Chapter 2 - ELIAS THREW HER OUT BEFORE HE HEARD THE TRUTH
Camille spoke first.
“She’s been watching me.”
Delphine stood just inside the library door.
The forbidden room.
The one Ruthie had warned her never to enter without permission.
Elias sat behind the desk.
Still.
Controlled.
Dangerous without movement.
“What did you see?” he asked.
Camille answered for her.
“She thinks I’m cheating.”
Delphine looked at her.
“No.”
Camille blinked.
Elias lifted one hand.
“Then what?”
Delphine’s throat tightened.
She had imagined this moment a hundred ways.
None included Camille standing six feet away.
“I saw her meeting a man in the carriage house.”
Camille laughed bitterly.
“My wedding planner’s financial adviser.”
“The man had Hion Ridge paperwork.”
That changed something.
Not in Elias.
In Camille.
Only for a second.
Enough.
Elias noticed.
“Hion Ridge?”
Delphine nodded.
“Your fiancée said your signature has to be the signature of a husband.”
Camille stared.
“That is insane.”
“I saw you say it.”
“You read lips?”
Silence.
Wrong move.
Delphine knew it immediately.
Elias’s eyes narrowed.
“How?”
“I learned for my daughter.”
Camille’s face hardened.
“This woman is spying on me through windows and inventing conversations.”
“I didn’t invent Hion Ridge.”
“You saw a folder in my study weeks ago.”
There.
Camille knew Delphine had seen it.
She had been testing her that first night.
Asking about Josie.
Smiling.
Thanking her for clean floors.
Delphine’s stomach turned.
Elias stood.
“Did you enter Camille’s study without permission?”
“To clean.”
“Did you read private documents?”
“No.”
“You remembered a heading.”
“Yes.”
“Then followed her.”
“Yes.”
The word sounded terrible spoken plainly.
Camille whispered:
“She is obsessed.”
Delphine looked at Elias.
“My husband’s loan was through Hion Ridge.”
That finally made him pause.
“What husband?”
“Aaron Aubrey.”
Victor’s head turned.
He knew the name.
Again.
That tiny reaction.
Delphine saw it.
“Victor knows.”
Elias looked at him.
Victor’s face became blank.
“No.”
“He reacted.”
Camille laughed.
“This is humiliating.”
Then Elias made the decision Delphine had expected from the beginning.
“You’re done here.”
Ruthie inhaled near the doorway.
Delphine’s hands went cold.
“You’re firing me.”
“Yes.”
“For telling you.”
“For following a member of my household, entering restricted rooms, and making claims based on fragments you admit you may misread.”
Reasonable enough to hurt.
Delphine took off her apron.
Placed it on the desk.
Then:
“Fine.”
She turned.
Camille’s shoulders relaxed.
Too soon.
Delphine stopped at the door.
“One thing.”
Elias looked irritated.
“My husband died with Hion Ridge debt still attached to both our names.”
She looked at Camille.
“If I’m wrong, you lose nothing.”
Then at Elias.
“If I’m right, you’re marrying someone who needs your legal status more than she needs you.”
Elias’s jaw tightened.
“Leave.”
Delphine did.
By midnight, she had lost one of her three jobs.
By 12:40, she was sitting on the floor beside Josie’s bed trying not to cry.
Then someone knocked downstairs.
Odette called up.
“Delphine.”
A man waited in the kitchen.
Victor Russo.
He placed a black leather notebook on the table.
Same kind Elias had used with Wendell Pruitt.
Delphine stared.
“Am I in there?”
Victor shook his head.
“No.”
He opened it.
Found one name.
Aaron Aubrey.
Delphine stopped breathing.
Victor said:
“Your husband worked at Warehouse 9.”
“I know.”
“No.”
His voice lowered.
May you like
“He worked for Elias’s father.”
And Aaron had died two weeks after telling Victor he had found something wrong with Hion Ridge’s debt books.
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