Gérard Beaumont’s letter arrived on a Wednesday.Not through lawyers. Not through the administration. A personal envelope, handwritten address, delivered to the Moreau Group’s office and passed to Sébastien who passed it to Lucas without comment.Lucas took it to the apartment before opening it.He sat at the table by the window. The Marais is outside doing its ordinary Wednesday afternoon. He held the envelope for a moment, then opened it.Three pages. The handwriting of a man who had been sitting with something for a long time — slightly uneven, the pressure of the pen varying, the kind of writing that happened when the hand was following the mind rather than leading it.He read it without stopping.Gérard did not apologise for the dinner table cruelties. He did not apologise for the job front comments, the coat, or the three years of pleasant, systematic diminishment. He apologised for something smaller and more precise.The first evening you came to our house I handed you my coat

Isabelle was called at nine-fifteen on the second morning.Lucas watched her walk from her seat to the witness stand with the same quality of movement she brought to everything — unhurried, deliberate, entirely herself. She did not look at Édouard. She did not look at the gallery. She looked at the prosecutor and waited.The prosecutor was Madame Voss. Fifty, precise, with the particular economy of someone who understood that a courtroom was not a stage and treated it accordingly.“Madame Fontaine,” she began. “Please describe your boulangerie for the court.”Isabelle folded her hands on the rail in front of her.“It is on Rue des Archives in the Marais,” she said. “I opened it six years ago. I run it alone with one part-time member of staff. We open at seven in the morning and close at six in the evening, six days a week.” She paused. “It is not a large operation. But it is entirely mine. Every decision about what we make and how we make it has been mine from the beginning.”“And on

The closing arguments lasted the morning.Madame Voss presented first. She was methodical and entirely without theatre — the footage, the testimony, the transfers, each element placed beside the next with the precision of someone constructing something that needed no decoration to stand. She spoke for forty minutes. When she finished the argument was complete in the way that simple, well-supported things are complete. Nothing left requiring interpretation.Perrin spoke for an hour.He was skilled. Lucas had known this from the beginning and continued to know it throughout the closing. He worked the gaps where gaps existed — the question of intent, the distinction between instructing a crime and failing to prevent one, the psychological context of a man displaced from an inheritance he had been promised for a decade. He was persuasive in the way that good lawyers were persuasive regardless of the evidence against them.But the transfers were there. The footage was there. Favre’s testim

The sentencing was on a Thursday morning three weeks after the verdict.Lucas and Isabelle arrived at the Palais de Justice at eight forty-five. The November that had attended the trial had given way to the first proper cold of December — the air sharp and still, the city wearing the particular quality of a morning that had decided to be taken seriously. They walked from the Métro without speaking. They had said what needed saying over the previous weeks. This morning required only presence.Sébastien was waiting at the entrance. He had a newspaper folded under his arm that he had clearly been carrying without reading. He looked at them both in the way he had of looking — precise, assessing, briefly warm.“Perrin submitted the mitigation materials yesterday,” he said. “Psychological assessment, character references, documentation of Édouard’s community contributions over the past decade.” He paused. “It is a competent submission. His lawyers have done their work.”“It will not change

Philippe Fontaine arrived on a Friday evening in January.He came by train from Lyon, carrying a single bag and the particular energy of a man who had decided the visit was important and was not going to make a performance of that decision. Isabelle collected him from Gare de Lyon. Lucas was at the apartment preparing dinner.He had been preparing since three o’clock.Not because the meal was complicated. Because Isabelle’s father had said proper dinner and Lucas had treated that with the seriousness it deserved. He had sourced everything three days in advance. The chicken from a producer in the Oise whose name Gilles had given him. The vegetables from the market on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. The cheese from the same valley supplier Sylvie, is now used for the Cannes restaurant. He knew where every element came from and why.At five-thirty Isabelle had sent a message.The train was on time. He is asking about the route. Twenty minutes.At five thirty-two another message.He wants to kn