Chapter 3
Sabine denied it for twelve minutes.
Then stopped.
Not because I threatened her.
Because Faye described the place.
Gray cottage.
Blue shutters.
Broken stone wall.
A pear tree beside the back steps.
Sabine’s face collapsed.
She had been there.
“Why?”
My voice stayed low.
She sat at the piano bench.
For once, my younger sister looked her age.
Maybe older.
“I needed to know.”
“If he was alive?”
“Yes.”
“You found out.”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
She looked at me.
“I left him there.”
The answer was too incomplete.
“Why?”
Her mouth tightened.
“Because he hated you.”
There.
I almost laughed.
“My brother hated me, so you decided I should believe he was dead?”
“You had just become head.”
Important.
Ten years earlier our father had suffered a stroke six weeks after the fire.
I took control.
Not because I expected to.
Because Lucien was dead.
Or so I believed.
The room shifted inside my memory.
“What did you tell Lucien?”
Sabine said nothing.
Faye did.
“He told me you sent the invitation.”
I frowned.
“What invitation?”
“The one that took him to the old river warehouse.”
I never sent one.
Sabine closed her eyes.
There.
The fire happened at River House Number Four.
An abandoned Montclair storage building.
Lucien went there alone except for Owen.
Why?
I had never known.
We assumed business.
Now I knew.
Someone summoned him using my name.
“Did you forge it?”
Sabine whispered:
“Yes.”
The word landed gently.
Almost politely.
Ten years of grief inside one syllable.
“What did it say?”
“That you wanted to meet privately.”
“Why?”
She cried.
Not enough.
“Why, Sabine?”
“Because Father was going to announce Lucien the next morning.”
I stared.
“Announce what?”
She laughed bitterly.
“You really didn’t know.”
Apparently not.
Our father planned to divide Montclair.
Lucien would control the family estates, social alliances, and financial houses.
I would control operations.
Two brothers.
Two centers.
Our father called it balance.
Sabine called it disaster.
She believed separate authority would split the family within a year.
Maybe she was right.
It did not matter.
“So you lured him to the warehouse.”
“To scare him.”
“No.”
Her eyes lifted.
“That’s what I thought.”
Interesting.
“Who else knew?”
She whispered:
“Victor Merrick.”
Of course.
Then:
“He said Lucien only needed to disappear long enough for Father to reconsider.”
I looked toward the conservatory doors.
May you like
Somewhere beneath ten years of lies, Victor Merrick had changed “scare him” into fire.
And Sabine had spent a decade hiding what happened afterward.
