Chapter 4 Celeste Duquesne

POV: Imogen

"Say it again," Otto said. "Slower this time."

"I'm still taking the job."

He closed his eyes like the words physically hurt him.

We'd been going in circles for twenty minutes ,Otto laying out every reason I should run, me nodding along like I agreed, both of us knowing exactly how this would end. He knew me too well to think I'd walk away from two and a half million dollars because of a warning, even a warning as ugly as the one he'd just given me. And I knew him too well to think he'd let me walk into Fenwick Dynamics without at least trying to arm me first.

"Then I need you to understand something," he said, pulling a wooden box down from the shelf behind him, the one he kept locked even from me most days. "If you're doing this, you're doing it my way. No shortcuts. No sloppy paper. If Fenwick Dynamics is even half as good as its reputation, one crack in your story and you're finished before you've started."

"I know how to build a cover, Otto."

"Not like this one." He set the box on the workbench and opened it, revealing a stack of blank documents, seals, a small collection of stamps I didn't recognize. "This isn't a lonely rich man who wants to believe you love him. This is a company that gets paid to catch people exactly like us. You need a name so clean it could survive their own background check running twice."

He worked while he talked, laying out paper like a man dealing cards, each one landing with a small, precise sound.

"Celeste Duquesne," he said. "Thirty-one. Private security consultant, specializing in personal risk assessment for high-value clients. Five years at a firm in the capital that closed down eighteen months ago ,real firm, real closure, easy enough to confirm and impossible to actually call and check. No family to trace. No social profile deep enough to dig through. Clean, quiet, forgettable in exactly the right way."

"Forgettable," I repeated. "Charming."

"You don't need charming for this one." Otto looked up at me over his glasses, serious in a way that stopped the joke in my throat. "You need invisible. Graham Fenwick isn't going to fall for a smile and a low neckline. That man doesn't have marks. He has suspects."

"You make him sound like a monster."

"I make him sound like what he is." Otto set down the stamp he'd been holding. "His father ran that company before him ,built half its fortune doing exactly the kind of work you and I do, before he got caught in his own scandal and put a gun in his mouth rather than face what came next. Graham took over at twenty-four with the whole city watching to see if he'd fall the same way his father did."

"Did he?"

"No." Otto's voice went flat. "He turned Fenwick Dynamics into the sharpest identity-security firm in Castryn. Some people say he did it out of grief. Some people say he did it out of rage. I've heard both, and I don't think it matters which is true, because either way, the man's spent ten years building tools specifically designed to hunt people who lie for a living."

Something cold moved through my chest, quiet and slow.

"People like us," I said.

"People exactly like us." He held my eyes. "So when I say be careful, Imogen, I don't mean the ordinary kind of careful. I mean the kind where one wrong word costs you everything, including your freedom."

I nodded slowly, filing that away somewhere I couldn't ignore it.

"Now." Otto straightened, brisker suddenly, the way he always got when he needed to move past something that scared him. "Veil Week starts in two days. You know the customs, but it's been years, so let me remind you, because Castryn doesn't forgive people who forget its rules."

He held up one finger.

"Masks in public, from sundown to sunrise, every night of the week. Not optional. Not decorative. Half the deals in this city get made behind those masks, and getting caught unmasked at the wrong hour marks you as either a fool or an outsider, and neither one gets you very far."

Second finger.

"The Unveiling, on the last night. One person may remove their mask in front of exactly one other soul, and only one. It's meant to be romantic ,a declaration, a trust given freely. But plenty of people use it for other things. Confessions. Threats. Trades. Watch closely who unveils to whom this year. It tells you more about this city's secrets than anything printed in a newspaper."

Third finger, and his voice dropped.

"And somewhere in all of it, Fenwick Dynamics will be running its own hunt for a woman using your name. Which means for one week, you'll be standing closer to that danger than you've ever stood to anything in your life, wearing a mask that hides your face from everyone except the one man clever enough to see straight through it if you slip even once."

I swallowed hard and reached for the papers he'd laid out, running my thumb along the edge of a driver's license that hadn't existed an hour ago.

"I won't slip," I said.

Otto looked at me for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes.

"I hope not," he said quietly. "Because I don't think Graham Fenwick forgives mistakes. I think he collects them."

I didn't get back to my apartment until well past dark, my bag heavy with Celeste Duquesne's entire manufactured life folded neat inside a manila envelope.

I hung my coat on the hook by the door, same as always, and it was only later ,sitting at the small mirror in my bedroom, practicing the particular stillness Celeste would need to wear like a second skin ,that I reached for the coat again, meaning to check the pocket for my keys.

My fingers found paper instead. Folded twice, sharp-cornered, tucked deep enough that it hadn't fallen out on the walk home.

I hadn't put anything in that pocket. I was certain of that the way I was certain of very few things anymore.

My hands went still. I sat there a moment, mirror throwing back a face that hadn't decided yet whether to look afraid, and made myself unfold the paper slowly, like it might bite.

Six words, written in plain block letters, no signature, no explanation.

I know who you really are.

I stared at it until the words stopped making sense as words and became just shapes, black ink on white paper, sitting in my palm like something alive.

Someone had been close enough to slip this into my coat without me noticing. Close enough to touch me and vanish before I turned around.

The same someone, maybe, who'd bumped my shoulder on the platform two days ago and murmured two words before disappearing into the crowd.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror ,my actual face, no mask yet, no borrowed name ,and understood, with a certainty that settled cold and heavy in my stomach, that somewhere in this city, someone already knew exactly who I was.

And Celeste Duquesne hadn't even met Graham Fenwick yet.