Chapter 29
Céline
I saw Daniel before he saw me, and that was the only reason I did not make a sound.
The rain had finally stopped sometime before noon, leaving the courtyard slick and shining beneath a thin grey sky.
Bellamont looked too clean after the storm, all wet stone and black iron and old windows reflecting pale light.
Students crossed paths in clusters, laughing over coffees, coats open now that the weather had loosened its grip on Blackwater.
For one strange second, everything felt ordinary.
Then I saw him standing near the archway.
He did not belong there. That was what made him impossible to miss.
Bellamont had a way of absorbing ugliness if it came dressed properly.
Rich cruelty, polished neglect, inherited violence, academic arrogance, all of it could pass through these halls as long as it knew which shoes to wear and which vowels to soften.
Daniel Martin had none of that camouflage.
His jacket was too thin for the weather, his jeans faded badly at the knees, and his face was unshaved beneath the weak afternoon light.
He stood with his shoulders hunched and his hands shoved into his pockets, looking around with the same mixture of resentment and hunger I saw in myself sometimes.
I stopped so abruptly that Wendy almost walked into me.
“Céline?”
The name hit the air between us. Daniel’s head turned.
For one impossible second, he looked directly at me and did not recognize me.
I saw that happen. I saw his eyes move over the cream coat, the dark hair pinned neatly back, the leather bag over my shoulder, the face I had spent years teaching into elegance.
Then recognition arrived. It changed his face slowly into satisfaction.
My fingers tightened around the strap of my bag. The prescription bottle sat inside the inner pocket, small and useless and suddenly very present in my mind. Pills could quiet the panic. They could not erase the man who had taught my nervous system what panic was for.
“Céline?” Wendy said again, softer now.
Daniel smiled, and my stomach dropped. I had survived Katherine’s death.
I had stood over her absence at her funeral while her mother called me a saint.
I had lied to police, professors, friends, and myself.
I had survived Vincent Moreau’s file, his mouth, his threats, his careful dismantling of every place I tried to hide.
And still one look from my father made me feel ten years old again.
That was humiliating enough to make me move.
“I forgot something,” I told Wendy.
She frowned. “We’re already late.”
“I’ll catch up.”
She followed my gaze. Daniel had started walking toward us. Wendy’s face changed with polite confusion. “Do you know him?”
“No.” The lie came too quickly. Daniel heard it. His smile widened.
“Now, sweetheart,” he called, voice rough enough to scrape across the courtyard, “that’s no way to greet your father.”
Several students turned. The world narrowed, and Wendy went still beside me. A boy near the fountain slowed with his coffee halfway to his mouth. Two girls under the archway glanced between Daniel and me, already interested, already sensing the possibility of something ugly enough to repeat later.
My skin went cold under my coat. Father. The word did not just expose him. It exposed me. It dragged Selena Martin into the middle of Bellamont’s courtyard by the hair and made her stand beside Céline in broad daylight.
I walked toward him before he could say anything else. I didn’t want to be closer, but if I reached him first, maybe I could contain the damage.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
Daniel looked me up and down, and the scrutiny felt worse than touch. “Well,” he said. “Look at you.”
“Leave.”
He laughed softly. “Still got that mouth. A disrespectful cunt like your mother.”
I glanced around. People were watching. “Not here,” I said.
“Why not here?” Daniel looked past me at the stone buildings, the iron lamps, the students pretending not to listen. “This is where my daughter goes, isn’t it?”
I wanted to slap him. I wanted to run. I wanted Katherine alive for one terrible second because at least Katherine would have understood what it meant to be ruined by a name.
Instead, Katherine was dead because of me, and Daniel was standing in the courtyard asking for money in front of people who believed I had the perfect life.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“Bus.”
“Then take one back.”
His expression hardened just enough for me to remember the kitchen in Portland, the way his jaw used to shift before shouting became physical violence.
“You think you’re too good for me now?”
“I think you need to leave before campus security does it for you.”
He smiled again, but this time there was anger beneath it.
“Campus security. Listen to you.”
“Daniel,” I say with a gritted jaw.
His face changed when I said his name. For a moment, I thought I had made a mistake. Then his voice dropped. “You got money for a fancy coat, fancy school, fancy friends, but nothing for your father?”
“You are not my father.”
The words came out before I could soften them.
The satisfaction vanished from his face.
This was the real him. Not the pathetic man in the courtyard.
Not the rough voice on the phone. The man beneath it, all grievance and entitlement, believing every refusal was theft because he had confused need with ownership long before I was born.
“You ungrateful little bitch,” he said quietly.
I stepped back. Just one step. Small enough that no one else would call it fear. Daniel saw it. Men like him measured power in inches. His face relaxed slightly, as if he had found something familiar beneath the coat and the name and the careful voice.
“Do you want money?” I asked because anger was easier than fear. “Is that what this is?”
“I want what I’m owed.”
I almost laughed. “You are owed nothing.”
“I kept quiet.”
My stomach dropped. The courtyard noise seemed to dim.
“What?”
He looked pleased again. “I know things.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I know my wife ran off and got herself a nice little servant job with rich people. I know my daughter started calling herself by some French name like she’s better than where she came from.”
He leaned closer, breath sour beneath old tobacco. “And I know rich dead girls make people nervous.”
The blood drained from my face. For one second, I saw Katherine falling.
The moment right before. Her hand in mine, wet and cold, her eyes wide with the realization that I was thinking.
That was what haunted me most. Not her body below.
Not the sound I imagined but never truly heard over the storm.
The fact that she saw the choice before I made it.
Daniel could not know that. He could not.
“What did you say?” I whispered.
He smiled slowly. “There’s my stupid girl. I didn’t think you had anything to do with it but your face is very expressive when you’re scared, sweetheart.”
I stepped back again. This time, my heel caught slightly on the wet stone. A hand closed around my arm before I could lose my balance. Not Daniel’s. I knew that touch immediately.
Vincent stood beside me, his dark coat open against the cold, his face calm enough that anyone passing might have mistaken this for a formal conversation instead of something cracking open in public. He did not look at me first. He looked at Daniel.
The relief that moved through me was so violent I hated it.
“Mr. Martin,” Vincent said.
Daniel’s expression changed. It was quick, but I saw it. Recognition.
Not of who Vincent was, maybe, but of the fact that they had spoken.
My body went still. Vincent’s hand remained on my arm.
“Professor Moreau,” Daniel said, and he made the title sound dirty.
I turned my head slowly. Vincent did not look at me. The courtyard tilted.
“You know each other?” I asked.
Neither man answered immediately. That was answer enough.
Something cold and clean cut through the panic.
I had suspected it. This was Daniel saying Vincent’s name with recognition in his mouth.
This was Vincent appearing exactly when fear had finally broken through my ability to perform.
This was the cage, the door, the key, all of it placed around me before I had even understood I was being moved.
I pulled my arm from Vincent’s hand. His fingers released me immediately.
“How do you know him?” I asked.
Vincent looked at me then. There was something in his face I had never seen before. Regret, raw and fleeting, before the mask slid back into place.
Daniel laughed softly. “Oh, she didn’t know?”
I turned to him. “Shut up.”
“Careful.” His eyes sharpened.
“No,” I said, and my voice shook now but did not break. “You do not get to tell me to be careful.”
The people nearby were definitely watching now. Wendy still stood near the steps, pale and frozen, one hand over her mouth. I had forgotten she was there. I had forgotten anyone was there.
Vincent’s voice stayed low. “Daniel, our arrangement was only for the phone call. You were not supposed to show up on campus.”
Daniel’s smile faltered for half a second.
“You said you’d make it worth my while.”
“I said I would pay you to stay away,” Vincent replied, and for once his tone carried a thread of genuine irritation, as if even he hated how poorly this had gone. “Not to parade yourself in front of her in the middle of the day.”
I stared at him. Hurt bloomed sharp and hot behind my ribs. He had done this. He had reached into my past and pulled Daniel here like a weapon. The betrayal felt worse because part of me had almost expected it.
Vincent met my eyes. The regret was there again, brief but real.
“I did not intend for this.”
I wanted to believe him. I almost did. But belief in him had become dangerous.
Daniel cleared his throat, impatient with a drama he did not control.
“So about the money—”
Vincent turned to him. The change in his face was subtle. Daniel stopped speaking.