XXI.

F O R T U N E  F A V O U R S

—aka, exes are good plot devices,

EXT— THE BANKS OF SEINE.

PARIS, FRANCE — MID-AFTERNOON.

CONT. SCENE I.

HE DIDN'T SMILE as he reached me but he didn't need to.

He was here, and he was going to keep me safe.

For now.

They can't very well attempt to hurt a French aristocrat, can't they?

... On the other hand, maybe they can. But it will at least give me— us time. He's a confusion. A curiosity.

It'll be a little bit harder than just making a common man disappear.

"You say my name like an old friend."

I focused back on Louis, smile widening. His glare faltered, standing so still for his body, he was making it awkward. I don't think I'd ever seen him this stilted and distressed. I have always seen Louis as someone languid, easy to move. It was the complicity of having blue blood but not having it control your future. His family is removed a few times over for him to actually work normally, but still known enough that it holds a sense of forgotten hierarchy.

And he has always carried himself well. Like fresh spring water.

Now there were rocks on the water's path.

I swirled my wine and sipped. "Why speak English when I can speak to you perfectly in French?"

He fidgeted, but replied in his native tongue nevertheless. "They say you're not even French."

"Who says?"

His eyes narrowed. For someone with brown eyes all my life, Louis' eyes have always been so pretty to me. You can't tell if they're blue or green or grey— they look like sea glass.

For someone who's usually amicable, they were so sharp right now, hm?

"The authorities, who else? You can't play the fool with me, Nina. Or Laura. Or whatever. . . whatever your name really is." His fists clenched. Oh, Louis. "Why did you even call me?"

I sighed, setting the glass down. "They told you about Laura, huh?"

"They told me everything." He looked hurt. Beyond hurt, he looked betrayed.

Unperturbed, I stood up, taking the folder and tucking it close to my inner coat's pocket before I turned to him, smiling. All these eyes on us, red hot on the nape of my neck. I needed fresh air.

I offered my hand. "Walk with me?"

His eyes, sea glass reflecting war torn confusion. Hurt. Expectancy.

But he followed. Of course he would.

EXT— PARK.

PARIS, FRANCE — AFTERNOON.

SCENE II.

It was all too surreal.

In all his life, Louis Moureau-Fournier had never felt his heart thud like this before. One misstep could ruin everything.

But what will it really ruin?

He felt his chest, where the wire ran across his body.

"You have one job, Mr. Fournier." Agent Baudelaire had said, a smile he had never seen before stretched across her face. She was excited. No, she was feral with it. "You made the right call calling us immediately once she contacted you. I knew she would. You were one of her best marks— not entirely in love with her to ruin the world for, but just enough kindness and curiosity that you'd attempt to contact in case something happened."

Louis didn't know if he should have been insulted. Last night, one of the last things he'd ever thought of happening was receiving a message from the woman who had spun him like a gold thread, broke his heart, and ran away.

He was just a job after all, a mark as the agent said. Time and again inside that cold, mind-numbing room inside that plain building they had for a headquarters. What exactly had happened to him, his aunt's pearls, that godforsaken party in Versailles.

Again and again, these questions, these comments, the pictures of her...

He spent the last few weeks trying to move on from what happened. Erasing her from his memories and waking dreams proved to be a trite effort. He didn't think his life was dull before her, but everything felt slow and thick after her. As if she had brought a big enough change to... stutter his life like this. Recuperating from her— with or without all the romantic fanfare — was difficult.

She made sure it was difficult.

And just one night, one message. An address. One of her favourite cafes— one of their favourite date spots as a matter. Before he went to work and she... planned on stealing from his family. Using him. All those mornings spent lounging and talking before the day actually begins. He treasured them. All of them.

She would be there and she was offering him a seat.

Louis had shaken his head, turning the memories and racing heart into a resolute thought. Of course he had reported it to the agent in charge. Who had taken him into a van just parked a block off the meeting place, whilst other people, quiet and steely, outfitted him with a microphone across his body.

"Something happened?" he asked, his gaze darting which way and everywhere. The van was compacted, filled to the brim with people like a sardines tin. Monitors showed various spots of the cafe. In a few of them, a familiar dark haired woman.

His heart raced, his palms sweaty. She was here. She was back.

She wanted to see him.

But why?

"We— well, I, think she's gotten into something dangerous. She arrived here with almost a militia with her, and someone we call in the US, an Untouchable."

Louis blinked. He wasn't absorbing all these words well. "An Untouchable?"

Agent Baudelaire pulled out a tablet and started rapidly going through pages and notes. "Can't say much to a civilian but..." She looked up, eyes grim with an askew smirk. "She's in a bit of a pickle. Dangerous, dangerous people around her." She looked up, impish and excited. "Could very well be the reason she contacted you."

"You're in your head, Louis," her voice, that familiar decibel with that flawless French, snapped him back to the present. "What's in your mind?"

He looked at her. He was two heads taller than her, with that smile that spoke of secrets you couldn't unearth even with a few kisses. Even with torture.

Louis wanted to unearth her. Ruin her. Kiss her.

It was all so trite.

He clenched his fist.

It was just the proximity. That was all there was to it. This girl he adored like a daydream, who had twisted his days and life in a gigantic pretzel that even he couldn't beg to touch. She controlled both ends, only the ever one who could tighten it like a noose or unravel it like a gift. He remembered her exactly like this. Her height, her perfume, her small, secretive smile. That gaze that rendered him useless.

He loved her still, and in the back of his head, she knew this too.

"Why are you here, Nina?"

Her smile widened ever so slightly. They walked side by side in the busy sidewalk. She loved walking here, he remembered. There was a cornerstone flower shop she bought fresh flowers from every morning before she kissed his cheek goodbye.

He thought she wouldn't reply, continue with that easy silence as if nothing had changed.

But she did.

"I didn't plan to. Truthfully." She laughed lightly. "But I do think, now that I'm here, I should settle a few scores, yes?"

He almost stopped walking. "Scores?"

He can feel the wire, can feel the gazes that weren't supposed to be there. This— this entire scene felt the same but not really, deep down. There was a darker take to it. A tense air that he wasn't sure was just the Interpol.

"Does your aunt still miss her necklace?"

She posed it as such a curious, innocent question that he couldn't help look at her as if she had her head on backwards. When she saw the expression on his face, she laughed, clutching at his arm.

"What kind of expression is that, Lou?"

"I— How could you be so callous to all of this?"

She laughed again, lighter this time as she looped her arm over his. Her touch was familiar. Her warmth. Memories... memories were so awful. "Sorry, sorry. I wasn't trying to be. It was legitimate question."

"You know it's a family heirloom."

"Family... Family is so weird, isn't it? Dangerous even." She sighed as if we had all the time in the world. As if this was just one of those mornings all those weeks ago... Mere weeks when it felt like years. "The man I'm with has a dangerous family."

His heart thudded painfully in his ribcage. He didn't know if it was from knowing she was in a dangerous situation like the agent had surmised, or the words, the man she's with.

There was a logical question... and then there was that escaped him.

"Then why are you with him?"

She looked up at him, impish. "Jealous?" His gaze, longing, deceptively agonised, told it all. "Jealous, indeed. I'm afraid I can't do anything to help with that. In a few months' time, I fear I might be engaged to him."

This time, he truly did stop, pulling at the arm intertwined with his. He gripped her arm. "Engaged?"

"I... I'm following a dance, my love. I'm not privy to all of the steps as I'm only following his lead." She patted his hand, urging him to keep walking. "I deserved it, don't I?" she joked. "Oh, I can just imagine how much you cursed at me when I left."

"Did... did you really think I would've?" He didn't mean to sound so heartbroken. But the reality was, in those mere weeks she knew him, he fell in love. This Nina. Her humour, her sweetness. Her wit and her awful sarcasm.

"Nina... Nina, look at me." He turned her body toward him, lifting her chin, her gaze, to his with a hand. Her eyes, for just a moment, flashed with panic before smoothening over like the depths that they usually were.

There were so many questions, so many things he wanted to say. But he could feel their time running thin, he could feel all the eyes, the ears on them.

Run away with me.

I love you.

Come back.

You shouldn't have left.

Stay. Here. I will protect you.

He swallowed all of them.

"Are you in danger? Do you need help?"

Her smile was genuine as it was pretty. As pretty as it has ever been. Her hand reached to touch his face, gentle. Persuasive. "You being here is more than enough." Then her hand went down. To his neck to his heart. It gripped his shirt and—

"Nina—"

"Shh, this isn't for you." She pulled at the wire. "How are you, Agent Baudelaire? Assuming it is you. I'm sure you're already well aware of the people following me if your trigger happy thoughts are telling you to arrest me now even when I know I didn't leave any circumstances where I can just be arrested on sight. I left you with nothing, so you can't hold me while you scramble to find something to pin on me in the mean time."

She brought him closer, and he couldn't help that he was blushing at the closeness, but she gripped him firmly. To outsiders, it may look like a lingering embrace, a sweet moment.

"You do well not to do that right now, because the person who has their eyes on me is keeping me on a tight leash. Knowing you, you've already done your homework. What a good detective." She laughed darkly, then her smile dropped. A contort between her eyebrows.

"He's dangerous and he likes me too much to let me go. Stop... stop using Louis for your agenda. Find another angle. He, nor I, aren't here for pleasure. Even I'm not privy to why he's here... Do look it up for me, will you? Catch you later. Oh, and be careful of the guy in glasses with him. He's far more dangerous than he looks."

Nina patted his chest, a satisfied smile on her face as she looked up at him and kissed his cheek. She lingered, that time-stopping moment. "Don't chase me. I don't want to put you in danger," she whispered before stepping back.

Her smile. That smile again. Twisted a little wry, a little heartbroken. He held his chest, feeling the ache all over. A healing wound opened. A healing wound bleeding.

She blew him an air kiss before turning and walking away.

When he slumped back on his heel, feeling like all the air in his system gone, his hands dropped to his coat's pocket. On one pocket, he felt something.

He was about to pull it out, heart hammering, when there was running, and he was surrounded by agents. Agent Baudelaire turned to him, face fierce.

"Do you think she's telling the truth?"

He blinked at her, feeling the contours of a folded paper. It was small and square, perfectly packed. "Truth?"

"Wake up from your love haze, Lord Fournier," she growled, looking like she wanted to slap him. "Think. Help me here. What do you think she meant when she said 'not being able to take her'?"

"We found a tail on her," the other agent, a Gabriel Moulin, answered in a less sharper and more tired voice. He was French and seemingly trying to placate the American who looked like she was about to burst. Run. Stab someone.

"Several in fact. And you've read the files. She couldn't be lying about that."

"Fuck!" Then she punched Agent Moulin on his shoulder. Louis raised his eyebrows at Gabriel, who only shook his head.

She pressed a tight finger on the other agent's chest, coals in her eyes. A live flame dancing. Then she turned to another agent. "Keep a tail on her. And that Kristoff Park. And his associate. Especially that 'glasses guy. Get me everything you have on them."

The other agent looked uncomfortable, mouth open to rebuke before Agent Moulin stepped forward, holding Agent Baudelaire by the shoulder.

"This isn't our territory. We can't just insert ourselves in another person's case."

She shook him. "Yes, we can if they overlap. Laura Finley is my case, and I would be damned if I'm going to let some rich ass billionaire ruin that when a French aristocrat couldn't." She turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "No offence."

How do you think I was going to take that? But he simpered a smile instead, pulling the wire from his body. "Sure. I have to go now, I mean. I am free to go, yes?"

"Did she give you anything?" Agent Moulin asked, eyes discerning. "Told you anything at all?"

Agent Baudelaire's eyes widened. "Yes, yes, a secret code or some kind?"

Eager as her face was, Louis lied fluidly. "No. You heard as much. She is to be married to him."

The American agent tsked. "Yeah, we're going to have to look in to that. Fuck, why the hell did this shit get so much more twisted?" But her mind was gearing, variables and possibilities running around her brain that she swept her gold-clung fingers across her kinky hair, saluted him, and left, walking back to the van to prop up another plan.

"She looks like she's enjoying the hunt," Louis remarked in French, fixing his coat again, trying to cool down.

Agent Moulin looked at him. Really looked him to the point that he felt judged by those eyes. Then he looked away, turning back to the agent's retreating figure. "She is, to some degree. This is her white whale after all." He folded and twisted the wire in his hands.

"Well, then... I must be going."

"Take care, Mr. Fournier," the agent said in farewell. "As much as she is her white whale, she is your poisonous flower."

"Are you saying I'm being played?"

"No, no. I'm saying she knows how."

Louis gripped the paper tighter under the coat's pocket, feeling hot all over.