Read Chapter 30: The Public Confrontation

The dressing room smelled of powder and decay. Evie stared at her reflection—the rouge on her cheeks too bright, the pearls at her throat borrowed, the gown Lucien had provided cut just low enough to feel like a debt. Tonight was the grand gala at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Tonight she would sing for Paris. And tonight, she knew with a certainty that sat cold in her stomach, Lucien would make his move.

Julien had wanted to come with her. She had refused. If Lucien suspected a conspiracy, Lily would pay.

The knock came at seven. Not the stagehand she expected, but Lucien himself, resplendent in white tie, his smile oiled and false. “Ma chérie. Ready to charm the city?”

Evie lifted her chin. “Always.”

The theatre was a cavern of gold and velvet, every box occupied by names that adorned the front pages of Paris. Evie stood in the wings, watching the conductor raise his baton, her pulse a war drum against her ribs. And then she walked out into the light.

The orchestra swelled. She opened her mouth.

It hit her mid-phrase—a voice from the mezzanine, amplified by the acoustics, sharp as a blade.

“Mesdames et messieurs—your pardon, but I must speak.”

Lucien. Of course. He stood in the second tier, a rolled document in his hand, every eye in the theatre turning from Evie to him.

“This woman,” he called, his voice dripping with theatrical sorrow, “whom I welcomed into my establishment as a sister—she has betrayed my trust. She has stolen from me, forged signatures upon contracts, and fled my employ to cover her crimes.”

Gasps rippled through the audience. Evie’s throat closed. The orchestra faltered, the conductor looking between her and Lucien as if caught between two storms.

“I have proof.” Lucien unfurled the document, holding it high. “Her contract with Le Cercle de Minuit, marked paid, signed with my own hand—and yet she has kept the advance and performed elsewhere. Fraud. Theft.”

Evie’s voice broke free, raw and furious. “That contract is a forgery—you know it! You forced me to sign a new one not three days past, and this—this is a lie staged for the public.”

Lucien’s mouth curled. “A desperate liar, as you see.” He turned to the audience, spreading his arms. “I only wished to spare you the scandal of hiring a thief. She is a common American grifter, nothing more.”

The whispers grew to a roar. From the corner of her eye, Evie saw the theatre manager approach the stage with a somber face, his hand already raised to pull her.

And then a voice rang from the orchestra stalls, clear as a bell.

“Lucien Moreau is the thief.”

Julien. He stood in the aisle, evening dress impeccable, a slim folder in his hand. His eyes were fixed on Lucien with a cold fury Evie had never seen in him.

“Who is this?” Lucien demanded. “Another accomplice?”

“My name is Julien Delacroix,” Julien said, and the audience inhaled as one. The Delacroix name carried weight in banking circles, in society columns, in the very architecture of French wealth. “And I have papers—registered with the Préfecture de Police—proving that Lucien Moreau’s ownership of Le Cercle de Minuit is fraudulent. He purchased it under a shell company belonging to the Baron de Saint-Loup, and he runs it in the Baron’s name without license, skimming profits that the Baron’s legitimate heirs should legally control.”

The theatre erupted. Lucien’s face drained to parchment. “This is absurd—Delacroix, you are nothing but a failed pianist who shames his family’s name with—“

“With the truth,” Julien interrupted, mounting the stage steps with the ease of a man who had spent his life moving through grand rooms. He held up a photograph—the documents Evie and he had photographed in Fontainebleau, the Baron’s incriminating correspondence laid out for the world. “These are records of the Baron de Saint-Loup’s illegal antiquities trading, conducted through front businesses, including the club where this woman was forced to perform. The Baron profits from stolen art. And Lucien Moreau profits from stolen people.”

Lily. Evie’s heart seized as she saw, standing at the edge of the aisle, a figure in a deep red dress that had been hidden in the crowd. Lily’s eyes met hers across the chaos of voices, and she was moving—breaking through the press of bodies, running toward the stage.

Lucien shrieked orders. Security men rushed forward. But the doors of the theatre burst open, and a wave of gendarmes in blue uniforms poured in, led by a commissioner whose face was carved from granite.

“Lucien Moreau,” the commissioner intoned, “you are under arrest for fraud, embezzlement, and the illegal operation of a licensed establishment.”

Lucien’s mouth opened and shut. The document in his hand fluttered to the floor like a dead leaf. The gendarmes took him by the arms, and for a moment, his eyes met Evie’s—and there was nothing in them but a cold, empty hatred that would outlive his handcuffs.

But Evie barely saw him. Because Lily was on the stage now, her arms around Evie’s waist, and the sisters were holding each other in the middle of the golden circle of light, and the audience was uncertain whether to clap or stare.

“He took me to the villa,” Lily whispered into Evie’s hair, her voice shaking. “When the news came. I thought they would lock me away, but Étienne—Étienne opened the gate. He said he could not hold a woman against her father’s own blood anymore.”

Evie pulled back, her hands trembling on Lily’s shoulders. “You’re free?”

“We’re free.” Lily’s smile was shattered glass and morning light all at once. “Look.”

She nodded toward the wings, where Julien stood with the commissioner, speaking in low, quick French, pointing at his papers. The commissioner nodded. A gendarme folded Lucien’s forged contract into an evidence envelope. And somewhere in the mezzanine, the Baron de Saint-Loup, who had come to watch Evie humiliate herself, was being escorted out through a side exit, his face a mask of beige fury that no one on earth would believe had ever been innocent.

Evie turned back to Lily, and for the first time in weeks, she allowed herself to breathe.

“I thought I would never find you,” she said.

Lily laughed—a broken, beautiful sound. “You did. You impossible, ridiculous sister. You sang to me in a garden and I did not even know your face.”

“And now?”

Lily took her hand and squeezed it. “And now we have each other. The rest—the money, the scandal, the men who wanted to own us—they can burn.”

Evie looked out at the audience, still restless, still hungry for more drama. She caught Julien’s eye across the chaos. He gave her the smallest of nods—a promise, silent and solid as stone.

The conductor cleared his throat. The orchestra sat uncertain, bows stilled.

Evie squared her shoulders, walked to the front of the stage, and opened her mouth to sing.