Matthieu Deveraux

The rain had been falling over Paris since late afternoon, turning the streets into slick ribbons of reflected headlights and drowning the city beneath a steady, miserable downpour. By the time evening settled in, the sky had darkened into an indistinguishable mass of clouds, and the narrow alleys between neglected buildings had become little more than pockets of shadow. It was the sort of night that made people hurry home, lock their doors, and think twice before answering an unfamiliar knock.

Eric Brooks, unfortunately, had never been particularly good at thinking things through.

His house stood at the end of one such alley, wedged between a boarded-up storefront and a building that looked as though it had been condemned years ago. Calling it a house was generous. The paint had peeled from its exterior walls, the windows were grimy, and a crooked gutter spilled rainwater directly onto the already cracked pavement. There was no porch light, no welcoming glow behind the curtains, and certainly nothing about the place that suggested a man with good intentions lived inside.

The interior wasn't much better. Water dripped steadily from a leak in the ceiling, landing in a battered cooking pot Eric had strategically placed beneath it. The walls were stained with dampness and patches of black mold, while the handful of furniture scattered throughout the cramped living room looked as though it had been rescued from a roadside dump. A sagging couch occupied one corner, its fabric torn along the armrests. An old television sat on a crooked stand, surrounded by empty takeout containers, tangled charging cables, and several pieces of equipment Eric had purchased for his supposedly brilliant plan.

He had spent weeks preparing for this.

Well, preparing was perhaps a generous description. He had researched wealthy families, watched videos about ransom negotiations, made several lists, and convinced himself that his newfound expertise was more than sufficient. He had even bought a cheap notebook to organize his thoughts, though most of its pages were filled with increasingly frantic calculations and numbers that didn't quite add up.

And now, against every reasonable expectation, he had actually done it.

Matthieu Deveraux was in his bathroom.

The bathroom was small, cramped, and illuminated by a single yellowish bulb that flickered whenever the rain grew particularly heavy. Yet, compared to the rest of the house, it was almost orderly. The sink had been scrubbed clean, the cracked mirror was relatively free of grime, and the few toiletries arranged beside the faucet had been placed in a neat line. Eric had clearly made an effort, though whether out of nervousness or a misplaced sense of hospitality remained uncertain.

In the center of the room sat a wooden chair.

Matthieu occupied it.

His wrists were secured behind the chair, his ankles bound together, and a strip of tape covered his mouth. His charcoal suit, ordinarily immaculate, had become rumpled during the ordeal. His tie hung crookedly around his collar, and a few strands of dark hair had fallen across his forehead. One of his cufflinks was missing. A faint red mark stood out against the warm tan of his skin where the restraints had rubbed too tightly.

His light brown eyes, however, were wide awake.

He had been awake for quite some time, in fact, and the expression in them had evolved through several distinct stages. Initial confusion had given way to disbelief, disbelief to anger, and anger to the cold, focused attention he usually reserved for people who made catastrophically poor decisions in the middle of a corporate crisis.

Only this time, the crisis involved a stranger, a damp bathroom, and the deeply unpleasant realization that he had been kidnapped.

Matthieu had already tried testing the restraints. He had assessed the room, examined the door, and listened carefully to the sounds coming from the other side of the wall. He had called out once, receiving no useful response beyond Eric's muffled voice and the sound of something crashing in the kitchen. His phone was gone, his watch had been removed, and there was no obvious way to contact anyone outside.

He was frightened. He would have been an idiot not to be.

But beneath the fear, his mind remained frustratingly clear. He had no idea who Eric was, what exactly he wanted, or how the evening had escalated from an apparently ordinary encounter into this nightmare. What he did know was that his captor seemed woefully unprepared for the consequences of his own actions.

That realization was not particularly comforting.

Outside the bathroom, Eric paced back and forth across the living room, stepping around a puddle that had formed beneath the ceiling leak. His phone was pressed to his ear, and his free hand gestured wildly at absolutely nothing. He had rehearsed this conversation several times in his head, each version ending with his financial problems miraculously solved and his future looking considerably brighter.

Reality, as usual, had failed to follow the script.

When the call connected, Eric straightened immediately.

"Finally! Jesus Christ, what took you so long?"

He listened for a moment, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet. The person on the other end was someone he knew well enough to call without warning, someone he trusted to show up when he needed help. Someone who, until a few seconds ago, had been blissfully unaware that Eric was about to drag {{obj}} into the worst decision of {{poss}} entire life.

"Okay, listen. Before you freak out, I need you to hear me out. I've done something. Something big."

He glanced toward the bathroom door, then lowered his voice as though the walls themselves might report him to the police.

"I'm serious. This is it. We're getting out of this mess. No more worrying about rent, no more dodging calls from people we owe money to. None of that. I've figured everything out."

A pause followed. Whatever response he received clearly wasn't the enthusiastic congratulations he had imagined.

"Oh, come on. Don't do that. Don't start with the questions before I've even explained anything."

Eric dragged a hand through his messy hair, leaving it in an even worse state than before. His gaze landed on the notebook lying open on the coffee table, where the words RANSOM PLAN had been written in block capitals across the top of a page. Beneath them sat a series of figures that had looked perfectly reasonable to him approximately three hours ago.

"Just come over, okay? I'm not explaining this over the phone. And bring something to eat if you can. I haven't had a proper meal all day, and there's, uh..." He looked toward the kitchen, where a half-empty bag of chips sat beside a microwave that no longer worked. "...not much here."

Another pause.

"Please? You're my friend. I need you to trust me on this one."

It was a remarkably unfair thing to ask, considering how little Eric trusted his own judgment whenever panic began to set in. Still, desperation had a way of making selfish requests sound like reasonable favors, and he had become very good at convincing himself that his problems justified just about anything. Eventually, he ended the call.

For several seconds, he simply stood there, staring at his phone with the stunned satisfaction of a man who believed he had successfully delegated half his problems to someone else. Then a muffled noise came from the bathroom.

Eric flinched. "Oh, for the love of—"

He hurried to the door and pushed it open just far enough to look inside.

Matthieu's gaze immediately snapped toward him.

Even with his wrists tied and his mouth covered, the man managed to convey an impressive amount of contempt. Eric hesitated beneath that steady stare, suddenly aware that he was looking at an actual person rather than a name on a financial news website. A person who could remember his face, identify his voice, and probably afford to ruin his entire existence without making a noticeable dent in his bank account.

"Okay," Eric muttered, lifting a finger as though he were addressing an unruly employee. "First of all, I need you to understand that this isn't personal."

Matthieu stared at him.

"Second, I'm working on a solution."

The silence that followed was somehow worse than an argument.

Eric shut the door.

He leaned against it for a moment, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Everything was fine. It had to be fine. He had a plan, he had a hostage, and now he had someone coming over to help him keep everything under control.

What could possibly go wrong?

By the time {{user}} arrived, the rain had soaked through the edges of {{poss}} clothes. The alley was barely wide enough for a car, hemmed in by grimy brick walls and overflowing dumpsters. Water ran along the uneven pavement, gathering around {{poss}} shoes as he approached the only house at the very end.

Eric's door opened before {{user}} could knock a second time. He stood in the doorway looking pale, disheveled, and far too excited for someone who had apparently summoned a friend into the middle of nowhere on a rainy evening.

"You're here!" Eric exclaimed, grabbing {{poss}} arm and ushering {{obj}} inside before {{user}} could get a proper look at him. "Okay, good. Great. Perfect. I knew you'd come."

He shut the door behind them and immediately began talking.

"Now, before you get mad, I need you to remember that I'm doing this for both of us. Well, mostly me, technically, but you're involved now, so that's basically the same thing."

He laughed nervously at his own explanation, then looked toward the hallway.

The house smelled of damp plaster, stale takeout, and something unpleasantly metallic. Rainwater dripped into a pot near the couch, and the floor creaked beneath his feet. Nothing about the place suggested that Eric had recently come into a substantial amount of money, unless the money had been spent on making the house look even more suspicious.

"So," Eric began, rubbing his palms together. "There's something I need you to see."

He led {{user}} down the narrow hallway, stopping in front of a half-open door. For the first time since {{user}}'s arrival, Eric's excitement faltered. Beneath the frantic confidence was something much less convincing: fear, perhaps, or the dawning awareness that he had no idea what to do next.

"Just... don't freak out, okay?"

Eric pushed the door open.

The yellow bathroom light spilled into the hallway, illuminating the cracked tiles, the old sink, and the wooden chair positioned in the middle of the room.

And the man sitting in it.

A broad-shouldered stranger in a disheveled charcoal suit, his wrists tied behind the chair and his ankles bound, lifted his head at the sound of the door. Dark hair fell messily across his forehead, and a strip of tape covered his mouth. Despite the uncomfortable position and the unmistakable marks left by his restraints, he held himself with a composure that seemed entirely out of place in the room.

Then his light brown eyes met {{user}}'s.

For one suspended moment, nobody spoke.

The stranger looked at {{user}}, then at Eric standing beside {{obj}}, and finally back at {{user}} again. His expression shifted almost imperceptibly, disbelief giving way to a sharp, searching assessment.

Eric, meanwhile, spread his arms with the pride of a man unveiling a particularly impressive birthday present.

"Surprise," he announced weakly. "I may have kidnapped Matthieu Deveraux."

The rain showed no signs of stopping.

By midnight, the city had settled beneath a curtain of cold water, its streets nearly empty and its lights blurred into pale streaks against the wet asphalt. Somewhere beyond the wealthier districts, far from the polished avenues and guarded entrances that defined the Deveraux world, a dark car pulled into a narrow alley and stopped in front of a house that looked as though it had been forgotten by the rest of Paris.

Inside the car, Éloi Deveraux sat motionless for a moment, watching the rain slide down the windshield.

He had come alone.

It was, objectively speaking, an appalling idea. He was aware of that. He had spent most of his life surrounded by people whose entire purpose was to prevent precisely this sort of situation, and he knew perfectly well what Laurent would say if he discovered where Éloi had gone. Lucien would probably have an entire security team tearing through the city by now, while Elio would insist on coming along despite being told to stay behind. Matthieu's other brothers would hardly be more reasonable. The Deveraux family did not respond to threats with patience, and a kidnapped son was not the sort of news that encouraged restraint.

Within an hour of the family learning what had happened, the surrounding streets would probably be filled with black vehicles, private security personnel, and men asking questions in voices that made people reconsider their life choices.

The kidnappers would be terrified before anyone even reached the front door.

And that was precisely why Éloi had decided not to tell them.

He had not informed Laurent. He had not called Lucien, nor had he asked the family's security team to accompany him. Instead, he had gone looking for answers himself, refusing to accept the increasingly useless reassurances offered by people who seemed to believe that keeping him uninformed would somehow make the situation less dangerous.

Marcel had been particularly unhelpful.

Unfortunately for Marcel, Éloi had never needed to raise his voice to make someone understand that his patience had limits. After a tense conversation and considerably more insistence than Marcel had expected, Éloi had managed to obtain an address. It had taken a little longer to establish that the information was reliable, but eventually, the pieces had fallen into place.

Someone had taken Matthieu.

Someone had decided that a member of the Deveraux family would make an appropriate target for a ransom.

And someone, Éloi suspected, had absolutely no idea what sort of family they had involved themselves with.

He glanced at the phone resting in his hand. There were several unanswered messages on the screen, including one from Laurent. He turned the device facedown without opening it. He would deal with his husband later.

For now, he needed to see his son.

Éloi had dressed for the weather rather than the occasion, wearing a loose, dark coat that fell well past his hips. Its raised collar and deep hood obscured much of his face, leaving little more than the lower half visible beneath the streetlight. He had brought almost nothing with him: his wallet, his phone, and the keys to the car. No security detail, no driver, no visible indication of the family name he carried.

He looked like a man who had stepped out into the rain for an ordinary errand.

The illusion lasted until he stepped out of the car.

Cold water immediately soaked the edges of his coat, and the wind carried the unpleasant smell of wet concrete, overflowing bins, and stagnant puddles through the alley. Éloi locked the car and slipped his keys into his pocket before walking toward the house.

The building was worse up close.

Its exterior walls were stained and crumbling, and the front door had a strip of peeling paint around the handle. A dim light flickered behind one of the windows. Somewhere inside, water was dripping steadily into what sounded like a metal container.

Éloi stopped beneath the narrow overhang above the entrance, allowing himself one final moment to consider the absurdity of what he was doing.

He was alone in an unfamiliar neighborhood, standing outside a dilapidated house in the middle of the night, hoping that the person who had kidnapped his son would be sufficiently sensible to let him inside.

Laurent was going to be furious. The thought almost made him smile.

Then the smile disappeared, replaced by the quiet, stubborn determination that had carried him through far more difficult situations than this one. Matthieu was not a child who needed rescuing from a scraped knee, and Éloi had no intention of pretending otherwise. He knew Matthieu was capable, perceptive, and far more resilient than most people gave him credit for.

But being capable did not make someone immune to fear. Being perceptive did not make a pair of restraints any less real.

And being a Deveraux did not mean he deserved to be treated like a bargaining chip.

Éloi lifted his hand and knocked. The sound was disappointingly small against the rain. He waited.

Nothing happened.

He knocked again, a little more firmly this time, then drew his coat closer around himself as a cold gust swept through the alley. His gaze flickered toward the windows. The light inside remained on, casting a faint, uneven glow across the damp glass.

Someone was home.

Éloi could hear movement beyond the door now, indistinct footsteps crossing a floor that creaked beneath their weight. A pause followed, long enough for him to imagine several different possibilities, none of them particularly reassuring.

Perhaps Matthieu was in there, waiting for someone to make a mistake.

Perhaps the person responsible for his disappearance was standing on the other side of the door, wondering whether to answer.

Or perhaps Éloi had just driven across the city in the middle of a storm to discover that the entire situation was even more hopeless than Marcel's reluctant explanations had suggested.

He straightened, keeping his face partially hidden beneath his hood.

He wasn't there as the spouse of Laurent Deveraux, nor as a member of a family capable of turning a quiet kidnapping into a citywide emergency.

He was there as Matthieu's family. And he was going to see his son.

Éloi raised his hand once more and knocked against the door, three measured taps.

"Please," he called through the wood, his voice gentle but unmistakably steady. "I need to speak to someone inside."

He hesitated, listening for movement on the other side.

Then, more quietly, with the rain running down the back of his coat, he added, "I'm here for Matthieu."

Éloi's knuckles had barely left the door when something behind him caught his attention.

At first, it was only a faint disturbance beneath the steady patter of rain. The distant rumble of an engine, perhaps, followed by the soft crunch of tires against loose gravel. Nothing particularly unusual for a city that rarely slept, but there was something about the sound that made him pause. He turned his head slightly.

Another set of headlights appeared at the mouth of the alley. Then another. Éloi stared.

A black sedan eased into the narrow street, followed closely by a second vehicle. Their headlights swept across the wet brick walls, illuminating the overflowing dumpsters and the uneven pavement before settling on the dilapidated house at the end of the alley. The engines barely had time to quiet before the doors began opening.

For a moment, Éloi simply stood there beneath his hood, rainwater dripping from the hem of his coat. "Oh, no." The words escaped him in a small, deeply weary murmur.

The first person out of the lead car was Laurent Deveraux.

He did not hurry. Laurent rarely needed to hurry. He stepped into the rain with the controlled, unhurried precision of a man who had already decided how the evening would end and was merely allowing everyone else time to catch up. His dark overcoat was immaculate despite the weather, his expression unreadable beneath the streetlights. Yet there was something distinctly dangerous about the way he looked at the house.

He had not come to ask politely for information.

Behind him, Lucien emerged from the second vehicle, fastening the button of his coat with a sharp, irritated movement. His gaze traveled over the building, the narrow alley, and the unlit windows, assessing every detail with the cold efficiency of someone already calculating the fastest way to gain control of the situation.

Elio was next, slamming his car door harder than necessary. "You're telling me this is the place?" he demanded, looking from the house to Marcel, who had just climbed out of another vehicle. "This absolute dump?"

"Keep your voice down," Lucien snapped.

"Oh, sure. Sorry. Wouldn't want to disturb the kidnappers."

"Elio."

"What? I'm being quiet."

Noir appeared a moment later, stepping out into the rain with considerably less visible agitation than his younger brother. His eyes moved toward the front entrance, then briefly toward Laurent. There was no obvious anger in his expression, but the stillness of his face did little to suggest that he was taking the situation lightly.

Marcel, meanwhile, looked as though he would have preferred to be anywhere else in the world.

He had already endured Éloi's questions once that evening. Apparently, being forced to answer them had not saved him from having to repeat the entire ordeal to the rest of the family. He stood beside the cars with his shoulders drawn tight, watching Laurent with the grim resignation of a man who knew that the consequences of one poorly guarded secret had somehow multiplied beyond all reasonable proportions. And Laurent had known. Of course he had known.

Éloi had left without an escort, taken his own car, and made a deliberate effort to keep his movements quiet. He had chosen his clothes to conceal his face, left almost everything behind, and ignored the messages waiting on his phone. In his mind, he had taken every reasonable precaution to prevent the family from following him.

Unfortunately, he had married Laurent Deveraux.

Laurent noticed absences. He noticed inconsistencies. He noticed when a conversation ended a fraction too quickly, when a familiar routine changed without explanation, and when the people around him attempted to hide information by becoming conspicuously uninformative.

Éloi's disappearance had not gone unnoticed for very long. Neither had Marcel's increasingly suspicious behavior.

By the time Laurent had put the pieces together, Éloi was already on the road. Laurent had simply ensured that he would not arrive alone.

Now, as the family gathered in the rain, Laurent's gaze finally settled on the lone figure standing by the front door.

His expression changed very little. That was, perhaps, the most worrying part. "Éloi."

The name carried effortlessly through the narrow alley. Éloi closed his eyes for one brief, private second. Then he turned around.

Under the hood of his oversized coat, his face was partially obscured, but there was no disguising the particular look of a man who had just discovered that his carefully arranged plan had been ruined by the one person he had most hoped to avoid involving.

"Laurent," he replied, with as much dignity as he could manage while standing outside a stranger's house in the pouring rain.

Laurent looked at him. Then at the door. Then back at him.

"Would you care to explain," he asked in a voice of extraordinary calm, "why you are standing outside a potential crime scene in the middle of the night without security, without informing me, and apparently intending to knock on the door?"

Éloi drew himself up slightly. "I was going to speak to them."

"Yes. I gathered that from the knocking."

Elio made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh. Lucien shot him a warning look.

Éloi's eyes narrowed beneath his hood. "I was trying to avoid turning this into a spectacle."

Laurent glanced at the procession of black vehicles now occupying most of the alley. "An admirable effort."

"Don't be sarcastic."

"I'm not being sarcastic."

"You are absolutely being sarcastic."

For the first time since stepping out of his car, Laurent seemed almost inclined to respond. Instead, his attention shifted back toward the house, his jaw tightening as he studied the entrance.

Whatever amusement might have existed between them vanished.

"Did you speak to anyone inside?"

"No."

"Did anyone see you arrive?"

"I don't know."

"Did you come here alone?"

Éloi gave him a pointed look.

Laurent held his gaze for another moment, apparently deciding that any further discussion could wait until their son was no longer missing.

"Then you'll remain behind me."

"Laurent—"

"That wasn't a request."

The words were quiet, but they left very little room for interpretation.

Éloi's mouth tightened. He had not driven across the city to be relegated to the background, particularly not by a man who had just demonstrated exactly why he had wanted to keep the entire family away from this house.

Before he could argue, Lucien spoke. "Dad, we should establish who is inside before making contact. We don't know how many people we're dealing with."

"Agreed," Noir said, his gaze fixed on the windows. "And if Matthieu is here, we need to consider how they'll react when they realize we've found them."

"Maybe we should just break the door down," Elio suggested.

"No," Lucien and Laurent replied simultaneously.

Elio threw up his hands. "Fine. We can stand here getting rained on until they develop a conscience."

Marcel rubbed a hand over his face. "I would like to formally point out that I advised against everyone coming here."

"No, you advised me against coming here," Éloi corrected.

"And I was right."

"That remains to be seen."

Laurent lifted one hand, and the conversation stopped.

It was not a dramatic gesture. He did not need one. Even Elio, who appeared to consider silence a personal insult, closed his mouth.

Laurent took a step toward the entrance, his shoes splashing through a shallow puddle. The rest of the family followed, their movements carrying none of Éloi's careful hesitation. Lucien's attention remained on the building. Noir watched the windows. Elio looked as though he was actively imagining several ways to express his displeasure to whoever answered the door.

Éloi followed them despite Laurent's earlier instruction, pulling his hood back just enough to see clearly.

He had wanted to approach this quietly. He had wanted to give whoever was inside a chance to cooperate without being confronted by the full weight of the Deveraux name. He had hoped that a calm conversation might get him to Matthieu faster than an entire family descending upon an unfamiliar house.

Now, with Laurent at the front of the group and his sons gathered behind him, that possibility seemed increasingly remote.

Laurent stopped directly in front of the door. For several seconds, he simply studied it. Then he knocked.

Three firm strikes reverberated through the house, considerably louder than Éloi's earlier attempt.

No one spoke.

Laurent waited just long enough to make it clear that his patience was a courtesy, not an obligation. He knocked again. "Open the door."

There was no shouting, no elaborate threat, no explanation of who he was. He delivered the words with the same composed certainty he might have used to summon an employee into his office.

Behind him, Elio folded his arms. Lucien sat rigidly in his wheelchair, while Noir watched the entrance with an unreadable expression. Marcel lingered a little farther back, looking increasingly convinced that the evening was about to become a permanent stain on his professional record.

Éloi stood just behind Laurent's shoulder, his hands tucked into the pockets of his damp coat.

For all his frustration, he found himself holding his breath.

Somewhere inside that miserable house was Matthieu.

And whatever happened when the door finally opened, the person responsible for taking him had just run out of any reasonable chance of keeping the Deveraux family out of it.

.