Read Chapter 3: The Father's Shadow

The offices of Maître Rousseau occupied the second floor of a cream-stone building on Rue Carnot, the same room where Alex had signed a dozen forms an hour before learning he owned a vineyard. Now, forty-eight hours later, he sat across the old notary’s desk again, but this time the man across from him was not Rousseau.

Henri Beaumont was eighty if he was a day, with the kind of deeply seamed face that came from decades of Burgundy weather and harder truths. He wore a corduroy jacket over a wool waistcoat despite the May warmth, and his hands rested on a battered leather satchel as if it contained a live animal.

“I knew your father for forty-three years,” Henri said, his accent thick as the morning fog off the Saône. “I was there when he bought Clos des Anges. I was there when he buried your mother. And I was there when they carried him out of the cellar last October.”

Alex shifted in his chair. The estate’s lawyer had mentioned an old friend who might call. He hadn’t expected to be summoned to the notary’s office before breakfast.

“The police said he fell,” Alex said. “The gendarmerie report called it an accident. Slipped on the stone stairs, hit his head.”

Henri’s mouth compressed into a thin line. He unclasped the satchel and withdrew a manila folder, worn at the edges, the tab marked with a single word in careful penmanship: *Moreau*.

“The gendarmerie report also noted that your father had a blood alcohol level of zero point two,” Henri said. “That was convenient. A man who’d had a bottle of wine with dinner, the stairs were steep, the lighting poor. Case closed before lunch.”

Alex felt the familiar tightening in his chest that came whenever his father’s name was spoken in the past tense. “You’re saying it wasn’t an accident.”

“I’m saying I don’t believe in coincidences.” Henri slid a photograph across the desk. It showed the cellar stairs at Clos des Anges, taken from above. The stone steps descended into shadow, a dark patch visible near the bottom. “Look at the third step from the top. Do you see it?”

Alex leaned closer. The step was slightly darker than the others, a subtle discoloration that could have been age or moisture.

“That’s oil,” Henri said. “Someone poured oil on the top steps the night before your father died. The gendarmerie tested it. They wrote it off as spilled lubricant from the equipment shed. But Claude Moreau had been walking those stairs for thirty years. He knew every stone. He wouldn’t have fallen because of a little oil.”

“Unless he was drunk.”

“He wasn’t drunk.” Henri’s voice carried a weight of certainty that made Alex’s skin prickle. “Your father stopped drinking wine the year your mother died. Said it tasted of grief. He’d have a glass at harvest, for ceremony, but that was all. The autopsy showed alcohol because someone made sure he had a reason to fall.”

The room seemed to tilt slightly. Alex gripped the armrest of his chair. Inspector Delacroix’s words from yesterday echoed in his mind: *your father's death may not have been an accident*. He’d dismissed it as an investigator’s dramatic flair. Now here was Henri Beaumont, a man old enough to be his grandfather, telling him the same thing with a photograph as evidence.

“Why are you telling me this?” Alex asked. “You don’t know me. I haven’t been back to Burgundy in a decade.”

Henri’s eyes softened. “Because your father wrote to me. Every year, at Christmas. Same card, same words: *Henri, if anything happens to me, make sure the boy knows where to look.*” He paused. “And because I was the one who found him.”

The silence stretched. Alex remembered the phone call, the choked voice of the estate manager telling him his father had died in a fall. He’d been in London, reviewing quarterly reports for a client in Luxembourg. He’d taken the next train to Paris, then the TGV to Dijon. The funeral had been a blur of black coats and murmured condolences from people whose faces he barely remembered.

“You found him,” Alex repeated.

“At seven in the morning. He was supposed to meet me for breakfast in Beaune. When he didn’t show, I drove out.” Henri’s voice dropped. “He was lying at the bottom of the stairs, his head against the stone wall. His eyes were open. He looked surprised. That’s the part I can’t forget. He didn’t look like a man who slipped. He looked like a man who saw something he never expected to see.”

Alex forced himself to breathe. The photograph blurred in front of him. He set it down carefully.

“You have the police report?”

“Copies. And something else.” Henri reached back into the satchel and withdrew a second document, this one printed on heavier paper. It had the unmistakable look of an insurance policy—dense clauses, rows of numbers, signatures at the bottom. “Your father took out a policy two years ago. Not on the house or the equipment. On the estate itself. The vineyard as collateral against a loan from a Swiss bank.”

Alex studied the document. The name of the bank was familiar—Geneva-based, discreet, the kind of institution that didn’t ask questions if the collateral was solid. The loan amount was staggering: 4.2 million euros.

“I didn’t know about this,” Alex said. “The lawyer only mentioned normal estate debts.”

“That’s because the lawyer doesn’t know about this.” Henri pointed to the bottom of the page. “Look at the signature.”

Alex followed his finger. There, in blue ink, was a looping flourish: *Alexandre Moreau*.

His signature. His exact signature—the way he’d signed it since university, with the distinctive upward sweep on the final letter. The way he’d signed documents a thousand times in London boardrooms.

Except he had never signed this.

“That’s not mine,” Alex said, his voice flat.

“I know,” Henri said. “You were in London when this policy was written. I was with your father the day he applied. He told them the signature would come later, that his son would co-sign remotely. They agreed. Then the policy was issued with this page already signed.”

Alex’s hands were trembling. He clasped them together. “Someone forged my signature.”

“Someone had access to one of your signatures and a very good forger,” Henri corrected. “With this document, the bank can claim the vineyard when the loan defaults. And the loan is structured to default within the year unless the estate can produce 4.2 million in immediate revenue.”

“The 2023 vintage sale at a loss,” Alex murmured. Claire had mentioned it yesterday—how his father had sold the entire harvest at a fraction of market value. He’d assumed it was a bad business decision. Now it looked like a desperation move.

“Your father was being squeezed,” Henri said. “Someone wanted Clos des Anges. They used the bank as leverage, and they used your name to seal the deal. When your father refused to go along, they made sure he couldn’t refuse anything ever again.”

Alex stared at the signature. It was perfect. A tremor of cold anger moved through him. Whoever had done this had studied him, reproduced the most personal mark of his identity, and used it against his father.

“Can I keep a copy?” he asked.

Henri nodded. “I made two. You should keep one somewhere safe. Not in the estate house.” He tapped the folder. “And you should know that the policy was amended last month. The beneficiary changed from your father’s estate to a holding company in Dijon. A company named Vernier Frères.”

The name hit Alex like a fist. *Vernier*. Élise Vernier, the woman who’d warned him about the hidden cellar, who claimed to know things about his father, who had been standing on the edge of every conversation since he’d arrived.

He looked up at Henri. “Vernier Frères. What do you know about them?”

Henri’s face darkened. “That’s a name I hoped you wouldn’t ask about. At least not yet.” He closed the satchel, his movements slow and deliberate. “Ask your father’s régisseur about the 1991 harvest. Ask her why the estate lost money that year even though the vintage was excellent. And ask her why she still works for a vineyard that should have gone bankrupt years ago.”

The anger in Alex’s chest shifted into something colder. Claire. Of course. She was the thread connecting the estate’s past to its present, the keeper of the keys, the one who had shown him the hidden cellar with its bank-stamped magnum.

He slid the copy of the insurance policy into his coat pocket, feeling its weight settle against his ribs.

“Thank you,” he said. “For telling me the truth.”

Henri rose slowly, joints creaking. He studied Alex with an expression that held both warning and something like pity. “Your father made a choice, years ago. He thought he could protect you from it by keeping you in London, away from all this. But the vineyard is the choice. It always has been.” He paused at the door. “Be careful, Alexandre. The men who killed your father are patient. They’ve been patient for a decade. And they’ve decided you’re part of the plan now—whether you signed on or not.”

The door closed behind him. Alex sat alone in the lawyer’s office, the forged signature burning against his chest like a brand, and for the first time since he’d arrived in Burgundy, he understood that accepting the inheritance might not be a choice at all.