Read Chapter 2: Masquerade

The auctioneer’s voice was a silken purr over the loudspeaker, a practiced cadence designed to make seven-figure sums feel like pocket change. Camille stood at the back of the grand hall, her hands folded so tightly that her knuckles showed white against the deep navy of her dress. She’d spent the last hour watching the *Cœur de Neptune* spin slowly on its velvet bust, the sapphire catching the chandelier light, throwing a fractured blue glow across the upturned faces of the wealthiest people in Monaco.

It was a lie. A gorgeous, meticulously crafted lie. And she was the only one in the room who knew it.

The counterfeit’s clasp had been machined with a precision that her own loupe had caught only after three passes. The trident hallmark—the signature of the Maison Laurent’s master founder—was blunted. Incorrect. She’d held the real necklace in her hands seventeen months ago, had felt its impossible weight, the cool certainty of its provenance. This was something else. Something new.

“You’re frowning, Camille,” murmured a voice at her elbow. Émile Rousseau, the auction house’s director, appeared beside her like a bad omen in a bespoke tuxedo. “That’s not the face of a woman about to watch a record sale.”

“It’s the face of a woman who needs a glass of water,” she said, forcing her jaw to unclench.

Émile’s eyes narrowed. He was a thin man, reedy, with the nervous energy of a greyhound that had never quite caught the rabbit. “The Lot 14 copy has been verified by our internal team. Double-signed. The provenance chain is airtight. We move at seven, yes?”

*Internal team.* Right. The same team that had rubber-stamped a forgery. Camille had kept her mouth shut after the initial discovery. She’d swept into Émile’s office an hour before the cocktail doors opened, dropped the counterfeit onto his desk, and watched the color drain from his face like a sink unplugged. But the scandal of a withdrawal—the whispers, the police, the insurance implications—had been worse than the risk of a quiet sale.

“We move at seven,” she said, tasting the lie on her tongue.

“And the verification?” Émile pressed.

“I’ll handle it personally. Quietly.” She placed a hand on his wrist, steadying him. “No one needs to know anything until we know everything. The buyer takes possession, the money clears, and the necklace—if it’s not real—gets very, very quietly un-replaced.”

Émile exhaled. He didn’t have the stomach for this. He was a logistics man, not a crisis man. “And if we can’t find the real one?”

Camille looked back at the stage, at the jewel that was not her father’s masterpiece. In her clutch bag, she had a copy of the original shipment manifest and a set of vault footage stills that showed a shadow pass through the frame at 3:47 a.m. The shadow moved with an easy confidence that suggested someone who knew the building’s sleep schedule better than its own night staff.

“We find it,” she said. “The forger had access. Access leaves traces. And traces leave names.”

The auctioneer’s gavel came down with a sharp crack, and the room applauded as a diamond bracelet changed hands for an obscene sum. The crowd shifted, champagne glasses clinking, a wave of tuxedos and silk gowns breaking toward the next lot.

That’s when she saw him.

He was standing near the grand staircase, half-turned as if he were about to leave. A glass of white wine in his hand, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth—not directed at anything, just there, like a secret he was enjoying. Tall. Silver at the temples that didn’t age him but gave him a patina of trustworthiness. Clean-shaven, no scars, no tells. The kind of man you’d hand your wallet to if you were careless.

And Camille had been careless. Ten years ago, she’d been young, green, desperate to prove herself at her father’s atelier. Victor Devereux had walked into the shop with credentials that had held up to every check her father could devise. He’d commissioned a bespoke piece—a sapphire collar to match a woman he claimed was his fiancée. He paid a deposit, built a relationship, charmed her late nights with stories of Paris and Petra. Then he’d vanished. With the collar. With the sapphires. With the name of the Laurent house dragged through the trade press for six weeks of humiliating headlines.

Her father had never said a word about it. He didn’t need to. The silence was the loudest thing Camille had ever heard.

She stood frozen, her breath shallow. The crowd parted and closed around him like water around a stone. She wanted to move, to cross the floor, to put a hand on his shoulder and demand—what? The necklace’s location? An apology? A confession she could take to the police?

He turned, as if sensing her gaze, and looked directly at her.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. His smile didn’t waver. He lifted his glass in a small, almost imperceptible salute, then slipped through the crowd toward the terrace doors.

Camille’s blood went cold, then hot. She pushed through the guests, muttering apologies that she didn’t mean, her heels clicking against the marble in a frantic staccato. By the time she reached the terrace, the doors were swinging shut. She caught them with her palm and stepped into the cool Mediterranean night.

The terrace overlooked the harbor, a glitter of yacht lights and black water. Victor stood at the railing, his back to her.

“You’ve got nerve,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt, “showing your face here.”

He turned. Up close, he was familiar in ways she hated: the laugh lines around his eyes, the easy curve of his mouth. He hadn’t had silver at the temples when she knew him. Time had been kinder to him than it had to her career.

“Camille,” he said, as if they were old friends meeting at a café. “Eleven years. You’ve done well—creative director of the maison. Your father must be proud.”

“My father is dead,” she said flatly. “And I’m not here to exchange pleasantries. The necklace on that stage is a fake. And I’d bet every franc my grandfather left me that you’re the reason it’s there.”

Victor’s expression flickered—a genuine crack in the mask, just a millimeter wide. He recovered quickly, but she’d seen it. He looked out at the harbor, swirling his wine.

“You always were sharp,” he said. “Sharper than the stones you worked with. It’s why I picked you, back then. You had the eye. Your father had the skill, but you—” He glanced at her. “You had something rarer. Trust.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m not here to gloat,” he said, setting his glass down on the railing. “I’m here because you have a problem, and I’m the only one who can solve it.”

Camille laughed, a hollow sound. “You’re the problem.”

“No. The problem is sitting under that auction spotlight, and the real one is sitting in a safe deposit box in a London bank vault, waiting for its buyer to get cold feet. And the woman who’s supposed to be guarding it is standing on a terrace arguing with me instead of doing her job.”

She stepped closer, close enough that she could see the fine lines around his eyes. “Explain. Now.”

He held her gaze. “Someone I used to run with got offered a commission. A replica job. High stakes, high pay. I didn’t know the target until last week. When I saw the catalog, I knew you’d be in the room, and I figured you’d spot it before the gavel fell.”

Camille’s stomach dropped. “You didn’t make the fake.”

“I’m a middleman, Camille. I always was. I never had the hands for the work.” He spread his palms, and they were smooth, manicured. “But I know who did. And I know where the original sits. I can give you what you need to get it back tonight—before the buyer’s courier arrives tomorrow to collect the fake.”

“Why?” she demanded. “What’s in it for you?”

“Finders fee,” he said. “Ten percent of insured value. Forty-eight hours to deliver, or you lose the necklace, the auction house loses its reputation, and my name stays clean because no one ever proves I was connected.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a card, worn at the edges, a phone number inked by hand. He held it out to her.

Camille stared at the card. Every instinct screamed at her to walk away, to find another way. But the gavel would fall in less than an hour, and the real necklace was over a thousand miles away, and she was running out of time—and out of people who could help.

She took the card.

Victor smiled, and it was the same smile he’d worn when he’d walked out of her father’s shop with a fortune in sapphires.

“Don’t call anyone else,” he said, turning to leave. “I’ll be in touch before the night’s over. And Camille?”

She gritted her teeth. “What?”

“The clasp wasn’t the only tell.” He tapped his temple. “Look at the prongs. Whoever made it knew your father’s work better than your own father did. That’s not a stranger’s hand. That’s someone who was in the room.”

He disappeared through the terrace doors, leaving her alone with the glitter of the harbor and the card burning her palm.

She looked down at it. No name. No logo. Just a phone number.

And beneath it, three words in Victor’s precise handwriting:

*Look closer, Camille.*