Part 2
He tried again.
“Credentials suspended,” the system said.
He struck the panel with the side of his fist.
The sound echoed through the library.
Mara flinched despite herself.
Adrian saw it. Something like satisfaction crossed his face, but it vanished when the speaker clicked again.
A man’s voice replaced the automated announcement.
“Mara?”
It belonged to Lucien Sorel, the oldest of the three trustees. He was seventy-one, chronically impatient, and incapable of making a telephone call without sounding as if someone had interrupted his lunch.
“Mara Voss, can you hear me?”
She brought the recorder closer.
“Yes.”
“Are you injured?”
She looked down at the dust on her dress, then touched the cut near her eyebrow.
“Yes.”
Adrian turned toward the nearest ceiling speaker.
“This is a misunderstanding, Lucien. She entered confidential rooms without authorization and became violent when confronted.”
Celeste looked at him.
Mara noticed the look, though she could not interpret it.
Lucien did not answer immediately. That pause frightened Adrian more than any accusation could have.
Finally, the trustee said, “The recording is preserved.”
“You have an incomplete conversation.”
“We have fourteen minutes.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
The library doors remained locked until the local security team arrived from the gatehouse. Two guards entered wearing dark suits under rain jackets. Neither appeared eager to decide which person in the room possessed the greater authority.
Adrian began giving orders before they crossed the threshold.
“Take the device from her. She has stolen confidential material.”
The older guard looked toward the camera in the ceiling corner.
A woman’s voice came through his earpiece. He listened, then shook his head.
“We have instructions not to handle the recorder, Mr. Bellmont.”
“From whom?”
“The trustees.”
“My family employs you.”
“The villa’s security contract is held by the trust.”
Adrian gave him a look Mara had seen reduce junior staff members to silence. The guard did not enjoy receiving it, but he held his position.
Celeste stood from the emerald chair. She placed the wine glass on the walnut desk, exactly centered on a leather blotter.
“I’m leaving,” she said.
“No one is leaving,” the guard replied.
Celeste regarded him with mild surprise.
“I’m not involved.”
The guard glanced toward Mara on the floor, Adrian by the doors, the recorder in her hand, and the riding crop hanging at Adrian’s side.
“That will be determined by someone else.”
Celeste’s face remained composed, but her fingers touched the empty place on her right hand where an engagement ring would ordinarily have been. She had removed it earlier for dinner because, she said, the stone caught on the lining of her gloves. Mara had noticed the pale indentation around her finger.
At the time, it had seemed irrelevant.
Now Celeste slid that hand behind her back.
The younger guard knelt beside Mara.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.”
She could not.
When she tried, pain moved through her ribs and her vision narrowed to a black tunnel. The recorder slipped against her palm. The guard caught her elbow but did not touch the device.
Adrian watched from across the room.
His expression had settled into something almost peaceful.
Mara knew that face. It was the one he wore when he had decided which version of an event he intended to make real.
An ambulance took her to a private clinic outside Lausanne shortly after midnight. The rain followed them along the lake, whitening the road in the headlights. A paramedic cleaned the cut near her eyebrow and asked whether she had lost consciousness.
“I don’t know.”
“That means maybe.”
“I suppose.”
“You historians always answer like witnesses?”
“Only when asked questions by people taking notes.”
He smiled without looking up from his tablet. “I’m not taking notes.”
“You are literally taking notes.”
“Fair.”
The exchange made her laugh once, which hurt badly enough that she stopped.
At the clinic, a doctor examined her shoulder, ribs, pupils, and neck. Nothing was broken. She had a mild concussion, bruising, and a cut that required adhesive strips instead of stitches. The doctor asked twice whether she felt safe returning home.
Mara said yes the first time and no the second.
Her apartment in Geneva was not dangerous because Adrian had ever been there. It was dangerous because he knew where it was, knew which floor she lived on, knew the name of the café below it, and had once sent a birthday arrangement to her office despite her never telling him the date.
The clinic kept her until morning.
Lucien Sorel arrived before seven wearing a camel coat over striped pajamas.
Mara stared at him from the hospital bed.
“You came like that?”
“I added the coat.”
“I can see.”
“My wife says the pajamas are less embarrassing than the trousers I chose in the dark.”
He placed a paper cup of coffee on the bedside table. It smelled burned and medicinal.
Mara did not reach for it.
Lucien pulled a chair close and sat down with a soft grunt. He had once served as general counsel to Bellmont Holdings, and even in retirement he seemed unable to sit without arranging his hands as though a board meeting had begun.
“The recording is intact,” he said.
“How many people heard it?”
“The three trustees. Two attorneys. A technical specialist from the security company.”
“And Adrian?”
“He has retained counsel.”
“That was fast.”
“He called someone before you left the villa.”
Mara looked toward the narrow window. Morning had turned the lake gray. A maintenance worker was scraping wet leaves from the clinic courtyard with a tool that made a steady plastic hiss against the stone.
“Will the recording be enough?”
Lucien took off his glasses and wiped them with the edge of his pajama shirt.
“No.”
The answer came too quickly to be softened.
Mara turned back to him.
May you like
“He admitted it.”
“He admitted changing something. He claimed justification. He did not identify the documents clearly enough, and the conversation began before the relevant context. His attorneys will say he was speaking hypothetically, emotionally, or in response to provocation.”
