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Chapter 71: Renaud’s Investor Revolt
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2026-05-11 19:25:00By the time we got back into the hearing room, the air had changed.
Not calmer. Sharper.
Courts are like markets in that way. One frightened witness, one badly timed glance, one dropped phone with the wrong messages on it, and suddenly neutrality starts looking expensive. The judge had returned to the bench. The clerks had regained their posture. The journalist in the second row had stopped pretending this was merely a procedural matter and started writing with both hands.
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VOWS IN THE WAR ROOM Chapter 72: A Quiet Night, A Real Touch
The estate felt too large after the courthouse.Victory, even partial victory, does not make a big house warm. It only gives the walls more room to listen while everyone inside pretends the next collapse might wait until morning.By evening, Julien had gone back to Montréal to begin the longer authenticity fight. Gabriel was still working phones, routes, and the question of where Sabine had gone after leaving the courthouse. Colette had installed Maud in the blue guest room and threatened both doctor and witness with equal authority until the ankle was wrapped properly and the woman had broth in her hands. The power of older women remains one of civilization’s least adequately studied forces.I escaped to the library because I needed a room that admitted silence without trying to interpret it.The lamps were low. Fire steady. Snow at the windows. Books everywhere, all of them pretending people came to houses like this for learning instead of
VOWS IN THE WAR ROOM Chapter 71: Renaud’s Investor Revolt
By the time we got back into the hearing room, the air had changed.Not calmer. Sharper.Courts are like markets in that way. One frightened witness, one badly timed glance, one dropped phone with the wrong messages on it, and suddenly neutrality starts looking expensive. The judge had returned to the bench. The clerks had regained their posture. The journalist in the second row had stopped pretending this was merely a procedural matter and started writing with both hands.Hector remained at the counsel table.That impressed me, though I hated him for deserving even that much credit. Lesser men would have fled into illness or indignation by then. Hector stayed. He knew public rooms reward endurance almost as much as innocence.Sabine’s chair, however, was empty.That looked louder than any confession.Julien was the first to speak.He requested leave to introduce newly recovered evidence tied directly to witness influence
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Gabriel did not shout.That was why people got out of his way.Loud men cause scenes. Efficient men create currents. He cut across the hallway with one hand brushing the rail and the other already reaching for his phone, not to call for help, but to move help into place before the rest of us had finished turning our heads.The runner hit the stairwell door.Gabriel hit it a breath later.Renaud took one step after them and stopped only because Julien caught his arm.“No.”“That was not a request.”“No,” Julien said, breathing harder than dignity required, “it was legal preservation.”I stepped forward before either of them could decide whether to drag me bodily back into the hearing room.The corridor outside the courtroom had gone live with panic disguised as etiquette. Clerks frozen at tables. One investor pretending not to stare. The journalist already texting wit
VOWS IN THE WAR ROOM Chapter 69: The Recanting Fear
The witness’s fear changed the room before it changed his words.That was the first useful thing about terror. It leaked.Not dramatically. Not with shaking hands and wild eyes the way weak writers imagine it. Real fear tries to stay neat. It sits in the throat. It makes a man answer too fast, then not fast enough. It sends his eyes to the wrong table one fraction too late to be hidden.Julien saw it.I saw it.The judge saw enough to become interested, which in a courtroom is often the nearest thing to danger.“Mr. Bellerose,” the judge said, “answer only what is asked.”He nodded. Too quickly.Julien did not move away from the lectern. He lowered his tone instead, which made the whole room lean in without realizing it.“You said Mrs. Morel-Valois attempted to pressure your office.”“Yes.”“No threats were made?”“No.”
VOWS IN THE WAR ROOM Chapter 68: The Public Hearing
Chapter 68: The Public HearingMorning made everyone look more honest than they wanted.The courthouse stood in the grey center of the city like an old lesson nobody enjoyed but everybody had to attend eventually. Stone steps, brass doors, wet footprints, a coat check run by a woman who had probably seen ministers cry and liars faint and found neither impressive.Inside, the air smelled of paper, damp wool, radiator heat, and institutional patience.We arrived without spectacle.That mattered.Julien first, carrying the hearing packet like a controlled fire.Me beside him.Renaud half a step behind, not because he meant to loom but because every room lately had taught him what happens when he gives distance too freely.Gabriel farther back in plain clothes, invisible only to the arrogant.Maud already moved through a separate access point under Colette’s management and one doctor’s irritated b
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The police left with their courtesy intact.That was the most irritating part.No shouting. No rough hands. No dramatic threat thrown over a shoulder. Just neat apologies, clipped procedure, and the kind of restraint that promised they would come back better prepared if the morning gave them reason. Detective Lemaire took her copies, acknowledged Julien’s objections for the record, and left Sabine’s initial sitting in my head like a splinter with excellent tailoring.When the front door shut, the house went quiet in a way that did not feel safe.It felt staged between rounds.Colette locked the entrance herself, slid the chain across with a hard decisive sound, and turned back toward us.“No one sleeps,” she said.Julien gathered the warrant notes into a stack. “That was already my legal recommendation.”Maud, wrapped in two blankets and elevated in the study armchair, looked as though she ha
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