Read Chapter 12: The Yacht Party

The tender sway of the yacht’s deck felt like a lie dressed in mahogany and brass. Camille kept her spine straight, her hand resting lightly on Victor’s forearm, her smile fixed in the practiced curve of a woman who had never once worried about a price tag.

The *Amarante* was a floating palace. Three decks of cream-white fiberglass and dark glass, its interior glowing like a lantern against the black water of the harbor. Around them, the Gala Méridien unfolded in a choreographed murmur of champagne flutes and discreet laughter. A string quartet played something by Chopin, and waiters in midnight-blue livery wove between guests draped in silk and diamonds.

Real diamonds, Camille noted. Real watches. Real art on the walls—a small Miró, a Calder mobile that turned lazily in the breeze from the open stern. Everything real.

Except the necklace in Falk’s vault. And, if their theory held, the forged pendant now displayed in a glass case near the main salon, spotlit like a holy relic.

“You’re staring,” Victor murmured, his lips barely moving.

“I’m cataloguing,” she replied, her smile never wavering. “That’s what a buyer does.”

“Buyers don’t catalogue. They covet.” He steered her gently toward the bar with a hand at the small of her back. The touch was light, impersonal—but it still sent a current up her spine she refused to name.

They had prepared for this. Two hours in a boutique off the Place du Casino, Victor greasing palms with cash from an envelope he’d refused to explain. Camille now wore a gown the color of champagne, cut to suggest wealth rather than flaunt it. Her own necklace—a modest strand of freshwater pearls borrowed from the boutique’s owner—was deliberately underwhelming. A connoisseur’s choice.

Victor, in a dinner jacket that fit him like it had been sewn onto his bones, looked like he’d been born to these decks. That was the danger of him, she thought. He became whoever the room required. She’d known that once, intimately.

“The case is at eleven o’clock,” she said, accepting a flute of vintage champagne from a passing tray. She didn’t drink. Neither did Victor.

“I see it.” He tilted his head as if commenting on the view. “Two guards. One at the salon entrance, one at the case itself. Plus the crew.”

“And Bellamy?”

“Not yet.” His eyes swept the crowd. “But someone’s watching us. Lidia, at the far rail.”

Camille’s pulse thickened. She turned, casual, as if admiring the coastline—the glittering necklace of lights that was Monaco at night. And there she was. Lidia Vasquez, in a breathtaking column of oxblood silk, her dark hair swept up to reveal the delicate architecture of her jaw. She was holding a martini with two olives, and she was looking directly at Camille.

Not at Victor. At Camille.

“She knows something,” Camille said.

“She knows everyone,” Victor replied. “That’s her trade. But if she knows you, we’re blown.”

“She’s never seen me. I’ve only seen her in photographs from auction catalogs.”

“Cameras lie.” Victor’s smile turned intimate, leaning in as if to whisper something flirtatious. “But eyes don’t. She’s already read you.”

“Then we leave.”

“No,” he said, and his hand found hers, squeezing once before releasing. “That’s what she’d expect. We go to her. Control the conversation.”

Camille wanted to argue. Argue with him. With the plan. With the heat still lingering on her palm where his fingers had pressed. But he was already moving, offering his arm with the ease of a man extending a dance invitation.

She took it.

Lidia met them halfway, near the port-side rail. The water below slapped softly against the hull. The night air smelled of salt and expensive perfume.

“Victor Damasio,” Lidia said, extending a hand that Victor took with European formality. “I haven’t seen you since—what was it? The auction in Vienna. You were selling that Klimt that turned out to be a Moritz forgery. Word was you came out ahead, despite the scandal.”

Victor’s smile didn’t flicker. “I came out alive. That’s the bar I set.”

Lidia laughed—low, musical, genuinely amused. Then her gaze slid to Camille. “And you are?”

“Camille,” she said, giving no surname. A titled woman’s privilege. “A friend of Victor’s. Interested in the Bellamy pendant.”

“Interested.” Lidia’s eyes glinted. “A dangerous word tonight. The pendant has been certified by the house, feted by the press. It arrived in Monaco in a convoy that cost more than most countries’ defense budgets. Yet I hear you’re not the only one interested in it—there are whispers of a rival valuation circulating. A question of provenance.”

Camille kept her breath even. “Provenance is my specialty.”

“Is it?” Lidia swirled her martini, studying Camille over the rim. “I confess, your face is familiar. But I can’t place it. It will irritate me until I do.”

“I have one of those faces,” Camille said. “Forgettable.”

“No, my dear.” Lidia’s smile sharpened. “That is the last thing you are.”

A waiter passed with canapés. Victor took two, offering one to Camille with a gesture so natural she almost believed they were a couple. She bit into the salmon, tasting nothing.

“You’re with Falk’s crowd,” Victor said, not quite a question.

Lidia’s eyebrow arched. “I’m with anyone who pays for my expertise. Tonight, that happens to include certain guests of the auction house. Falk is… a facilitator. Not a patron.”

“But you know where his interests lie.”

“Everyone knows where Falk’s interests lie. Money.” She drained her martini, setting the glass on the rail. “The real question is where yours lie, Victor. You’re a man who owes favors. And this…” She gestured vaguely at the yacht, the guests, the pendant in its case. “This smells like the kind of favor that compounds.”

Victor’s jaw tightened—the only tell he allowed. “I’m here to accompany a client.”

“Are you?” Lidia’s gaze returned to Camille, and for a moment the mask slipped. Behind the wit and the glitter was something colder. Younger than the elegant surface suggested, and far more cunning. “May I give you some advice, my dear? And it costs nothing, unlike my usual counsel.”

Camille waited.

“Buy and leave,” Lidia said. “Enjoy the party. Take the pendant if the price is right. But whatever business you’ve actually come aboard for—the *real* business—abandon it. Tonight’s currents run deep.” She glanced at Victor. “And some of us have already chosen our side.”

“Chosen,” Victor repeated. “That implies commitment. I hear you’re more flexible.”

Lidia laughed again, but there was no warmth in it. She reached out and, to Camille’s shock, touched the pearls at her throat. “Lovely. But not your taste. Who chose these for you?”

The question landed like a needle. Camille’s smile held, but she felt the trap closing. She hadn’t chosen the pearls—the boutique owner had insisted, and she’d accepted to move quickly.

“They were a gift,” she said.

“From whom?”

“From me,” Victor said smoothly. “For an occasion I hope is still ahead of us.”

Lidia’s eyes flicked between them. She made a soft noise of amusement. “Then you must be very patient, Victor. Or very guilty.” She stepped back, her gown rippling in the salt breeze. “Enjoy the festivities. And remember what I said.”

She was gone before either of them could respond, absorbed back into the glittering crowd as if she’d never been there at all.

Camille’s hand went to the pearls, then dropped. “She’s Falk’s.”

“Or Bellamy’s,” Victor said. “Or her own. Lidia only ever serves Lidia.”

“She recognized me. Not by name, but by—something.” Camille’s stomach clenched. “She knows I don’t belong here.”

“She doesn’t know why you’re here. That’s better.”

“Is it?” Camille shifted her gaze to the glass case across the salon. The pendant glittered under its spotlight, beautiful and false. “She warned us off. That means she knows something about Bellamy. Or about the night of the swap. She’s a node in this network we haven’t untangled.”

Victor was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was low and stripped of performance. “I recognize that look, Camille. You’re not going to back off. You’re going to dig deeper.”

“I’m going to find Bellamy,” she agreed. “Before the timer expires. Before Falk liquidates the real pendant. Before Lidia decides to unmask me.”

“Then we need more than a fake identity.” Victor’s eyes found the pendant again. “We need a reason to get near that case. And we need an ally aboard.”

“Lidia won’t help us.”

“She will if we give her something she wants more than she fears Falk.” Victor’s smile returned, but there was a hard edge beneath it. “We just need to figure out what that is.”

Camille looked at him. The yacht. The glittering crowd. The lie of the pendant. Somewhere on this boat—or in Monaco—Christophe Bellamy was watching them. A ghost with a heartbeat, waiting to see which way the game would turn.

And she was already losing the initiative.