Chapter 7 - The Weight of Inheritance
The basement office beneath the harbor hardware store smelled of damp concrete, stale coffee, and old paper. A single overhead bulb cast a harsh circle of light over a metal folding table covered in bank statements, land titles, and medical logs.
Vivian sat on a folding chair, her coat open, one hand resting protectively over her stomach. She hadn't spoken since they arrived forty minutes ago. She was staring at a copy of a real estate transfer tax form dated three days before her father’s death—a form bearing Camille’s signature as a witness.
"She was twenty-one," Vivian whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of a small electric space heater in the corner. "Matteo had just brought her into the city. He told me he was paying for her fashion merchandising classes."
"He was paying her silence," Marcus Vance said, limping over with a chipped mug of black coffee and setting it down near Vivian’s elbow. "Camille signed as the secondary witness on the shell company transfer that routed your family’s land through three offshore accounts in the Caymans. In exchange, Matteo set up her trust fund, her apartment in the city, and her allowance."
Evelyn Cross sat across the table, her fingers tapping against a laptop keyboard as she decrypted a secured hard drive. "Camille isn't just a mistress, Vivian. She’s an accomplice. If these documents go to the state attorney general, Camille goes down right beside Matteo on wire fraud and conspiracy charges."
Vivian looked up sharply, her eyes burning. "She’s my sister."
"She’s the one who verified your father’s signature on the fraudulent deed while he was in the ICU," Evelyn said without looking up. "She knew exactly whose blood bought her wardrobe."
The harsh reality hit Vivian with physical force. For three months, she had tortured herself with the image of Camille as a home-breaker—a selfish girl stealing another woman’s husband in the dim light of a billiard room. That petty betrayal now looked like a child’s game compared to the horrifying architecture of their lives. Camille hadn't just betrayed a marriage; she had been tied to the murder of their father from the very beginning, bound to Matteo by a shared crime that made leaving him nearly impossible.
"She’s terrified of him," Vivian said, remembering the look on Camille’s face in the Draven estate hallway when Matteo told her to go. "When she looked at him yesterday, it wasn't love. It was panic."
"Because she knows what happens to people who become liabilities," Marcus said, pulling up a chair. "Matteo doesn't tolerate loose ends. Now that you've taken the ledger, Camille is the most vulnerable person in that house. He’ll assume she helped you."
Vivian’s breath hitched. For all her anger, for all the bitter humiliation of finding her sister in her husband's arms, a cold realization settled into her chest. If Matteo believed Camille helped her escape, Camille was no longer just a rival—she was a target.
"We need to contact her," Vivian said, reaching for the burner phone on the table.
"If you call her, Viktor’s tech team will triangulate the signal within ninety seconds," Evelyn warned. "We can't use phones."
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"Then we don't call," Vivian said, standing up from the chair with a sudden, resolute stiffness that left no room for argument. "We go back."
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