Chapter 8 - THE CELLAR WHERE ALICE FOUGHT BACK

Technicians restored more footage from the old wine cellar.

Alice had hidden two cameras.

Victor found one.

The second remained inside a temperature sensor.

The final recording began thirty minutes after the first ended.

Alice stood near the cellar stairs.

Celeste blocked the exit.

Victor held Alice’s ledger.

“You copied the pension accounts,” he said.

“I copied everything.”

“To whom?”

“People you cannot control.”

Victor smiled.

“Everyone can be controlled.”

Alice answered:

“Only if they are alone.”

Celeste moved closer.

“You are going to resign.”

“You are going to leave Nora and your son in the staff cottage.”

“You will tell them nothing.”

Alice looked at her.

“You keep Nora because she knows numbers.”

“You keep Eli because his medical care makes her afraid to leave.”

Celeste’s face hardened.

Nora’s younger brother, Eli, had a congenital heart condition.

Crosshaven insurance paid for his treatment.

Celeste used the coverage as leverage.

“If you expose us, the insurance ends,” Celeste said.

Alice answered:

“Then I expose you twice.”

Victor struck her.

The camera shook when Alice fell against the wine rack.

Celeste gasped.

Not because Alice was injured.

Because blood had marked the floor.

“She cannot leave looking like that.”

Victor called Silverline Security.

The recording captured every word.

Take her through the rear road.

Use her car.

Make it look like rain.

Alice was alive when they removed her.

Her death had been planned inside Damien’s home while he attended a conference in Singapore.

The recovered footage changed the case.

Victor was charged with murder.

Celeste was charged with conspiracy and unlawful imprisonment.

Silverline’s former operations manager accepted immunity.

He admitted cutting Alice’s brake line.

He admitted placing her unconscious behind the wheel.

He admitted deleting road cameras.

Nora watched the footage only once.

Afterward, she sat outside the hospital beside her brother.

Eli was twenty-one now.

He had believed their mother fell asleep while driving.

“They made us think she left us by accident,” he said.

Nora took his hand with her uninjured one.

“She was trying to protect us.”

“Did Damien know?”

“No.”

“Should he have?”

Nora looked toward the mansion in the distance.

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“He should have known more than he did.”

That was the most honest answer.