Read Chapter 25: The Debt Paid

The ink was still wet on the page when the weight of what she’d done settled onto Evie’s chest like a piano falling from a third-story window. Fifty percent. Half of everything she would ever earn, every record sold, every note sung in every smoky room from Montmartre to Manhattan. Gone. Signed over to a man who wore serpents on his fingers and sold women like bottles of vintage wine.

Lucien slid the contract into his breast pocket with the satisfaction of a cat who’d just swallowed a canary. “Pleasure doing business, Mademoiselle Hart. Or should I say, Mademoiselle de Saint-Simon?” He let the name hang in the air between them, poisonous and sweet. “I’ll have my man send word to Fontainebleau. La Clairière is the villa’s name. Ask for Étienne Valcourt. But do remember—we have an arrangement now. You say nothing about our mutual acquaintance at Le Cercle, and I say nothing to the Comtesse about her granddaughter’s… colorful past in New York.”

Evie’s hands were trembling as she tucked her copy of the contract into her handbag. She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t let him see the tears threatening to spill. “You’ll get what you want, Lucien. You always do.”

“That’s the spirit.” He lit a cigarette, exhaling smoke toward the low ceiling of his office. “You know, Evie, I almost admire you. Most singers would have walked away. But you—you actually care about your friend. It’s almost touching.”

She was out the door before he could say another word, her heels clicking a furious staccato against the wooden floors of the back corridor. The nightclub was still quiet, the staff setting up for the evening rush, and she pushed through the service entrance into the cool Parisian twilight.

Julien was there, leaning against the wall across the street, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He straightened when he saw her, and even from a distance she could see the tension in his shoulders. He’d been waiting. Of course he’d been waiting. She’d told him to give her fifteen minutes, and that had been nearly an hour ago.

“Evie.” He crossed the street in three long strides, his eyes searching her face. “What happened? You look—did he hurt you?”

She shook her head, but the movement dislodged a tear, and she cursed herself for it. Julien’s hands came up to cup her face, his thumbs brushing the moisture from her cheeks.

“Tell me,” he said quietly.

“I signed it.” The words came out small, crushed. “His contract. Fifty percent of everything, for as long as I perform in France. He’s got me, Julien. He’s got me tied to him like a dog on a leash.”

Julien’s jaw tightened. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did.” She pulled away from his touch, wrapping her arms around herself. The evening air had turned cold, or maybe that was just her blood. “He knows where Lily is. La Clairière. A villa in Fontainebleau. She’s being held by a man named Étienne Valcourt.” She laughed, bitter and broken. “Lucien told me. Just like that. As if he hadn’t been sitting on the knowledge for weeks while I tore Paris apart looking for her.”

“And in exchange?”

“Silence about Le Cercle. Silence about what he does. And if I break the deal, he tells the Comtesse about New York.” She met his eyes. “About the gambling debts and the married senator and all of it. I’d lose everything. The family name, the tour with Josephine Baker—everything.”

Julien was silent for a long moment, his hands flexing at his sides. She could see the anger building in him, the way his knuckles went white. When he spoke, his voice was carefully controlled. “Evie, look at me.”

She did.

“Fifty percent of nothing is still nothing. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

She blinked. “What?”

“This contract he made you sign—it only matters if you earn money in France. It’s a leash, yes, but leashes can be cut.” He stepped closer, taking her hands in his. “And it only matters as long as Lucien has something to hold over you. Maybe—maybe there’s a way to loosen his grip.”

“He’ll expose me to the Comtesse. The timing couldn’t be worse. She’s only just agreed to meet with me, to consider acknowledging me. If Lucien tells her about New York before I’ve had a chance to prove myself, she’ll never accept me. The family will close ranks, and I’ll be nothing again.”

“You were never nothing.” Julien’s voice was fierce. “You’re the woman who walked into Chez Nous and silenced a room full of cynics with a single verse. You’re the woman who stood up to Lucien Bernal when no one else would. You are not defined by what some baron in New York does with your debts, or what a strip of paper says about your earnings.”

Evie’s breath hitched. “But the recording contract. If we sign with the London producer, Lucien gets half.”

“Then we make the record worth twice as much.” A ghost of a smile crossed Julien’s face. “We’ll be so successful that fifty percent of our earnings is still enough to buy us our freedom. And in the meantime—” He paused, glancing down the street as if checking for eavesdroppers. “In the meantime, we find out exactly what Lucien is afraid of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every man has a weakness, Evie. Lucien’s is his connection to Le Cercle de Minuit. He’s been supplying singers to that club for years. If we can prove it—if we can link him directly to what happened to Lily and the other women—then he loses his leverage. He’d be the one exposed, not you.”

“He’d never let us get close enough to prove anything. He covers his tracks too well.”

“Maybe.” Julien’s eyes were distant for a moment. “But Marguerite’s friend Jeanne—she fled to Lyon after her experience at the club. She might know more. And Étienne Valcourt holds Lily now. He’s the one who actually runs the place, isn’t he? Perhaps Lily herself has seen things. Perhaps when we free her, she can tell us everything.”

Evie felt something flicker in her chest. Hope, maybe. Or the embers of the fight she thought she’d lost back in Lucien’s office. “You make it sound simple.”

“It’s not simple.” He squeezed her hands. “But it is possible. And we’ve come this far. Lucien thinks he’s won—he thinks he’s bound you to him and silenced you with fear. But he doesn’t know you the way I do. He doesn’t know that you don’t stay quiet. You can’t.”

A laugh escaped her, wet and incredulous. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“It’s the truth.” He released one of her hands to brush a strand of hair from her face. “What did he say about Valcourt? Did he give you any details about the villa?”

“Only the name. La Clairière. He said Lily is being kept there, performing for private gatherings. I’m supposed to stay away until the danger passes, that’s what he said. He made it sound like he was doing me a favor.”

“He’s not doing you a favor. He’s buying your silence with her freedom.” Julien’s voice hardened. “We need to go to Fontainebleau.”

“We can’t just show up. Valcourt is apparently wealthy and well-connected. We’d be arrested for trespassing before we got through the gates.”

Julien was quiet, thinking. “Then we don’t show up as ourselves. We show up as entertainment.”

Evie looked at him. “You’re suggesting we crash a private party.”

“I’m suggesting we accept an invitation. There’s a garden party at the end of the week—a Baron de Saint-Loup hosts it every year. He’s known for hiring new acts. If I get us in as musicians…”

“You’d be recognized. You’re Julien Marchand. The Marchands are known in every salon in Paris.”

“Not if I play under a different name.” He smiled, thin and sharp. “The Marchand dynasty has more than a few black sheep. I know how to pass as one.”

Evie stared at him. “You’re risking everything. Your family’s reputation, your position at the Conservatoire, all of it—for Lily? For me?”

“I’m risking everything for music.” He said it simply, as if it explained everything. “And for you. The two are tangled together now. I can’t separate them.”

The streetlamp above them flickered on, casting a pool of amber light around them. Somewhere in the distance, a saxophone began to play—someone practicing scales in an upstairs room. The city was coming alive for the night, and Evie felt the familiar pull of the rhythm, the pulse of Paris beneath her feet.

“The Baron’s party,” she said slowly. “When is it?”

“Saturday.”

Three days. Three days to prepare, to plan, to figure out how to walk into a lion’s den without being eaten. She thought of Lily, somewhere in a villa outside Paris, dressed as a dancer she wasn’t, performing for men who thought they owned her. She thought of Lucien, smug behind his desk, counting his commission before she’d sung a single note under his thumb.

She thought of the Comtesse, who would be hearing from Lucien if Evie stepped out of line.

And she thought of Julien, standing beside her in the lamplight, asking her to trust him one more time.

“Come on,” she said, turning toward the river. “I need to walk. And I need you to tell me everything you know about the Baron de Saint-Loup.”

Julien fell into step beside her, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. The Seine glittered in the darkness, endless and indifferent, carrying the city’s secrets toward the sea. Evie felt the contract burning in her handbag, felt the weight of Lucien’s claim on her future, but she also felt something else—a stubborn, defiant warmth in her chest that refused to be extinguished.

She had signed away half her earnings. She had traded silence for Lily’s location. She had bound herself to a man who thought he owned her.

But Lucien didn’t know her the way Julien did. He didn’t know that she never stayed quiet, that she never stayed still, that she had crossed an ocean to bury her past and found something worth fighting for instead.

Let him think he’d won. Let him count his future profits while she planned her escape.

Three days until Fontainebleau. Three days to find a way in.

And when she found Lily—when she walked out of La Clairière with her friend at her side—she would burn Lucien’s contract in the hearth of Chez Nous and watch the smoke rise like a phoenix.

“Julien,” she said, stopping at the edge of the Pont Neuf. The water rushed below them, dark and patient. “If this goes wrong—if Valcourt recognizes us, if the Baron proves to be more than we can handle—what happens then?”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned to face her, his eyes catching the lamplight. “Then we face it together. Whatever it is. Whatever comes. I’m not letting go of this—of you—because of what might happen.”

She looked at him, this classically-trained French pianist who had abandoned his family’s expectations for a jazz singer with a tarnished name and a scandalous past. He had more to lose than she did, and yet here he stood, offering to walk into the lion’s den with nothing but a borrowed name and a half-formed plan.

“You’re a fool,” she said softly.

“Yes.” He smiled. “But I’m your fool. And that’s worth more to me than any Conservatoire prize.”

The saxophone had stopped somewhere in the distance, replaced by the sound of laughter drifting from a café across the river. Paris was tuning up for another night of music and wine and desperate gambles. Evie looked at the water one more time, then turned away.

“Saturday, then,” she said.

“Saturday.”

They walked on, leaving the contract—and Lucien, and all his serpent promises—behind them in the dark.