Her hand shakes as she adjusts her glove. Silence, thick and ugly, settles between us.
And then she breaks. “Fine. You want it? Here it is.”
I cling to every word.
“Rodolphe was increasingly disappointed in Geoffroy,” she begins, her voice bitter. “And he made no secret of it.”
She stops and looks away again. I wait, holding my breath.
“They fought that day,” she continues. “It was loud and heated. You could hear them from the ground floor. Rodolphe accused Geoffroy of being unworthy, squandering the estate… Geoffroy—” She swallows.
“What?” I prompt. “What did he do, Brigitte?”
“Geoffroy shoved him down the stairs. It wasn’t a stumble. It wasn’t an accident.”
“You saw it?” I ask. “You and Rodolphe had been long divorced by then.”
“Yes, but the divorce was amicable. I spent more time at Fort Vauclairt than my own house,” she replies.
I nod slowly. “So, Geoffroy pushed him.”
“Yes. Rodolphe died at the bottom before I could call for help.”
I stare at her.
My throat is dry, but I force the words out. “You knew.”
“Of course I knew!” she hisses. “I was there. I helped him cover it up. What choice did I have? He was my son.”
I grip the steering wheel so hard my hands ache. “You lied to everyone. To me. To Alex. To the royals. To Rohinnians.”
“Rodolphe was a good man,” she says quietly. “Better than most.”
“Better than Geoffroy,” I mutter.
To my surprise, she nods. “Even after our divorce, he was kind to me. I knew what I was destroying by keeping silent.”
I tilt my head. “But you loved Geoffroy more.”
“He was my blood! My only child.” She blinks fast and then lifts her chin. “What mother wouldn’t do the same? I had to protect him. No one else would.”
I whisper, “Alex should’ve inherited eighteen years ago after Geoffroy killed his father.”
“And what would you have me do?” She turns on me, eyes blazing. “Watch my son’s life destroyed? Watch him be branded a murderer, stripped of his birthright?”
I snap, “Watch justice be served?”
Her hand flies to her chest, trembling. “Justice? There was no justice for me, Eva. There was survival. I got the coroner’s daughter into the Royal Conservatory in exchange for a sloppy report. I bribed Mireille, the housekeeper. She’d overheard the fight.”
Well, that explains the big house and the maid.
“Geoffroy and I offered her enough money to never scrub another floor,” Brigitte says. “She took it, moved to Gruyac, and kept her silence. Everyone did.”
I close my eyes. I’d suspected something like this, but hearing it makes my stomach churn.
Brigitte exhales hard. “It was imperative. Not just to keep Geoffroy out of prison, but to protect the line.”
“The principle of representation,” I murmur, floored.
