Read Chapter 33: The Senator's Revenge

The narrow rue des Fontaines smelled of wet coal and cabbage water. Camille had taken the long way home from the newspaper office, savoring the first true warmth of spring, when she noticed the footsteps behind her—not the shuffling tread of a laborer or the quick patter of a shopgirl, but something measured, deliberate.

She crossed the street. The footsteps followed.

Camille quickened her pace, cursing the heels that had seemed so elegant that morning. The Île de la Cité lay ahead, its bridges promising crowds, safety. She was twenty paces from the corner when the man closed the distance.

"Camille Moreau?"

She turned. He was broad-shouldered, with a face that had been broken too many times to hold any expression beyond a blank menace. His coat was too fine for his bearing—a gentleman's garment worn by someone who had never been one.

"I don't know you," she said, keeping her voice steady.

"No. But you know my employer." He smiled, revealing a missing tooth. "The Comte de Vasseur sends his regards."

Camille's blood went cold. She took a step back and felt the wall of a building against her shoulders.

"He wanted me to remind you," the man continued, closing the gap, "that widows' fortunes are built on discretion. And that reporters who dig graves sometimes fall into them."

He was close enough now that she could smell the garlic on his breath, the cheap wine. His hand shot out and seized her wrist, twisting it until pain shot up her arm.

"If you know what's good for you, you'll drop this business about the Comte. Forget the locket. Forget the old woman. Your brother—what's his name? Gabriel?—he's found a nice position at the printing press. It would be a shame if something happened to—"

Camille did not think. She acted. Her free hand snapped up, fingers finding his eyes, fingernails raking across the soft flesh. The man howled and released her wrist, staggering backward.

"Bitch!" He lunged for her again, but Camille was already moving, her umbrella swinging up to catch him across the temple. The metal tip glanced off bone, drawing blood.

He came at her again, and this time she could not dodge. His fist caught her shoulder, spinning her into the street. She went down hard, gravel biting into her palms.

"Enough!"

The voice came from behind them. A man in a dark suit had emerged from a doorway, a silver-headed cane in his hand. He was older, perhaps sixty, with iron-gray hair and the bearing of a man who had commanded soldiers.

"Walk away," the stranger said quietly, "or I will call for the police. And I will testify that I saw you assault this woman."

The thug looked from the stranger to Camille, weighing his options. The sound of footsteps echoed from the next street—a patrol, perhaps, or an evening crowd spilling from a nearby café.

"This isn't over," he said, pointing at Camille. Then he melted back into the shadows from which he had come.

The stranger helped Camille to her feet. "Are you injured?"

She tested her shoulder, winced. "I'll live." She looked at him properly now, taking in the careful tailoring of his coat, the gold watch chain. "Thank you, Monsieur—"

"Jean-Baptiste Roche." He studied her face. "You're the actress who writes for Le Monde. The one who's been speaking about the Vasseur affair."

Camille's heart seized. "You know who I am?"

"I know the quality of your writing, Mademoiselle Moreau." He smiled. "I also know the Comte. We served on several committees together before his fall. He always did prefer to hire others to do his dirty work."

"You believe me, then? About what he did?"

"I believe that a man who posts bail for fraud does not send his henchmen to threaten a woman without cause." Roche adjusted his cuffs. "I am a Senator, Mademoiselle. I have spent thirty years in politics, and I have seen men like the Comte destroy themselves with their own arrogance."

He paused, studying her with sudden intensity. "You are building a case against him. A public one."

"I'm writing an exposé. For the paper."

"Then write it," Roche said. "But write it properly. A scandal piece will be dismissed. A demand for a full parliamentary investigation—that cannot be ignored."

Camille felt the weight of his words settle over her. She had planned to expose the Comte's fraud, yes. But she had thought of it as a newspaper story, one piece among many.

This was something larger.

"Senator," she said slowly, "would you support such an investigation?"

"I would chair it myself," he said. "If a credible journalist would call for it in print." He handed her his card. "You know where to find me."

He tipped his hat and walked away, leaving Camille standing alone in the street, her shoulder throbbing, her mind racing.

She walked the rest of the way home on legs that trembled but did not fail her. In her garret, she lit the lamp and sat down at her desk. Gabriel was not yet home from the printing press. The room was silent save for the scratch of her pen.

The editorial wrote itself in a fever.

*"This week, I was assaulted in the streets of Paris by a man employed to silence me. The man who sent him is the Comte de Vasseur, awaiting trial for fraud, free on bail he should never have been granted..."*

She wrote of the investors who had lost their savings, of the widows' fortunes that had vanished, of Aurelie, whose very identity had been stolen. She named dates and amounts and witnesses.

And then she wrote the final line: *"I call upon the Senate to open a full investigation into the affairs of the Comte de Vasseur. If a woman cannot walk the streets of this city without fear because she has raised her voice against corruption, then tell me—what kind of Republic do we live in?"*

Camille set down her pen. Outside, the bells of Notre-Dame tolled midnight.

She did not hide the pages away. She left them on her desk, in plain view.

Let the Comte's agents find them. Let them come.

She was done running.