Read Chapter 9: The Mayor's Party

The Palais Garnier glowed like a jewel box against the bruised Parisian twilight, its gilded facade a monument to a century that refused to die. Luca adjusted the press credential clipped to his borrowed jacket—Maya had fabricated it in under an hour, complete with a holographic stamp that shifted hue as he moved—and joined the trickle of journalists being funneled through the side entrance.

Inside, the opera house had been transformed. Crystal chandeliers dripped light onto clusters of silk-gowned patrons and men in midnight suits. Waiters circulated with flutes of champagne that caught the glow like liquid amber. A string quartet played something baroque near the grand staircase, but the real music was the murmur of power, the soft clink of deals being made over canapés.

Luca scanned the crowd with the practiced ease of a man who'd spent years learning to read rooms. The donors were easy to spot—they wore their wealth like armor. The politicians were easier—they wore their ambition like a second skin. And there, near the back of the orchestra level, stood a man who wore neither.

Adrian Moreau. Despite the name he shared with the candidate, he was not family. He was the security chief, a wiry man with a military haircut and eyes that never stopped moving. He stood with his back to a marble column, scanning the crowd with the detached vigilance of a predator who knew exactly where all the exits were.

Luca made his way through the crowd, pausing to accept a champagne flute he had no intention of drinking. The bug was small, barely larger than a grain of rice, housed in a casing designed to look like a stray thread. He'd used the trick before—a subtle bump, a quick pass, and the device would cling to the shoulder seam of Adrian's jacket like a piece of lint.

He approached from Adrian's blind side, angling as if he were merely passing through. The security chief's eyes snapped to him a moment before contact, but Luca was already in motion, stumbling slightly, his hand coming up to steady himself against Adrian's arm.

"Sorry, sorry," Luca said, his voice pitched with embarrassment. "These heels on marble, I'm a disaster."

Adrian's hand closed around Luca's wrist with surprising strength, but the bug was already in place. Luca felt the tiny device latch onto the fabric of Adrian's jacket, a barely perceptible weight against his palm.

"You're press?" Adrian's voice was flat, assessing.

Luca smiled, the press badge catching the light. "Le Monde. Feature piece on the cultural patronage angle. You know, art and politics, the eternal dance."

"Right." Adrian released him, his expression unreadable. "Careful on the stairs. They're slicker than they look."

Luca nodded and melted back into the crowd, his pulse hammering with the familiar thrill of the close call. He found a spot near the bar, close enough to observe but far enough to be unremarkable, and touched the edge of his collar. The earpiece hummed to life, transmitting the feed from the bug.

For a moment, there was nothing but ambient noise—the clink of glasses, the murmur of conversation. Then Adrian's voice came through, sharp and low.

"—can't keep this contained forever. Delacroix's people are sniffing around, and they're getting too close."

A second voice, smoother and harder to place, replied. "Delacroix is a scavenger. She'll chase any rumor if she thinks it can wound. That's not news."

"This isn't rumor," Adrian said. "She has something. She's bluffing now, but if she actually gets her hands on a copy—"

"She won't."

The assuredness in that second voice made Luca's skin prickle. He adjusted his earpiece, straining to hear.

"Madame Moreau, with all due respect—"

So the second voice was Catherine Moreau herself. Luca's heart rate ticked up. He scanned the room, locating a cluster of bodies near the stage doors. Moreau stood at the center, her silver hair swept into an elegant chignon, her smile flawless as she worked the room. But her head was tilted slightly, as if she were listening to something beyond the pleasantries.

"The memory is gone," Moreau said, her voice dropping so low Luca almost missed it. "I've verified it six times. Six procedures. There is nothing left in my head but the shape of a hole where it used to be. Delacroix can threaten all she wants, but she can't reveal what doesn't exist."

Adrian's voice was careful. "And if she's found a copy? A backup? You said yourself the original was recorded by—"

"That was a risk we accepted."

"Accepting a risk and being able to survive it are different things, Madame. If the voters see you deleting parts of your own mind, they'll ask what else you've hidden. And they won't stop asking until they've unearthed every last—"

The sound of a champagne glass shattering cut through the feed. Luca watched Moreau's smile flicker, just for a moment, before she turned to address a waiting donor.

"I'll handle Delacroix," Moreau said, her voice clipped. "You focus on the other problem."

"There is no other problem. The journalist was silenced. His files were purged."

"And the woman? The one who saw what happened at Bois de Vincennes?"

Luca felt the blood drain from his face. He gripped the edge of the bar, steadying himself.

"Camille Vidal," Adrian said, and the name hit Luca like a physical blow. "She's been handled. That thread is cut. No one is going to find her now."

"Good." Moreau's voice carried a finality that made Luca's stomach turn. "Then we have nothing to fear from the past. Only from the lies Delacroix tells about it."

The feed went quiet, replaced by the ambient noise of the party. Luca stood frozen, the champagne flute forgotten in his hand.

*Handled.* The word echoed in his skull. *That thread is cut.*

His mother wasn't missing. She hadn't vanished into some mystery that needed solving. She'd been *handled*. By Moreau. By this woman who smiled at donors while her security chief discussed murder like it was routine maintenance.

The irony was almost too sharp to bear. Luca had come here to plant a bug, to gather intelligence on Moreau's movements. He'd expected political secrets, strategic betrayals. Instead, he'd found the confirmation of his worst fear—and a name he'd never heard before.

*Bois de Vincennes.*

The missing memory. The murder. It had happened at a pavilion in the woods on the eastern edge of the city. And his mother had been there, watching, when Moreau killed a man named Christophe.

Luca's hands were shaking. He set down the champagne glass carefully, forcing himself to breathe. He couldn't fall apart here, not in the middle of a room full of people who would notice a journalist having a crisis.

He needed to leave. He needed to find somewhere quiet, somewhere he could think. But as he turned toward the exit, his path was blocked by a woman in a deep blue dress, her smile sharp and knowing.

"Mr. Vidal," she said, and the use of his real name froze him in place. "I thought you might show up tonight. You have your mother's persistence."

Luca stared at her. The woman was older, in her sixties perhaps, with steel-gray hair and eyes that had seen too much to be surprised by anything. She extended a hand.

"Sabine Delacroix," she said. "I believe we have a delivery to discuss."