Eliot's POV
My bank account was screaming at me to get a job.
The Valmont affair had cost me my rented shirt (stained with a serial killer's blood—rental guy didn't want to hear a thing), and the faculty had suspended theses while they "processed" the fact that our research director had been collecting corpses.
Result: I was broke, overdrawn, and surviving on canned white beans.
Which is how I ended up accepting this temp gig: waiter at a high-society charity gala under the glass roof of the Grand Palais.
I was stuck in the kitchen locker room, facing a mirror speckled with humidity stains, trying to strangle myself with a rented black bow tie.
My tux was too big in the shoulders and too short at the ankles. I looked like a penguin coming back from a hunger strike.
"You're turning the loop the wrong way, young man."
I startled and let go of my collar. A man in his sixties had just stepped into the room to wash his hands at the sink.
He had natural presence—the kind of reassuring aura you associate with old country doctors or model grandfathers. His silver hair was perfectly combed, and his charcoal-gray suit radiated expensive discretion.
He approached with a kind smile, his eyes creased with warm crow's-feet.
"May I?" he asked softly.
I nodded, frozen with shyness. With fatherly dexterity, he undid my butchered knot and started tying it properly.
"Bow ties are like campaign promises," he joked in a deep, steady voice. "Pull too hard on one side, and the whole thing collapses. You're a student?"
"Y-yes, sir. Law. I'm doing side jobs to pay my rent."
The man's expression brightened with genuine respect. Once the knot was perfect, he patted my shoulder affectionately.
"That does you credit, my boy. Never give up. Law, justice... it's the last barrier we have left to protect the weakest. It's for hardworking young people like you—and for our orphans—that I fight every day in the Senate."
It hit me, all at once, who I was talking to.
Senator-Mayor Delacroix.
The organizer of this grand gala for the "Orphans of the Future" foundation. The politicians' darling in the polls, famed for incorruptible integrity and social causes.
"Thank you, Senator," I murmured, genuinely moved.
He gave me a conspiratorial wink. "Call me Henri. And good luck tonight. Don't hesitate to pour yourself a glass in the kitchen if the chef isn't looking."
He left the locker room.
I stared at myself in the mirror, my heart warmed. For once, I'd met someone good. A real rock. A man with principles in a world of sharks.
"Come on, Eliot," I told myself, grabbing my stainless-steel tray. "Be worthy. Serve canapés for a good cause."
Inspector Vasseur's POV
I hated charity galas.
As the lead security coordinator for VIPs, I spent my evenings watching hypocritical politicians, drunk CEOs, and Botoxed socialites, while praying no lunatic forced the entrance with a weapon.
Tonight, security was maximal. We were protecting Delacroix, a man famous enough to attract the crazies.
My earpiece crackled nonstop. My men were in position. Snipers on rooftops. Metal detectors working perfectly.
I paced the upper walkway of the Grand Palais, scanning the flow of guests and servers with hawk-like vigilance. The usual stress kept me sharp.
And then my gaze crossed his.
Near the seafood buffet, awkwardly carrying a tray of champagne flutes, stood a young man with messy brown hair, slightly hunched shoulders, and the lost, harmless look of a stray dog.
My heart stopped.
My lungs emptied. A brutal, icy sweat flooded my back.
No.
I instinctively stepped back, my heel bumping a marble column. My hands started shaking so violently I had to grip my own belt to hide them.
This can't be happening. What is he doing here?!
It was him. The law student. The boy who had "accidentally" walked into the apartment of the worst serial killer of the decade and—somehow—made him smash his own skull with his own statue after retieing a shoelace.
Since the Valmont case, that kid had haunted my nights. The police reports were clear: he was just a cursed witness. But I knew.
My old-cop instinct screamed that this student was hiding a predator of divine danger. Death itself, disguised as an underpaid intern.
I watched him approach a guest to offer a glass. The guest—a wealthy industrialist—jostled him slightly without apologizing.
Oh my God, he's going to kill him, I thought, breath caught. He's going to trigger a hurricane or drop a three-ton chandelier on his head.
But the student simply apologized meekly and stepped back.
I raised my hand to my earpiece, voice strangled by terror.
"Alpha Unit, Vasseur. Listen carefully. This is a direct order."
"We're listening, boss. Problem?"
"The brown-haired server near the shellfish buffet. Black bow tie. Sneakers under his tux pants."
"We've got him in sight. Proceed with an arrest?"
"Absolutely not, you moron," I hissed, eyes bulging. "Do not approach him under any circumstances. Do not make eye contact. If he walks toward you, you change trajectory. If he asks you the time, you give him your watch and you run."
"Uh... boss? Who is this guy? A terrorist?"
"It's worse than that," I stammered, shrinking behind the column to slip out of his line of sight. "He's a walking calamity. Let him do his job. And if he gets close to Senator Delacroix... pray for the Senator's soul."
I cut the comms and swallowed a stomach pill dry.
The evening had barely started, and I already knew we'd end up with body bags.
The only question was how many.
Eliot's POV
The Grand Palais glittered with a thousand lights. Under the immense glass roof, a jazz orchestra played softly while the capital's elite sipped champagne from crystal flutes.
I threaded through this ocean of silk and diamonds, my tray balanced precariously on my left hand. I dodged the sharp elbows of socialites and the wide gestures of politicians with the agility of a frightened cat.
In the exact center of the reception hall sat the evening's showpiece:
A contemporary abstract sculpture.
It was, without a doubt, the ugliest and most menacing thing I'd ever seen. A mountain of brushed steel, twisted, bristling with spikes and razor-sharp angles. It looked like a collision between an industrial meat grinder and a spaceship.
On the marble base, a gold plaque read:
"Youth in Flight. Gift of Senator Henri Delacroix to the Foundation. Estimated value: €500,000."
I whistled inwardly in admiration. Half a million euros for orphans. Delacroix really was a saint.
Even if he had questionable taste—and potentially lethal taste if it ever fell.
The air-conditioning and stress were drying out my throat. Slipping away from the noise, I ducked behind a heavy purple velvet curtain that concealed a room reserved for sound equipment. I set my tray down on a transport crate, took a deep breath, and was about to sneak a glass of water.
That's when I heard voices on the other side of the curtain.
"Did you handle the local press problem?" asked a deep, steady voice.
I recognized it instantly. Henri Delacroix.
But his voice no longer had the warm, grandfatherly tone from the locker room. It was cold, metallic—without a single human inflection.
"Everything's under control, Henri," answered a second voice, nasal and nervous—probably an adviser or lawyer. "The article about the gala goes out tomorrow morning. Planned headline: 'The Big-Hearted Senator Comes to the Rescue of Childhood.' It'll blow up your numbers for regionals."
"Good," Delacroix spat with contempt. "Organizing this circus with these whiners makes my skin crawl. Make sure the shell company in the Bahamas received the transfer for the steel sculpture."
"It's done. Five hundred thousand wired. The straw artist took his 5% cut. We diverted 80% of tonight's donations straight to your offshore account, as planned. I'm leaving the remaining 20% to the foster-care foundation to buy a few schoolbags and make the donors cry into their nice warm homes."
Behind my curtain, my glass of water stopped a millimeter from my lips. My brain started to tilt.
Eighty percent... diverted? The steel sculpture is a money-laundering machine built from cash stolen from orphans?!
Nausea surged through me. The "nice grandpa" who'd fixed my bow tie was pure leech.
But the conversation wasn't done. The horror was just getting started.
"Good," the Senator continued with a sigh. "It's the minimum to make up for last month's losses. Pierre's death cost me a fortune."
My ears rang. Pierre?
"That guru moron," Delacroix growled, his voice heavy with hate. "I covered him for five years. I blocked three financial-brigade investigations into his cult. I buried the families' complaints. And in exchange, he gave me 30% of his profits. Solid gold business. And then the idiot had to break his own neck tripping on his robe during his own spiritual retreat!"
I pressed myself against the wall, hands trembling, holding my breath until my lungs burned.
It was him.
Delacroix was the shadow man behind the Crystal Tree. The politician protecting the scammer who'd nearly destroyed Thomas's family and pushed so many others toward suicide.
Under his savior-of-the-nation act, he was nothing but a white-collar mafia godfather, fattening himself on foster kids' misery and desperate people's weakness.
"The inbred little church people shut down the accounts after the accident," the adviser continued weakly. "But don't worry, Henri. The sculpture scam tonight will refill your campaign coffers."
"I'm counting on it," Delacroix concluded, voice glacial. "Now. Put your fake smile back on. Time to play philanthropist for the cameras."
Their footsteps moved away across the parquet.
I stayed frozen in my alcove, shaking with rage and disgust.
The bow tie he'd tied for me with such care suddenly tightened around my throat like a noose. I ripped it off with one sharp motion.
Criminal justice—the one I studied—could never touch a man like him. Too powerful. Too protected. Untouchable.
I didn't know then that, against a certain kind of karma, parliamentary immunity is just paper.
And that inside me, something cold and absolute had listened very carefully to that conversation.
I stepped out of the alcove, breath short, face pale. I grabbed my tray with a trembling hand and returned to the blinding light of the gala.
In the distance, near the dessert buffet, Henri Delacroix laughed loudly with a group of investors.
Seeing him wear that mask of benevolence after confessing the looting of an orphanage and his complicity with a destructive cult made me physically sick.
I stared—unable to look away. For a second, I imagined dumping my tray of canapés right into his face.
It was a very bad idea.
And also: I wasn't the only one watching.
Suddenly, a hand the size of a frying pan slammed down on my shoulder, nearly crushing my collarbone. I let out a strangled squeak.
"You. Come with me," growled a gravelly voice with a strong Eastern European accent.
I was lifted off the ground.
Literally.
The guy who'd grabbed me looked like a tank in a tux. A colossus—at least six-foot-five, two hundred and sixty pounds of dense muscle, shaved head, nose broken more than once.
One of the Senator's personal bodyguards.
Before I could even form a protest, he shoved me through the kitchen swing doors.
He dragged me into the back room near the dishwashing area and the big stainless recycling bins—an empty corner, abandoned during the dinner rush. He slammed me against the cold tiled wall. My tray slipped from my hands and hit the floor with a metallic crash.
"You think I didn't see you, penguin?" the giant spat, his scarred face inches from mine. "You've been staring at the boss for ten minutes like you want to kill him. You a nosy journalist? Some far-left activist?"
"S-s-sir, I swear I'm just a temp!" I stammered, knees shaking, feeling my bladder threatening betrayal. "I was just wondering if he wanted... white or red!"
The colossus chuckled, mean.
"Sure. I'll teach you where to look."
He took half a step back, planted his massive feet on the slick floor, and cocked his right fist.
A fist the size of a cinderblock.
He was going to pulverize my skull.
Total panic swallowed me. My lungs locked. I squeezed my eyes shut, tucked my head into my shoulders, curled in on myself, and braced for the killing blow with a pathetic little squeal—
Click.
It was like someone flicked my brain's power off and on. A micro black-out.
I opened my eyes again.
The silence in the back kitchen was total.
There was no one in front of me.
I blinked, confused, touching my face. No blood. No broken jaw.
I lowered my gaze.
The 260-pound colossus wasn't standing anymore.
He was... embedded.
His legs stuck out absurdly from a huge 100-liter stainless bin reserved for organic waste. His torso and head were jammed at the bottom of the metal cylinder, and both arms—thick as tree trunks—were twisted behind his back in a submission lock so anatomically complex it defied physics.
He was deeply unconscious.
I stood there with my mouth open, brain frozen, trying to make sense of the scene.
How much time had passed? A second and a half? Two, at most.
I looked at the floor. Near the bin there was a small puddle of olive oil—probably leaked from a poorly closed container.
"Wow..." I whispered, genuinely impressed. "He must've put all his weight into the punch, slipped on that oil, flipped backward, got his arms tangled trying to catch himself, and landed headfirst right into the bin."
I crept closer and patted the unconscious giant's thigh. No reaction.
"What incredible bad luck," I sighed, shaking my head in commiseration. "Safety standards in these kitchens are really disastrous. If the labor inspector saw this... He could've broken his neck!"
I picked up my stainless tray, adjusted the front panels of my tux, and smoothed my hair. That had been close. Very close.
For once, the bad luck glued to my skin had hit someone else—with perfect timing.
I had no idea my own knuckles were slightly reddened. I had no idea the "oil puddle" had nothing to do with it.
And above all: I had no idea that in a 1.4-second absence, I had just performed a judo throw combined with a special-forces-level joint lock to neutralize a professional killer and dump him into the trash with surgical precision.
Eliot the anxious student went back to work.
The alter ego went back to sleep, satisfied with the job done.
I pushed through the swing doors and returned to the reception hall.
Senator Delacroix's big speech was about to begin.
Inspector Vasseur's POV
My miniature binoculars were shaking so hard the lens kept tapping my eyebrow.
From the first-floor walkway, I had just seen the student come back out of the kitchens. He adjusted his bow tie calmly, holding a brand-new tray of champagne.
Where is Igor? screamed my brain.
I'd watched the Russian colossus—Delacroix's best bodyguard—grab the kid ten minutes earlier and drag him into the back room. Igor weighed 260 pounds of muscle forged in the worst Eastern European militias.
And yet the student returned alone, barely ruffled, without a scratch.
The monster had literally swallowed Igor without making a sound.
My knees threatened to give.
This student wasn't human.
He was a black hole made of calamities.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Delacroix's smooth voice boomed through the speakers.
The Senator had stepped onto the stage. Behind him towered that terrifying brushed-steel sculpture, "Youth in Flight," held by thin metal cables to create the illusion it floated above him.
"Tonight we gather for our most vulnerable children..."
As Delacroix began his hypocritical sob story, I lowered my eyes toward the floor.
The blood drained from my face.
The student was approaching the stage with his tray.
He was moving into position.
"Bravo Unit!" I shouted into my earpiece, practically spitting into the mic. "The brown-haired server is three meters from the podium! Intercept him immediately before he triggers the apocalypse!"
I saw one of my plainclothes agents—a big guy—charge straight at the student to tackle him.
That was the fatal mistake.
You don't charge the black cat.
Eliot's POV
I'd slipped into the front row to serve the VIPs. Delacroix spoke with trembles in his voice about the misery of orphans.
Hearing that, knowing what he'd just said backstage, made me want to throw up. I looked down at my feet to hide my disgust.
Huh. My right shoelace had come undone again.
And there was a thick black power cable, slapped down with cheap duct tape, snaking right in front of me toward a big open power supply box.
Really, the safety standards at this event are catastrophic, I thought, shaking my head. They must've hired the cheapest installer in the region to pocket the difference.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy in a suit sprinting straight at me with the expression of a rugby player ready to make me eat the floor.
Panic struck like lightning. I took a sharp step back to dodge him.
My left foot crushed my right shoelace. My heel slammed hard against the poorly taped cable.
Gravity did the rest.
I toppled backward, windmilling my arms. My silver tray launched off my palm, catapulting its contents into the air with the grace of an alcoholic firework.
Three champagne flutes filled to the brim and two salmon macarons performed a perfect ballistic arc.
Time seemed to slow under the Grand Palais glass roof.
The champagne landed with diabolical precision inside the main power box feeding the stage lights—a non-watertight box, bought cheaply from China by the Senator's shell company.
The sparkling liquid flooded the overloaded circuits.
BZZZ—BAM!
An explosive short-circuit tore through the air. A spray of blue sparks lit up the stage, followed by a dull blast. The shock wave made the podium's metal structure vibrate.
Under the brutal jolt, the cheap fastenings holding the sculpture's cables snapped with a dry crack that chilled the crowd's blood.
The ton of spiked brushed steel tipped forward.
Senator Delacroix looked up, his face warped by terror. Forgetting his speech and his dignity, he dropped the microphone and spun to dive off the stage.
Good reflex. He was going to survive.
But Eliot's karma never left survivors.
The Senator's foot, in a luxurious smooth Italian leather shoe, landed exactly—to the millimeter—on the greasy filling of a salmon macaron crushed on the floor during the tray's flight.
Delacroix's foot shot forward. His legs flew up. The "good Samaritan" slammed flat onto his back, breath knocked out, arms spread wide in the middle of the stage.
He had just enough time to widen his eyes before "Youth in Flight" hit him full force.
CRUNCH.
The horrific sound of steel pulverizing flesh and bone echoed in the reception hall's deathly silence. Senator Delacroix was instantly impaled and crushed by the very metal mass he had purchased with money stolen from orphans.
The sculpture now hovered over him like an avant-garde tombstone, smeared with a very non-abstract red.
The screams of high society began tearing through the Paris night.
A heavy, unreal silence fell beneath the great glass roof, replacing the terrifying echo of metal grinding bone.
Then the hysterical shrieks erupted—sharp, panicked. Socialites in designer gowns ran in every direction, stumbling on stilettos.
I pushed myself up with difficulty, rubbing my bruised elbow. My rented shirt was sprayed with champagne, but by some miracle nothing was broken.
I looked down at the ruined stage.
Where Senator Delacroix—the great defender of orphans—had stood, there was now only a heap of brushed steel with vicious angles.
Only the tip of a luxury Italian loafer stuck out from beneath the marble base of "Youth in Flight," twitching once—then going still. A few centimeters away, a tragically crushed salmon macaron bore witness to the fatal slip.
I shook my head, dusting off my pants with a tired sigh.
"Honestly..." I murmured, staring at the scene. "I'll never understand contemporary abstract art. It's really... heavy with meaning."
I picked up my bent tray with a grimace. My temp agency was definitely going to dock the damage from my paycheck. My usual bad luck had just cost me my evening again.
That's when a man cut through the panicked crowd, holding up a police badge.
Inspector Vasseur.
The same exhausted-faced cop who'd handled the Valmont file, and before that, the Pierre-the-Guru case.
He stopped dead three meters from the destroyed stage. His gaze swept over the charred power box, the salmon macaron, the murderous sculpture—and finally... me.
I gave him a small, friendly, slightly embarrassed wave, recognizing him immediately.
"Good evening, Inspector. It's me again. I think there's been an issue with the electrical installation..."
Inspector Vasseur's POV
My soul permanently left my body.
He had waved at me. The demon had given me a small, friendly hand wave, surrounded by chaos, screams, and the crushed corpse of the region's most powerful man.
I stared at the salmon macaron. I stared at the power cable. I stared at that sheepish little student smile.
The equation formed in my mind with terrifying clarity: he'd calculated the champagne's trajectory to trigger the short circuit that released the sculpture, and he'd placed the macaron's greasy filling with millimetric precision to ensure the Senator slipped exactly beneath the impact point.
A ballistic, dietary, artistic murder.
My deputy—a young cop fresh out of school—came running up behind me, breathless.
"Chief! Is this an attack?! Do we seal the perimeter? Do we take the waiter in the tux in for questioning? He was front row!"
I turned to my deputy with the slowness of an automaton and grabbed him by the jacket collar.
"Listen to me carefully, kid," I murmured in a dead voice. "You do not look at that server. You do not talk to him. You do not breathe in his direction."
"But Chief, he—"
"IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!" I suddenly shouted to the room, making the remaining VIPs flinch. "A tragic, unfortunate, purely divine accident! The cable was defective! The Senator slipped! No crime! Move along!"
I swallowed a violent wave of nausea, turned on my heel, and walked away from the most cursed student in France as fast as possible without actually running.
I knew that if I brought him into an interrogation room, the precinct would get swallowed by a meteorite or explode from a gas leak.
I wanted my retirement.
...
The Delacroix affair made every newspaper in the country the next day.
Officially, Inspector Vasseur closed the file in record time: "Accidental death by blunt trauma, following an electrical failure and a slip on an appetizer." No charges were brought against the caterer, nor against the temp waiter miraculously spared.
But the real earthquake came forty-eight hours later.
While dismantling the monumental steel sculpture to recover the Senator's remains, forensics discovered something odd: the heavy marble base sounded hollow.
Inside, protected in a watertight safe, lay the "real" treasure of abstract art: Delacroix's personal hard drives.
Years of occult accounting, irrefutable proof of diverting 80% of foster-care donations, and—above all—the trace of bribes paid by Pierre-the-Guru's cult to secure political immunity.
The national tribute planned for the Senator was canceled in total disgrace. His offshore accounts were frozen, then seized by the State.
The "Orphans of the Future" foundation recovered the stolen millions in full.
And in his tiny suburban studio, Eliot—still broke and still anxious—watched the evening news while eating lukewarm pasta, thinking that justice sometimes triumphed in a very strange way.
Cause of death: Impalement and crushing by blunt abstract art (1,000 kg mass).
Verdict: Tragic accident caused by an electrical failure and a "slippery" salmon macaron.
Red Flag for a corrupt politician: Never steal orphans' money to buy sharp contemporary art. Karma has an annoying habit of returning it—with the grace of a demolition ball. Especially if a clumsy student is working the buffet.
End of Chapter 8.