anything to you. You did it to yourself.”

“I lost everything because of you.” Delage’s voice was low, venomous. “My career. My reputation. My marriage. All of it went down the drain when you decided to play hero in that trafficking case. You wouldn’t let it go. You kept digging even when the commissioner told you to stop. And when the dust settled, the department needed a scapegoat. They took your badge—but they took my future too.”

“You were under investigation for taking bribes.”

“I was under investigation because you planted the suspicion.” Delage’s hands were shaking now. “You couldn’t prove anything, so you left the doubt hanging in the air. And doubt is enough. It’s always enough. People don’t need evidence to destroy you. They just need to believe there might be some.”

Julien stared at him. For a long moment, neither spoke.

“So you decided to ruin a family you’d never met,” Julien said quietly. “To get vengeance on a man who was already disgraced and living hand to mouth. That’s your revenge, Delage? Fabricating a debt, forging signatures, bankrupting an estate that’s been in the same family for over a century?”

“The family was already broken. I just gave them a push.” Delage sat back down, the anger subsiding into something colder. “And yes, part of it was you. But most of it was the deal. The consortium pays well. Very well. I’ll be a rich man when this closes. Richer than I ever was as a captain.”

“The deal won’t close.”

“It will. The 48-hour deadline is tomorrow. When it passes, the bank—my bank—will begin foreclosure proceedings. The estate goes to auction. My consortium is the only bidder with authorization to purchase.” Delage smiled. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it. Unless you convince the family to pay a debt that doesn’t exist. But they don’t have the money. They never did. That’s the beauty of it.”

Julien looked at him, then reached into his jacket again. This time he pulled out his phone. He unlocked it, tapped a few times, and turned the screen toward Delage.

“You see that?” he asked.

Delage squinted. The screen showed a live video feed—a drone hovering at altitude, pointed down at a vineyard. The image was crisp, daylight bright. A cluster of figures stood near the old well in the wasteland, and among them was Commissioner Bréard in full uniform, directing a team of forensic investigators in white suits.

“That’s the Belliveau property,” Delage said.

“That’s the scene of a murder investigation,” Julien corrected him. “The body of Étienne Belliveau was found in that well this morning. Along with a confession written by Auguste Moreau in 1903, detailing the killing. The commissioner is coordinating forensic recovery as we speak.”

Delage’s face went still. “They won’t rule on that for months.”

“They won’t have to. The news cycle is already filled with the disappearance of Théo Belliveau. Now there’s a skeleton. A confession. A family feud. All of it is about to become public.” Julien pocketed the phone. “And when the media starts digging—and they will—they’ll begin with the estate’s finances. They’ll find the fabricated loan from your phantom bank. They’ll trace Venatrix Capital back to you. And then they’ll ask you the one question you can’t answer.”

“What’s that?”

“Why a former police captain would go to such lengths to destroy a struggling wine family.” Julien smiled. “I think they’ll find it very interesting. Especially given your history.”

Delage’s right hand clenched around the armrest of his chair. His knuckles were white. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came.

Julien turned and walked toward the door. He paused with his hand on the handle and looked back over his shoulder.

“The family knows about the debt now,” he said. “They know it’s fabricated. They know who’s behind it. You’ve lost the element of surprise, Delage. Whatever you do next, they’ll be watching.” He opened the door. “So will I.”

He left the office and closed the door behind him. The stairwell was quiet, the way up empty. Julien walked down slowly, hand on the railing, and when he reached the street, he stood in the fresh air and let the rain-cooled breeze wash over him.

He pulled out his phone and dialed.

Odile answered on the second ring. Her voice was steel and smoke. “Moreau.”

“It’s Delage,” he said. “The bank. It’s him.”

A pause. Then, quietly: “I suspected.”

“The debt is fabricated. The signature on the loan is forged. There is no real obligation.” He waited. “You don’t have to pay anything.”

“And the letters?”

Julien turned and looked up at the building behind him. A shadow moved behind the window on the third floor—Delage, watching him.

“The letters stay sealed,” Julien said. “For now. We have a bigger enemy to deal with first.”

There was no reply, but he heard her exhale—a long, slow breath that sounded like a woman who had been holding it for days.

“Come back to the estate,” Odile said. “We need to talk.”

The line went dead. Julien pocketed the phone and started walking. The clouds above were beginning to break, letting thin columns of light fall across the quiet streets of Bordeaux.