Read Chapter 28: The Missing Scrum Cap

The scrum cap wasn’t where Camille had left it.

She’d tucked it beneath the second drawer of the filing cabinet, wrapped in a clean towel, wedged behind a box of ultrasound gel. Nobody had any reason to open that drawer. Nobody but her. And now it was gone, and the towel sat folded on top of the cabinet like an apology.

“Lucas,” she breathed.

She found him in the equipment room, sorting shoulder pads into bins with the enthusiasm of a man serving a prison sentence. He looked up when she entered, and the flash of guilt that crossed his face was almost too fast to catch. Almost.

“The scrum cap,” she said, closing the door behind her. “The one from Vincent’s bag. Where is it?”

Lucas set down the pad in his hands. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were in my office yesterday. I saw you coming out.”

“I was looking for tape.”

“There’s tape in this room. There’s tape in every room in this building. Try again.”

He exhaled, long and slow, and when he spoke his voice had dropped to something careful. Controlled. The voice of a man who’d been coached on exactly what to say. “A man came in. He said he was Julien’s father.”

Camille’s blood went cold. “Julien’s father is dead.”

“He didn’t know that.” Lucas shrugged, but the gesture was stiff. “He had identification. Club lanyard. Said he was here for a family matter, that Julien had asked him to collect something from your office. He knew exactly which drawer. Knew exactly what was inside. I figured it was fine.”

“You figured.” She took a step toward him. “You didn’t think to ask me? You didn’t think it was strange that some man you’ve never seen claims to be a dead person?”

Lucas’s jaw tightened. “He knew things. About the club. About Julien’s medical file. About your—about your situation.”

Camille went very still. “My situation.”

“He said Julien had told him everything. About the degree. About the notes.” Lucas swallowed. “He said you’d be grateful if I helped him.”

The floor tilted beneath her. The syndicate. They knew about the degree, about the notes—of course they did, they’d used Delacroix to threaten her with it—but now they had physical evidence from Vincent’s bag, and someone had walked into the club and taken it under a dead man’s name, and Lucas had simply handed it over like a receipt.

“What did he look like?” she asked.

“Tall. Broad. Dark hair going grey. Looked like he’d played the game himself, once. He had a scar—” Lucas touched his own cheek, just below the eye. “Here.”

Camille was already pulling out her phone.

Julien answered on the second ring. She could hear the weight room in the background, the clank of iron, the low murmur of other players. “Camille. I was about to call you. The board meeting—we need a plan before tomorrow morning.”

“Forget the board meeting,” she said. “Vincent’s scrum cap is gone. Lucas gave it to a man claiming to be your father.”

A beat of silence. Then, dangerously quiet: “Put Lucas on speaker.”

She did, and Julien’s voice filled the equipment room like a storm front rolling in. “Describe him again. Slowly.”

Lucas did, his voice shrinking with each detail. Dark hair, grey at the temples. Scar under the left eye. A French accent but clipped, northern, not from the coast. He wore a black jacket, and he’d known his way around the club’s back corridors like he’d been given a map.

“Christ,” Julien said. “I know who that is.”

“Who?” Camille asked.

“My father’s old teammate. He came to the funeral. I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years.” A pause. “His name is André Valois. And he doesn’t work for the club. He works for Aubert.”

Marcel Aubert. The man they’d discovered was the cartel’s front, the supposed landowner whose name sat on the paperwork of Moreau’s debts.

“He was at the funeral?” Camille said. “Then he knew your father. He could know what was in the bag.”

“He knew better than I did,” Julien said grimly. “Vincent and I weren’t exactly close at the end. But Valois—he was around in the old days. He knew what my father kept. What he recorded.” A rustling sound, the setting down of weights. “Where are you?”

“The club.”

“Stay there. I’m coming. And don’t let Lucas out of your sight.”

Lucas had gone pale, his earlier composure crumbling like sand. “I didn’t know,” he said, but Camille was already moving, grabbing her keys from the desk, checking the hallway.

“Get me the CCTV feed from the main entrance,” she said. “Now.”

The security office was unmanned—of course it was, the club had cut half the staff after Moreau’s embezzlement had started biting—so Lucas fumbled through the login while Camille watched the clock. Julien would be maybe ten minutes out, traffic willing. Ten minutes was an eternity.

The feed came up. Camille scanned it, stepping backward through the afternoon. There—a figure in a black jacket, moving through the reception area with the unhurried confidence of someone who belonged. He wasn’t wearing the lanyard anymore. He didn’t need it. He’d already gotten what he came for.

She watched him pause at the exit, turn, and look directly up at the camera. His face was clear: the scar, the grey hair, the cold eyes. And then he smiled, raised the scrum cap in a mock salute, and walked out.

“He knew,” Camille said. “He knew he was on camera. He wanted us to see him.”

Julien arrived eight minutes later, still in his training kit, sweat cooling on his forearms. He didn’t look at Lucas. He looked only at the frozen frame on the screen.

“Valois,” he said. “I haven’t seen him since the funeral. My father’s team—they called themselves the old guard. Valois was the one who kept in touch.” His jaw worked. “He was there when Vincent played his last season. He knew what the club did to him. He knew about the injections, the pressure, the threats.”

“He’s not a landowner’s associate,” Camille said. “He’s a player. He’s one of them.”

“He’s worse.” Julien turned from the screen. “He’s the one who introduces the young players to the syndicate. That’s how Vincent got involved in the first place.” He looked at her, and something raw had surfaced in his eyes. “My brother didn’t find the syndicate. The syndicate found him. Through Valois.”

The room seemed to shrink around them. Camille thought of Vincent’s letter, of the warning he’d written for Julien years before his death. And now the man who had first pulled Vincent into that world had walked into the club and taken the last physical piece of him.

“Why the scrum cap?” Lucas asked, his voice small. “Why would they want that?”

Julien and Camille exchanged a look. Because it wasn’t just a scrum cap. It had been in Vincent’s bag, the bag he’d had with him when he died, the bag that had held evidence someone had gone to great lengths to bury.

“They don’t just want to isolate you,” Camille said slowly. “They want everything Vincent had. Everything that ties them to him. They’re cleaning house.”

Julien was already moving toward the door. “Valois will go back to Aubert. And Aubert reports to Marseille.” He looked over his shoulder. “If I can catch Valois before he hands that cap over, we have something. A connection. A name the board can’t ignore.”

“You can’t go after him alone,” Camille said.

“I’m not going after him.” Julien’s smile was hard. “I’m going to intercept him. And you’re coming with me.”

She should have said no. She should have called the police, called Moreau, done anything but climb into Julien’s car and race through the afternoon streets toward a man who had been doing this far longer than either of them had been alive.

But she climbed in anyway.

They drove toward the port, where Valois had been seen heading, according to a frightened call from one of the club’s kit men who owed Julien a favor. The streets narrowed as they approached the water, the tourist crowds thinning into local traffic and fishing boats.

Julien pulled over at a corner. “There.” He pointed.

A black jacket, moving through the crowd near the fish market. The scrum cap was visible in his hand, a splash of club colors against the grey of the day.

“Stay here,” Julien said, but Camille was already opening her door.

They moved through the crowd together, fast and silent. Valois was ahead, weaving between stalls, unaware or unconcerned. They were twenty meters away. Fifteen. Ten.

A van suddenly pulled up between them, blocking the gap. When it pulled away, Valois was gone. The crowd had closed around the empty space like water.

Julien spun, searching. “Where did he—?”

Camille saw it a moment too late. The scrum cap, discarded on the cobblestones. She picked it up. It was empty. Whatever Vincent had hidden inside it—the recording, the evidence, the proof they’d been counting on—was gone.

“He didn’t vanish,” she said slowly. “He delivered it.”

Julien’s face went white.

“He’s not going to Aubert to hand that over,” Camille continued, the pieces clicking into place. “He had it delivered here, to the port. To someone. Whoever’s been in the club all along.”

The scrum cap sat in her hands, a hollow shell.

The proof was already gone. And whoever had taken it was still inside the club, waiting.