Chapter 16 - Eleanor’s Confession
"Step away from the mannequin, Clara," Beatrice commanded, her voice smooth, cultured, and chillingly devoid of emotion. "You were always such an inconvenient creature. Just like your mother. Always stitching where you weren't supposed to, always listening through the floorboards."
"Where is Eleanor?" I demanded, standing my ground despite Julian’s attempt to pull me behind him. "You let your own daughter get humiliated in front of the entire country! She was arrested by federal police while you hid down here like a rat!"
Beatrice laughed—a high, brittle sound that echoed mockingly against the brick vaulting. "Eleanor? Eleanor is an idiot. She has your mother’s vanity without an ounce of her talent. I told her to secure Julian Vance because his shipping lines are the only ones exempt from port customs inspections. Instead, she got obsessed with your wedding gown. She couldn't stand the thought of you shining brighter than her, even for one afternoon."
"You used your own child as bait," Julian said, his jaw clenching with disgust. "You knew the livestream would distract us while you broke into the vault."
"Of course I did," Beatrice sneered. "Eleanor was facing twenty years for corporate embezzlement anyway. I balanced the books of the Laurent fashion house by shifting forty million euros of debt onto her private accounts. The police would have taken her by sunset regardless. At least this way, she served a purpose."
"You burned Vivienne alive," Thomas said, his weapon leveling with Beatrice’s forehead. "You stood by the door and held the bolt while she burned."
"She refused to be reasonable, Thomas!" Beatrice snapped, her eyes widening with a flicker of madness. "We could have been billionaires! The French government was going to classify the spider-silk project and bury it in an underground bunker in French Guiana! We were offering her thirty percent of the offshore shares! But no... she wanted to make *dresses*. She wanted to make wedding gowns for bourgeois brides who wouldn't know the difference between silk and polyester!"
Suddenly, a ragged, choking sob came from the darkness near the loom’s lower treadle.
A figure crawled out from behind the heavy oak support beams, her designer makeup smeared with soot, tears, and blood. Her ivory dress—the identical gown she had stolen from my dressing room—was shredded at the knees, the delicate lace ripped to pieces by the rough masonry.
It was Eleanor.
"Mother...?" Eleanor wheezed, her voice trembling in horrific realization. "You... you put the debt in my name? You told me Julian loved me. You told me if I wore the dress down the aisle, he would have no choice but to sign the marriage certificate before the investors..."
Beatrice didn't even turn her head to look at her daughter. "Be quiet, Eleanor. You’re giving me a headache. You couldn't even walk twenty yards without tripping on your own ego."
"I did everything you told me!" Eleanor screamed, pulling herself up by the loom's iron frame, her hands shaking violently. "I hated Clara because you told me she was the bastard of a thief! I locked her in the sewing rooms! I tore up her sketches! I stole her designs and put my name on them because you told me it was my birthright!"
"Your birthright was mediocrity," Beatrice said coldly, cocking her pistol. "And now you’re a liability."
May you like
Beatrice pivoted her weapon, not toward Thomas, but directly toward Eleanor.
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