Chapter 13 - Celeste’s Voice
The cassette began with room noise.
A door.
Footsteps.
Then Celeste Reed spoke.
“If either of you touches these records, copies go to the attorney general.”
Alexander closed his eyes.
Thirty years.
Then his mother’s voice filled the room.
Richard answered.
“Celeste, stop.”
“No.”
“You don’t understand the structure.”
“I understand eighteen million dollars.”
Sebastian’s voice followed.
“You understand numbers without context.”
“I understand a charitable foundation selling property to companies you secretly own.”
Silence.
Celeste continued.
“And I understand Richard approved it.”
Alexander’s hands tightened.
Richard said, “We were preserving the opera.”
“You were enriching yourselves.”
“We saved St. Aurelia from bankruptcy.”
“By stealing its land?”
Sebastian said, “Lower your voice.”
“No.”
A chair moved.
Celeste continued.
“Tomorrow I meet investigators.”
Richard’s voice changed.
“You cannot do that.”
“Watch me.”
“You will destroy Alexander.”
At the sound of his own name, Alexander flinched.
Celeste answered.
“Don’t use our son.”
“His entire life becomes scandal.”
“Then we tell him the truth.”
Richard shouted, “He is fifteen!”
Celeste replied, “And one day he’ll be thirty. Forty. Fifty. How long do you want him living inside your lie?”
Nobody in the evidence room moved.
Elena began crying.
Celeste had somehow described the future exactly.
Sebastian spoke.
“Give me the ledger.”
“No.”
A struggle.
Fabric tearing.
Richard shouting.
Then a crash.
The tape hissed.
Celeste gasped.
Sebastian said, “She hit the rail.”
Richard’s voice became panicked.
“Celeste?”
Silence.
“Celeste!”
Footsteps.
Then Richard again.
“Call an ambulance.”
Sebastian said, “Wait.”
“What do you mean, wait?”
“She has no pulse.”
“Call someone!”
“And tell them what?”
“The truth!”
“The truth puts both of us in prison before sunrise.”
Richard began sobbing.
Alexander stared at the table.
Sebastian’s voice remained controlled.
“She came here threatening us. There was a struggle.”
“You pushed her.”
“She grabbed the ledger.”
“You pushed her!”
“I pulled it away.”
“You killed her.”
Silence.
Then Sebastian said:
“And you stole eighteen million dollars with me.”
The cassette continued.
Richard whispered, “We can still fix this.”
Luis had remembered correctly.
Sebastian answered:
“There is nothing left to fix.”
The tape clicked off.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
Detective Foster finally said, “That is extraordinary evidence.”
Alexander looked numb.
“Elena.”
She turned.
“My father wanted to call an ambulance.”
“Yes.”
“And then he helped bury her.”
“Yes.”
The truth was not clean enough to hate one man and forgive the other.
Sebastian appeared to have caused the fatal injury during the struggle.
Richard had chosen the cover-up.
Both had robbed Celeste of justice.
Alexander stood.
“I need air.”
Outside, he leaned against the courthouse wall.
Elena joined him several minutes later.
“You don’t have to say anything.”
He laughed.
“That might be the first useful advice anyone has given me.”
After a while he said, “I spent three days hoping my father wasn’t a murderer.”
“He may not have caused the blow.”
“That’s supposed to help?”
“No.”
He looked at her.
“Good.”
Alexander’s anger turned unexpectedly toward Elena.
“You heard them later.”
“Yes.”
“You saw the canvas.”
“Yes.”
“You could have stopped the wall.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
Elena stared at him.
“And you keep asking me to punish myself enough that you don’t have to punish your father.”
He froze.
She continued.
“I failed Celeste.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid.”
“Yes.”
“I took money.”
“Yes.”
“But I did not push her.”
Alexander’s face tightened.
“I know.”
“I did not put her behind that wall.”
“I know.”
“I will carry my part.”
Elena’s voice shook.
“But I will not carry theirs because you need somewhere alive to put your anger.”
Alexander stared at her.
Then walked away.
Their fragile alliance collapsed.
Maya found Elena later sitting outside St. Aurelia.
“He’ll come back.”
“Maybe.”
“He’s hurting.”
“So am I.”
Maya nodded.
Victoria’s relationship with Alexander collapsed too.
He accused her of using the brooch to blackmail Sebastian while knowing it might be connected to Celeste.
Victoria shouted back.
“You inherited the money. I inherited the fear.”
He answered, “You profited.”
“So did you!”
That stopped him.
Every major relationship had become contaminated by money.
Elena’s settlement.
Victoria’s trust.
Alexander’s inheritance.
Richard’s fortune.
Sebastian’s empire.
Even St. Aurelia itself.
The opera house was a monument built partly from stolen value and buried truth.
Then Sebastian made his move.
Through his attorneys, he filed a defamation suit against Elena.
He also sued Victoria for unauthorized removal of trust property.
And he issued a public statement.
Celeste’s death, he claimed, was “a tragic accidental fall during an emotional confrontation.”
Richard Reed, he said, had orchestrated the concealment.
Sebastian presented himself as a frightened younger partner pressured by a billionaire.
Alexander read the statement in disbelief.
“He’s blaming my father.”
Miriam said, “Richard cannot answer.”
Elena looked at Sebastian’s photograph on the news.
“He has been preparing for this possibility for thirty years.”
The dead made excellent defendants.
But Sebastian made one mistake.
He denied ever touching Celeste after she fell.
Detective Foster’s forensic team had just found something caught inside Celeste’s damaged ring setting.
A fragment of dark blue silk.
Elena remembered Sebastian’s tuxedo that night.
Midnight blue.
And in the Marlowe archive, police had seized the jacket.
May you like
One cuff torn.
A piece missing from the lapel.
