Chapter 3 - The File Beneath My Mattress
I left the hospital two days later with my son in my arms and fear following us all the way home.
I named him Adrien.
I had chosen the name months earlier, back when I still believed the hardest part of becoming a mother would be doing it alone.
I was wrong.
My apartment had never looked particularly small before.
Now, carrying Adrien through the doorway in his infant seat, I noticed everything Julien’s attorneys would notice.
One bedroom.
Secondhand sofa.
Tiny kitchen.
A stack of laundry beside the bathroom.
I saw my home through the eyes of people preparing to call me unfit.
Then I looked at the crib I had assembled myself.
The tiny clothes I had washed and folded.
The diapers stacked neatly beside the changing table.
The inexpensive rocking chair I bought from a retired teacher.
This wasn’t poverty.
It was a home.
And my son was loved.
That mattered more than the marble floors at the Valois estate.
Camille arrived twenty minutes later.
She brought groceries, coffee, and a portable scanner.
“You just had a baby,” she said. “Please tell me you are not planning to crawl under your bed.”
“I am.”
“Viviane.”
“I need the file.”
She sighed.
“I’ll get it.”
The folder was exactly where I had left it.
But the moment Camille pulled it out, my stomach dropped.
“What?”
She examined the edge.
“The tape.”
I always sealed the folder with a narrow strip of clear tape.
It had been cut.
Someone had opened it.
Camille immediately photographed everything.
“Check whether anything is missing.”
I went through the documents.
Invoices.
Emails.
Transaction records.
Corporate registrations.
Everything seemed present.
Then I found a sheet I had never seen before.
It was folded inside an envelope.
My name was written on the front.
VIVIANE.
“Did you put that there?” Camille asked.
“No.”
I opened it.
Inside was a photocopy of an old photograph.
A teenage boy stood beside Henri Valois.
The resemblance to Julien was unmistakable.
But that wasn’t what made my hands shake.
The boy had turned slightly toward the camera.
Beside his left ear was a crescent-shaped birthmark.
Luc.
On the back of the photograph someone had written:
Ask who died in the car.
Camille read it twice.
“Someone has been inside your apartment.”
I looked toward Adrien’s crib.
Suddenly every sound from the hallway felt threatening.
Camille called the police to document the possible intrusion, then arranged for me to stay temporarily in a secure apartment belonging to her firm.
Before we left, she photographed the entire room.
That decision saved us.
Because twenty minutes after we reached the secure apartment, I received a call.
It was Julien.
“You’ve made a serious mistake.”
I switched on speaker.
Camille began recording.
“What mistake?”
“You removed documents belonging to Valois Holdings.”
“They were in my apartment.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, Julien. Explain it.”
Silence.
He realized what I was doing.
“You always thought you were clever.”
“I was clever enough to discover your shell companies.”
Camille raised a finger, warning me not to reveal too much.
Julien’s voice softened.
“Come home.”
I almost laughed.
“What?”
“Bring the baby. We can resolve this privately.”
“There is no home.”
“Viviane, you’re tired and emotional.”
“I’m perfectly awake.”
“You’re surrounded by people exploiting you.”
“Like Dr. Moreau?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“What are you afraid he’ll tell me?”
Nothing.
Then Julien said, “Luc Moreau was unstable.”
“His name was Luc Valois.”
Silence again.
That silence told me more than words could have.
“You knew him,” I said.
“No.”
“You were a child when he died.”
“I said no.”
“Then how did you recognize Adrien’s birthmark?”
Julien hung up.
Camille and I looked at each other.
“He knows,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“But what?”
Camille opened her laptop.
“That’s what we find out.”
The answer began with money.
The trust she had discovered contained a strange clause.
Henri Valois had created it shortly before Luc’s death.
Its controlling interest would pass through Henri’s “acknowledged biological descendants,” but a sealed amendment had been filed with a private fiduciary company.
Nobody outside the trustees knew what it said.
Then we found another clue.
Julien had spent nearly two years trying to gain access to that amendment.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the trust controls voting shares in several Valois companies.”
“How much?”
Camille looked at me.
“Enough that whoever controls it effectively controls the family empire.”
I sat down.
Suddenly Éléonore’s obsession with custody looked very different.
This wasn’t about a grandmother wanting access to her grandson.
It was about control.
But there was still a huge problem.
Adrien was Julien’s son.
How could Adrien’s existence alter anything?
Unless—
I stopped.
“Camille.”
She looked up.
“What if Julien isn’t who he thinks he is?”
She stared at me.
“Explain.”
“I don’t know.”
But the idea wouldn’t leave.
Dr. Moreau had said Luc was Julien’s uncle.
Yet Julien reacted to Luc’s birthmark as though it meant something personally dangerous.
The genetics laboratory.
The trust.
The false amendment to Luc’s death certificate.
Someone had spent decades manipulating family lineage.
My phone rang.
Dr. Moreau.
“I found something,” he said.
“What?”
“My mother kept journals.”
I sat straighter.
“She wrote about Luc?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“There’s an entry from six months before he died.”
His voice trembled.
“What does it say?”
He read it.
“Luc came tonight. He was terrified. He said Éléonore knows about the baby.”
I stopped breathing.
“What baby?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was Luc a father?”
“My mother never told me.”
Another line followed.
“Luc said if anything happened to him, the child must never be raised as a Valois.”
Camille had moved close enough to hear.
“What date?” she asked.
Dr. Moreau told her.
Camille typed quickly.
Then she froze.
“What?” I asked.
She turned the laptop.
A public birth record was displayed.
Julien Valois.
Date of birth.
Seven months before Luc died.
Nobody spoke.
I stared at the screen.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“No,” Camille said. “It doesn’t prove anything.”
But we were all thinking it.
What if Luc wasn’t Julien’s uncle?
What if he was Julien’s father?
My phone buzzed.
A message from Julien.
We need to talk without lawyers.
Another message appeared.
My mother lied to both of us.
Then a third.
May you like
And if you want Adrien safe, you need to know who his real grandfather was.
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