Read Chapter 32: The Father's Return

The morning light was wrong. Too clean. Too ordinary for a day that had already swallowed his brother's ghost and was about to spit out everything else.

Julien stood at the window of the club's empty medical office—Camille's office, still hers in every way that mattered—watching the training pitch below. The grounds crew were rolling the turf. Birds sang. Somewhere beyond the perimeter wall, the Mediterranean glittered like it didn't know what was coming.

“Two hours,” Camille said behind him. She was packing the last of her things into a canvas bag, moving slowly. Not defeated. Just conserving. “Board meeting. Then this is over, one way or another.”

“I know.”

“You don't have to come.”

He turned. She looked smaller in the daylight without her lab coat, but her eyes were steady. That was the thing about her. Everything else could fall apart, and she’d just anchor herself deeper into the ground.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

Something moved outside. A figure at the main gate, arguing with the security guard. Julien squinted. Old man. Rail-thin, stooped, wearing clothes that hung loose like they'd been bought for a heavier body.

His heart stopped. Then started again, wrong.

“Julien?” Camille was beside him now, following his gaze.

“That's my father.”

---

Antoine Valois looked like a man who had aged twenty years in five. His face was all sharp angles—cheekbones cutting through skin that had gone sallow and gray. His hair, once thick and dark like Julien's, was thin and white at the temples, plastered flat with sweat. He looked like a photograph left in the sun too long.

The guard let him through after Julien waved, and the old man walked across the pitch slowly, favoring his right leg. He stopped at the bottom of the clubhouse steps, looking up at Julien with eyes that were Vincent's eyes. Julien felt the air leave his lungs.

“You look good,” Antoine said. His voice cracked on the second word. “Strong. Like you're playing well.”

“I'm not playing,” Julien said flatly. “I've been suspended. The club is trying to end my career. My brother's death might have been murder. And you chose today—of all days—to come back.”

Antoine flinched like Julien had struck him. “I didn't know about the suspension. I've been—” He stopped, swallowed. “I've been in Marseille. Working on the docks. I saw the news about the club. About the—the investigation.” He said the word like it was foreign to him. “I thought you might need me.”

“Need you?” Julien's laugh was hollow, ugly. “Where were you when Vincent died? Where were you when I needed someone to tell me it wasn't my fault? Where were you for the last six years, Papa?”

Antoine's shoulders crumpled. He seemed to shrink further into himself, a man already hollowed out.

“I couldn't,” he whispered. “I couldn't stay. Every place I looked, I saw him. I saw his face in the crowd. I heard his voice in the kitchen. I kept thinking—” He pressed a hand to his chest, breathing hard. “I kept thinking it should have been me. He was my boy. He was supposed to bury me, Julien. Not the other way around.”

“So you buried him, and then you buried yourself,” Camille said. She'd come down the steps to stand beside Julien, her voice soft but not gentle. “You left your other son alone.”

Antoine looked at her properly for the first time. Something shifted in his face. Recognition, or the echo of it.

“You're her,” he said. “Vincent's physio. He talked about you. In his letters.” His eyes moved to Julien. “He said you found someone good. That she was strong. That maybe—maybe you'd be okay.”

Julien's jaw tightened. “Vincent wrote to you?”

“Every week.” Antoine's voice broke. “I never wrote back. I told myself I would, when I was ready. Then he was gone, and the letters kept coming for two more days. The post doesn't know when a man dies.” He reached into his coat pocket, trembling, and pulled out a folded envelope, creased and softened from being read and refolded a hundred times. “I've kept this one. His last one. I read it every night.”

Julien stared at the envelope. His brother's handwriting—bold, messy, alive—scrawled across the front.

“I don't want your guilt,” Julien said, but his voice had lost its edge. It came out thin. Young. “I want my brother back.”

“I know.” Antoine took a step forward, stopped at arm's length, like he was afraid to touch Julien or afraid he'd collapse if he did. “I know, son. And I can't give him to you. I can't undo anything. I can't be the father you deserved then. But I can be here now. If you'll let me.”

The word *son* hung in the air between them. Julien felt something crack open in his chest—a locked door, a sealed vault. He thought about Vincent. About the way his brother had always been the one to step between Julien and their father's moods, absorbing the blows, softening the edges. Vincent had forgiven Antoine a hundred times, a thousand times, for things Julien couldn't even remember.

And Vincent was dead.

Julien thought about the board meeting. About Moreau's confession. About the syndicate and the missing drive and the camera footage and everything else stacking up like a wall in front of him.

He didn't have room for this. Not today.

“I can't forgive you,” he said.

Antoine nodded slowly, like he'd expected it. “I understand.”

“Not yet.”

The old man's eyes flickered up. Something tentative, fragile, kindled there.

“There's a lot you don't know,” Julien said, the words like gravel in his throat. “About Vincent. About what happened. I'm going to find out the truth today. I'm going to the board meeting, and I'm going to tell them everything, and I'm going to lose my career or save it, and I don't know which side it'll land on. But if you want to be part of this—if you want to help—then you need to know what we're walking into.”

Antoine looked at Camille. Then back at Julien. He put the envelope back in his pocket, pressed it against his heart.

“Tell me everything, son.”

Julien opened his mouth. The words wouldn't come. He looked at Camille, and she stepped forward, placing herself at his side.

“Two hours,” she said. “Let's use them.”

---

They were halfway across the parking lot when Julien heard his father's voice behind him, barely a rasp.

“Julien.”

He stopped. Didn't turn.

“I was there,” Antoine said. “At the investigation. When they asked questions about how Vincent died. I told them it was an accident.” A pause. A shuddering breath. “I lied.”

Julien turned slowly. Camille froze beside him.

“What?”

“They told me—afterward—that Vincent had refused something. Some men. I didn't understand at the time. But your coach, the old one, he came to me. He said if I made trouble, if I pushed, Julian—my other boy's career would end. Like Vincent's life had. So I lied. I signed their statement. I let them call it an accident.”

The parking lot was silent. A seagull cried somewhere far off.

“You knew,” Julien said, his voice barely a whisper. “You knew it wasn't an accident. And you said nothing.”

Antoine's face crumpled. “I thought I was protecting you.”

Julien's fists clenched at his sides. Camille's hand closed around his wrist.

He stared at his father—at the ruined man who'd carried this secret for six years, who'd let his son believe his brother died because of his own carelessness on the pitch, who'd buried his shame in Marseille and dock work and a folded envelope in his pocket.

“We need to go,” Julien said, his voice flat as glass. “Now I don't know if that changes what we do at the meeting. But it changes everything else.”