Page 127 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

I try to sound like I’m reading it out to her. As if I don’t have it memorized. “Amara Mariana Vizcaya. That’s all I have.”

I hear the tapping of keys, but all I can see is the face of a man who is certainly not Luc Garnier. The Luc Garnier who Tess asks me about every morning. As if she thinks I might have gone off to France with him for the express purpose of chopping him up and leaving him by the side of the road somewhere.

Luc Garnier, who everyone seems to believe in even more now than they did before. Just because of thehintof his presence. Just because it was whispered in the right ears and passed on by the right sources that he was actually at that party. That people met him and interacted with him, so any concern about his identity or indeed his existence is gone as if it never was.

Whispers of his presence, his prowess, are everywhere these days.

That I was also at that party is never mentioned.

“Luc Garnier,” the voice with that French accent says on the other side of the phone.

My heart thumps in my chest again, so jagged and so hard it hurts. “Excuse me?”

“Your boss,” the woman says with a laugh. “He has been looking for this woman, who was a client of our firm, for many years. He was not certain of her name, or how to track her. It took him some time to come along and find us. Did he not tell you this?”

“He doesn’t tell me anything,” I say, hoping I sound like every overwhelmed intern who ever lived.

She makes a clucking sound that I interpret as victory. “So I see this is the same everywhere,t’sais?Well. Apparently he heard the story at the beginning of his career and always wanted to get to the bottom of it. So, finally, he found our firm and they were able to tell him not only her full name, but the sad news that she passed away not long after she left Spain.”

But I looked up that name. I tracked her here. “I don’t think I realized she was from Spain,” I say, making myself sound bewildered. “I’m sure that we were talking about his French projects.”

“C’est vrai, maisshe went from Spain to Nice, and then from Nice to the United States.” The woman sighs. “I suppose the mystery will endure forever.”

“I will tell my boss that,” I say.

“He is a very nice man, your boss,” the woman tells me, but this is not exactly what I wish to hear about the man in question. “When Monsieur Du Hamel came back to the office after meeting him, he was filled with praise. Too many people have been chasing Amara Mariana Vizcaya over the years, but none were as thoughtful as Luc Garnier. He told Monsieur Du Hamel that he became interested in the case because he could not believe the story as he heard it.”

She lets out that sigh again, as if she is being swept away in some sort of romantic daydream, and while I am pleased that she’s the one I reached, I find myself doubtful that she has a long career ahead of her in her law firm.

Not that I stop her when she continues. “I think it’s a shame that he could not definitively conclude one way or the other that she did not, in fact, give birth to the marquess.”

Everything in me shifts a bit at that. I sit a little straighter in my chair. I’m used to this feeling by now. It’s what happens when a set of hunches and theories come together, and I justknow.

If I could tell you the reasons I am here, I would,he told me once.

There are matters at play here that you cannot understand,he told me.

And,I am not the sort of man who indulges in parties like this, or nights like this…

She says that word,Marquess,and I feel it. Iknow.

“Then again, no one can prove that she didn’t,” my new contact says merrily. “So I suppose we will never know.”

“Thank you so much for telling me,” I gush at her. “Now I will sound knowledgeable in the extreme when he calls me on the carpet. I can’t thank you enough.”

We exchange pleasantries and bond over the baffling behavior of our superiors, and then after the calls end, I sit there for a long moment. I stare at the computer screen before me.

My heart is thumping and thumping, as if it’s trying to batter its own hole through my ribs.

My stomach hurts. I feel on the verge of pale and clammy—likely because it’s been all feelings and very little fitness these last few months. My clothes don’t even fit well any longer.

But I type the words into the search bar. The name, and then the key bit of new information. That title.Marquess.

Just to make certain, I add Spain, too.

And the screen fills with his face.

I feel the contents of my stomach decide that it’s high time to vacate, and I only manage to grab my wastebasket at the last minute. I think I’m about to be thoroughly sick, but all I do is heave, which feels like a final indignity.

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