Previously on Renzo: After Hours:
Guided by Jules’s coded negatives, Renzo, Xander, and Sebastian flew to Paris in search of the hidden reel at L’Aube Atelier—the site of Renzo’s past commissions and Marcel’s old empire. But Stephan’s shadow followed them, already photographing their departure.
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The city wore rain like jewelry that night—thin and glittering, catching light from every café window. Paris always looked like it wanted to be remembered, even by those trying to forget it.
The car dropped them two streets from the river. From there they walked. The atelier sat behind a rusted iron gate, half-swallowed by ivy, its sign long faded to ghosts of letters. Only the carved word AUBÉ remained legible, the accent chipped away.
Renzo hesitated at the gate. “It feels smaller.”
“That’s how the past always feels,” Xander said.
Sebastian smiled thinly. “Let’s make it larger again.”
Emilie met them at the side entrance. Her hair was streaked silver now, but her posture was the same: graceful defiance. She carried an old key on a string around her wrist.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, though she was already unlocking the door.
“Story of my life,” Renzo replied.
Inside, the air was dust and turpentine. The walls were lined with mirrors and frames stacked like forgotten sentences. Emilie guided them down a narrow stair to the cellar—low ceiling, bare bulb, concrete floor polished smooth by time.
“Cabinet sixty-three,” she said, pointing. “But it’s not locked anymore.”
Renzo pulled the handle. It opened too easily. Inside, an empty space—except for a single envelope taped to the back panel. He tore it free.
You’re late, Vale.
The reel moved to safer hands. Find me before he does. Follow the blue light. — J
Sebastian’s eyes tracked the note. “Follow the blue light. He means neon? Street signs?”
“No,” Xander said quietly, scanning the cellar. “He means this.”
He flicked off the bulb. Darkness settled like a held breath. Then faintly, along the concrete wall opposite the cabinet, thin streaks of phosphorescent paint began to glow—arrows, overlapping, leading upward.
They followed the trail through a back corridor that twisted through the old studio’s bones. Every step carried a memory: Renzo half-dressed in front of a camera, Jules’s laughter behind the lens, Marcel’s shadow pacing the periphery.
The arrows ended at a door sealed with glass. Beyond it, the faint pulse of blue neon—the old darkroom. Inside, a single safe rested on the counter, its face painted with the same phosphor pattern.
Xander crouched. “Combination?”
Renzo handed him the note. “Try the cabinet and reel numbers—LXIII and forty-two.”
The lock gave after the third turn. Inside, a metal film canister wrapped in paper. On the paper, a Polaroid of Jules—older, sharper, eyes rimmed with exhaustion but smiling faintly—as if he’d just thought of a private joke. Behind him, half-blurred, Marcel’s reflection in a mirror, watching.
Sebastian exhaled. “He was alive when this was taken.”
“Alive enough to play his last move,” Renzo murmured.
Xander unfolded the paper around the canister. A small key fell out—engraved RVB.
Renzo turned it in his palm. “The same mark as the capsule. It’s not just color—it’s initials.”
“Whose?” Sebastian asked.
A sound answered instead—the creak of a door above them, slow and deliberate. Voices, low and measured. Emilie’s, tight with fear. A man’s, smooth and patient.
Renzo’s pulse stuttered. “Stephan.”
Xander moved to the shadows by the stairs, already scanning exits. Sebastian pulled Renzo back toward the far wall, hand steady at his back.
They listened.
“Renzo Vale,” Stephan’s voice drifted down. “I thought you’d make me work harder. Paris deserves more of a chase.”
He descended slowly, his shoes whispering against the stone. Two men followed—security, unmarked but unmistakable.
Stephan stopped at the threshold of the darkroom, framed by the dying blue light. His velvet jacket caught the glow, turning him into something mythic.
“Found it, didn’t you?” he said. “The reel. Jules was always theatrical.”
Renzo stood his ground. “What do you want?”
“The same thing Marcel wanted,” Stephan said. “The truth about you—signed, printed, and hung where people can pay for it.”
“I’m done being bought.”
Stephan’s gaze softened, almost kind. “Oh, Renzo. You were never bought. You were collected.”
He stepped closer, ignoring the tension coiling in Xander’s stance, the quiet anger in Sebastian’s eyes. “Marcel wanted obedience. I want revelation. There’s a difference.”
Renzo’s hand closed around the canister. “Then you’ll have neither.”
He threw the reel toward the far wall. It hit the concrete with a bright crack, unspooling film like a black river. Stephan lunged too late. Xander pulled the bulb chain; the room plunged into darkness.
In the confusion—footsteps, shouts, the hiss of film across the floor—Renzo, Xander, and Sebastian slipped through the side corridor Emilie had shown them years before. They burst into the alley behind the atelier, breathless, soaked in rain.
Sebastian laughed once, wild. “That was stupid and perfect.”
Renzo clutched the key marked RVB. “It’s not over. The reel was a decoy. Jules wanted us to have this.”
Xander touched his shoulder. “Then the real story’s still hidden.”
They started toward the river, the sound of sirens muffled by the rain. Behind them, smoke began to coil from L’Aube’s windows.
“Fire,” Sebastian said.
Renzo didn’t look back. “Marcel’s version of cleaning house.”
They reached the Pont de la Tournelle just as the bells struck one. The city glowed below them—blue reflections trembling in the water.
Renzo opened his palm. The RVB key gleamed wetly.
“What does it open?” Xander asked.
Renzo watched the light shift across its surface, red to blue to green. “Something Jules didn’t want burning with the rest.”
He slipped the key into his pocket. The rain thickened, disguising the tremor in his hands.
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Next On Renzo: After Hours:
The trio follows the RVB key to a hidden archive under the Musée d’Orsay. Inside: photographs that shouldn’t exist, a ledger of names that tie Marcel to Paris’s elite—and a final message from Jules recorded on film, beginning with five words: “If you’re seeing this, run.”
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