Read Chapter 16: The Interrogation

The handcuffs were cold. That was the first thing Camille registered as the plainclothes officer shoved her into the back of the unmarked car—the bite of metal against her wrists, the way it clicked too tight, the finality of it.

She’d been halfway to her brother’s meeting. Seven a.m. at the Brasserie des Fontaines, a fifteen-minute walk from her apartment, and she’d taken the long way through the Marais to clear her head. Instead, she’d been intercepted at a crosswalk by two men in cheap suits who flashed badges and asked her to come quietly.

“Quietly” had been optimistic. They’d cuffed her in front of a baker unloading croissants.

Now she sat in an interview room that smelled of stale coffee and bleach, wrists still bound, facing a man with a file folder and the tired eyes of someone who’d stopped being surprised by human failure years ago.

“Inspector Vasseur.” He introduced himself without looking up from the folder. “And before you ask, no relation to the name you’ve been using.”

Camille kept her face still. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He finally looked at her. “Madame Vasseur. Swiss widow. Interested in fine art.” He opened the folder, revealing grainy photographs—her at Delacroix’s soirée, her outside Legrand’s gallery, her in the catacombs. The last one made her stomach drop. “You’ve been busy, Mademoiselle Moreau.”

“I’m an insurance investigator. I was working a case.”

“Working a case.” He savored the words. “That’s an interesting way to describe breaking into a private vault and assaulting a security guard.”

“I didn’t—“

“Your accomplice did.” He closed the folder. “Étienne Marchand. Known to certain circles as Le Fantôme. You’re familiar with the name?”

Camille forced herself to breathe slowly. She could deny everything, play the confused civilian, demand a lawyer. But something in the inspector’s posture told her he wasn’t going to let her walk away without a story.

“I know the name,” she said carefully. “I was investigating him. The forgery ring he’s connected to.”

Vasseur laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound. “Investigating him. Is that what you call it? Because from where I sit, it looks like you’ve been running with him. The catacombs. Legrand’s soirée. The gallery.” He leaned forward. “You’ve been seen together in four different locations over the past week. That’s not an investigation. That’s a partnership.”

“He’s an informant.”

“He’s a ghost. He doesn’t exist. There are no records, no prints, no warrants—nothing. But you’ve been tripping alarms with him all over Paris.” Vasseur opened the folder again, pulling out a second photograph. It was older, the edges yellowed. Camille’s father, standing outside a bank in Lyon, shoulders hunched like a man carrying a weight he couldn’t set down.

She felt the breath leave her lungs.

“I know about your father’s debts, Mademoiselle Moreau. The bankruptcy. The house. The—what do they call it in the insurance world?—creative accounting that got him disbarred.” He placed the photograph on the table between them. “I know you’ve been paying off his creditors for years. Living well below your means. Selling furniture, jewelry, that little Renault you used to drive.”

“That’s not a crime.”

“No. But it is a motive.” His voice went soft, almost kind. “A woman with that much financial pressure, working alongside the most notorious art thief in Europe… it writes itself, doesn’t it? The debt-ridden investigator who decides to flip sides.”

Camille’s jaw clenched. “I haven’t flipped anything. I’m trying to take down a forgery ring that’s laundering millions through Paris galleries. Étienne Marchand is my way in.”

“Étienne Marchand is your co-conspirator.”

“Prove it.”

Vasseur’s eyes flickered. For a moment, she saw something behind the mask—frustration, maybe, or the calculation of a man who knew he didn’t have enough to hold her.

“I don’t need to prove it yet,” he said. “I just need to make sure you know that we’re watching. That if you walk out of this room, you do so with a leash.”

“What leash?”

He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re going to tell me what you know about the forgery ring. Where they operate, who runs it, what they’re moving. And you’re going to do it now, before your lawyer gets here and complicates things.”

“I don’t have a lawyer.”

“You do. She’s in the lobby.” He checked his watch. “You have about fifteen minutes before she walks through that door. So let’s be productive.”

Camille stared at him. Fifteen minutes. Enough time for him to extract something he could use, or enough time for her to figure out what he really wanted. She went with the second option.

“You don’t care about the ring,” she said slowly. “You’ve had years to take down Legrand, and you haven’t. You’re not interested in forgeries. You’re interested in Le Fantôme.”

Vasseur’s smile thinned.

“You’ve been hunting him for years,” she continued. “Everyone in the insurance world knows that. The great Inspector Vasseur, the man who was supposed to catch him and never did. So this isn’t about justice. This is about ego.”

“Careful, Mademoiselle Moreau.”

“And now you think you have leverage through me. A way to get to him.” She leaned back. “You’re going to be disappointed.”

The door opened. A woman in a sharp navy suit stepped in—mid-fifties, silver-haired, with the calm efficiency of someone who’d faced down worse than Vasseur before breakfast.

“Mademoiselle Moreau,” she said, setting a briefcase on the table. “I’m Isabelle Duval. Your brother sent me.”

Camille’s throat tightened. Julien. Of course.

“I’m her lawyer,” Duval continued, turning to Vasseur. “And unless you have formal charges, she’s leaving with me now.”

Vasseur’s expression flickered with something close to contempt. “She’s free to go. For now.” He gathered his folder. “But tell your client that I’ll be watching. And that if she crosses paths with Le Fantôme again, I won’t be this generous.”

He left. The door clicked shut behind him.

Duval moved to Camille’s side, producing a key and unlocking the cuffs with practiced efficiency. “Your brother’s in the car. He said to tell you to be careful—that Legrand has friends in the police. Friends who might be watching you for reasons that have nothing to do with art theft.”

Camille rubbed her wrists, feeling the raw ache where the metal had bitten. She thought about Vasseur’s file, his knowledge of her father, his easy familiarity with her movements.

“He’s not on our side,” she said quietly.

Duval’s eyes were sharp. “No. And he’s not the only one.”

Camille followed her out of the interview room, past the desks with their clicking keyboards and buzzing phones, into the gray morning light of the street. A black sedan idled at the curb. Through the tinted window, she caught a glimpse of Julien’s profile—jaw tight, hands gripping the wheel.

She slid into the passenger seat. He didn’t look at her.

“You were supposed to meet me at seven,” he said.

“I was arrested.”

“I know.” He finally turned, and his eyes held an exhaustion she hadn’t seen before. “I’ve got a friend in the prefecture who told me about Vasseur’s interest in your case. He’s been tracking you for weeks, Camille. He didn’t just stumble onto you today.”

The words settled over her like a cold fog. She’d been so focused on Legrand, on the forgery ring, on the trail of a dead man named Alain Roussel—she’d missed the trail someone had been laying for her.

“He knows about the debt,” she said. “About Papa.”

Julien’s face tightened. “Everyone knows about the debt. The question is who’s using it.”

The car pulled away from the curb, merging into the morning traffic. Camille watched the station shrink in the side mirror, Vasseur’s window darkening in the dawn light.

She’d thought the police were the one force in Paris she could trust. Now she understood—in this city, everyone was playing a game of their own. And she had just become a piece on someone else’s board.