Read Chapter 28: The Journalist's Question

The golden light of late afternoon spilled across the terrace, catching the amber in Hélène's glass as she swirled it with the practiced ease of someone who had spent years in wine country. She was younger than Alex had first assumed—mid-thirties, perhaps—with sharp grey eyes that missed nothing and a way of tilting her head when she listened that made him feel like he was being interviewed even when they were discussing the weather.

"You've been very careful with your answers today," she said, setting down her glass. The festival noise from the courtyard below drifted up—laughter, a string quartet tuning, the pop of corks. "Every time I steer toward your father, you steer toward the renovation. The harvest. The future of Burgundy wine."

Alex allowed himself a small smile. "The future is more interesting than the past."

"It usually is." She leaned forward, elbows on the wrought-iron table. "But the past has a way of catching up. I've been looking into the estate's history, Alex. Not the official version. The other one."

His chest tightened. "What other version is there?"

"Étienne Belrose."

The name hung between them like a stale cork. Alex had heard it whispered in the village—the cellar master who had vanished over a decade ago, his disappearance folded into the local lore of the Bouchard years. But his father's journal had mentioned Étienne only once, in a passage so cryptic Alex had almost missed it. *The cellar master knew. What he knew went with him.*

"That's a name I haven't heard in a while," Alex said carefully.

"I'm sure." Hélène reached into her leather satchel and pulled out a worn manila folder, its edges soft with handling. She placed it on the table but didn't open it. "Étienne worked for your father for nearly twenty years. He was loyal to the Moreau family—the real Moreau family, not the men who took over the books. And then one day, in October of 2012, he left his cottage and never came back. No goodbye. No forwarding address. His bank account never touched again. His sister filed a missing person's report; it went nowhere."

"How do you know all this?"

"I'm a journalist, Alex. This is what I do." She tapped the folder. "I started digging into the Bouchard connection months ago, before anyone knew the estate would change hands. I had a source inside the local gendarmerie who told me there were things in the Bouchard case file that never made it to court."

Alex's jaw tightened. "The Bouchards are in custody. The case is moving forward."

"It isn't, though." Hélène's voice dropped. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. The prosecutor has enough to hold Jean-Marc for fraud and tax evasion, but the deeper network—the suppliers, the buyers, the people who laundered money through this estate for years—they're walking. Nobody has talked. Nobody will talk."

She opened the folder. Inside, clipped together, were photocopied pages—police reports, bank statements, a photograph of a man with kind eyes and a strong jaw standing beside Étienne's father in the vineyard.

"Étienne knew," Hélène said quietly. "He knew about the laundering operation. He knew before your father did, or maybe at the same time. And he had evidence. I've spoken to his sister, Marguerite. She lives in Beaune now, runs a small bookshop. She told me Étienne came to her two days before he disappeared and gave her a box of his things—like he was cleaning house. She never opened it, said she was too afraid. When I asked her about it last week, she said she'd been holding onto it for eleven years, waiting for someone to ask."

Alex's mouth went dry. "Did she give it to you?"

"No. She gave me something better—an address." Hélène slid a photograph across the table. It showed a stone cottage half-swallowed by ivy, its windows dark, a rusted gate hanging crooked on its hinges. "Étienne's cottage. It's on the edge of your property, less than a kilometer from where we're sitting. It's been abandoned since he vanished. No one has touched it."

He stared at the photograph. He had walked the boundaries of the estate a dozen times since returning, had explored the old press house and the outer buildings, but he had never thought to go farther out, past the treeline, where the valley narrowed and the ground grew rocky and the vines gave way to wild bramble.

"I've walked right past this place," he said, more to himself than to her.

"You have." Hélène closed the folder. "Alex, I believe Étienne found what your father was missing. I believe he found proof of who was really running the money through this estate—not just the Bouchards, but the people above them. And I believe he was going to go to the authorities when someone got to him first."

"Got to him—you think he was killed?"

"I think a man doesn't vanish with his bank account intact and his boots still by the door unless he either never planned to leave or never had the choice." She paused. "And I think that if we can find what Étienne left behind, it could change everything. Not just for your case, but for the whole network. The Bouchards are the branches, Alex. Étienne knew where the roots were."

Alex leaned back in his chair. Below, the festival was winding down, lanterns flickering on as dusk crept over the village. He could see the chateau from where he sat, its windows glowing warm and golden, a symbol of everything he had rebuilt in the last two months. The villagers had toasted him tonight. They had clapped him on the back and called him the new Moreau, the one who had saved the estate from the corruption that had stained his father's name.

And now this journalist sat across from him, offering him a choice—hold onto the redemption he had earned, carefully curated and clean, or follow a ghost into the dark and risk it all.

"You could write this story without me," he said. "You have an address. You have sources. Why do you need me?"

Hélène met his eyes. "Because it's your land. Because if I search that cottage and find something, it will look like trespassing. But if you search it—if you find evidence that implicates the people who tried to destroy your family—it's a property owner cooperating with an investigation." She smiled, a hint of steel beneath the charm. "And because I've read the testimony you gave. I know you didn't tell them everything. You're still carrying something, Alex. I can see it in the way you talk about your father's journal—the parts you skip."

The silence stretched between them. Somewhere in the chateau kitchen, a pan clattered. A woman's laugh rose and fell on the evening air.

Alex thought of his father's notes, the coded references he still hadn't deciphered. The circled four-hectare valley he had never located. *The truth is in the barrel.* He had assumed it referred to the wine, to the rack of aging Barolo at the back of the cellar. But what if it meant something else entirely?

"Marguerite said Étienne left the box with her," he said slowly. "What was in it?"

"Papers. Photographs. A key to something—she didn't know what." Hélène's eyes brightened. "She said he told her, 'If anything happens to me, give this to the Moreau who's willing to fight.'"

Alex looked down at the photograph of the ivy-covered cottage. His father's legacy, he had decided, was one of redemption. But redemption had a price, and it seldom stayed where you left it.

He reached for the photograph and slid it into his pocket.

"Tomorrow morning," he said. "We go together."

Hélène smiled, and for the first time, Alex saw something that looked like genuine relief on her face. "I'll bring a crowbar. That gate looks like it hasn't moved in a decade."

"Bring gloves too." Alex stood, feeling the weight of the decision settle into his bones. "Whatever we find in there, I have a feeling we're going to want to leave our fingerprints off it."

He turned toward the chateau, then stopped. Hélène was still seated, watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read.

"There's one more thing," she said.

Alex turned back.

"The sister—Marguerite—she told me something else. The night before Étienne disappeared, he called her. He was frightened, more frightened than she'd ever heard him. He told her that if anything happened to him, she shouldn't trust the police—not the local ones, anyway. He said someone inside the gendarmerie was working for the Bouchards."

Alex's blood went cold. It had been Captain Renaud who had finally arrested the Bouchard sons, but it had also been Renaud who had been reassigned pending internal review.

"Who?" he asked. "Did he say who?"

Hélène shook her head. "He never said. But if that person is still on the force, and if they find out we're digging into Étienne's disappearance..." She let the sentence trail off, its weight settling between them.

Alex looked up at the chateau, its windows bright and welcoming, then back at the photograph in his pocket—the dark cottage waiting somewhere in the bramble beyond the treeline.

Tomorrow, he would open a door that had been sealed for eleven years.

He only hoped he was ready for what was on the other side.