Chapter 30 Céleste

Chapter 30 Céleste
Marco found her name in four hours.

Céleste Arnaud. Thirty-one. French. Based in Paris for the last six years after three years in London and before that — two years in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles.

The underground fashion network. The same channels. The same circulating listings and warehouse shows and secret client lists that Ivy had used to build the Elena Russo infrastructure three years ago.

Céleste Arnaud had been in that network.

At the same time as Ivy.

Marco turned the laptop toward her without a word and let her read it herself — the submission records he had pulled from the Elena Russo account's full history, the same history the FBI had accessed during the investigation, the same history that was now sitting in federal discovery documents that Caruso's defence team had access to.

Three submissions. Eighteen months ago. Under a name that was not Céleste Arnaud — a handle, an alias, the kind of anonymous identity the underground network ran on. Three pieces submitted through the Elena Russo portal. Accepted by the woman who had been managing the account after Ivy died. Listed in the platform's internal records as received, reviewed, declined.

Declined.

Not stolen. Declined.

Gia looked at the word on the screen.

"She submitted work," she said. "It was declined. And now she is claiming the work that replaced hers in the collection was derived from hers."

"That is what she is claiming," Marco said.

"Can she prove it?"

He looked at her steadily. "She cannot prove what is not true. But she can create enough documentation to make the claim look credible for ten days." He paused. "Which is exactly how long she needs."

Gia thought about that for a long moment.

Ten days was not a legal strategy. Ten days was a pressure strategy. Céleste Arnaud was not trying to win an intellectual property claim — that would take months of litigation and require evidence she did not have. She was trying to force a postponement of the Paris show. She was trying to make the fashion house blink.

Which meant someone had told her that ten days was the window.

Someone who knew the Paris timeline. Someone who knew the fashion house's position on legal risk. Someone with access to the internal correspondence between the creative director and the Elena Russo account.

Gia looked at Marco.

"She is not working alone," she said.

He looked back at her.

"No," he said.

The word sat between them.

Someone had found Céleste Arnaud. Someone had given her the timeline and the leverage point and the ten day window and sent her toward the fashion house like a missile.

Someone who wanted the Paris show stopped.

Someone who wanted Gia's name off that programme before the collection reached a wider audience.

She called the creative director directly.

Not the assistant. The creative director herself — the woman who had spent thirty years deciding in the first thirty seconds whether a room was worth her attention, who had told Gia not to disappear and had meant it.

The creative director picked up on the third ring.

"I know why you are calling," she said. Her voice was even. Not worried. The voice of a woman who had navigated the fashion industry for thirty years and had encountered manufactured crises before and knew the difference between a real threat and a designed one. "Tell me about Céleste Arnaud."

"She submitted three pieces to the Elena Russo platform eighteen months ago," Gia said. "They were declined. The pieces she is claiming were derived from her work were built from original files that predate her submission by two years. I have the timestamps. I have the construction notes. I have documentation that the Elena Russo infrastructure was built three years ago by a woman named Ivy Vasquez who died before Céleste Arnaud submitted anything."

A silence.

The silence of someone who has just heard what they needed to hear.

"The claim is fabricated," the creative director said.

"The claim is fabricated," Gia confirmed.

"Then the question is not whether we can prove it," the creative director said. "The question is why someone went to the trouble of fabricating it ten days before Paris." Another silence. Shorter. "Who benefits from Paris not happening?"

It was the right question. It was the only question.

"I am working on that," Gia said.

"Work faster," the creative director said. "You have nine days."

The line went dead.

She sat with that for a moment.

She found Marco in the east corridor after the call.

Standing at the window. Hands loose. Looking at the garden the way he had been looking at things since the crisis lifted — with the careful attention of someone who had spent years watching for threats and was now learning to watch for other things.

She stood beside him.

"Caruso," she said.

He did not turn from the window. "Caruso is in federal custody."

"Caruso has lawyers," she said. "Caruso has associates. Caruso had three years of building an operation inside the Lombardi infrastructure and he did not do it alone." She looked at the garden. "The defence accelerated the trial timeline. They wanted it concluded before certain financial records became available. What financial records?"

He was quiet for a moment.

"The secondary accounts," he said. "The ones that fed the platform. The ones that connect Caruso not just to the trafficking network but to the people above the trafficking network. The people who are not in federal custody." He paused. "If those records surface before the trial concludes Caruso is not the primary target anymore. Someone above him is."

She understood it then. The full shape of it. The trial acceleration. The IP claim. The ten day window.

Someone above Caruso in the network — someone whose name was in those financial records, someone who had been protected by Caruso's operation for years — needed the prosecution to collapse before those records surfaced. And collapsing the prosecution meant collapsing Gia.

The IP claim was not about Paris.

It was about the federal courtroom.

"They are not trying to stop the show," she said.

"No," Marco said.

"They are trying to stop my testimony."

He looked at her then. Away from the garden. At her.

"Yes," he said.

Her phone buzzed.

Not a call. A message. From a number she did not recognise — not a Los Angeles area code, not a California number. International. French.

She opened it.

One line of text. No introduction. No name.

You don't know what Ivy Vasquez agreed to before she died.

Marco was already looking at her when she looked up.

"Who sent this?" she said.

He looked at the screen. Then at her.

"Céleste Arnaud," he said.

She looked at the message again.

You don't know what Ivy Vasquez agreed to before she died.

"She knew Ivy," Gia said.

It was not a question.