Chapter 8 - Brooke Had Signed More Than She Knew
Brooke called just after midnight.
Camille did not answer the first time.
Or the second.
She answered the third because Evelyn, who was still working in the next room, glanced up and said, “If she’s calling after midnight, she’s not calling from strength.”
Camille put the phone on speaker without greeting her.
Brooke’s breathing came first.
Then: “We need to talk.”
Camille almost laughed.
“No. You need something.”
Silence.
Then Brooke said, “I didn’t know it was going to turn into this.”
“You shoved me into a pool at your own engagement announcement.”
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
“Then how was it supposed to happen?”
Brooke did not answer directly.
Camille let the silence stretch until Brooke finally said, “Elliot said you were about to ruin everything over accounting errors.”
“Accounting errors.”
“Listen to me—”
“No. You listen.” Camille’s voice sharpened. “You picked up the ring. You signed the retention bonus. You approved shell invoices. So don’t call me after midnight and act like this happened around you.”
Brooke inhaled sharply.
Then she said something that made Evelyn stop typing in the other room.
“I didn’t know North Spire was mine.”
Camille went still.
“What?”
Brooke’s words came faster now, as if she had already crossed some line inside herself and didn’t know how to go back.
“I knew I was getting a retention payment. I knew Arthur wanted North Harbor sold. I knew Elliot said you were too emotional about the place to be objective. But tonight, after you left, Elliot got drunk and Arthur started yelling because the board packet landed in everybody’s inbox before midnight. They thought I was asleep in the suite upstairs.” Her voice cracked. “I heard them.”
Camille leaned forward.
“Heard what?”
“That the North Spire operating authority was all in my name.” Brooke swallowed hard. “That if anything blew up publicly, I would look like the one who coordinated the vendor deals and tried to acquire the property.”
Evelyn was already moving toward the speakerphone.
“Brooke,” she said calmly, “did you sign organizational documents?”
“Yes, but Elliot said they were event-liability forms and performance-bonus disclosures.”
“Did you read them?”
A long silence.
“Not carefully enough.”
Camille closed her eyes.
That was not innocence.
But it was not total authorship either.
Brooke had taken money. Approved invoices. Helped set the trap.
Yet Elliot had also arranged the paperwork so that if regulators or the board followed the trail, the clearest visible beneficiary would be Brooke.
Not him.
Not Arthur.
Her.
The revelation snapped several earlier clues into place.
The private proposal to Camille.
The public engagement to Brooke.
The chaos of the party.
Elliot had been triangulating both women, keeping each useful in a different way.
Brooke kept Camille within reach and helped destabilize her.
Camille’s public outburst would justify suspension.
And if the theft surfaced anyway, Brooke could be sacrificed as the greedy, jealous friend who turned rogue.
Camille’s voice came out flatter now.
“What do you want from me?”
Brooke’s answer was immediate.
“I want out.”
Evelyn stepped in before Camille could reply.
“Out is not an emotion, Brooke. It’s cooperation.”
“I’ll cooperate.”
“With what?”
“I know where he keeps the original donor-transition binder.”
Camille and Evelyn exchanged a look.
The digital files were strong.
An original binder could be fatal.
“Where?” Camille asked.
“In the locked office above the ballroom. The one he uses when he wants privacy at estate events.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I saw him move it there after he realized you were reviewing records last week.”
Camille’s hand tightened on the phone.
Brooke continued, more quietly now.
“There’s something else. Arthur kept saying tonight had to happen before ‘the signature issue’ could be reviewed.”
“What signature issue?”
“I don’t know,” Brooke whispered. “But Elliot told him not to worry because you’d never get that far if you looked crazy first.”
The call ended with no forgiveness, no deal, and no trust.
Only an address, a time, and the promise that Brooke would text the access code to the upstairs office door.
Afterward, Camille stood by the window for a long time.
Brooke had signed more than she understood.
That did not excuse what she did.
But it changed the geometry of the crime.
Elliot had not just betrayed Camille.
He had designed Brooke as the visible end point of the fraud.
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Which meant the next truth hiding behind all of this was even darker:
What had Elliot needed badly enough that he was willing to use Brooke as both accomplice and scapegoat at the same time?
