The Heiress in the Headlines
Chapter 08 - The Heiress in the Headlines
By the time Clara reached Blackwood Lake, the internet had already decided she was reckless.
Someone leaked photographs of her leaving Rosebridge with Lillian. Headlines accused her of exploiting a vulnerable patient and manipulating Edmund to gain control of Bellmont House. Commentators debated whether a seamstress could responsibly inherit a global company.
Clara wanted to respond, but Adrian advised silence until the evidence was secure.
“Silence is what allowed this to happen,” she said.
“Strategic silence is not surrender.”
She disagreed, but she trusted him enough to wait.
Blackwood Lodge stood as a roofless stone shell behind overgrown gates. Police watched from the trees while Clara entered through the old kitchen. The golden pouch rested in her coat pocket, though the key and original bracelet were safely stored elsewhere.
Vivienne waited beside the cellar stairs.
Her silver confidence was gone. Mud stained her shoes, and a bruise darkened one wrist.
“My father knows I spoke to you,” she said. “He thinks I betrayed him.”
“You did.”
“I know.”
Vivienne revealed that Marcus had forced her to sign false contracts since she was eighteen. He controlled her accounts, her mother’s treatment, and every public decision. She helped him because she believed obedience would eventually earn freedom.
“It never does,” Clara said.
They descended together.
The cellar contained old trunks, burned furniture, and a steel door bearing the Bellmont crest. Clara’s brass key opened it. Behind the door was not money but a small projection room where James Avery had stored research films.
Marcus stepped from the shadows holding a can of fuel.
He demanded the microfilm and confessed he had searched for the key since the night of the fire. The ledgers in the bank box proved theft; the materials behind the steel door proved he sold James’s formulas to competitors.
“You should have stayed dead,” he told Clara.
Vivienne moved between them. “Enough.”
Marcus laughed. “Everything you have came from what I did.”
“Then I don’t want it.”
He grabbed Vivienne and struck the fuel can against the floor. Adrian entered from the second stairwell with Detective Park behind him.
Marcus dropped a match.
Flames raced across the old wood.
May you like
Clara pulled Vivienne away while Adrian tackled Marcus. Smoke filled the cellar, and the steel door slammed shut behind them.
For the second time in twenty-four years, Blackwood Lodge began to burn around a Bellmont mother’s daughter.
