Read Chapter 4: The Blue Ring

The hotel suite smelled of expensive cologne and old money—a combination that set Camille’s teeth on edge. Victor Devereux moved through the living room like he owned it, which he probably did, for the next three nights at least. His jacket was off, sleeves rolled to the forearm, and he poured two glasses of something amber without asking if she wanted one.

“You came,” he said, sliding a glass across the marble counter. “I half expected you to burn that card and pretend we never spoke.”

“I considered it.” Camille didn’t touch the drink. “You mentioned a name. A forger who knew my father’s work.”

“I mentioned a lot of things.” Victor settled onto the arm of a cream sofa, crossing his ankles. “But you’re here for the evidence, not the pleasantries. Fair enough.”

He reached into his inner jacket pocket and produced a small velvet pouch, the deep blue of a midnight sky. He loosened the drawstring and tipped something into his palm—a ring. A blue diamond, perhaps two carats, set in platinum with delicate shoulder work.

Camille’s breath caught before she could stop it.

“Where did you get that?”

“From the thief’s accomplice.” Victor held it up between thumb and forefinger, letting the light catch the stone. “Or rather, from a woman who *was* the thief’s accomplice, before she became his problem. She’s currently in a hospital in Nice with a broken wrist and a story to tell.”

“You hurt her.”

“I didn’t have to.” He set the ring on the glass table between them. “Her former partner did that. I merely had a conversation with her afterward. She was very motivated to share details about the man she used to work for.”

Camille stepped closer, drawn against her better judgment. The ring was beautiful—clean lines, a classic French cut from the early aughts. But it was the hallmark that made her stomach drop.

She leaned in, squinting at the interior of the band. A tiny stamped mark, worn but legible: a fleur-de-lis inside a circle, with a small trident crossing its base.

“Christophe Bellamy,” she murmured.

Victor’s eyebrow arched. “You recognize it.”

“The Bellamy workshop went under in 2008 after a scandal involving insured pieces that never made it to their buyers.” Camille’s mind was already racing, pulling threads from memory. “Christophe was my father’s junior apprentice in the late nineties. He left to start his own atelier. They had a falling out.”

“A falling out,” Victor repeated, tasting the word. “That’s one way to describe it. Your father testified against him when the insurance fraud case went to court. Bellamy spent two years in prison. His workshop closed. His reputation never recovered.”

Camille looked up sharply. “You’re saying Bellamy forged the Cœur de Neptune.”

“I’m saying this ring was made by someone with access to Bellamy’s tools and techniques, or by Bellamy himself.” Victor picked up his glass and took a slow sip. “The woman I spoke to worked for a man who runs a small operation out of a workshop in the industrial quarter. She described him as meticulous, obsessive, and very good with his hands. He keeps his tools locked in a separate room. No one sees them but him.”

“That could be anyone.”

“He also has a grudge against the Laurent family name.” Victor’s voice was calm, almost gentle, which made it worse. “How many people in Monaco fit that description, Camille? How many people both know your father’s work intimately and hate him enough to want to destroy what he built?”

Her throat tightened. “Bellamy’s dead. He died in a boating accident off Sardinia five years ago.”

“Did he?” Victor shrugged. “The report was thin. No body recovered, just a capsized hull and a life jacket with his name on it. Insurance paid out. His widow closed the remaining accounts and moved to Lyon. Very tidy.”

Camille’s pulse hammered. She wanted to dismiss this as one of Victor’s elaborate cons—he was a master of building narratives that served his interests. But the hallmark on the ring was unmistakable. Bellamy’s mark had always been distinctive, the trident cutting across the fleur-de-lis in a way that felt almost rebellious. Her father had pointed it out once, with a mix of admiration and frustration.

“Look closer, Camille.” Victor echoed the note he’d written on the business card. He nudged the ring toward her. “What do you see?”

She picked it up, ignoring the frisson of touching something that had come from a criminal’s hand. The stone was flawless, a deep cornflower blue that seemed to hold light rather than reflect it. She tilted it, examining the shoulder work—tiny pavé diamonds set in a pattern that looked random but wasn’t. There, at the base of the setting, a single tiny flaw in the platinum. Almost invisible.

Her breath caught.

“The prongs are wrong,” she said slowly. “This is a repair job. The original setting was two-prong jewelry, but these are three-prong. Someone reworked the head.”

“Go on.”

“Christophe always set his stones with a specific tension mount. He designed his own tool for it, a curved clamp that put pressure at a precise angle.” She rotated the ring, examining the base. “This ring was *made* with Bellamy’s technique, but it’s not his design. The stone is too large for the band proportions. This is a replacement stone set into an older piece.”

“Very good.” Victor’s eyes held a glint of something that might have been respect. “The woman told me the ring belonged to her mother. Her mother worked as a maid for a family in Cannes in the early 2000s. The family reported a theft—jewelry worth nearly a million francs. The police never solved it.”

Camille’s mind was spinning. “Bellamy was still operating then?”

“Under a different name. He was a ghost for most of that decade—working out of rented spaces, using recycled hallmarks, selling pieces through intermediaries. He developed a reputation among certain circles for producing work that could pass as either genuine antiques or convincing forgeries.” Victor set his glass down. “The woman said her partner was obsessed with one piece in particular. A necklace. He’d been planning this for years.”

“The Cœur de Neptune.”

“She saw photographs, sketches, diagrams of the clasp mechanism. He compared them against examples of your father’s work, muttering about the old man’s techniques.” Victor’s voice dropped. “She said he would get angry sometimes, when the work wasn’t perfect. He’d curse your father’s name.”

Camille’s chest tightened. She slipped the ring into her own pocket before she could think better of it.

“Are you going to give that back?” Victor asked mildly.

“Consider it a retainer.” Her voice was steadier than she felt. “You said you know where the real necklace is. London bank vault, if I recall your earlier claims.”

“I know where it was two days ago.” Victor’s tone sharpened. “Bank transfers happen quickly when people get nervous. If the accomplice I spoke to hasn’t been silenced by now, her partner is likely moving the necklace to a new location. Which means we have a narrow window.”

“You said forty-eight hours earlier.”

“That was before my source got herself beaten half to death.” Victor’s jaw tightened. “The timeline has compressed. We have maybe thirty-six hours now, if we’re lucky. After that, the necklace disappears into a network I can’t trace.”

Camille’s fingers closed around the ring in her pocket. The metal was warm now, carrying the heat of her palm. She thought about her father—about the way he’d spoken of Bellamy’s talent with a mix of pride and sadness. About how he’d never fully recovered from testifying against his own apprentice.

“This workshop you mentioned,” she said. “The one in the industrial quarter. You know where it is.”

“I do.”

“Take me there.”

Victor studied her for a long moment. Something flickered behind his eyes—calculation, or perhaps the faintest trace of guilt. “You understand what you’re asking. The man who runs that workshop doesn’t like visitors. And he definitely doesn’t like me.”

“Why would he dislike you specifically?”

Victor’s smile was thin and sharp. “Because the last time we worked together, I stole two million euros from him.”

Camille stared at him, the ring pressing against her thigh like a brand. Every instinct screamed that this was a trap—that Victor was building an elaborate stage for another one of his cons. But the hallmark was real. The memory of Christophe Bellamy’s name on her father’s lips was real.

“Then we’ll be careful,” she said.

Victor’s smile widened, and for the first time, it reached his eyes. “I was hoping you’d say that. I already have a car waiting.”