Chapter 8
The east gate belonged to our old estate.
Ten years earlier, River House Number Four was reachable by two roads.
North road.
East road.
After the fire, Sabine told everyone the east gate malfunctioned.
It did not.
She ordered it locked.
Why?
“To delay you.”
There.
I had been fifteen minutes away.
Victor Merrick learned I was driving back from a meeting.
If I reached Lucien before the warehouse plan finished, everything collapsed.
So Sabine closed the gate and told security a tree had fallen on the road.
I rerouted north.
Lost twenty-two minutes.
Lucien entered the warehouse during those twenty-two.
Fire began at eleven fifty-eight.
I arrived after midnight.
My sister had not merely forged the invitation.
She actively kept me from reaching him.
“You said Victor only meant to frighten him.”
“He did.”
“Then why delay me?”
“Because you would stop it.”
Exactly.
Even Sabine knew the plan violated something fundamental.
She wanted Lucien frightened enough to leave.
Victor wanted more.
But she built the conditions.
Then I asked:
“Who arrived after the fire?”
Warren had been waiting to answer that one.
A car.
Unmarked.
One passenger.
Our father.
Lionel Montclair.
I stared.
“What?”
Father arrived at twelve twenty.
Before the body was formally identified.
He spoke privately with Victor.
Then Sabine.
Then ordered the remains treated as Lucien.
Why?
My sister began crying.
“Father knew it might not be him.”
My chest went cold.
“How?”
“The ring.”
Lucien’s signet was found beside the body, not on the finger.
I had never been told that.
The watch clasp did not fit the wrist correctly.
Owen was broader.
Father noticed.
Victor insisted fire changed everything.
Father chose certainty.
Why?
Succession.
Again.
If Lucien might be alive, Montclair would remain divided.
If Lucien was declared dead, I became uncontested.
My own father helped bury doubt because ambiguity threatened control.
I sat down.
The betrayal had become older.
Wider.
Sabine whispered:
“He told me never to search.”
“But you did.”
“Yes.”
One year later.
She found Lucien in Briar Glen.
Then told Father?
“No.”
Interesting.
“Why?”
“He was dying.”
Not enough.
Then:
“And if he knew Lucien lived, he would bring him back only to control him again.”
For the first time, Sabine’s silence contained something almost protective.
Almost.
But then she preserved it for nine more years.
Protection hardened into power.
That was the difference.
Finally:
“The second will.”
She closed her eyes.
May you like
Our father had written another succession plan after the fire.
And Sabine had hidden that too.
