Read Chapter 7: The First Threat

The smoke hit him before the heat did.

Alex was halfway across the courtyard when he saw it—a thin gray ribbon curling from the barrel shed's roofline, barely visible against the pale morning sky. For a moment he thought it was mist off the vines. Then the smell reached him. Burnt oak, charred sugar, something chemical underneath.

He ran.

The shed doors hung open. Claire stood inside, backlit by a dull orange glow, both hands pressed to her mouth. Flames ran along the far rack like a living thing, crawling from barrel to barrel, black smoke rolling across the ceiling. Alex grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and yanked the pin.

"Get back!" he shouted.

Claire didn't move. He shoved past her, aimed at the base of the fire, and squeezed. White foam arced across the flames, hissing violently, steam and smoke mixing into a thick fog. Overhead, the old beams creaked. A barrel split open with a sound like a gunshot, spilling deep red liquid that hit the hot concrete and flashed into steam.

Alex kept the trigger held. The foam was running low, the roar of the fire subsiding into crackling whispers. Through the smoke, he could see the charred skeletons of eight barrels, their staves blackened and weeping. Beyond them, the fire had eaten a hole in the back wall.

But it had not spread to the main cellar. Not yet.

He dropped the empty extinguisher. His hands were shaking. Claire had backed against the doorway, her face pale, her eyes fixed on the ruined rack.

"They were the 2019s," she said, her voice hollow. "The last good vintage your father bottled."

Alex wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The smoke tasted like ash and copper. "This wasn't an accident."

Claire turned to face him. Her jaw was tight. "You think I don't know that?"

He walked the length of the shed, boots crunching through charred debris. The fire had burned hottest near the door—the floor there was scorched black, the concrete blistered. He knelt, touched the surface, felt the rough flaking residue. He'd spent enough years auditing industrial losses to know the pattern.

"Here." He pointed to a dark stain that ran from the threshold toward the rack, an uneven trail like spilled paint. "Accelerant. Gasoline, probably." He looked up at Claire. "Someone poured this, lit it, and walked out."

Claire moved slowly toward the damaged rack. She reached a hand out, almost tender, and touched a blackened barrel head. The char crumbled under her fingers. "He's sending you a message."

"Vichet."

"Who else? The contract is signed. The estate is collateral. Everything your father built now belongs to him if you miss that deadline." She looked at Alex, and for the first time, he saw exhaustion in her face—something older than the years she carried. "This is how he does it. Not all at once. He takes pieces. He makes you watch."

"The police—"

"Will find a faulty electrical connection. A careless spark. That's what they found last time." She turned away from the wreckage. "It was the north vineyard in 2017. A frost came early. Vichet said it was a shame. My father died six months later. Heart attack, they said. He was fifty-two. He had no heart problems."

Alex stood in the smoky ruin and felt the weight of the estate settle around him like a wet coat. He was not just protecting his father's legacy. He was protecting a world of debts and secrets that kept collecting the living.

"Tell me something," he said quietly. "The barrels that survived—do you know what's in them?"

Claire blinked. "The 2018s. Why?"

"Because I need to know what a man who burns wine is afraid of losing." He pulled out his phone and photographed the burn pattern, the scorched floor, the ruined barrels. "He's not just threatening me. He's telling me what matters to him. I want to know why."

---

Delacroix arrived forty minutes later, his unmarked sedan crunching over soot-stained gravel. He stood in the shed doorway in a wool overcoat, hands clasped behind his back, surveying the wreckage with the placid expression of a man who had seen worse.

"Monsieur Moreau." He nodded at Alex. "Madame Vernet."

"Someone tried to burn down my barrel shed," Alex said.

"Indeed." Delacroix stepped carefully through the debris, stopping near the burn trail. He crouched, peered at the residue, then straightened. "Gasoline. Cheap grade. Not the work of a professional."

"You think this was amateur?"

"I think it was a message." Delacroix looked at him with those flat, assessing eyes. "Professionals don't use messages. They use results. Monsieur Vichet, however, prefers a softer touch. He learned the technique from his father, who preferred intimidation to violence because intimidation leaves the victim alive to pay."

Alex stared at him. "You know about Vichet."

"Everyone in Dijon knows about Vichet. He is the largest broker in Burgundy and the most ancient family in the region. He has been buying and selling—wine, influence, favors—for four generations. The investigation into your father had been building for years." Delacroix paused. "We believe Vichet's operation is the hub. Your father was one of several spokes."

"Several? How many?"

Delacroix didn't answer. He walked to the ruined back wall, touched a charred beam, and turned back. "I would suggest you be careful, Monsieur Moreau. Fire has a way of spreading." He looked from Alex to Claire, then back. "I will file a report. Accidental cause, pending investigation. It will be easier for everyone."

"Aren't you here to investigate crime?"

"I am here to investigate money that moves through wine. Arson is a local matter. And local matters in Burgundy are often... complicated." He pulled a card from his pocket, held it out. "If you find something you want me to know, call this number. Not the one I gave you before. This one is private."

Alex took it. The card was blank except for a phone number. No name, no title.

Delacroix left the way he came, and the silence of the estate closed in behind him.

---

Claire stayed in the shed, salvaging what she could. Alex walked back to the house, stripped off his smoke-stained coat, and sat at the kitchen table with the ledger open in front of him. The shell companies stared up at him—Morna Holdings, Azure Crest Ltd., Halcyon Pacific—all registered in the Caymans, all connected to a series of shipping manifests and storage receipts that didn't make sense for wine.

He needed help.

He found Marcus Reid's number on his phone and dialed before he could talk himself out of it. It rang three times.

"Alex? Do you know what time it is?"

Alex checked the clock. Seven in the morning in London. Eleven p.m. in Hong Kong, where Marcus worked out of now. "I need you to trace some companies for me."

"Aren't you supposed to be playing vintner in the middle of nowhere?"

"Something like that." Alex read out the first three names from the ledger. "Cayman registrations. Shell companies. I need to know who owns them, who controls them, and where the money flows."

Marcus was quiet for a moment. "Alex, mate. I deal in forensic accounting, not espionage. Tracing offshore entities takes time, access, and a warrant."

"You have access."

"To clients' data, yes. Legally."

"Marcus."

Another pause. "How deep are you in?"

Alex looked at the ledger, at the passports stacked beside it, at the charred smell still clinging to his clothes. "Deeper than I know."

"Fine. Give me the names. I'll see what I can find off the books. But Alex—" Marcus's voice lost its levity. "If these companies are doing what you think they're doing, then whoever's behind them isn't going to stop at burning a shed. You should get out."

"I can't get out." Alex closed the ledger. "I have a vineyard to save."

"Your father's vineyard."

"The vineyard that's keeping me alive." He hung up and stared at the ledger's pages, at the columns of numbers that connected his father to a world he was only beginning to understand.

He didn't hear Claire come in until she was standing across the table. She was holding something small and dark in her palm. She set it down gently between them.

A brass key. Old, worn, engraved with a cross.

"This was your father's," she said quietly. "He gave it to me the night he died. Said if anything happened to him, I was to give it to you when the time was right." She looked at Alex, and her eyes were wet. "I think the time is right."

Alex picked it up. The metal was warm from her hand.

"What does it open?"

Claire looked away. "You'll know when you find it."