Read Chapter 36: A New Stone

The call came on a Tuesday, while Camille was still unpacking the last of the shipping crates in the auction house’s back office. Jean-Pierre Moreau, the house’s silver-haired director, stood in the doorway with an envelope in his hand and an expression she couldn’t quite read.

“Camille,” he said, tapping the envelope against his palm. “A moment?”

She set down the bubble wrap and wiped her hands on her apron. The past three weeks had been a blur of restorations, insurance valuations, and the quiet satisfaction of seeing her name cleared in the trade journals. The necklace itself sat in the vault downstairs, awaiting its final appraisal for the private collector—whose identity remained, maddeningly, a mystery even to her.

“Of course,” she said.

Moreau stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He was a man who measured his words the way she measured carats—slowly, precisely, with an eye for the flaw in the stone. He held out the envelope.

“The board met this morning. Unanimously, I might add.” A pause. “We’d like you to stay. Permanently. As chief curator.”

Camille blinked. The words landed somewhere between her chest and her throat, and for a moment she couldn’t find her voice.

“Chief curator,” she repeated.

“You’ve brought us back from the brink of scandal, Camille. Your reputation is stronger than ever—rather ironic, given the circumstances—and your eye is unmatched. We’d be fools to let you walk out that door.” Moreau smiled, a rare crack in his usual granite demeanor. “The salary is generous. The office has a window. And you’d have full authority over the acquisitions calendar.”

She took the envelope, feeling its weight—paper, not stone, but no less significant. Camille had spent the last decade of her life fighting to be taken seriously in rooms full of men who thought a jeweler’s daughter from the Rue Grimaldi would never amount to more than a pretty showcase. Now they were offering her the keys to the whole house.

“There’s one condition,” she said.

Moreau raised an eyebrow.

“Victor Morel. I need him brought on as an associate. We work as a team, or I don’t work here at all.”

The director’s eyebrow climbed higher. “The man who—I believe the phrase in the police report was ‘perpetrated a fraudulent acquisition scheme against this very institution’?”

“The man who infiltrated Falk’s network, gave Interpol everything they needed to take him down, and helped me recover the necklace you’re about to sell for eight figures,” Camille corrected. “His warrant has been destroyed. His file is clean. And he’s the best evaluator of provenance I’ve ever worked with—including me.”

Moreau was silent for a long moment. Camille held his gaze. She had learned, over the past month, that the only way to win a negotiation was to be willing to walk away. And she was. The necklace had been returned. Her name was clear. Whatever came next was a choice, not a necessity.

“You’re serious,” Moreau said at last.

“I’ve never been more serious about anything.”

He sighed, a sound that carried the weight of fifty years of compromise. “I’ll speak to legal. If his records are as clean as you say, we can structure a consultancy. Six-month probation, standard terms.” He tilted his head. “But I want it on record that I think this is a mistake.”

“Duly noted,” Camille said, and smiled for the first time in what felt like weeks.

---

Victor met her that evening at a small café on the Avenue de la Madone, the one with the faded awning and the espresso that tasted like burnt caramel. He was already seated when she arrived, a folder open on the table in front of him, a pen tucked behind his ear like he belonged here, in the daylight, among the ordinary.

“You look like you’ve got news,” he said, sliding the folder aside.

Camille sat down across from him. The waiter appeared, and she ordered a glass of white wine—a celebration, she decided, even if Victor didn’t know it yet.

“I spoke to Moreau today,” she said. “They’ve offered me chief curator.”

Victor’s face broke into a slow grin. “Camille. That’s—” He shook his head. “That’s enormous. After everything, they’ve finally—God, that’s brilliant.”

“There’s more.” She watched his expression carefully. “I told them I’d only take it if you came on as my associate.”

The grin faltered. “Camille…”

“I mean it. We’re better together than we are apart. You know it, and I know it. And I’m not going to pretend otherwise just because it’s complicated.” She leaned forward. “The case is public now. We’re being named as an expert team in the official report. Interpol has already confirmed our roles. The auction house wants to leverage that—two specialists who took down a crime lord and recovered a masterpiece. It’s good for them. And it’s good for us.”

Victor looked down at his hands. When he spoke, his voice was quieter. “You don’t owe me this.”

“I’m not doing it because I owe you.” Camille reached across the table and touched his wrist. “I’m doing it because I trust you. That’s the whole point, Victor. We agreed to try. This is what trying looks like.”

He was silent for a long moment. A motorbike rumbled past, and the café’s string lights flickered on as the evening settled in. Then he laughed—a short, surprised sound, like he hadn’t expected to feel this light.

“You’re going to regret this when I misplace a catalog and you have to redo a full inventory,” he said.

“I’ve handled worse,” she said. “I once had to revalue a whole estate because a junior appraiser confused a ruby with a garnet. You’re not that junior.”

“High praise.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

---

The following week, the auction house held a reception to announce the new appointment—and, more pointedly, to toast the recovery of the necklace. The event was held in the grand hall, under the chandeliers that had witnessed a century of deals and disasters. Camille wore a deep blue gown that matched the sapphire at her throat—not the necklace, which remained in the vault, but a piece from her own collection. Victor stood beside her in a tailored charcoal suit, looking almost comfortable among the champagne flutes and whispered appraisals.

“Any word on the collector?” he murmured, his lips barely moving, as Moreau took the podium to introduce them.

“Still anonymous,” she said. “The escrow goes through tomorrow. Then we hand it over and never see it again.”

“Think they’re watching?”

Camille scanned the room. A hundred faces, a hundred polite smiles. She caught Henri in the corner, nursing a glass of water and looking profoundly out of place in his off-the-rack suit. He raised his glass in a silent salute.

“Probably,” she said. “But that’s Interpol’s problem now.”

Moreau cleared his throat, and the room quieted. He spoke at length about resilience, about trust, about the house’s commitment to integrity. Camille let the words wash over her, her attention fixed on the future—on the office with the window, on the plans she and Victor had already begun to sketch for the autumn acquisition season.

“And so,” Moreau concluded, “I am delighted to introduce our new chief curator, Camille Laurent, and her associate, Victor Morel. Together, they have proven that even the most careful deception can be unmasked by expertise, patience, and—if I may be so bold—a certain measure of courage.”

The room applauded. Camille stepped forward to shake Moreau’s hand, and for a moment, everything felt possible.

Then Victor’s phone buzzed.

He glanced at it, and his face went still. Camille caught the shift immediately—the way his jaw tightened, the way his eyes lost their warmth.

“What is it?” she asked, keeping her smile fixed for the photographers.

Victor tucked the phone away. “I need to check something. Don’t worry.”

“Victor.”

He met her eyes. For a heartbeat, she saw something there she hadn’t seen since the airstrip—a flicker of the old wariness, the sense that the ground beneath them might not be as solid as it appeared.

“The warrant,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it. “Henri showed me the destruction certificate. I trusted him.”

“And?”

Victor’s hand went to his breast pocket, where he kept the folded copy of his file. “That message—the one from Lidia. I had someone look into it. She left a copy of the warrant with a third party before the sting. If she ever disappeared, it was set to be released to the press. With annotations.”

Camille felt the room’s warmth drain away. “Annotations of what?”

“Proof,” Victor said. “That I was running my own operation. That Interpol didn’t know everything.” He swallowed. “That the warrant wasn’t the only secret I was keeping.”

Above them, the chandeliers blazed. Around them, the applause had faded into the comfortable murmur of conversation and clinking glasses. Camille stood very still, her mind racing through the implications—Lidia’s insurance policy, the watcher Falk might have planted, the gap between what Henri had promised and what he had delivered.

“We need to talk,” she said. “Privately.”

Victor nodded. They moved toward the side door, smiles still fixed, backs straight, two experts in the art of looking unbothered while everything shifted beneath their feet.