Read Chapter 24: A Change of Heart

The pounding came again, harder this time, rattling the chapel’s warped wooden door. Pierre’s face had gone the color of chalk dust. He stared at the door as if it might burst open and swallow him whole.

Victor moved first. He crossed the small workshop in two strides, pressing his back against the wall beside the window. His hand drifted toward his waistband, where Camille knew he kept the badge that may or may not have been real. “Who knows you’re here, Pierre?”

The old forger shook his head, mute.

“Pierre.” Victor’s voice was low, sharp. “Who?”

“No one. No one knows the workshop.” Pierre’s hands trembled around the ring he still held—the ring Victor had given Camille, now proven to be a forgery made at Lidia’s command. “Except Eloise. And the girl who delivers my supplies from the village. But she comes on Fridays.”

The knocking stopped.

Camille exhaled, but the silence that followed was worse—thick and listening. She crept to the window’s edge and peered through a crack in the warped frame. The clearing outside was empty. Just wind moving through the pines, the lowering sun throwing long shadows across the chapel’s crumbling bell tower.

Then she saw it. A flash of movement low in the brush, fifty yards out. A figure, already turning, heading back down the mountain path.

“They’re leaving,” she whispered.

Victor was at her side in an instant, shoulder brushing hers. He followed her gaze. “One person?”

“I think so.”

“Did you see a face?”

“No. Too far.”

Pierre shuffled to the door and threw the iron bolt with shaking hands. “That’s it. I’m done. I shouldn’t have spoken to you at all.” He turned to face them, and for the first time Camille saw something harder beneath the old man’s veneer of fear. “You need to go. Now. Before they come back with more.”

“Who, Pierre?” Camille stepped toward him. “Who was that?”

“I don’t know. But they found me. That means Eloise talked, or someone above her did.” He pressed the ring into Camille’s palm, folding her fingers over the cold metal. “You keep this. It’s the only proof you have that Lidia’s been playing you since the beginning. And you”—he pointed at Victor—“you knew. You knew what that ring was when you gave it to her. Don’t you pretend otherwise.”

Camille’s grip tightened around the ring. She didn’t look at Victor. She didn’t want to see the answer on his face.

“The real pendant,” she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her chest. “You said it never left Monaco.”

Pierre nodded. “I made the copy. It was good—perhaps my best. But the original went back into the pipeline the night of the auction. I don’t know where it was hidden. That was Eloise’s job.” He paused, his eyes flicking to Victor. “But I know who moved it.”

Victor stiffened. “Who?”

“A man named Serge Kovač. Eloise’s cousin. He works as a porter at the casino. No one looks twice at him because he’s always been there, moving crates and furniture, invisible.” Pierre’s voice dropped. “He’s the one who walked the real piece out of the auction hall in the back of a velvet chair lined with lead sheeting. The scanners won’t pick it up. The cameras won’t catch it.”

Camille’s mind raced. A porter. Of course. The auction house had gone through every guest, every handler, every piece of jewelry—but a porter carrying a chair out on a hand truck was background noise. Invisible by design.

“Where is Kovač now?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But I know where he’ll be tomorrow night.” Pierre moved to a cluttered workbench and pulled open a drawer, producing a creased casino staff schedule. “The gala at the Société des Bains de Mer. He’s on the loading crew for the dinner service. You want to find him, that’s your only window. After that, he disappears. Eloise was planning to fly out at the end of the month, and he goes with her.”

Victor took the schedule. His fingers brushed Pierre’s wrist, and something passed between them—an acknowledgment, perhaps, of the years Victor had spent circling these hidden networks.

“Thank you,” Victor said.

Pierre waved him off. “Don’t thank me. Just make sure she pays.” He looked at Camille, and his voice softened. “You were always too good for the likes of them, girl. Don’t let this world make you like me.”

The weight of the ring in her palm felt heavier than it should have. She wanted to ask Pierre how he knew her, how he’d come to make a fake of a piece bound for her hands, but the old man was already retreating toward a back room, his shoulders bowed.

“Go,” he said without turning. “Take the goat path east. It’ll put you on the main road in half an hour.”

Outside, the mountain air had turned cold, and the sun had sunk fully behind the peaks, painting the sky in shades of bruised violet. Camille walked ahead of Victor, the steep path narrow and treacherous, gravel sliding beneath her boots. She could feel his gaze on her back, patient and expectant.

When they reached the first switchback, she stopped and turned.

“You knew about the ring.”

Victor’s jaw tightened. He stood three steps below her, looking up, and in the dying light his face was difficult to read. “I knew it was made by Pierre. I didn’t know Lidia had commissioned it until we spoke to him.”

“But you gave it to me anyway. A forgery. A test piece.” She heard her own voice crack. “What was it meant to prove?”

“That I could get you something beautiful.” He moved up two steps, closing the distance. His eyes held hers, and she hated the sincerity she saw there. “I was working a case. I needed access to you, to your workshop, to your connection to Falk. The ring was my opening. But what I didn’t expect—” He stopped, swallowed. “What I didn’t expect was you. The way you are. The way you make me want to be someone else.”

The words hung between them, sharp-edged and dangerous. Camille wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it—a cornered criminal in the mountains of Monaco, speaking of redemption like it was a gift he could wrap and hand over.

But she didn’t laugh. Because she saw something in his face that she recognized. A weariness. A longing for a different path, one he’d never allowed himself to walk.

“I don’t even know if you’re real,” she whispered. “Your badge. Your name. Everything about you is a layer I can’t see through.”

“Camille.” He reached up and took her hand, the one still clutching the ring. His fingers were warm against her cold skin. “I have lied to you. I have used you. And I will probably lie to you again before this is done, because that’s what I am.” He paused. “But the way I feel about you is the truest thing I have. And I swear to you, if we get through this alive, I will walk away from every part of that world.”

She looked at him. The fading light caught the faint scar above his brow, the haunted set of his mouth. She wanted to believe him. God help her, she wanted to.

He leaned in, his free hand rising to cup her cheek. His breath was warm on her lips. She didn’t pull away.

The phone buzzed between them, shrill and unwelcome.

Victor’s hand dropped. He pulled the device from his coat, his expression shifting from tenderness to alarm as he read the screen.

“What?” Camille asked.

“Monaco police.” His voice was flat. “They’re notifying all interested parties in your case.”

“Victor. What?”

He looked up at her. The mountain wind howled through the pines, and for a moment, the world seemed to stop. “The auction house was broken into again. Forty minutes ago. The security vault they sealed after the theft has been breached.”

Camille’s blood ran cold. “The vault was empty.”

Victor nodded slowly. “That’s the problem. Whoever broke in wasn’t after the necklace.” He unlocked the phone and showed her the accompanying photo—a single item left behind on the vault’s mahogany table, its blue gem catching the security lights.

A ring. Exactly like the one in her hand.

“They’re sending a message,” Victor said. “Lidia knows we found Pierre. And she knows we’re coming.”