Read Chapter 39: Shattered Glass

The boardroom doors were reinforced oak, but Camille didn't slow. She pushed through with the flat of her palm, the sound cracking against the marble like a gunshot.

Inside, the auction house’s executive board sat in a horseshoe of polished mahogany. And at the head of the table, Étienne Roussel, the CEO, looked up from his notes with practiced surprise.

"Camille," he said, rising. "This is a closed session. We discussed your—"

"Insurance premiums," she cut off. "Yes. I read the agenda."

She crossed the Persian rug, heels ticking a steady countdown. She held her jeweler's loupe in one hand and a slim silver drive in the other. Behind her, the board's security chief stepped in, but Camille didn't stop.

"You manufactured a theft attempt to frighten the board," she said, setting the drive on the table. "You staged the gala incident. You faked the security test that blamed me. And you've been feeding the board the story that the necklace is in mortal danger, so you can spike the premiums and pocket the difference through a collector's escrow account."

Roussel's smile was smooth. "That's an extraordinary accusation from a woman under investigation."

"Not under investigation anymore." Camille clicked the drive into the boardroom display port. The screen behind Roussel flickered to life. "You cleared my name yourself when you staged that gala theft. The problem is you picked the wrong thief."

On the screen, a still frame: the tattooed man's wrist, the mark barely visible beneath his cuff. Then the image sharpened—and there, in the corner, was the same man six weeks earlier, entering Roussel's private office with an envelope.

"A security camera from your own building," Camille said. "The thief who was supposed to make me look like a leak? He works for you. Pays his rent through a shell company that feeds into your nephew's property firm."

Roussel's smile didn't crack, but his knuckles whitened on the chair back. "Anyone can be paid to look guilty."

"Then explain this."

Camille clicked. The microfilm Victor had pulled from the blue ring filled the screen—torrents of documents, but she had the timecode ready. A wire transfer. A chain of accounts, circling from Falk's network, washing through the auction house's insurance partners, landing in a private collector's escrow. The collector's name blinked beneath, a masked entity Roussel had created himself.

"The theft attempt wasn't to steal the necklace," Camille said. "That was your real plan. Create enough fear, drive up the premium, and the collector—your collector—buys the necklace at a depressed valuation while the insurance payout plumps your accounts. The gala, the test, the fake leak targeting me? All of it was to get the one person who knew the real necklace's provenance out of the building."

"She's lying," the security chief said to the board, stepping toward the display. "Someone's forged these."

"Don't."

The voice came from the doorway. Every head turned.

Victor stood there, gray suit immaculate, a handcuffed man kneeling beside him. The man was Ian Duvall, Roussel's operations director—pale, sweating, his shirt torn at the collar.

"Mr. Duvall had a crisis of conscience," Victor said, pressing a phone into his free hand. "He called the police about the shipping container in the basement. Wants full immunity."

"Victor," Roussel said, venom in the syllable. "Still running con jobs, I see."

"Old habits." Victor's dark eyes were flat. "But this one's honest work. The container's double-walled. Inside: enough fake provenance documents to indict half this table, and the real blue necklace—the one you swapped out when Camille returned the replica. You were going to sell it privately, weren't you, Roussel? Then report it stolen and claim the insurance yourself."

The room went silent. Even the air conditioning seemed to pause.

Camille's hands were steady, but inside her chest, her heart was a war drum. She thought of Victor slipping away at the gala, of the gray-haired woman's quiet warning, of Marchand's pointed silence. Every thread had pulled to this knot.

Roussel's mask slipped. His jaw tightened, and he took a step toward Camille—but the board's security chief put a hand on his shoulder.

"Sir. The police are outside."

For a moment, Roussel's face cycled through rage, calculation, and back to a thin, frozen smile. He smoothed his tie.

"When this is sorted," he said, "you'll all regret—"

The doors burst open. Interpol agents in dark vests moved in formation, their leader already reading rights as they closed on Roussel. He didn't resist. He looked past them, straight at Camille, and said nothing—just that smile, brittle as old glass, until they turned him and walked him out past the assembled board.

The room breathed again.

Victor released Duvall to the police and walked to Camille. He was close enough she could smell the salt wind on his coat, and something in her finally eased.

"You did it," he said, quiet enough only she could hear.

Camille turned the loupe over in her fingers. The blue diamond ring at her throat caught the light.

"No," she said. "We did."

A beat passed. And then she unclasped the fine silver chain and held the ring out to him, glinting between them like a question.

The board's murmuring faded. The security lights flickered once. And in the glass-walled corridor behind Victor, the Monaco dusk was beginning to paint the harbor gold.