The Conspiracy of Us (The Conspiracy of Us 1)

My heart rate spiked again. This was exactly what I didn’t want. “I don’t have anything to—”

I trailed off as a million tiny lights suddenly danced in front of my eyes. Maybe I actually was having a panic attack now.

But no, people were pointing out of the tower. Of course—the Eiffel Tower light show. It twinkled out over Paris every hour. If I had been a tourist, I definitely would have wanted to come see it, and now we were watching it from the inside.

“What are you not telling me?” Stellan said.

“We have some things to show—” Jack started to pull the diary out of his jacket, but Stellan looked over my shoulder. His face hardened, and I put a hand on Jack’s arm. A tall man in a tuxedo was storming across the dance floor toward us. Jack hid the book again.

“You and the security staff were supposed to keep her home tonight,” the man barked at Stellan, his face and light brown hair blurring with the twinkling lights. “And now she’s off doing God knows what.”

“Yes, Monsieur Dauphin,” Stellan said, and I looked up sharply. The lights burned into my brain. “Madame was not meant to come tonight. But—”

“But she does as she wants.” Monsieur Dauphin hit the table with a fist, and I flinched.

He looked just like Luc, only twice as wide. And ten times as mean. He didn’t look like me. Not even a little bit.

I touched Jack’s arm, motioning him away. We couldn’t do this now. Monsieur Dauphin’s eyes flicked to me and narrowed. I could see the wheels turning in his head—Madame must have told him her suspicions, too. He said something in French to Stellan, who glanced at me, too.

I turned, pulling on Jack’s sleeve, and was surprised to see Lydia Saxon headed our way, with a frowning dark-haired boy who must have been her brother, Cole, in tow. And behind them, a man in a masquerade mask. Now Jack was the one who snapped to attention. My hand fell from his arm.

The lights kept going. Flash, flash, flash. They seemed to get brighter by the second.

Flash. I turned to Jack, to find his brows a tangle of unreadable emotions. He nodded to the man, who stepped forward, pulling off his mask.

Flash. The lights flickered faster, or maybe now it really was in my head.

Flash. I stared, unblinking, unable to move. The man’s face was illuminated by a million tiny bulbs, dark-bright, dark-bright.

Flash. I couldn’t tear my gaze away, and the man didn’t move either as the edges of my world fell away.

As I stared into a mirror version of my own eyes.

CHAPTER 32

My eyes.

And not just the same color, like Luc’s. The same everything. Intense, dark violet eyes, set a little too far apart. Rimmed with thick black lashes, bordered by dark brows. The rest of his face was entirely different—the square jawline, the pronounced cheekbones—and if I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed any more resemblance than distant family would be expected to have. But I knew. They were my eyes.

Lydia stepped up next to him, her hand on his arm. She’d taken off her mask, too. She didn’t have the eye color, but I could see now that her wide-set eyes—and her twin brother’s—were an echo of mine. That was what had bothered me about her. Even behind the mask, I’d seen shades of my own face. Lydia and Cole Saxon. That meant—

Something drew my gaze down, to Alistair Saxon’s jacket, to the embroidered insignia on a handkerchief sticking out of the breast pocket. A compass. Just like Jack’s tattoo, which I had always thought looked familiar. Then I realized when I’d seen it before.

I was five years old, searching the drawers in my mom’s bedroom for something to play with. In one of them, my locket had rested on top of a sheaf of papers. Letters. Love letters, from what I could read of them. On top of each one, like personalized stationery, a compass had been embossed into the paper.

My head swiveled between the three of them, and the certainty of it all knocked the breath out of me.

This man was my father, and he was also Jack’s boss, Alistair Saxon.

Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t look at all surprised. Obviously he hadn’t found out just now. Finally, he flicked his eyes to mine, then back to his feet. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed.

Jack had lied. He knew exactly who my father was.

My father.

Jack broke the silence that probably only lasted a few seconds but felt like a lifetime. “Sir, this is Avery West. She’s the cousin we found in the States.” He looked pointedly at Stellan and Monsieur Dauphin, who were talking just a few feet away, still shooting glances in our direction.

Saxon, my father, took a step closer to me. He knew I wasn’t a cousin. I could tell. I could see him confirm it as he recognized me bit by bit. My mom’s button nose and rounded cheeks. His own eyes. His daughter.

I wondered just how much Jack had lied to me—how much he’d told Saxon. If he knew I was the purple-eyed girl they’d all been waiting for.

“Yes,” my father said with a bland smile. “Very good. Nice to meet you, young lady.”

And then he turned away, like he was already bored.

I staggered like I’d been slapped, and had to grab the back of a chair. The lights outside stopped blinking. My father didn’t bother to look in my direction again.

So Jack hadn’t told him about my eyes. He didn’t know how powerful I could make him, so he didn’t care that I was his kid. After all that, he was just any old deadbeat dad. Maybe he had a dozen illegitimate children running around, and finding a new one wasn’t a big deal.

“It’s been a long night, Hugo,” my father said to Monsieur Dauphin. “I know our guest has been staying with you, but I think we’ll take her to our hotel, as we haven’t had a chance to talk—”

I looked up, a flicker of hope running through me.

“Nonsense,” Monsieur Dauphin cut him off. “It’s nearly midnight. Isn’t most of your family staying with us anyway? Sort it out in the morning. Speaking of, have you seen my wife? The headstrong . . .” He broke off, muttering under his breath.

My father glanced at me, then at Jack, and the hope coiled inside me like a spring. Then he gave a noncommittal shrug. “Yes. Fine. Lovely.”

The spring snapped. My hand fluttered up to my chest, like I was trying to hold in the bits of shattered heart leaking out. My father knew I existed, and he didn’t care a bit.