Read Chapter 19: Cold Shoulder

The harbor wind cut through Camille’s coat as she walked, each step on the wet pavement a small, deliberate verdict. Victor had not followed her. She had not looked back to check. The hotel’s glass doors had sighed shut behind her, and she had let them, carrying only her phone, her keys, and the weight of every lie she had swallowed since Monaco had opened its glittering jaws around her.

The police headquarters in Monaco was a modest building for a principality of such grand illusion. Camille sat in the waiting area, her hands folded in her lap, watching a clerk file paperwork with the same meticulousness she reserved for a loupe inspection. She had rehearsed her speech twice in the taxi. The pendant. The false security guard. The apartment in Larvotto. The photograph on her phone, crisp and damning, of Henri’s hands closing the case.

Inspector Roussel took his time. He was a thin man with a gray mustache that looked more maintained than his patience. He gestured her into his office without rising. The room smelled of stale coffee and old paper.

“Mademoiselle Laurent,” he said, settling into his chair. “You said this was urgent.”

“It is.” She placed her phone on his desk, the photograph enlarged. “This man, Henri Dupont, is believed dead. He is not. He has the Grimaldi Pendant. He is moving it tonight.”

Roussel glanced at the screen. His expression did not shift. He picked up the phone, tilted it toward the light, then set it down.

“Where did you get this?”

“I took it. Through a window in Larvotto. He’s packing the necklace for shipment.”

“You followed a suspected deceased individual to a residential property and photographed him without a warrant.”

“I’m not the police. I’m the victim.”

Roussel’s eyes met hers for the first time. They were flat, unimpressed. He opened a drawer and pulled out a manila folder, opened it, and slid a single sheet across the desk. It was a case note, typed, with her name at the top.

Camille read it twice before she understood the words.

*Laurent, Camille — flagged as person of interest. Possible insider collusion with theft of Grimaldi Pendant. Insurance file indicates access to vault and knowledge of alarm bypass. Recommend surveillance.*

She looked up. “This is absurd.”

“Is it?” Roussel leaned back. “You were the last jeweler to handle the piece before the gala. You have expert knowledge of the case’s security. And you’re here, alone, telling me you happen to know the thief’s exact location on the night he plans to move the goods.”

“Because I followed him.”

“With who?”

The question hung. Camille opened her mouth, and closed it. Victor’s name sat on her tongue like a stone she could not swallow.

Roussel noticed. His lips twitched. “That’s what I thought. You’ve been seen with a man known to Interpol. A man with a file of his own. And you expect me to believe you’re just a concerned victim?”

“I am the victim,” she repeated, her voice thinner now.

“The insurance company disagrees. They flagged you within hours of the theft. Your workshop was searched this morning. Did you know that?”

Camille’s chest tightened. “I have nothing to hide.”

“Then you won’t mind answering a few questions here,” Roussel said. “Where were you on the night of the ceremony, between the hours of nine and eleven?”

She gave him the truth. She had been in the auction hall’s preparation room. Alone. Checking the pendant’s clasp for the fourth time. No witnesses. No cameras in that room, a detail that had once seemed quaint and now felt like a trap.

Roussel wrote nothing down. He did not need to. Her answers had already been typed into the folder before she arrived.

When she left the office forty minutes later, she was not under arrest. But she had been photographed leaving, her name logged in the visitor’s book, her face added to a board she would never see. In Monaco, suspicion moved faster than evidence. It always had.

Camille stood on the steps outside, the cold air finally reaching her. She had no plan. No ally. The last man she trusted had sold her a story about Interpol and a dead wife, and the police had just confirmed what she feared most: she was alone in a city that polished its surfaces to blind you from what lay beneath.

She walked. Not toward the hotel. Not back to her workshop. Just away, along the harbor, where the masts of superyachts swayed like metronomes counting down to something she could not name. Her phone buzzed. A text from Lidia.

*Two hours, Camille. Henri departs at midnight. Tick tock.*

She did not respond. She pocketed the phone and kept walking until the harbor ended and the seawall began, and then she stood at the railing, watching the dark water slap the stone, and tried to decide if trust was a luxury she could still afford.

Victor was waiting for her in the hotel lobby when she returned. That was the first thing she noticed. The second was that he was holding two cups of coffee, one of which looked untouched.

He did not ask where she had been. He just looked at her, his face unreadable, and offered the cup.

“You went to the police,” he said.

“How do you know that?”

“Because you’re back. And you look like they told you something you didn’t want to hear.”

She took the coffee. It was warm. She hated that this small comfort felt meaningful.

“They flagged me,” she said. “As a suspect. My workshop was searched. They knew things they should not have known.”

Victor’s jaw tightened. He set his own cup on the lobby’s marble table. “Lidia got to them. Or Falk did. Either way, you’re burned.”

“I don’t understand how they knew about the vault access so quickly. That documentation was sealed after the theft. Only the insurance auditor had it.”

“And Lidia,” Victor said quietly.

Camille looked at him. “You’re still in her pocket.”

“No.” He met her gaze, steady. “But I know how she operates. She doesn’t need to be in the room. She leaves breadcrumbs. You followed hers to Larvotto. Then you followed mine to the police. She knew you would. That was the point.”

Camille’s fingers tightened around the cup. “You’re saying she wanted me to go to the police.”

“I’m saying she wanted you to have no other options.” Victor took a step closer. “She’s isolating you, Camille. Not me. You just walked into the one place that would brand you a suspect, and she knew you would do it because you stopped trusting me.”

The accusation was quiet, precise, and it landed. She had not trusted him. She still did not, not fully. But the police had confirmed her worst fear without solving any of it, and standing in the polished lobby with a cup of mediocre hotel coffee, she could feel the architecture of her solitude beginning to crack.

“The badge,” she said. “Is it real?”

Victor was silent. Then he reached into his jacket, pulled out the slim leather holder, and offered it to her.

“Check it yourself.”

She took it. Opened it. The badge was heavy, the engraving sharp. Interpol. His name. A serial number. She knew enough about metalwork to recognize quality. This was not a forgery. Not a cheap one, at least.

“Why didn’t you show me this before?” she asked.

“Because I wasn’t supposed to use it. Undercover protocol. If I flashed that badge above a certain threshold, it would have flagged my operation and blown a case that took two years to build.”

“A case against Falk.”

Victor nodded. “Falk traffics in more than jewels. He moves people. The pendant was supposed to be the collar of a larger operation. But Lidia and Henri moved first, and now Falk thinks I betrayed him because I was the driver who lost the package.”

Camille turned the badge over in her hands. The cold metal felt like the truth, or a very good imitation of it.

“And your wife?” she asked softly.

Victor’s face closed. He took the badge back, returning it to his jacket. “She was real. She was an agent. She died in Geneva. Lidia uses that story because she knows it’s the one thing I can’t prove without reopening a file that would end my career.”

“So you lied to me.”

“I omitted.”

Camille almost laughed. “That’s what every con man says.”

Victor studied her. “You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t believe anyone tonight.” She set the coffee down on the table, untouched. “But I believe the police have my name on a list, and I believe Lidia is moving the pendant in two hours, and I believe that if I walk away from you now, I might as well hand her everything.”

She looked at him. The lobby lights caught his face, the same face that had broken her trust years ago, and then rebuilt it piece by piece in the days since.

“I’m not saying I trust you,” she said. “I’m saying I can’t afford to believe I’m alone in this.”

Victor’s expression softened, just a fraction. He picked up her abandoned coffee and pressed it back into her hands.

“Then let’s not be alone,” he said. “I know where Henri is moving the pendant. I have a location. It’s not the one Lidia sent you.”

Camille blinked. “What?”

“In the apartment, when you were photographing the case, I saw a shipping label on the crate. It had a destination stamp. Lidia sent you a decoy address. She wants you out of the way tonight.”

Camille’s mind raced. She pulled out her phone, scrolled to Lidia’s text, read the address aloud.

Victor shook his head. “That’s the marina office. Empty after hours. She’s parked you in a blind spot.”

“Where’s the real one?”

“The Casino. There’s a service tunnel beneath the auction hall. They’re moving it through the old postal route that connects the casino vaults to the harbor.”

Camille looked at him. “How do you know that?”

Victor hesitated. “Because I built the escape route for Falk. Eleven years ago. When he first commissioned Bellamy’s set, he asked for a schematic. I thought it was for a gallery installation. It wasn’t.”

The ring. The presentation set. The forgotten commission. All of it was threading together in a pattern she could finally begin to see.

“You’ve been lying to me since the beginning,” she said.

“I’ve been lying to everyone,” Victor replied. “But I’m done with that now. If you walk away, I go alone, and I probably don’t make it back. But if you stay, we might just catch her.”

Camille looked at the coffee in her hands. Then she looked at the man who had broken her once, who had offered her a badge and a story and a ring that traced back to Falk’s original crime.

She took a sip. It was cold now. She drank it anyway.

“Show me the tunnel,” she said.