Chapter 13
Julian spun around sharply, his heart pounding in his throat. Officer Miller simultaneously raised her service pistol, sweeping the beam of her tactical flashlight toward the entrance of the boathouse.
Standing in the shattered doorway, framed by the pouring rain and the dark shadows of the embankment, was Beatrice.
She no longer wore her silk dressing gown or her tailored velvet blazer. Instead, she had pulled on a heavy black winter coat, and her short grey hair was plastered to her forehead by the storm. In her right hand, she casually held a heavy iron fireplace poker, its tip dark and gleaming with fresh moisture.
Officer Miller’s voice cut through the sound of the rushing river like a blade. "Drop the weapon, Mrs. Vance. Put it down immediately."
Beatrice did not drop the poker. Instead, she let out a quiet, desolate sigh, stepping fully into the boathouse and letting the ruined door swing shut behind her with a dull bang. She looked at Arthur, then at Julian, and finally at the scattered archive documents on the table.
"You always were a sentimental fool, Arthur," Beatrice said, her voice entirely devoid of its usual commanding authority, sounding instead like a woman reciting lines from a tragedy she had performed a thousand times before. "Hiding down here in the damp, collecting scraps of paper like a crow in a nest, thinking you could rewrite history."
"I'm not trying to rewrite history, Beatrice," Arthur replied, standing up slowly from his wooden crate, towering over her despite his age. "I'm trying to end it. Julian and Sarah deserve to raise their son without living in the shadow of our lies."
"There is no life for them outside of this estate," Beatrice countered, stepping closer, her knuckles white around the handle of the iron poker. "Without the foundation, without the name, without the protection these walls provide, they are nothing. Just ordinary people tossed around by an ordinary, cruel world."
Julian stared at his mother, the full weight of her twisted logic crashing down upon him. The bruises on Sarah’s face, the secret camera footage, the missing documents, the sudden reappearance of his father—it all converged on this single, miserable moment.
"You were the one in the woods today," Julian said, his voice cracking with disbelief and horror. "When Clara gave the documents to my father... you were watching from the trees. You confronted her afterward, didn't you?"
Beatrice looked at her son, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "I didn't hurt her, Julian. I tried to reason with her. I offered her a settlement, a way out, anything to keep the records from leaving the estate. But she laughed in my face. She said the truth was already uploaded, that the past was out of our hands."
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"Where is she, Mother?" Julian demanded, stepping forward until he stood just inches from her. "Where is Clara?"
Beatrice lowered her gaze, her shoulders slumping under the weight of her defeat. "She went down to the river path. She said she wanted to see the water before she left for good."
