Chương 4
“No.”
“Camille, this is no time for one of your moral performances.”
Something hot and humiliating rose behind Camille’s ribs. Eleanor had used that phrase when Camille objected to cutting health benefits at one of the resort properties. She had used it when Camille wanted the foundation to publish executive travel expenses. She had used it after Camille found out the family had paid a former employee to withdraw a harassment complaint against an uncle.
A moral performance was any principle that inconvenienced someone richer than the person harmed.
Camille slid the phone beneath her stole.
“Then we’ll call it a refusal.”
Eleanor stared at her belly, then her face. “Grant is the father of your child.”
“That did not seem to concern him in our bedroom.”
“You have no idea what concerns him.”
“I’m beginning to suspect neither do you.”
Roger cleared his throat. “We should avoid speculation until we understand the contents of the recording.”
Camille stood slowly. The baby shifted downward with enough pressure to make her grip the chair.
“What was he looking for in my safe?”
Neither answered.
There it was. Not proof, but space where an answer should have been.
Camille had learned to notice that kind of silence at Sterling board meetings. Eleanor never lied when she could make the questioner feel impolite for asking.
Camille picked up her shoes and walked toward the elevator.
Behind her, Eleanor said, “Your father trusted me with this family.”
Camille stopped.
Her father had been dead for eleven years. Eleanor invoked him only when she wanted Camille to confuse obedience with grief.
“He trusted you with the company,” Camille said. “He trusted me with myself.”
The bedroom still smelled faintly of Bianca’s perfume.
It was a dry, green scent Camille had complimented at lunch in October. She had asked for the name. Bianca had laughed and said it was cheap and impossible to find, the sort of answer that invited someone wealthy to insist price did not matter.
Camille left the lights off.
The nursery camera’s blue indicator glowed in the adjoining room. Grant had mounted it above a white bookcase and complained for twenty minutes about the drywall anchors. He had kissed Camille afterward, pleased with himself, and placed both hands on her belly until the baby kicked.
She entered the bedroom without looking at the bed.
The false panel behind the jewelry cabinet stood open. Inside, velvet boxes had been moved aside. The folder containing her trust documents lay on the floor. Her passport was there. So were two sealed envelopes from the family office and a copy of the revised Sterling Mountain Holdings voting agreement.
One item was missing.
Camille knelt with difficulty and checked again.
The black leather ledger had belonged to her father. It contained handwritten notes from the final year of his life—property valuations, private loans, names of shell companies, questions about transfers he had intended to investigate after recovering from surgery. He had not recovered.
Camille had found the ledger in a locked desk two years after his death. Eleanor called it the confused work of a sick man. Grant had encouraged Camille to store it somewhere secure and stop upsetting herself with old suspicions.
Now it was gone.
She sat back on her heels.
Her phone rang.
Grant’s name appeared on the screen.
For a moment she watched it vibrate across her palm. The diamond on her left hand flashed beside it. She answered without speaking.
Hospital noise filled the line. A monitor beeped. Someone rolled a cart past him.
“Camille.”
His voice had changed. Without the glass and wind between them, he sounded tired rather than desperate. It was a voice designed for private forgiveness.
“Where is my father’s ledger?”
Silence.
Then, “Is Roger with you?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t show him anything else.”
She almost laughed. “You were in my bedroom with another woman.”
“I know what it looked like.”
“You keep saying that as if the problem is my eyesight.”
“Bianca helped me get into the safe.”
“I watched.”
“I needed the ledger before Eleanor moved it.”
“Why would she move something she says is meaningless?”
Grant breathed through his nose. He had always done that when deciding which portion of the truth to release.
“Because your father was investigating transfers from the foundation.”
“Transfers to where?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“You knew enough to climb into my safe during our gala.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
“Which part? The theft or the sex?”
He said her name again, softer.
She hated that he still knew how to place tenderness into it.
“Bianca and I…” He stopped. “It started months ago. I’m not asking you to understand that tonight.”
“How generous.”
“I am asking you to understand that Eleanor is in deeper trouble than you think. She used me to move money between entities after the North Basin project failed. She said it was temporary. It wasn’t.”
Camille leaned against the jewelry cabinet. “You expect me to believe you were stealing evidence to protect me?”
“No. I was stealing it to protect myself.”
The answer was so clean that she could not dismiss it.
Grant continued. “I signed things. Roger drafted things. You signed some too.”
“I signed board consents.”
“You signed emergency authorizations.”
“At Eleanor’s request.”
“That won’t matter to investigators.”
The baby pressed against Camille’s ribs again. She closed her eyes.
“Where is the ledger?”
“Bianca had it.”
Camille looked toward the terrace. Snow erased the footprints outside almost as quickly as they had been made.
“She was wearing a satin slip.”
“She hid it before we went outside.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that too?”
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“She panicked when you came in. She took it and ran through the terrace door. I followed her. The latch caught. Eleanor arrived before you did.”
That did not match the footage Camille had watched. On the recording, Bianca had left the bedroom first, but Grant had remained long enough to remove something from the safe and place it inside his shirt.
