Chương 13
“Why did you hire Marcus after destroying her?” Camille asked.
Eleanor traced the photograph’s edge.
“Because he was good at his work.”
“That can’t be all.”
“It is most of it.”
“And the rest?”
Eleanor looked toward the glass wall.
“I wanted someone near me who knew what I had done.”
“Why?”
“Punishment, perhaps.”
Camille studied her face.
“You could have told the truth.”
“Then I would have lost the company.”
“You’re losing it now.”
“Yes.”
The word held no self-pity. Only arithmetic completed too late.
Eleanor handed Camille the photograph.
“Bianca should have this.”
“You can give it to her.”
“She won’t see me.”
“Have you asked?”
“No.”
Camille placed the photograph back on the table.
“Then you don’t know.”
Eleanor’s fingers moved to the pearls at her throat. She had worn them every day since the gala, perhaps because gripping them had become part of the public image.
“The prosecutors offered a plea,” she said.
Camille waited.
“Conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Restitution. Eighteen to thirty months, likely home confinement given my age and health.”
“Will you take it?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“What does Roger say?”
“Roger is negotiating for himself.”
“Of course.”
Eleanor looked at Camille’s bare left hand.
“And Grant?”
“His cooperation agreement is still under review.”
“He will blame me.”
“He already has.”
“He is not entirely wrong.”
“No.”
The baby shifted. Camille pressed her palm beneath the movement.
Eleanor watched.
“May I?”
Camille’s body tightened before she could hide it.
Eleanor noticed.
Her hand remained in her lap.
“No,” Camille said quietly.
Pain crossed Eleanor’s face, restrained and immediate.
“Of course.”
Camille stood with effort.
At the doorway, she turned back.
“You kept telling me the family had to survive.”
Eleanor looked around the stripped ballroom.
“It did.”
“No. The name did. The accounts did. The buildings did. I’m not sure we did.”
Eleanor picked up another photograph.
“That distinction becomes clearer when the buildings are gone.”
Bianca gave formal testimony to investigators in April.
Her messages with Grant established that he planned to use the foundation fraud to pressure Camille after the birth. They also showed Bianca asking repeatedly when he would leave the marriage and Grant postponing the date. In one exchange, she threatened to tell Camille. Grant replied with a photograph of Elise’s false confession and wrote: Your mother learned what happens when people challenge them without leverage.
The cruelty of it changed something in Marcus.
He stopped speaking of Grant altogether.
He and Bianca began meeting for coffee once a week in a diner near her apartment. The first three meetings lasted less than twenty minutes. At the fourth, she brought the unopened letter Elise had returned to him. At the fifth, Marcus apologized without explaining himself.
Bianca did not forgive him.
She came back the next week anyway.
Camille learned these details from Marcus in fragments. He never described the conversations unless asked. Sometimes he only reported what Bianca had ordered.
“She likes apple pie for breakfast,” he said once.
“So do you.”
“I don’t eat sugar.”
“You ate half a pecan pie at my thirteenth birthday.”
“That was operational.”
Camille smiled. “What operation?”
“Preventing your cousin from finishing it.”
The humor vanished quickly, but it left the room warmer.
Camille’s daughter was born eleven days early during a spring storm.
Not snow. Rain.
Her water broke while Dana was arguing on speakerphone with a bank representative. Camille stood in the kitchen holding a piece of toast and felt warmth run down her legs.
Dana stopped mid-sentence.
“Did you spill something?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
A second contraction folded Camille over the counter.
Dana hung up on the bank.
Labor lasted fourteen hours. There were no dramatic revelations, no family reconciliations, no perfect speeches. Camille vomited twice, swore at an anesthesiologist, and accused Dana of breathing too loudly. Marisol arrived with a bag containing socks, lip balm, and three sandwiches nobody ate.
Marcus waited outside the delivery room because Camille had asked him to.
Eleanor was not told until after the birth.
Grant learned from his attorney.
At 3:42 in the morning, Camille’s daughter arrived furious, red-faced, and healthy. Camille held her against her chest and felt astonishment mixed with terror so complete that she could not separate love from responsibility.
The baby’s hand opened against Camille’s skin.
Camille named her Elise Margaret Sterling.
Not to make Bianca’s mother symbolic. Not to erase what happened. The name had belonged to Camille’s maternal grandmother too, though nobody online knew that when the birth certificate became public three weeks later.
Bianca heard before the announcement.
She came to the hospital on the second afternoon, carrying no flowers.
“I can leave,” she said from the doorway.
Camille looked at the sleeping baby.
“You’re already here.”
Bianca entered slowly. The frostbite had healed, leaving a faint discoloration across two toes that Camille did not see but knew from testimony. The emerald pendant rested at her throat.
“Marcus told me the name.”
“It isn’t only for your mother.”
“I know.”
Camille adjusted the blanket beneath the baby’s chin.
Bianca stood beside the bed but did not ask to hold her.
“She’s small.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. She felt enormous.”
Bianca almost smiled.
The silence that followed was not comfortable, but it was no longer hostile enough to require defense.
“Grant wants a paternity test,” Bianca said.
Camille looked up sharply.
“He told Naomi he might request one to delay support calculations.”
For a second, anger erased the room.
Then the baby made a soft snorting noise.
Bianca looked down. “That sounded like him.”
Camille laughed before she could stop herself. The laugh hurt the stitches and turned into a gasp.
Bianca reached for the water cup, then hesitated.
Camille took it herself.
“I’m sorry,” Bianca said.
The words were plain. No explanation followed.
Camille drank.
“I believe you’re sorry.”
“That isn’t forgiveness.”
“No.”
“Will it ever be?”
“I don’t know.”
May you like
Bianca nodded.
Before leaving, she placed an envelope on the table. Inside was the old photograph from the mansion.
