The Paris Illusion – Season 3, Part 2

I didn’t sleep that night.

I sat in the corner of my apartment, phone in one hand, knife in the other, the message glowing like a threat in my palm—Marienne, tied up. Choose. It was the kind of choice I thought I’d never face again. Not after Love. Not after Henry. I had tried to bury Joe Goldberg, but someone had unearthed him and was dangling his crimes over the only pure thing I ever loved.

I knew three things: One, someone had access to my past. Two, they had Marienne. And three, they wanted to play.

But this isn’t a game. Not to me.

The next message came with coordinates. A place on the outskirts of Paris, near the train yards. Abandoned, forgotten. A fitting setting for a final act. I packed my backpack carefully: gloves, burner phone, flashlight, tranquilizer, my old copy of Crime and Punishment. Don’t ask why. Maybe I still believed literature could explain why monsters like me exist.

I arrived just after midnight.

It was quiet, too quiet. The building was an old industrial space—graffiti, rusted metal, shattered glass underfoot. I moved slowly, controlled, watching every shadow. And then I heard it.

A breath.

A whimper.

Her voice.

“Joe?”

My heart cracked in half. She was here. Marienne. She sounded scared but alive.

I found her in a side room—tied to a chair, bruised, gagged. I rushed to her, but stopped cold when I saw the red dot sweep across my chest.

“Not so fast,” a voice said from the dark. Male. Calm. Familiar. A man stepped forward. Tall, wiry, wearing a mask.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked. “That makes this so much more poetic.”

I tried to place the voice. Nothing.

“You took someone from me. Someone who mattered.”

He pulled off the mask.

I froze.

“Ryan Goodwin,” I said.

Marienne’s ex. The abusive one. The one I killed.

Or thought I killed.

“No,” he grinned. “I’m Ryan’s brother. The one who cleaned up after his messes. The one you didn’t even know existed.”

He circled me like a wolf.

“You didn’t just kill my brother,” he said. “You made him a monster in the eyes of the woman he loved. You ruined his legacy. His daughter’s future. So now I get to ruin yours.”

He pulled out his phone and showed me photos—of me with Beck, with Love, even Candace. Somehow, he had pieced together everything.

“You're going to confess,” he said. “To all of it. On video. Or I kill her.”

My pulse thundered.

He pressed record.

“Say your name.”

I stared at Marienne. Her eyes were wet. But she wasn’t pleading. She was watching. Judging. I saw what I looked like reflected in her—broken. Ugly. Irredeemable.

“My name is Joe Goldberg,” I said, slowly. “And I’ve killed people.”

He smiled. “Keep going.”

I inhaled.

“I killed Beck. I killed Benji. I killed Candace. I killed Love. I killed your brother. And if you hurt her, I’ll kill you too.”

He laughed, raising the gun.

And that’s when the flashlight behind him flicked on.

Kate.

She struck him with a crowbar before he could turn. He collapsed in a heap, unconscious.

I blinked.

“What… what are you doing here?” I asked.

Kate dropped the crowbar and shrugged. “Following my gut. I knew something was off with you. So I tracked your phone.”

She walked over to Marienne, cut her free.

I thought Marienne would run. Or hit me. Or scream.

But she just stood there. Looked me in the eye.

“You didn’t do this for me,” she said. “You did it for yourself.”

I didn’t deny it.

She walked past me, quietly, pulling her coat tighter around her.

Kate stood beside me, watching her go.

“She’s right, you know,” Kate said. “You always make it about you.”

And for once, I didn’t have anything to say.

We called the police anonymously, left Ryan’s brother tied up. Kate made it look like a drug thing. She was good at that—erasing truth and replacing it with something easier to swallow.

The next day, I stood in the bakery stairwell again, coffee in hand, feeling hollow.

Marienne was gone. Again. But this time, I wasn’t going after her.

Because maybe, just maybe, I was the villain in her story.

But not in mine.

Not yet.