Chapter 2 - The Man Who Knew Her Father’s Name
Camille left the ballroom through the service corridor.
Behind her, the benefit continued in a strange, fractured way. Music resumed because someone had apparently decided music should resume. Guests began speaking again. Glasses clinked.
But the evening had changed.
Camille could feel it.
She walked quickly.
“Camille.”
Preston.
She kept moving.
“Camille, wait.”
He caught up near the employee elevators.
She turned.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“The inventory number.”
Preston stared at her.
“That isn't an answer.”
“I knew you were interested in old documents.”
“How?”
“You talk in your sleep. You leave notes around your apartment.”
“I've never written that inventory number anywhere.”
Silence.
That was the moment.
Small.
Almost invisible.
But Camille saw it.
Preston had made a mistake.
“You knew,” she whispered.
“Camille—”
“You knew why I worked here.”
His jaw tightened.
Before he could answer, the elevator doors opened.
Luca Moreau stood inside.
Neither of them spoke.
Luca looked from Preston to Camille.
“Get in.”
Preston scoffed. “She isn't going anywhere with you.”
Camille stepped into the elevator.
Preston stared.
“Apparently,” Camille said, “you don't know me as well as you thought.”
The doors closed.
For several seconds, only the elevator machinery made a sound.
Luca pressed the button for the fourth floor.
Camille noticed.
“Employee storage is on four.”
“I know.”
“You aren't an employee.”
“No.”
“Then why do you have access?”
Luca produced a black access card.
“Because my family owns twenty-two percent of Ashmore and Vance.”
Camille stared at him.
That information was not public.
“At least,” he added, “we did until somebody began quietly transferring shares six years ago.”
The doors opened.
The fourth floor was dark.
Luca switched on his phone flashlight.
“Your father contacted mine nine years ago,” he said as they walked. “He believed he had discovered evidence that several historic estates had been fraudulently transferred.”
Camille frowned.
“Two-hundred-year-old property?”
“Some. But the documents established chains of ownership that still matter today.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“That isn't a number.”
“Hundreds of millions.”
Camille stopped walking.
Luca turned.
“My father believed Étienne. They began investigating together.”
“And you?”
“I was twenty-seven. My father brought me in because he needed someone he trusted.”
“Then why didn't you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“After your father died.”
Camille stared.
Luca continued quietly.
“Your aunt refused to let me near you. She said you had lost enough.”
Camille remembered Aunt Celeste answering the telephone repeatedly during those first terrible weeks.
Unknown callers.
Men asking questions.
Celeste hanging up.
“You were one of those calls?”
“Yes.”
Camille looked away.
“Why stop trying?”
“Because someone followed you home from Tulane.”
She looked back.
“What?”
“Three days after your father's funeral. We saw them too.”
Camille remembered a dark sedan.
She had forgotten it until now.
“My father decided the safest thing was to let everyone believe Étienne had told you nothing.”
“He hadn't.”
Luca studied her.
“Hadn't he?”
Camille said nothing.
They reached a locked archival room.
Luca opened it.
Rows of shelving stretched into darkness.
“AV-1847-31,” Camille said.
They searched.
Thirty-one minutes later, they found the shelf.
Empty.
A white inventory card remained.
Camille pulled it free.
TRANSFERRED — 10/14.
Tonight’s date.
Her stomach tightened.
“Transferred where?”
Luca examined the barcode.
“Warehouse B.”
Camille knew Warehouse B.
Everyone did.
It was across the river.
Restricted storage.
Only senior staff had access.
A sound came from the corridor.
They turned.
Footsteps.
Luca switched off the flashlight.
Someone passed the doorway.
Camille barely breathed.
Then silence.
Luca waited.
“Come on.”
They returned downstairs through the service stairwell.
At the loading entrance, Camille stopped.
“I need to go home.”
“You shouldn't be alone.”
“That's not your decision.”
“No.”
His answer surprised her.
Luca handed her a card.
Only a telephone number was printed on it.
“If you need me.”
Camille took it.
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn't.”
He walked away.
That answer bothered her more than a reassurance would have.
Camille drove home.
Her apartment was dark.
Nothing appeared disturbed.
She locked the door and leaned against it.
Then she saw the envelope.
It had been pushed beneath her door.
No stamp.
No name.
Inside was a photograph.
Camille recognized herself.
She was standing outside Ashmore and Vance three days earlier.
Someone had photographed her from across Royal Street.
On the back:
Your father should have stopped looking. So should you.
Camille immediately reached for her phone.
She almost called the police.
Then she remembered her father.
Eight years earlier, police had called his death an accident within forty-eight hours.
Instead, she called Luca.
He answered on the first ring.
“Someone left something at my apartment.”
“I'll be there in ten minutes.”
“You don't know where I live.”
A pause.
“Yes,” Luca said, “I do.”
Camille almost hung up.
“You've been watching me?”
“Protecting you.”
“Those are not automatically the same thing.”
“I know.”
Ten minutes later, he arrived.
Camille showed him the photograph.
Luca's expression hardened.
“Pack a bag.”
“No.”
“Camille.”
“You don't get to enter my life after eight years and start giving orders.”
“Fair.”
That stopped her.
He studied the photograph.
“Then I'll stay outside.”
“All night?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I promised your father.”
Camille stared at him.
She wanted to distrust him.
Part of her did.
But another part remembered the photograph.
Her father beside Luca.
She sat down.
“Tell me everything.”
Luca remained standing.
“The week before he died, your father found evidence that someone had altered records belonging to twelve Louisiana estates. The originals were inside AV-1847-31.”
“The blue pages?”
“I never saw them.”
“My father mentioned them.”
“When?”
“The night before he disappeared.”
Luca's eyes sharpened.
“What exactly did he say?”
Camille closed her eyes.
Memory returned.
Her father at the kitchen table.
Rain against the window.
His hands trembling.
Don't look at the black ink. Find the blue pages.
Then something else.
Something she had forgotten.
“He gave me a key.”
Luca froze.
“What key?”
Camille stood.
She walked toward her bedroom.
For eight years, one box had followed her through three apartments.
Her father's things.
She pulled it from the closet.
Photographs.
Letters.
His fountain pen.
A broken watch.
And beneath everything, taped inside the lid, was a small brass key.
Luca stared.
“Do you recognize it?”
“No.”
Camille turned it over.
Three tiny letters had been engraved into the metal.
S.L.R.
Luca's face changed.
“What?”
He looked at her.
“St. Louis Repository.”
Camille knew the name.
An old private records vault beneath a former bank building.
“What's there?”
Luca looked at the key.
“Your father rented a box there.”
Camille's pulse jumped.
“How do you know?”
“Because the day before he died, I drove him there.”
The next morning they arrived before opening.
The manager took one look at the key and disappeared into the back.
When he returned, he carried a ledger.
“Box 317,” he said.
Camille signed.
They were escorted underground.
The box was small.
Camille inserted the key.
Her hand shook.
Luca stood several feet away.
She opened it.
Inside was one envelope.
Her name was written across the front.
CAMILLE.
She recognized her father's handwriting immediately.
Her eyes filled.
For several seconds she couldn't touch it.
Finally she opened the envelope.
There was no letter.
Only another photograph.
It showed Camille at seventeen, sitting beside her father at their kitchen table.
On the back was a message.
You already have what they’re looking for.
Camille read it twice.
Then a third time.
“What does that mean?” Luca asked.
“I don't know.”
But suddenly she remembered something.
The night her father disappeared, he had given her more than a key.
He had given her one of his old books.
A battered French-English maritime dictionary.
Camille had kept it for eight years.
It was sitting on a shelf in her apartment.
She looked at Luca.
“We need to go back.”
They reached her apartment twenty minutes later.
The door was open.
Camille stopped.
Luca moved in front of her.
The living room had been destroyed.
Drawers emptied.
Furniture overturned.
Books scattered across the floor.
Camille rushed toward the shelf.
The dictionary was gone.
And on the wall above the empty space, someone had written four words:
May you like
WE KNOW ABOUT THE BLUE.
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