Chapter 5 - Camille Was Not The First Woman He Chose
Camille gave the photo back slowly.
Her face had gone from shock to calculation now. She was replaying conversations. Excuses. Small details she had dismissed because Pierce delivered them with such polished ease.
“How long have you been seeing him?” Rosa asked.
Pierce immediately cut in. “That is none of her business.”
Camille didn’t look at him. “Five months.”
Rosa nodded once, grimly.
“Long enough.”
“For what?”
“For him to learn your habits, your money, and what you’d sign if he timed it right.”
Pierce barked a laugh. “Now you’re writing fantasy.”
Camille finally turned toward him.
“Am I?”
He held her gaze.
Then, with just the slightest shift in tone, he reached for a softer strategy.
“Camille, look at me. She’s grieving. That’s terrible, but it has nothing to do with us.”
Rosa stepped closer, bouquet still in one hand.
“Then explain the hotel suite under a declined card.”
He didn’t answer.
“Explain the thirty arrangements you ordered for a dinner you didn’t pay for.”
Still nothing.
Rosa’s eyes hardened.
“Explain why my daughter’s photo makes you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Pierce exhaled and ran a hand through his golden hair.
“She worked for me once. Briefly. That’s it.”
“Not what she wrote down,” Rosa said.
Camille’s attention sharpened again. “Wrote down where?”
Rosa looked at her carefully. This was the line she had never crossed in public.
“In the notebook she kept hidden from me until after the funeral.”
Pierce’s face changed.
Not guilt. Not sorrow.
Recognition.
He knew exactly which notebook Rosa meant.
That made Camille take a step backward.
“How would you know about a notebook?”
Pierce realized too late that he had given himself away.
Rosa’s voice lowered.
“Because you went into my daughter’s apartment after she died.”
The manager and security supervisor looked at each other.
Camille’s breath caught.
Pierce tried to recover. “You have no proof.”
Rosa held his gaze.
“No,” she said. “But my daughter left enough clues to know you were scared of one thing.”
Camille swallowed. “What thing?”
Rosa lifted the phone in her hand.
“Someone finally catching up to you.”
And then, from the curb behind them, another black sedan pulled in fast.
Pierce turned toward it.
May you like
And for the first time, he looked like he already knew who had arrived.
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