Chapter 12 - The Last Thirty Minutes
“Tell me everything.”
Maren’s voice barely sounded human.
Celestine leaned back.
“Why?”
“Because you asked me here.”
“I wanted you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“That Victor is worse than me.”
Claire immediately said:
“This isn’t a competition.”
Celestine ignored her.
She looked at Maren.
“Adrian discovered the fuel problem. He couldn’t call for help because Victor had taken the radio.”
“You knew that.”
“Yes.”
“He swam?”
Celestine nodded.
“The current pushed him south. He reached the private beach.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he called me.”
Maren’s hands went numb.
“From where?”
“The emergency phone inside the old cliff boathouse.”
Mercer Point had a maintenance building abandoned years earlier.
Maren knew it.
She had forgotten it even existed.
“What did he say?”
Celestine looked down.
“He knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Everything.”
Adrian had found traces of sealant around the fuel fitting.
He knew the failure had been intentional.
He knew Victor had taken his radio.
And he believed Celestine was involved.
“He told me he was calling the police.”
Maren whispered:
“And then?”
“I called Victor.”
Claire stared at her.
“You sent him there.”
Celestine said nothing.
Maren understood.
“You sent Victor to Adrian.”
“I thought he would scare him.”
“Stop saying that.”
Maren slammed her palm against the table.
For the first time, Celestine flinched.
“You keep saying you only wanted people scared.”
Maren’s voice broke.
“My husband is dead. I nearly died. My daughter was held over a cliff.”
She stared directly into Celestine’s eyes.
“Your intentions stopped mattering a long time ago.”
Celestine swallowed.
“Victor went to the boathouse.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
Victor called Celestine twenty-seven minutes later.
Adrian was unconscious.
Victor said they had fought.
Adrian fell backward and struck his head against the concrete landing.
Victor panicked.
Instead of calling an ambulance, he dragged Adrian back toward the water.
Maren covered her mouth.
Celestine’s voice weakened.
“He put him in the water.”
Claire went completely still.
“And then you helped him report Adrian missing.”
“Yes.”
Maren couldn’t speak.
There were some truths too terrible even when you already suspected them.
Adrian had survived the sabotaged boat.
He had reached land.
He could have lived.
Victor made sure he didn’t.
Celestine looked at Maren.
“I wasn’t there.”
Maren’s eyes hardened.
“You sent him.”
“Yes.”
“And you helped hide it.”
Celestine said nothing.
Maren stood.
Celestine suddenly leaned toward the glass.
“Maren.”
She stopped.
“I did love Elodie.”
Maren slowly turned.
“No.”
Celestine’s face crumpled.
“I did.”
“You loved what having Elodie gave you.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Fair?”
Maren almost smiled.
“You forged my signature.”
Celestine looked away.
“You told a grieving toddler that her mother didn’t want her.”
Silence.
“You stole from her.”
Celestine’s breathing changed.
“And when you realized you were losing control, you held her over a cliff.”
Maren stepped closer to the glass.
“Don’t ever confuse possession with love.”
Celestine began crying.
For once, Maren felt no need to comfort her.
She left.
Investigators searched the abandoned boathouse.
Eighteen months of weather had destroyed much.
But Victor had missed one thing.
A rusted security camera mounted beneath the rear roofline.
Everyone assumed it was dead.
It wasn’t.
The camera fed to a storage system inside the Mercer estate’s old security server.
And because Grant never replaced that server after Adrian died, the archived files were still there.
Owen called Maren at 11:18 that night.
“We found the video.”
Maren couldn’t answer.
“Maren?”
“Does it show him?”
A long pause.
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Her knees weakened.
“And Victor?”
Another pause.
May you like
“Yes.”
👉 Celestine had finally told the truth about Adrian’s last thirty minutes—but the forgotten security footage was about to show exactly which parts of her confession were still lies.
