Chapter 29 - Convergence at the Palais de la Bourse
The Palais de la Bourse rose from the heart of Lyon like a neoclassical fortress of greed, its towering Corinthian columns illuminated by dramatic architectural spotlights that pierced the torrential rain. Black limousines lined the surrounding boulevards for six blocks, their motors idling as armed private security personnel with earpieces and umbrella-bearing valets escorted Europe’s wealthiest industrial barons, diplomats, and fashion magnates up the grand marble steps.
Beneath the street, inside the service access tunnels beneath the Palais’s historic heating vaults, Julian, Madame Laurent, and I waited in the shadows.
Beside us, shivering uncontrollably in a soiled silk bathrobe, was Evelyn. Julian had dragged her out of the laundry chute just seconds before David’s men reached the cellar. Her mascara was smeared across her pale, bruised cheeks, her styled wedding hair reduced to a rat’s nest of tangled blonde strands. For the first time in her life, my sister looked small, hollow, and utterly terrified.
"You're going to put me in prison," Evelyn whimpered, hugging her knees to her chest against the damp brick wall. "You have the footage from the church. You have the papers."
"Prison is a luxury David Vance wasn't planning on offering you," Julian said coldly, checking the magazine of a captured automatic pistol he had taken from one of David’s perimeter guards. "Now stand up."
I stepped out from the dressing alcove of the vault, and both Evelyn and Julian stopped breathing.
The black mourning gown fit me like armor. The inner golden spider-silk corset was cinched to its maximum torsion, pulling my waist tight and locking the conductive filaments directly against my skin. The black damask cascaded around my legs like liquid obsidian, the golden embroidered weeping willows gleaming with subtle, lethal radiance beneath the flickering halogen bulbs of the basement. Around my neck hung the original gold-plated spindle Eleanor had used to spin the first prototype in 1996.
"You look like Mother," Evelyn whispered, tears finally cutting clean tracks through the grime on her face. "The night before she disappeared... she was wearing that exact dress."
"Mother wore this dress to plan a war," I told her, kneeling down so my eyes were level with hers. "And now you are going to help me finish it. You still have your biometric VIP credential around your neck, don't you?"
Evelyn swallowed hard, reaching beneath her bathrobe to pull out the gilded plastic pass David had issued her three days ago—the all-access lanyard granting entry to the private executive balcony overlooking the grand trading floor.
May you like
"If I give it to you," Evelyn stammered, "what happens to me?"
"You sit in the subterranean maintenance room with Madame Laurent," I replied without blinking. "And you watch the screens. Because tonight, Evelyn, the entire world is going to see what you were willing to sell our family for."
