Chapter 6 #2
When the handshake ended, Adrien spoke again, then placed his hand on Andre's upper arm—a proprietary gesture that would have been missed by anyone who hadn't grown up in a room where every gesture was a signal.
Andre didn't react, not visibly, but when Adrien walked away, Andre looked at his own arm as if memorizing the contact.
Fucking peacock.
I watched the rest of the evening unfold in a pattern that would have been comic if it hadn't been so elegant.
Every orbit, every migration, every performative laugh and deliberate proximity.
I spoke with three people whose names I didn't know at the start of the evening and would never need to know again.
I accepted a compliment about my dress from a woman who then introduced herself as the wife of a junior minister, and listened as she explained, with a candor reserved for strangers, that her husband was “not made for this place, but he tries.”
By eleven, the room began to thin, and the bar became the gravity well for those who remained.
I took a place at it, set my clutch on the counter, and let the water bead against the side of the glass.
In the mirrored panel behind the liquor, I could see Andre, four meters behind me, talking to Malik.
The reflection warped the distance, made him look closer, but I knew the exact gap.
I felt, then, the animal certainty of being watched. Not in the predatory sense, but in the sense of a vector: two points, a direct line, nothing in between but the air and the possibility of contact. I didn't turn around. I didn't need to.
Instead, I looked at the pattern of condensation on the bar, the fractured green of the dress in the mirrors, the way the light found a thousand versions of me and sent them back, each slightly altered.
I stayed that way for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, before collecting my clutch, nodding at the bartender, and making my way toward the doors.
On the way out, I felt the space behind me close. A footfall matched my own, but always a half-step behind.
The cameras at the entrance had mostly gone, but one remained, a woman with a tired face and a lens that had seen too much. As I passed, she said, “Bonsoir, Mademoiselle,” not as a greeting, but as a record.
I walked out into the cold, felt the green silk shift with the movement, and didn't look back until I reached the street. When I did, the doors were already closed, the casino lit up behind them like a ship that would never leave the harbor.
I started down the steps. The rhythm of my own steps on the marble echoed, and the city opened before me, gold and white and restless, every room inside it a separate performance. In none of them did I feel less alone than I did here, in the half-light, with my own name echoing off the stone.
The bar was quieter now. Most of the decorative guests had migrated to the upper lounges or the gaming rooms, which sharpened the ratio of reporters to stories.
I recognized the three women waiting at the far curve of the counter before they lifted their phones: the senior correspondent for Paris Reflet, the social reporter from Sovereign Monaco, and a young freelancer whose byline had lately begun to surface at the bottom of every story about my family.
Here we go.
I could have walked away.
Instead, I moved toward them, smiling the half-smile I'd learned worked best on people who didn't like me.
“Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Moreau,” the Paris Reflet woman said, with the flourished accent that always felt a half-degree from parody. “May we have a word?”
“Of course.”
To refuse would be to concede a weakness, and I'd already spent the evening refusing that.
The first question was about the engagement: “Is it true that Monsieur Castellane preferred you not work so much, and that this was a factor?” The woman's hand, holding her phone aloft, was too steady. Not her first time delivering this exact payload.
I smiled again. “My former fiancé is a man of traditional values. My own values are more adaptive.”
The second question, from Sovereign Monaco: “There are rumors your father has begun looking for a successor outside the family. Is this a reflection on your relationship, or on your capacity for the role?”
This was better. A two-pronged attack, professional and personal.
I met the woman's gaze, let her see I was counting the seconds she thought she was buying with her question.
“My father has always sought the best available candidate. In this case, the best available candidate is not always on the market. He knows where I am if he needs me.”
The freelancer, emboldened, asked: “Some say you are difficult to live with. Would you care to comment?”
Difficult.
I wanted to laugh.
Instead I looked directly at her, adjusted the line of my dress at the wrist, and said, “Difficulty is relative to the effort required. My effort goes into my work.”
They conferred briefly, an almost imperceptible triangulation of eye contact. Then Paris Reflet, returning to the kill: “Would you ever consider giving a real interview? One not managed by the firm?”
I let the silence do the work, counting to two before answering. “When there's something worth saying, I'll say it.”
That should have been the end, but they pressed: “Will there be an announcement this weekend? Something new for Monaco?”
I let the smile relax, enough for them to know I was enjoying myself now. “You'll be the first to know. Just as soon as I know myself.”
It landed, the phrase going off in the space between us like a soft impact.
The women exchanged glances, assessing whether to try for one more round or let the win stand.
In the end, they did what all smart operators did.
They thanked me, phones still running, and moved on, back to their corner to file the exchange before the clock ran out on relevance.
I watched them go, then turned to the bartender for a glass of water.
He poured it in silence, his hands a little less sure now, the showmanship gone.
I wondered if he had children, if he'd ever taught them the difference between surviving and performing.
I took the water, drained it, and set the glass down with a precision that made a quiet sound on the marble.
The room had emptied, the echo of the exchange vibrating in the air behind me. I walked out of the salon, through the corridor, and found a staff door, unmarked except for the faint thumbprint of a cleaning crew. I let myself in.
The antechamber was lit by a single bulb, the kind that turned every surface the color of an old bruise. Lockers for the catering staff, a rack of folded jackets, the perfume of industrial soap. I leaned against the wall, closed my eyes, and let the tension in my jaw migrate down into my fists.
It was supposed to be simple. A set of questions, a set of answers.