Read Chapter 14: HUGO’S FALL

Hugo Delmas disappeared from school for four days.

When he returned, he had lost weight and the polish that usually made him look permanently ready for a photograph. He ignored Orphée meetings and worked alone in Studio B.

Élise found him there on a Sunday morning.

“Did Maxime have you removed from the Delaroche shortlist?” she asked.

Hugo’s brush stopped.

“No hello?”

“Hello. Did he?”

He put the brush down.

“You really are incapable of normal conversation.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Work harder.”

She waited.

Finally Hugo said, “My father promised the school two hundred thousand euros for the new digital lab. Then he froze every discretionary payment when the divorce began. Maxime thought it would look bad if I won anything major while the pledge was unresolved.”

Élise felt cold.

“So he intervened.”

“I don’t know exactly what he did.”

“Did he tell you?”

“He told me withdrawing voluntarily would be ‘wise.’ I refused. Then I missed the shortlist by one place after being told privately I was safe.”

“And I moved up.”

“Yes.”

His smile was exhausted. “Congratulations.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Would it matter if you had?”

“Yes.”

“You say that now.”

Élise looked at his unfinished painting. It was good—better than the hotel corridor, better than anything she had seen from him that term.

“Why don’t you expose Maxime?”

Hugo laughed.

“With what? My father’s unpaid pledge? A conversation with no witnesses? A draft score sheet I’m not supposed to know exists?”

“You know about the sheet?”

He looked at her sharply.

Too late.

“Who told you?” she asked.

“No one.”

“Hugo.”

He turned away.

The anonymous photograph suddenly made sense.

“You sent it.”

He said nothing.

“You sent me Maxime with Kessler.”

Still nothing.

“Why me?”

“Because Lucien protects you.”

She flinched.

“And because Solène underestimates you. Maxime hates uncertainty. You are the one variable none of them inherited.”

“Did you want me to expose him?”

“I wanted you to make him afraid.”

“You used me.”

Hugo looked back. “Welcome to Orphée.”

The cruelty of it was almost elegant.

Élise crossed her arms. “What else do you have?”

His eyebrows lifted.

“If you want Maxime afraid, a café photograph isn’t enough.”

For the first time, Hugo looked interested.

He locked the studio door.

Then he opened a drawer and removed a small digital recorder.

“Maxime likes meetings,” he said. “He thinks speaking calmly makes everything legal.”

On the recording, Maxime’s voice was unmistakable.

You need to understand, Hugo, Delaroche is not about fairness. It is about institutional stability. Your family situation introduces risk. If Pauline adjusts her weighting, it is because she understands the broader context.

Hugo’s recorded voice replied: You asked her to lower my score?

A pause.

I asked her to consider whether your candidacy serves the school this year.

Élise closed her eyes.

There it was.

Not a rumor. Not a map. Not proximity.

Interference.

“Why haven’t you released this?”

“Because my father will know I recorded Maxime. My mother’s settlement depends on keeping the Valcourt and Delmas boards cooperative. My younger sister’s school is funded by the family trust. You think I’m rich, so consequences are fake.”

“I don’t think that.”

“You do a little.”

She did.

Hugo put the recorder back.

“I want Maxime out,” he said. “But I do not want my family war in Le Figaro.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Find another way to prove it.”

Élise laughed softly.

“Everyone keeps giving me jobs.”

“Because you keep doing them.”

She left Studio B with the sentence lodged under her ribs.

That evening she opened her map of favors.

At the center she had written ORPHÉE in a circle.

She erased it.

Then she wrote SAINT-AURELIE.

The society was not the disease.

It was only the part of the institution arrogant enough to keep minutes.