Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WITH CAMILLE'S FACEBy the time Camille reached the street, the October sky had turned the color of wet concrete.
Paris moved around her as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
Cars passed.
Pedestrians hurried beneath umbrellas.
A delivery driver argued with a cyclist.
Somewhere nearby, a child laughed.
Camille wanted to stop every stranger and demand an explanation.
How could the world continue normally when hers had just split in two?
Geneviève followed her outside.
“Camille, wait.”
Camille turned.
“You knew the name Étienne.”
Her grandmother stopped walking.
“I recognized it.”
“That's not the same as answering my question.”
“No.”
“Then answer it.”
Geneviève looked exhausted.
“Étienne Delacroix.”
Camille repeated the name silently.
It sounded familiar.
Not personally familiar, but like a name she had encountered in newspapers or heard during television interviews.
“Who is he?”
“A man who once had considerable influence over medical institutions in Paris.”
“Was he a doctor?”
“No. He owned companies that financed hospitals, research programs, and private clinics.”
Camille stared at her.
“And you think he's my father?”
“I think your mother was afraid of him.”
“That's not what I asked.”
Geneviève lowered her voice.
“I don't know whether he is your father.”
Camille turned away.
She was beginning to understand that uncertainty could hurt almost as much as betrayal.
Her phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
She ignored it.
A second message appeared.
Do not go home.
Camille stopped.
Then another.
Someone has been inside your apartment.
Her stomach tightened.
She showed Geneviève.
“Who sent these?”
“I don't know.”
Camille called the number.
It rang once.
Then disconnected.
A photograph arrived.
Her kitchen table.
The sealed envelope.
The empty coffee cup she had left beside it that morning.
The photograph had been taken inside her apartment.
Less than an hour earlier.
Camille's fingers went numb.
“They're in my home.”
Geneviève looked toward the street.
“We need to go somewhere safe.”
“Who are they?”
“I don't know.”
“Stop saying that!”
Several pedestrians turned.
Camille lowered her voice.
“Every time I ask you something, you tell me you don't know. My mother spent thirty years hiding something. You spent thirty years believing she had disappeared. Now someone has broken into my apartment, and you're still protecting pieces of the truth.”
Geneviève accepted the accusation without defending herself.
“You're right.”
Camille looked at her.
“I should have told you about Étienne the moment you showed me the photograph.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Because I was afraid I might lose you before I had the chance to know you.”
The answer struck Camille unexpectedly.
Geneviève was not merely an elderly woman carrying old secrets.
She was a mother who had lost her daughter.
And a grandmother who had only recently discovered she had a granddaughter.
Fear had shaped both their lives.
Camille's anger softened, though it did not disappear.
“Then no more secrets.”
Geneviève nodded.
“No more secrets.”
They took a taxi to Geneviève's apartment in the Sixteenth Arrondissement.
It was a modest, old-fashioned place filled with books, framed paintings, and furniture that seemed to have remained in the same positions for decades.
Geneviève locked the door.
Then she took a small wooden box from a bedroom drawer.
Inside were photographs of Élise.
Camille sat beside her on the couch.
She had never seen her mother this young.
In one picture, Élise stood in a garden wearing a yellow dress.
In another, she laughed beside a bicycle.
A third showed her graduating from nursing school.
Camille touched the photograph.
“She was a nurse?”
Geneviève smiled sadly.
“She wanted to work with premature babies.”
“She never told me.”
“Perhaps remembering was painful.”
Camille looked at the young woman in the photograph.
Claire had spent most of Camille's childhood working as a seamstress, then as a caregiver for elderly patients.
She had never mentioned a nursing qualification.
Another piece of her life had been hidden.
Geneviève removed a photograph from the bottom of the box.
It showed Élise standing outside a medical building beside a tall man in a dark suit.
His face was visible.
Camille immediately recognized the posture from the damaged photograph.
“Is that him?”
Geneviève nodded.
“Étienne Delacroix.”
Camille studied his face.
Sharp cheekbones.
Dark hair.
A narrow smile that did not reach his eyes.
He looked to be in his late thirties.
“What happened between them?”
“I knew they were seeing each other. Élise told me he was helping fund a neonatal research project. She admired his work at first.”
“At first?”
“She became frightened of him. She wouldn't explain why.”
Camille looked again at the photograph.
Something about the man's expression disturbed her.
He was smiling at the camera.
But his hand rested firmly around Élise's wrist.
Not affectionately.
Possessively.
Her phone vibrated again.
Another photograph.
This time, it showed a woman standing outside a café.
She wore a dark coat and carried a leather shoulder bag.
Her hair was shoulder-length.
Her face was turned toward the camera.
Camille stopped breathing.
The woman looked exactly like her.
Not similar.
Not vaguely related.
Exactly.
The same eyes.
The same narrow chin.
The same small scar near the left eyebrow.
Camille instinctively touched her own scar.
She had received it during a childhood bicycle accident.
Or so her mother had told her.
Geneviève leaned closer.
“Oh, my God.”
A message appeared beneath the photograph.
Her name is Juliette.
Camille's hands shook.
Another message followed.
She has spent the last six months investigating the disappearance of a nurse named Élise Laurent.
Camille stared at the screen.
Her sister had been searching for their mother.
Perhaps without knowing that she had already died.
“Where is she?” Geneviève whispered.
Camille typed the question.
The reply came almost immediately.
She was last seen entering the Delacroix Foundation headquarters yesterday afternoon.
Camille looked up.
Geneviève's expression had changed.
“What?”
“Camille,” she whispered, “Étienne Delacroix still controls that foundation.”
A final message arrived.
It contained a photograph of Juliette inside an elevator.
Two men stood behind her.
One had his hand pressed against her shoulder.
The other held a black bag.
Juliette's face was pale.
She appeared frightened.
May you like
Beneath the image were six words.
“Your sister never came out.”
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