Previously on Renzo: After Hours:
In the Mirror Room, Renzo, Xander, and Sebastian discovered that the ledger and its camera weren’t just archives—they could predict what came next. The mirror showed them a future on the Pont de la Tournelle: Stephan, a gun, the ledger in Renzo’s hands. Now, the trio prepares to face what’s waiting for them at midnight.
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The city had folded itself into fog by the time they reached the bridge. The Seine below was a slow, breathing thing, reflecting the low orange of the lamps. Paris slept the way the guilty do—half awake, listening for footsteps.
Renzo stopped halfway across the span. The river smelled of iron and rain. Xander stood at his right shoulder, posture calm but ready; Sebastian paced the railing, jacket collar up, impatience disguised as bravado.
“You’re sure it’s here?” Sebastian asked.
Renzo nodded. “The ledger doesn’t write poetry. It writes instructions.”
Xander looked out at the water. “Then the collector’s watching already.”
They didn’t have to wait long.
Footsteps echoed against stone—measured, confident. Stephan emerged from the mist like a painting stepping off its canvas, coat tailored, expression serene. Behind him, two figures carried a case between them.
“Bonsoir, Renzo,” Stephan said. “I was beginning to think you’d learned discretion.”
“Still working on it,” Renzo replied.
Stephan’s gaze lingered on Xander and Sebastian, then the bulge of the ledger under Renzo’s coat. “Do you know what that book really is?”
“You mean besides a monument to other people’s sins?”
Stephan smiled faintly. “It’s a contract. One that doesn’t end when you stop signing it. The ink in those pages isn’t ink at all—it’s blood mixed with silver nitrate. Everyone recorded in it gave a part of themselves, willingly or not. You included.”
He opened the case. Inside, another reel—metal canister gleaming wet in the fog. “Marcel’s last work. The missing film from Project Muse. You’ll want to see it.”
Renzo didn’t move. “Why show it now?”
“Because the museum fire erased the rest,” Stephan said. “What’s left is legacy. And I’m offering you control of it.”
He nodded to his men. One set up a small projector against the stone parapet, its hum oddly intimate in the silence. The beam cut through the fog, painting the bridge with flickering ghosts.
The reel began.
At first: images from the atelier—the sessions, the clients, the art that had made Marcel rich and infamous. Then the focus shifted. Jules behind the camera, Renzo in front of it. But these weren’t posed. These were private—moments between shots, when the masks had slipped. Laughter. Trust. The beginnings of something that had nothing to do with money.
Renzo’s breath caught. “He kept this?”
“Of course,” Stephan said softly. “Even monsters know beauty when they find it.”
The film stuttered. The next image froze: Jules, eyes on Renzo, speaking to someone off-screen. His voice, faint under the wind:
“If you ever see this, Renzo—don’t save me. Save yourself.”
Then static. The reel ended. The projector clicked, the fog swallowing the light.
Renzo stood very still. “What do you want from me?”
“Simple,” Stephan said. “You destroy the ledger. Publicly. You burn it here, in front of me, and I make sure Project Muse dies with it. No one will ever see those photographs again. Your names vanish from the archive. You get your freedom.”
Xander’s eyes narrowed. “And if he doesn’t?”
Stephan smiled without warmth. “Then I deliver the ledger to the highest bidder. There’s always a market for confession.”
Sebastian took a step forward. “You think you can buy absolution?”
“No,” Stephan said. “I curate it.”
Renzo pulled the ledger from his coat. The red leather gleamed wet under the mist. “Why me?”
“Because you’re the only one whose story still sells,” Stephan said. “Tragedy with perfect symmetry. The artist who escaped his own frame.”
For a long moment, nobody moved. The fog pressed closer, wrapping the bridge in silence.
Then Renzo held the ledger over the railing. “You want an ending?” he said. “Here’s one.”
He dropped it.
The book spun once, catching light as it fell, then hit the water and vanished. Steam rose where it touched, as if the Seine itself refused to be archive.
Stephan’s composure cracked just enough for Renzo to see the truth: panic, sharp and human.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Stephan said quietly. “It wasn’t only your names written there.”
Renzo took a step closer. “Then maybe I just set everyone free.”
Behind Stephan, a second figure appeared at the far end of the bridge. Older. Slower. The sound of a cane on stone. Marcel.
He looked smaller than memory but no less dangerous. “You burned history,” he said. “Do you think the world forgives that?”
Renzo met his gaze. “I’m not asking it to.”
Marcel’s lips curved. “Then let’s see who history remembers.”
He raised a small pistol—polished, deliberate. The same one from the mirror’s prediction.
Sebastian shouted, lunging. Xander moved first, pulling Renzo sideways. The shot cracked across the river.
The bullet missed. The echo didn’t.
Marcel staggered, surprise blooming across his face—not from Renzo’s hand but from behind him. Stephan stood frozen, smoke curling from a second gun. For the first time, his voice shook. “He was going to kill you. And me.”
Marcel fell to his knees, eyes wide with something between fury and relief. “We were never separate, boy,” he whispered. “You’re just my latest frame.”
Then he was still.
The fog swallowed the sound of his body hitting stone.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The projector still hummed faintly, casting empty light against the bridge.
Renzo looked at Stephan. “Was that mercy or ambition?”
Stephan holstered the weapon. “Both.”
He stepped back toward the fog. “The ledger’s gone. Marcel’s gone. You should leave Paris before it remembers you again.”
Renzo’s voice was quiet but certain. “We’ll decide what gets remembered.”
Stephan smiled once more, the kind of smile that always meant goodbye, and disappeared into the mist.
Later, they stood at the river’s edge, watching dawn unroll across the water. The city seemed cleaner somehow, its reflections softer.
Sebastian’s hand found Renzo’s. “You know this doesn’t end here, right?”
Renzo nodded. “Stories never do. They just change photographers.”
Xander leaned on the railing, eyes on the current. “What happens now?”
Renzo watched the first light break over the rooftops. “Now? We make something new. And we don’t hide.”
The wind shifted. Somewhere in the fog, a faint glint of red leather floated past, the ledger half-burned but still alive, its gold script curling in the water like a signature.
Renzo didn’t reach for it. He just watched it drift away.
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Next On Renzo: After Hours:
A week later in Florence, a new exhibition opens under an anonymous name. Among the photographs is one no one can explain: three figures on a bridge, facing sunrise, their reflections looking back as if aware of being watched.
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