“What the hell is happening?” I screamed. “Where did it start? Did you call the fire department?” I tried to intersperse French with my English, but I couldn’t catch up to the words.
His face was covered in black streaks of ash.
“Peter.” I shook his shoulders.
“Oui. Pompiers.” The firefighters. That was something, but I didn’t hear the engines. The only thing I heard was the roaring fire.
I dropped my grip on him and turned toward the building that was now engulfed in flames.
“The champagne, Peter! The grapes!” I rushed forward but was immediately shoved backward. I hit the gravel drive roughly. “What the fuck,” I snarled. “That’s my office. This is my vineyard.”
It wasn’t Peter standing over me, it was a man in a dark blue uniform. The baton in his fists explained how he had knocked me on my back. I spotted a motorbike leaning on its side. He was the first to arrive on the scene from the local emergency dispatch.
“Stay.” He eyed me.
I dusted myself off as the truck pulled into view and the pompiers dismounted and started pulling the hoses over their shoulders. The man barked orders at the team. They began to surround the stone cottage.
Peter and I watched from a distance while they began to line up.
“What happened?” I asked the vineyard manager. “How did the fire start?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I was in the cellars and when I came back up, there was smoke. I grabbed my phone and ran outside.”
“How long ago?” I pressed.
The Frenchman shrugged. “Twenty minutes?”
“Twenty minutes.” I sighed.
“Oui.”
“The tunnels?” I glanced at him. “Do you think it spread in the tunnels?” Beneath the offices were twenty-five connecting tunnels that spanned almost fifteen miles. If they had been breached by the flames, the entire vineyard was lost. I’d never be able to recuperate that kind of production.
“I don’t know, Monsieur Corban.”
“Was there anyone else here?” Occasionally, Peter provided guided tours of the cellars and hosted champagne tastings for tourists. Our cellars were lesser known and didn’t have the kind of traffic the others did in the village.
“No,” he answered. “Only me.”
“Thank God.”
By now, the men who worked in the grape fields had begun to gather close to us. I saw their eyes. The fear and uncertainty the fire brought. Every time a spark launched off the roof I watched to see if it would hit one of the vines. What then? I was about to lose all of it. Was I going to lose the grapes too?
“Monsieur Corban?” The man who had knocked me on my ass approached. He had returned the baton to his holster. I glared at him, my arms folded over my chest.
“Yes.” I stepped forward.
“The fire is contained.”
“Did it spread to the tunnels?” I asked. “How much damage is there?”
“Come with me.” He led me away from the vineyard workers. We stopped on the other side of the rescue engine. “I’m sorry, but the offices are a total loss.”
“What about the casks? The wine and champagne? I have a million bottles under our feet.”
“I sent a team to the first level. I think you might have some heat damage, but there was no fire.”
I exhaled. I could rebuild a cottage. I could rebuild a tasting venue and a gazebo for weddings. I couldn’t reproduce a hundred years-worth of priceless grapes.
“Thank you.” I nodded at the report.
“I will begin an investigation as soon as I’m able to set foot in there. It’s still too hot.”
“You think someone started the fire?”
“We will find out if that’s what happened.”
My brow furrowed. The officer walked away. I rubbed the back of my head, trying to make sense of what happened. I had to catch my breath and figure out what I was going to do next. When I glanced at the workers, I noticed their families had started to join them. One man put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. She leaned into him as they watched the weeping smoke curl in tendrils over the roof.
The vineyard was going to require all of my attention now. Were the burning embers the escape I needed? A salvation in disguise. I wasn’t religious. Barely spiritual, but maybe God had tossed me a line. I needed to grab on and take hold before I drowned.
3
Kennedy
Present Day
I read the headline on my phone, but I struggled to reconcile the news story was about my casino project. The one Knight was trying to destroy. I turned the screen over on my desk. I couldn’t look at it again. It also hid the texts and calls from Knight. I had no plans to answer any of them. He got what he wanted. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of hearing the pain in my voice.
“Good morning,” Renee marched into my office. She tossed her briefcase in an open chair and poured a cup of coffee.
“I don’t think we see the morning the same way.” How did she smile under these circumstances?
“It’s a setback. Only a setback.” She sipped her coffee. “I have a meeting set up with a new lobbyist at two today.”
She didn’t know about the emotional grenade the chain of events from the Crescent Towers had set off. This wasn’t solely about losing the biggest deal of my career, it was about being stabbed in the back by the one person I trusted.
“Oh?” I raised my eyebrows. “Who is the new lobbyist?”
“She has connections to both Senators Merritt and Hyde. She’s been recommended by a friend.”
I turned my back on my attorney. Even from this distance I could see the crane hovering next to the Crescent Towers construction site from my window. I could also pick out the Vieux Carre from here. They were in different directions.
“Kennedy?”
“Hmm?”
“I was trying to tell you about Victoria Banks. The new lobbyist.”
I peered closely at the boutique hotel, as if I could
