Chapter 5: The Deal She Came to Make
The footsteps moved away fast.
Gabriel was already standing.
He crossed to the door in four strides and opened it.
The corridor was empty in both directions.
A single wall sconce burned at the far end near the staircase.
The marble floor gave nothing away.
But the door to the small parlor across the hall — the one that shared a wall with his study — was open two inches.
Gabriel pushed it fully open.
Camille was standing at the center of the room with her arms crossed and her chin up.
She had not bothered to pretend she had been doing anything other than listening.
That, Gabriel thought, was either confidence or desperation.
He was beginning to understand it was both.
"You could have knocked," he said.
"You would have sent me away."
"Yes."
She looked past him to where Elena had appeared in the study doorway.
Something moved across Camille's face — not guilt, not quite.
Something more calculated than guilt.
"I want to talk," Camille said.
"To both of you."
"You burned her arm two hours ago," Gabriel said.
"I know what I did." Her voice didn't waver.
"I'm not here to pretend otherwise.
I'm here because you only have part of the story and the part you're missing changes everything."
Gabriel looked at her for a long moment.
Then he stepped back from the parlor doorway and gestured toward the study.
"Then come in," he said.
"And sit down."
Camille sat.
Elena remained standing near the bookshelf, her bandaged arm at her side.
Gabriel returned to the chair behind the desk but did not lean back.
He waited.
"My father is not a good man," Camille said.
"I want to start there, because I need you to understand that I know that.
I have always known that."
"Go on," Gabriel said.
"He came to me eight months ago.
He said he had a problem with his investment accounts — the ones connected to your companies.
He said the arrangement he had with you was about to be audited and that if certain transfers were flagged, it would expose not just him but the other partner." She paused.
"He said the cleanest solution was for me to get close to you.
To become someone you trusted.
Someone who could be in certain rooms, hear certain conversations, and give him enough warning to move the funds before anyone looked too closely."
The room was very quiet.
"He told you to pursue me," Gabriel said.
"He introduced us.
He arranged the charity gala where we met.
He coached me on what to say." Camille's hands were in her lap.
She was not fidgeting.
"I told myself it wasn't so different from how anyone meets anyone.
That if something real developed, it would cancel out how it started."
"Did something real develop?" Gabriel asked.
Camille looked at him directly.
"Yes.
That's the part that made everything harder."
Elena made a small sound near the bookshelf — not a word, just a breath that carried something sharp in it.
Camille turned to her.
"I know you have no reason to believe anything I say.
But what I told you about your father — the address, the information — that was real.
I wasn't lying to you to get you into that room.
I was using real information as leverage, which is worse, and I know that."
"Why did you need me in that room?" Elena asked.
"Specifically me."
"Because your father asked me to." Camille's voice was flat now, stripped of everything except the fact.
"Thomas Brooks wanted to see you.
He had been watching you from a distance for years — he knew where you worked, where you lived.
He was too afraid to contact you directly.
He asked my father to arrange a situation where you would be in the same room as Gabriel, because he knew Gabriel would notice you.
He thought if Gabriel noticed you, he would ask questions.
And if Gabriel asked questions—"
"He would find Thomas," Gabriel said.
"He wanted to be found," Camille said.
"He just didn't want to be the one to walk up and knock on the door."
Elena's back was against the bookshelf now.
Her face had gone through several things in the last thirty seconds and had arrived somewhere that was not quite anger and not quite grief and was entirely its own territory.
"He wanted to be found," she repeated.
"So he sent a woman to burn my arm."
"That was not part of anyone's plan," Camille said.
"I lost my temper.
I have a bad temper.
I am not going to pretend that's an excuse either."
"Then what are you here to say?" Elena asked.
"What is the part that changes everything?"
Camille reached into the small clutch she had carried in from the parlor.
She set a USB drive on the desk.
"Everything my father moved through Gabriel's companies," she said.
"Every transfer.
Every account number.
Every date.
I copied it four weeks ago when I realized he wasn't going to stop." She looked at Gabriel.
"I was going to give it to you eventually.
I was trying to find a way to do it that didn't destroy my father completely."
Gabriel looked at the drive.
He did not touch it.
"And now?" he said.
"Now I'm giving it to you tonight," Camille said, "because you took off your ring, and I would rather lose everything honestly than keep it dishonestly."
The lamp hummed softly.
Gabriel picked up the drive.
"Where is Thomas Brooks tonight?" he asked.
Camille looked at Elena.
"He's been parked outside this estate for the last three hours," she said.
"He drove up from Boston this afternoon.
He knew tonight was the dinner.
He's been sitting in a gray sedan at the end of the service road, waiting to see if Gabriel's men would bring Elena out."
Elena pushed off the bookshelf.
Her jaw was set.
Her eyes were bright with something that had not decided yet whether it was going to be tears or fury.
"He's been sitting out there," she said, "this whole time."
"Yes," Camille said.
Elena looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel looked at Marco, who had appeared silently in the study doorway at some point in the last five minutes.
"Gray sedan," Gabriel said.
May you like
"Service road."
Marco was already gone.
