Chương 5
“You had it,” Camille said.
“What?”
“The camera saw you put something under your shirt.”
A longer silence.
The monitor near him changed rhythm.
“Grant.”
“It was a copy.”
“Of the ledger?”
“Of three pages.”
“Where are they?”
“Not with me.”
She heard a nurse tell him to keep his foot elevated. Grant covered the phone and answered politely. Even now, he could make courtesy sound like evidence of innocence.
“Camille, listen carefully. Do not let Eleanor take your phone. Do not let Roger isolate you. Call Dana Kessler.”
Dana had been her father’s personal attorney, then Camille’s, until Eleanor persuaded the family board that separate counsel looked divisive. Camille had not spoken to her in four years.
“Why?”
“Because Roger represents the company. Not you.”
The line went quiet again.
Then Grant said, “I am sorry about Bianca.”
It was a strange arrangement of words. Sorry about, as if Bianca were weather damage.
Camille looked at the bed without meaning to.
“Are you sorry you loved her?”
Grant answered too quickly. “I don’t love her.”
Somewhere in the hospital, a door slammed.
Camille’s throat tightened. Not because she believed him, but because Bianca had almost frozen beside a man who would not grant her even the dignity of being the reason.
“Get warm,” Camille said.
She ended the call.
Dana Kessler answered on the fourth ring with a voice roughened by sleep and cigarettes she claimed to have quit.
“Who died?”
“No one.”
“Then it’s a bad night, not the worst one.”
Camille sat on the bedroom floor among trust documents and empty velvet boxes.
“I need a lawyer.”
“You have an entire firm.”
“I need one who works for me.”
Dana was silent for perhaps three seconds.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Is Grant there?”
“No.”
“Is Eleanor?”
“Downstairs.”
“Lock the door.”
Camille looked at the broken privacy of the room.
“Done,” she lied.
“Now tell me the part you least want to say.”
By sunrise, Dana had arranged for an independent digital forensic specialist to collect Camille’s phone, clone its contents, and return it under a signed evidence receipt. She also instructed Camille to photograph the safe, the trust documents, the missing ledger’s usual location, and every device in the bedroom without touching anything else.
“You’re going to want coffee,” Dana said. “Don’t make it in that house.”
“Why?”
“Because people do stupid things when they’re scared, and poison is not the only way to put someone in a hospital. You’re pregnant, exhausted, and surrounded by employees who don’t know whose orders matter.”
“That sounds dramatic.”
“It’s less dramatic than letting your husband freeze against a glass door, and apparently we’ve crossed that bridge.”
Camille closed her eyes.
“I didn’t lock him out.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I could have opened it.”
“Yes.”
The lack of comfort felt like respect.
Dana continued. “You called emergency services?”
“Before Marcus arrived.”
“Good. You’ll still need separate criminal counsel if the sheriff treats the delay as reckless endangerment.”
“Do you think they will?”
“I think a wealthy woman, a pregnant heiress, a cheating husband, a mistress in lingerie, and a blizzard are already being turned into a national morality play. I think prosecutors read the internet even when they pretend not to. I think you tell the truth and stop trying to look sympathetic.”
Camille rubbed her eyes. “You make that sound simple.”
“No. I make it sound necessary.”
At six fifteen, Camille left the Sterling mansion through the kitchen with one suitcase, her father’s trust documents, and a plastic container of crackers a cook named Marisol pressed into her hands.
“You need salt,” Marisol said. “And something in your stomach.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That has never stopped a baby.”
Marisol wore kitchen clogs and a flour-streaked sweater. She had worked for the family since Camille was twelve and still spoke to her as if money were an eccentric illness requiring practical management.
At the employee entrance, Camille looked back.
The ballroom chandeliers had gone dark. Pale morning pressed against the glass walls. On the terrace, blood from Grant’s knuckles remained in two thin marks beneath the frost.
Eleanor stood alone beside the fireplace.
She did not wave.
Dana had booked Camille a suite at a small hotel in town under the name of her paralegal’s sister. It fooled nobody for long. By noon, two television vans occupied the curb. A freelance photographer waited beside the vending machines until hotel security removed him.
Camille watched the first press coverage with the sound off.
One channel showed a wedding photograph of her and Grant beneath an arch of white roses. Another displayed a cropped frame of Bianca against the glass. Commentators argued over whether infidelity justified “near-fatal exposure.” A former prosecutor said charges were possible. A relationship expert praised Camille’s “boundary-setting” before admitting she had not seen the full video.
Grant’s publicist issued a statement at one thirty.
Mr. Sterling deeply regrets the private conduct that caused pain to his wife. However, no marital dispute can justify preventing individuals from seeking shelter during a life-threatening storm. Mr. Sterling is cooperating fully with authorities and is focused on recovery.
Camille read it twice.
There was no mention of Bianca.
Dana arrived carrying two coffees and an old leather briefcase with a broken clasp.
“You’re trending above a senator’s indictment,” she said. “Congratulations on American priorities.”
Camille took the decaffeinated cup. “Grant hired a publicist from the hospital.”
“He had one before the hospital. Men like Grant don’t discover publicists during emergencies. They keep them in the pantry with bottled water.”
Dana sat at the small desk and opened her laptop.
“Bianca’s condition is stable. Moderate hypothermia, superficial frostbite, no permanent organ damage expected. Grant has minor frostbite in two toes and may lose part of one toenail.”
“That sounds almost comic.”
May you like
“It will not feel comic when his lawyer enlarges the toenail in court.”
Camille looked out at the parking lot. Snowplows pushed dirty ridges toward the curb. A man in a red hat scraped ice from a rental car, stopped, checked his phone, and looked directly up at her window.
