Chapter 11
Sabine asked to speak with Cassian.
He refused the first request.
Then the second.
The third came through Rebecca with a specific purpose.
Sabine wanted to correct parts of Adrian’s account before prosecutors decided which charges to pursue.
Cassian agreed to receive the written statement.
He would not sit across from her.
Sabine admitted the museum meeting had been engineered.
She admitted asking Cassian questions about Claire during the early months of their relationship.
She admitted searching Claire’s office.
She admitted recognizing herself in Elodie’s photograph.
She admitted knowing Adrian had begun preparing leverage once the audit resurfaced.
Then came the part Cassian cared about most.
The suitcase.
Sabine claimed the hard-shell case had not been the original plan.
Adrian intended to move Elodie through a service entrance wrapped in a blanket while wedding staff were distracted.
Sabine panicked when two bodyguards unexpectedly entered the corridor.
She put Elodie inside the case.
That did not make the decision better.
It made it more impulsive.
More dangerous.
Sabine wrote:
I kept telling myself it would be ten minutes. I knew she was afraid. I did it anyway.
Cassian stopped reading.
He walked upstairs.
Elodie was coloring at the kitchen island.
She had drawn three people.
Cassian.
Herself.
Claire.
Sabine was absent.
Children could be brutally current about belonging.
Cassian sat beside her.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Are we still having wedding?”
“No.”
“Sabine mad?”
“I don’t know.”
Elodie colored Claire’s dress blue.
Then asked:
“Sabine come back?”
Cassian looked at the paper.
“No.”
The answer hurt.
Not because he wanted Sabine back.
Because eight months earlier Elodie had begun asking Sabine to brush her hair.
Six months earlier she started saving a seat beside her at breakfast.
The betrayal was not only romantic.
Sabine had allowed a child to love her while knowing the relationship began as access to the child’s father.
Then, when the lie became dangerous, she used that child as leverage.
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Whatever feelings Sabine later developed did not repair the original choice.
And they certainly did not excuse the final one.
