Léo's POVThe voice on Maya’s phone had frozen the entire loft. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Margaux Delisle had stepped out of the shadows and into the room with us, her words cutting through the air like a scalpel. The temperature seemed to drop a few degrees. Even the city hum beyond the tall windows felt distant, as if Paris itself had paused to listen.Maya’s eyes met mine for a fraction of a second... steady, but I saw the flash of steel beneath. Without a word, she tapped the screen and set the phone on speaker. The line crackled faintly with background silence. Margaux was waiting, patient as a spider.“I do not know anyone named Colette,” Maya said. Her voice was level, almost conversational, the way she spoke when she was designing under pressure, calm on the surface while every detail was being calculated.A soft exhale came through the speaker, almost amused. “Let us dispense with the pretense,” Margaux replied, her tone cultured, precise, every syllable shaped by
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