Chapter 31 What Ivy Agreed To

Chapter 31 What Ivy Agreed To
She called Céleste Arnaud back.

Not from her own number. From the foundation's administrative line… Maria's suggestion, delivered without being asked, the way Maria had always delivered the right move at the right moment. A number that was real and documented and connected to a legitimate organisation but that gave Gia one degree of distance from whatever this conversation was going to be.

The phone rang four times.

Five.

Then a voice. Young. Careful. The voice of someone who had been waiting for this call and was not entirely certain they were ready for it.

"You got my message," Céleste said.

"I got your message," Gia said. "Now you are going to tell me what it means."

A silence. Someone deciding where to start.

"I knew Ivy for two years," Céleste said. "In Los Angeles. Before I went to London. We were in the same network, the same warehouse shows, the same listings, the same underground channels. She was the most talented person I had ever seen."

Gia did not speak.

"She told me about Elena Russo," Céleste continued. "Not everything. Ivy never told anyone everything. But enough. She told me she was building something for a friend, a designer whose work deserved to be in the world and whose circumstances were making that impossible. She told me the friend did not know about it yet."

"And?" Gia said.

"And six months before she died, Ivy came to me." A pause. The weight of someone carrying a thing for a long time and setting it down in stages. "She was afraid. Not of dying. I don't think she knew she was going to die. She was afraid of what happened to the account if something happened to her before she could tell her friend about it. She needed someone who knew about Elena Russo to keep it running. Someone who could be trusted not to tell anyone who it belonged to until the time was right."

The east corridor was very quiet around her.

"She asked me to be that person," Céleste said. "She asked me to keep the account active. To submit her own work, work she believed in. To keep Elena Russo visible and credible while she figured out how to tell her friend. She told me when the time came, when her friend was ready, she would explain everything."

The woman who had been managing the Elena Russo submissions for eighteen months. The woman who had called about the Milan offer. The woman who had submitted her own designs, three pieces, declined, and kept the account running not for profit, not for credit, but because Ivy had asked her to.

That woman was not a stranger who had found a dormant account.

That woman was Céleste Arnaud.

"Why the IP claim?" Gia said.

"I needed to get your attention," Céleste said. "I tried to reach you through the network. Through the fashion house. Through every channel I could find. Nobody would connect me to you directly." A pause. "I didn't know how else to make you listen."

"You could have sent a message."

"I did," Céleste said. "You don't know what Ivy Vasquez agreed to before she died. That was the message. That was how I knew you would call back."

Gia held the phone.

The IP claim was not a legal strategy. It was not a pressure strategy. It was a signal, the only message specific enough to prove she actually knew Ivy and did not simply know about her.

"The IP claim," Gia said. "You will withdraw it."

"The moment you want me to," Céleste said. "I never wanted Paris stopped. I only wanted you to call me back."

She ended the call with Céleste and called the creative director.

Eight days left on the window. Not nine. One day had passed in the investigation and the processing of what Céleste Arnaud actually was.

"The claim is being withdrawn," Gia said.

A silence. Shorter than the previous ones.

"How?"

"Because the woman who filed it was not an adversary," Gia said. "She was a friend of the woman who built Elena Russo. She is withdrawing it today."

Another silence.

"Do I want to know more than that?" the creative director said.

"Not today," Gia said. "But eventually. There is a story here that belongs in the world. When Paris is done I will tell it to you."

"Then Paris is on," the creative director said.

She ended the call before Gia could respond.

That was its own answer.

Marco was in the kitchen when she came back downstairs.

Coffee on. The particular smell of it filling the room the way it always did. Maria's morning routine continuing with the unhurried efficiency of someone who had been doing this for thirty years and was not going to stop now.

She sat at the table.

He set a cup in front of her without a word.

She looked at it.

"Céleste Arnaud is the woman who called about the Milan offer," she said. "She was managing the Elena Russo account for eighteen months not because she found it. Because Ivy asked her to."

He sat across from her.

"Ivy recruited her," he said.

"Before she died. She was afraid the account would go dark if something happened to her before she could tell me about it. So she found someone she trusted in the network and she asked them to keep it running."

He looked at the table. At the same kitchen table that had held everything. At the space where the folder of documents had been three days ago and the subpoena had been this morning.

"Ivy planned for every contingency," he said.

"Ivy planned for every contingency," she confirmed.

The kitchen was very quiet.

She looked at him. "The IP claim was a signal," she said. "Not a threat. Not a legal strategy. The only message specific enough to prove she actually knew Ivy."

Marco looked at her.

She looked back.

"She needs to testify," Gia said.

He went very still.

She understood why immediately. The Caruso trial. The testimony three weeks away. The defence strategy was to make Elena Russo look like a Lombardi operation. And now a French designer named Céleste Arnaud who had been managing the Elena Russo account for eighteen months and who could either confirm or destroy every piece of the prosecution's fraud case depending on how she was positioned.

"If Céleste testifies she confirms Ivy built Elena Russo," Gia said. "She was there. She knew. She can put Ivy in that network three years before my submission. She can prove the infrastructure predates Caruso's involvement by years."

"The defence will use her too," Marco said. "A woman managing a deceased person's account without the account owner's knowledge. Submitting work under a dead woman's identity. They will make it look like exactly what Caruso's defence needs it to look like."

"Then we get to Reyes before the defence does," Gia said.

She picked up her phone.

Started dialling.

Stopped.

She looked at Marco.

"There is one more thing," she said. "Céleste said Ivy was afraid. Six months before she died. She said Ivy was not afraid of dying. She didn't think she was going to die. She was afraid of something."

Marco was very still.

"She knew something was wrong," Gia said. "She was building contingencies six months before the gala. She recruited Céleste. She documented the account. She set Elena Russo up to survive without her." She looked at him. "Ivy knew something was coming."

The kitchen held that in silence.

"She didn't know what it was," Gia said. "But she knew enough to prepare for the possibility that she would not be there to explain it herself."

Marco looked at her for a long moment.

Then he looked at the table.

"Which means," he said quietly, "that whatever frightened Ivy enough to build all of that six months before she died is still in those files somewhere."

Her phone was already in her hand.