Chapter 11 - The Confession in the ConservatoryAt 3:00 PM, a black town car pulled up to the circular driveway.
Two federal agents in plainclothes stood waiting near the vehicle. Camilla Vance walked down the front steps of the mansion for the very last time.
She wore a simple, unbranded black wool coat. Her luggage sat in the trunk. Her signature emerald engagement ring lay on Matteo’s desk upstairs, beside the signed forfeiture documents that stripped her family of their multi-million-dollar empire.
As she reached the bottom step, she stopped, turning her gaze toward the terrace where I stood carrying a tray of clean glasses.
Camilla stared at me. The arrogance was gone. The venom was gone. What remained was a hollow, broken shell of a woman who had traded her soul for power and ended up with nothing.
Eighty feet away, she walked slowly up the terrace steps until she stood three paces from me.
“You won,” Camilla whispered, her voice rough and cracked.
I set the tray down on the glass table. “Winning isn't about destroying people, Miss Vance. A little girl lost her mother four years ago. You could have been the person who brought her comfort. Instead, you tried to erase her mother’s memory to protect a criminal operation.”
Camilla looked down at her bare fingers, where the emerald ring had sat only twelve hours earlier.
“I was terrified,” she admitted, a single tear escaping down her pale cheek. “My father ruled our lives with an iron fist. When Isabella found those manifests, I knew what he would do. I thought... I thought if I married Matteo, I could protect everyone. I could keep the peace.”
“You don't build peace on the blood of your friends,” I replied quietly.
She closed her eyes, swallowing the bitter pill of her own choices.
“He loves you, you know,” Camilla said suddenly, looking back up into my eyes.
My breath caught in my throat. “What?”
“Matteo,” she said, offering a sad, defeated smile. “In four years, I never saw him look at anyone the way he looked at you when you stood in front of that banquet table holding that broken cookie. He looked at you like a man who had finally found dry land after drowning in the dark.”
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Before I could answer, the federal agent called from the driveway. “Miss Vance. It’s time.”
Camilla nodded once, turned, and walked down the steps. She climbed into the back of the town car, the heavy door thudded shut, and the vehicle disappeared down the long, tree-lined drive into the gray Chicago mist.
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