Chapter 6 - SABINE HAD BEEN SENT INTO DORIAN’S LIFE BEFORE SHE EVER LOVED HIMSabine stopped lying when the evidence became older than the marriage.
Detective Landry questioned her for four hours.
Her lawyer sat beside her.
Dorian did not attend.
That was deliberate.
When he finally read the transcript, he understood why.
Sabine Moreau had met Landon Ashford seven years earlier.
Not romantically.
Professionally.
She worked for a political consulting firm that helped shipping companies secure city contracts.
Landon was her client.
The affair began briefly then.
Months before Dorian’s father died.
They ended it when Sabine left the firm.
Or said they did.
Three years later, Landon reconnected.
He introduced Sabine to Dorian at a charity auction.
Dorian remembered.
He had thought the meeting accidental.
Nothing about it was.
“Why?” Landry asked Sabine.
The answer:
“Landon said Dorian needed someone normal.”
Normal.
Dorian almost laughed reading it.
Sabine continued:
“He said Dorian was disappearing into grief after Olivia.”
“He thought I could help.”
“Did he tell you to marry him?”
“No.”
“At first.”
There it was.
Months into dating, Landon began encouraging the relationship.
Dorian trusted Sabine.
Eli liked her.
Marriage followed.
Then Landon resurfaced privately.
He told Sabine Dorian planned to leave most Ashford voting control to Eli.
True.
He told her she would receive almost nothing if Dorian died.
Mostly true.
Then he told her something else.
That Dorian had never loved her.
That she was childcare with a wedding ring.
Cruel.
Effective.
Their affair restarted.
But the criminal plot evolved separately.
At least according to Sabine.
She admitted sharing household schedules with Landon.
She admitted telling him when Dorian traveled.
She admitted giving him information about Eli’s tutoring.
She admitted discussing the trust.
She denied knowing anyone intended to harm the boy.
Then police showed her the anonymous threats.
Photographs of Eli leaving school.
Metadata led to a camera registered to a security subcontractor controlled by Landon.
Sabine covered her mouth.
“You didn't know?”
Landry asked.
“No.”
“Did Landon ever tell you those threats were real?”
“Yes.”
“He made you afraid too.”
“Yes.”
For the first time, Audrey later understood the shape of the scheme.
Landon had created danger.
Then positioned himself as the person who understood the danger.
He manipulated Dorian into locking the estate down.
Manipulated Sabine into sharing more security information.
Manipulated Eli into feeling trapped.
Fear did the work for him.
The storage unit revealed the financial motive.
Ashford Maritime consisted of legitimate businesses and Dorian’s hidden criminal network.
After Dorian’s father died, ownership shifted.
Dorian received controlling interest.
Landon received a significant minority stake.
But a family trust placed an additional twenty-two percent in Eli’s name.
Dorian controlled the votes while Eli was a minor.
If Eli died, those shares reverted temporarily to Dorian.
If Dorian then died without a living direct heir—
Landon became principal beneficiary.
The order mattered.
Eli first.
Then Dorian.
Detective Landry looked at Dorian.
“You understand what that suggests.”
“Yes.”
His voice became quiet.
“My brother needs both of us dead.”
Maybe.
Evidence suggested motive.
Not final proof.
Then Olivia’s audio recordings changed the case.
The first was dated nine days before her death.
Her voice came through an old digital recorder.
Dorian had not heard it in six years.
He almost left the room.
He stayed.
Dorian thinks Landon is reckless, not dangerous. I think that is because Dorian remembers being twelve and pulling him out of a swimming pool. He still sees his little brother under the man.
Dorian closed his eyes.
Audrey was not there.
Jonah stood beside him.
Landry across the table.
Olivia continued.
Landon has been moving money through waterfront security contracts. I found payments to people Dorian’s father used for off-book enforcement.
Another recording.
I told Jonah. He wants to tell Dorian. I said not yet. Dorian loves through protection, and protection becomes violence too quickly when he is afraid. I need proof.
That sentence gutted him.
Again.
Dead women apparently had a talent for accurate diagnosis.
Then the final recording.
Made three days before Olivia died in a car accident.
If anything happens to me, it is not necessarily Landon. That is important. Dorian will want one enemy. There may be more than one.
A pause.
His father knew about the missing money before he died.
Another.
I found a payment authorized after his stroke. Someone used his credentials.
The implication:
Fraud surrounding the father’s death.
Not necessarily murder.
But exploitation.
Then Olivia said:
There is a woman named Marianne Pike who handled trust documents. Jonah knows how to find the records if I can't finish this.
The fake storage name.
A clue.
Not a person.
Dorian sat in silence after the recording ended.
Jonah whispered:
“She planned everything.”
“No.”
Dorian looked at him.
“She tried to.”
“She died before she could.”
That distinction hurt.
Olivia’s car accident had been investigated as weather-related.
Rain.
Hydroplaning.
Guardrail.
No evidence of tampering at the time.
Police reopened it.
Three days later, they found the original impound photographs.
One image showed a cut brake-fluid line.
The report had called it crash damage.
A modern forensic review could not prove when the cut occurred.
But it raised the possibility Olivia’s death had been engineered.
Dorian did exactly what Landon would have expected six years earlier.
He wanted blood.
This time he did not move.
He went to Dr. Brennan instead.
Not therapy for Eli.
For himself.
She stared when he entered.
“You understand I treat children.”
“I need a referral.”
That surprised her.
She gave him one.
Audrey learned only because Eli proudly announced:
“Dad has a feelings doctor now.”
Dorian nearly died of embarrassment.
Good.
The second week after the river, Audrey’s temporary assignment continued.
Eli slept better.
Still had nightmares.
Still refused to say the name.
Sometimes he drew.
Always wolves.
Sometimes black water.
Once he drew two adults behind a door.
One woman.
One man.
Their faces blank.
Audrey did not interpret it.
She handed it to Brennan.
Correct channel.
Brennan asked Eli:
“What were they doing?”
He whispered:
“Bad married stuff.”
That was how an eight-year-old described adultery.
Dorian heard later.
His face changed.
Eli had seen Sabine and Landon.
That seemed increasingly likely.
Still no name.
Then Audrey noticed something unrelated.
Eli refused orange juice.
Every time.
At breakfast.
At snack.
Even orange candy.
“Don't like orange?”
she asked.
His face tightened.
“Smells like him.”
Audrey did not ask who.
She noted it for Brennan.
Orange.
Cologne.
Landon.
Another piece.
That afternoon Dorian received a call from Ashford Maritime’s CFO.
A forty-two-million-dollar transfer had been initiated from a dormant holding company.
Approval required two signatures.
One was Landon’s.
The other belonged to Dorian’s dead father.
Another resurrected credential.
The destination:
A corporation in Belize.
Money laundering.
Escape funding.
Landon was preparing to disappear.
Then NOPD finally located him.
Not abroad.
Not on the waterfront.
Inside a private apartment above a restaurant Dorian owned in the French Quarter.
The apartment belonged to Sabine.
When police entered, Landon was gone.
But they found her clothes.
His clothes.
Passports.
Cash.
And one handwritten plan.
Three dates.
One beside Eli’s name.
One beside Dorian’s.
One beside SABINE.
Dorian stared.
His brother had not planned to run away with his lover.
He had planned to eliminate her too.
The cheating woman who believed she was helping Landon build a future had been useful only until the future arrived.
When Sabine saw the document, she broke down.
Not elegantly.
Not manipulatively.
She looked at Dorian through tears.
“He was going to kill me.”
Dorian’s face remained still.
“Yes.”
“I thought he loved me.”
Dorian answered:
“So did I.”
The words silenced her.
Not cruel.
True.
Then Sabine handed police the final thing she had been hiding.
A safe-deposit key Landon gave her.
“He told me never to open it unless something happened to him.”
Police opened the box.
Inside was a flash drive.
On it—
video from the night Eli disappeared.
For the first time, they saw the boy leaving the Ashford estate.
Not alone.
Holding the hand of someone he trusted.
And the person beside him was not Landon.
It was a woman.
Blond.
Wearing the uniform of Eli’s private tutor.
The same blond hairs found in Audrey’s apartment stairwell.
Her name was Melanie Frost.
May you like
Sabine’s personal assistant.
And she had vanished the morning after Eli went into the river.
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