Read Chapter 5: The Debt Collector

The damp green smell of the Île Saint-Louis clung to the stairwell of her father’s building, a relic of a Paris that had not yet surrendered to glass towers. Élise climbed the narrow steps, her boots echoing off worn stone. She’d told no one where she was going. Not Renaud. Not the palace. Just her father.

He opened the door before she knocked, as if he’d been waiting. Jean Moreau was a broad-shouldered man gone to seed, his once-trim uniform gut now pressed against a cardigan that had known better decades. His eyes, the same pale grey as hers, flickered with something between warmth and dread.

“Louise,” he said, using her middle name—an old habit reserved for when he wanted to soften her. “You didn’t call.”

“I didn’t know I had to book an appointment with my own father.”

He stepped aside, and she entered the cramped flat. The place smelled of coffee and old paper. She noted the piles of unopened bills on the sideboard before she could stop herself. A silver-framed photo of her mother, dead twelve years now, watched over the chaos. Her father’s posture was careful, deliberate, as if he’d rehearsed for this visit.

“You’re on the news,” he said, closing the door. “Captain Moreau, tasked with finding the prince’s shooter. They called you a hero. I called you a fool.”

“They call me what’s convenient,” Élise said, taking the chair he gestured to, the one with the good spring. He sat opposite, a low table between them. “When did you stop reading the sports section and start reading politics, Papa?”

He didn’t answer. He poured two glasses of wine from an open bottle, though it wasn’t yet noon. She didn’t touch hers.

“I need background,” she said. “On the royal household. The whispers. The people they keep. You worked the Palace liaison detail for eight years. You know where the bodies are buried—figuratively, at least.”

Her father’s jaw tightened. He took a long sip of wine, buying time. “The palace is a different country now. I’ve been retired ten years. They don’t send me Christmas cards.”

“You still have contacts. You wrote to old partners. You know what’s really been said about Louis since he started pushing back against the old guard.” She leaned forward. “Someone shot the heir to the throne in his own home, Papa. I need to know who hates him enough to do it—and who in the palace wanted me to believe it was a random madman.”

Jean Moreau set the glass down. For a long moment, he stared at his hands, thick fingers scarred from a lifetime of street work and bar brawls. When he looked up, his grey eyes were watery.

“You need to drop this, Louise.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You walk away. You cite personal matters, you take a desk job in Lyon, you—you live.”

The silence cracked open between them. Élise felt her pulse quicken. Her father was not a fearful man. He’d walked into riot lines, taken batons to the ribs, chased killers through the sewers without flinching. But the man in front of her was afraid.

“Why?” she asked, quiet.

He exhaled, slow and deliberate. “Because the people who move against that family aren’t in the gutter. They wear good suits and they live in the Marais. And they don’t leave witnesses.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper, creased as if he’d been carrying it for weeks. He held it out to her.

She took it. It was a bank notice—a final demand. The name at the top read: DUVAL & FILS, FINANCE. The amount was staggering. Six figures. Her stomach dropped.

“You’re in debt to a financier?” she asked, her voice barely controlled. “To Duval?”

“The pension doesn’t stretch, and your mother’s care—those last years—I made choices.” His voice cracked. “Duval was kind at first. Considered a loan for a retired officer of the palace guard. A favor, he called it. He knows people in the court. He made it sound like a reward for years of service.”

Élise gripped the paper. “This is twelve times what you borrowed.”

“Interest compounds,” he said, but the bitterness in his voice told her it wasn’t simple interest. It was leverage. “I was going to pay it off with a piece of land in Brittany—your mother’s family plot. It’s worth enough. But Duval’s paperwork has a clause. He can seize more than the collateral if I default. Everything.”

Élise felt a cold stone sink in her gut. “You want me to drop the investigation because you owe money to a man with connections to the royal court?”

“I want you to live,” her father said, and the words were ragged. “I’ve made my peace with what’s coming for me. But not for you. Not over this.”

She stared at the paper, reading the small print despite herself. The address of Duval’s firm was in the second arrondissement, a stone’s throw from the Palais-Royal. The signature was ornate, old-blood French. The date was two weeks before the prince was shot.

“Did Duval ever ask you about the prince? About palace movements? Security schedules?”

Her father’s silence was the worst answer he could have given.

“Papa.”

“He asked general questions,” Jean Moreau said, his voice hollow. “About who commanded the household guard. About how the prince traveled. I told him I was too far from those decisions.” He paused. “But I didn’t tell him nothing.”

Élise closed her eyes. She wanted to be angry—at her father for his weakness, at Duval for his predatory patience, at the world that made a retired policeman beg at the gates of finance. But the anger settled into something colder, more immediate.

“Duval didn’t just want money,” she said, opening her eyes. “Whoever ordered the shooting needed to know the prince’s routine, his unprotected moments. They needed information from people inside the security apparatus. And they used men like you to get it.”

Her father opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out. He looked older than she’d ever seen him—a man who had measured his integrity in degrees, until it eroded to nothing.

“Is there more?” she asked. “Anything else Duval asked for, anything you gave him, tell me now.”

“A name,” her father said, barely audible. “He asked me to confirm that Captain Beaumont commanded the prince’s security detail. I said yes. I didn’t know why he wanted that. I swear.”

Élise stood, folding the notice and slipping it into her pocket. Beaumont. The captain who insisted on handling Louis’s security. The man who gave assurances before the attack, who executed the shooter before questions could be asked. The man who had summoned her this very morning.

“Louise, please,” her father said, rising. “Let the bank take the house. Let them ruin me. But you walk away. The prince is half-dead in a hospital bed. They don’t need you to finish the job.”

She turned at the door, hand on the knob. “They killed the Grand Chamberlain for asking questions. They fed me a false crime scene. They’re burying evidence inside the palace, and now a man who finances royals and republicans alike is squeezing my father for intelligence on security protocols.” She shook her head slowly. “There’s no walking away from this, Papa. There’s only finding the truth before it finds me.”

“Then find someone you can trust,” he said, desperate. “Someone outside the system.”

Élise thought of Madame de Villiers and her silken contradictions. Thought of the secret letter from the prince. Thought of the silver lily cufflink, an expensive sigil on a working man’s cuff.

“I’m working on it,” she said.

She closed the door behind her and stood in the dim hallway for a moment, pressing her palm flat against the old wood, breathing through the nausea. Then she pulled out her phone and typed a message to Renaud.

*Tell Beaumont I’ll see him now. I have new questions.*

She hit send before she could second-guess it. The stairs stretched below her like a descent into water. She took the first step, and the debt collector’s name burned in her pocket like a brand.