Chapter Text
Contrary to the way movies make it look, stealing money isn’t actually as simple as wiring money from some mark’s account into a secret offshore repository. Truly anonymous bank accounts are a thing of the past, and if Lila were to, say, dump fifty million euros from Adrien’s accounts into one of hers, it would take the police about five minutes to trace the transaction, look up who owned that account with the stolen fifty million, and send policemen to arrest her. Furthermore, if Lila started trying to set up new accounts now with no clear connection to her, it would take months and she’d run out of time before she left town.
But, fortunately for Lila, she had long believed in a maxim which had been expressed in one of her favorite movies.
“When did Noah build the ark? Before the rain, before the rain.”
As far as Lila was concerned, that was the most important rule for doing what she did. You prepared, you trained, you laid groundwork, and you got ready to seize opportunities that came your way. Only then could you really get the most out of life.
Lila had laid her groundwork. Though she was still young and hadn’t had much time, she had read as much as she could about con artists, grifters, and thieves, and she’d done her best to learn what was needed to swindle a huge payday from some marks. Then, where possible, she’d used that knowledge to set up a few key resources just in case she got a chance for a big score of her own. Now that her chance was finally here, she felt she was ready to seize it, make her fortune, and leave Adrien to take the fall while she escaped with her riches.
"Here we go," said Lila as she headed to school the next day. "Let's get started."
.
That day began with Lila attending class like usual. Things were tense in the room, and it was clear Marinette’s absence was bothering people. The whole class had clearly expected Marinette to be there as usual, showering them with favors and making sure everyone was happy, so her absence was unnerving. Even Alya, who had been so excited after learning about Marinette’s real identity, seemed put out by her inability to get Marinette to say hello to her.
The only important thing was that Lila had formally invited the rest of the class, excluding Chloe, to the ‘chat’ she’d set up with Alya that Friday night. (“We don’t need the class bully,” Alya had said. “And we don’t want to annoy Marinette by bringing someone who will only hurt her.”) Adrien didn’t push for Chloe’s inclusion, which was surprising, but Lila figured he thought it would be best to keep Chloe away so as to maximize the chances of Marinette having fun and resuming her friendships with him and the rest of the class. Whatever the case, when he’d found out that Alya had set everything up, he’d nodded and said something about being happy that everything would soon be back to normal. Lila had given him a sweet smile and tried her hardest not to laugh.
When school let out, Lila slipped away and hurried home to drop her phone in her desk; she didn’t think anyone was tracking it, but she wanted to be absolutely safe. Then she began biking through Paris to a distant public library. It wasn’t a great library, but it had public computers which Lila could use without anyone knowing she was doing it. And that was important for the first step of her plan to grab Adrien’s money and run.
First, she reminded herself as she sat down at the computer, she’d have to transfer the money from Adrien’s account into an intermediate one that nobody knew was connected to her. Broadly speaking, there were two ways she could have access to such an account. One was to have forged a fake identity and set up an account under that identity’s name, but Lila had known that trying to forge a good enough fake identity that it could fool a bank wasn’t a great idea. That kind of forgery would take skills Lila didn’t have, would cost money Lila hadn’t had, and would have a massive chance of being exposed and getting Lila sent to juvenile detention. The better way was to simply borrow somebody else’s bank account, and Lila had built her arc. Such an account existed, it was all ready for her, and Lila intended to use it.
About a year before Lila had entered Paris, when her mother had been stationed in the Normandy consulate, Lila had taken to casing a couple of retirement homes in her spare time. She had known that elderly millionaires would know better than to associate with the likes of her; even if Lila could get to them, they fended off financial vultures all the time and were used to dealing with that sort of thing. Old people with families or close friends didn’t need her either since they already had loved ones in their lives. But retirees with a bit of money and no families? Well, surely they’d be happy to see someone who wanted to spend time with them, and then perhaps they’d be persuaded to buy her nice meals, or clothes, or whatever else she wanted.
Her plan had worked. She’d volunteered with a couple of homes under fake names and quickly identified residents who had a decent amount of spare money and nobody to spend it on. She’d steadily worked them and gotten quite a bit from them. But of course, once she was used to having that bit, she wanted more. And that was where one Ms. Agnes Delacroix came in.
Delacroix was a weak and timid old woman with no family left in the world. She spent most of her time in her room reading physical books, listening to an old-style radio, and complaining that she couldn’t understand modern machines. Lila, who had been looking for a way to obtain a bank account with no apparent connection to her because her books said con artists often needed such accounts, offered to teach Delacroix about technology. She helped set up the digital television which came with the old woman’s room, she demonstrated how to use a laptop… and she laboriously walked Delacroix through the process of setting up a new bank account that she could access online.
And in the process of setting that account up, Lila had gotten a few things. First, the bank offered the option to get a ‘bank ID,’ which was basically a photo ID that could be used at the bank’s ATMs as a type of Two-Factor Authentication; even if somebody tried to withdraw cash from an account using a stolen debit card and PIN, the ATMs would still demand to scan the account owner’s bank ID card before dispensing any money. Lila had helped Delacroix fill out the information for that, then switched Delacroix’s photo with one of herself at the last moment before sending it in, and then she’d made sure to get to the nursing home quickly enough over the next few days to intercept the letter with the ID card before Delacroix could receive it. And second, while setting up the account, Lila had of course obtained the account number, passwords, and other login information.
Lila had known from the start Delacroix would never actually use the account; the bank she’d picked was a high-tech one whose customers were mostly flashy venture capitalists and technology titans, so everything about the bank was nigh-incomprehensible to those who had been born before the advent of the Internet. Lila also made sure that her ‘explanation’ of how to log in was as technical and intimidating as possible, and she’d ‘accidentally’ left Delacroix some fake news articles she’d written about a guy who mistakenly withdrew money from somebody else’s online account and got sent to jail on a thirty-year theft sentence. And so Delacroix had politely thanked Lila for her help with the account, dutifully put in the minimum balance for the bank not to close it, and then never touched it again. That in turn was just fine with Lila, because that meant when Delacroix died six months later, not only did nobody know Delacroix had that account, but nobody knew to tell the bank to shut it down.
Which meant it was Lila’s to do with as she pleased.
Lila logged into Adrien’s account using his passwords and smiled again when she saw the fifty million euro balance. Then she set up a transfer into the Delacroix account. “He needs to not notice this for a week, so I need to leave fifty thousand so his check to that gorilla lunkhead clears,” she murmured. “And of course the ten grand he knows he gave me needs to go through too.” She shrugged. “I’ll leave him sixty grand, then. That should do the trick.”
And so she sent over the remaining balance, all forty-nine million plus euros. She deducted the fee to make the transfer take place immediately, since after all it was Adrien that was paying for it, and that was that. Within seconds the money was in the Delacroix account. Step one was complete.
Of course, Lila couldn’t leave the money there forever; if Adrien learned what had happened before Lila withdrew the cash, then Adrien could have the bank reverse the transaction and get everything back. But, again, Lila still couldn’t just wire the money to one of her accounts. It would be too easy for the authorities to trace the money as it went from Adrien to Delacroix to Lila, and even if nobody connected Delacroix to Lila directly, she’d still be nailed by virtue of owning the final account where the money had ultimately wound up. No, the next step was to get the money into an untraceable form.
Cash would have been ideal, but withdrawing fifty million euros in cash wasn’t an option. She wasn’t actually sure there were banks that had fifty million euros in cash, and even if they did, she couldn’t physically carry hundreds of pounds of euro bills around. So how could she take a bunch of money and put it into an untraceable form?
Well, Lila had devoted some time to pondering that question. After all, she had thought, there were plenty of rich people who did secret things they didn’t want others to know about, and it wasn’t like a CEO or a member of the royal family would pay for drugs or a mistress’s house with a credit card. Rich people needed untraceable money, and when rich people wanted something, they were very good at getting the government to make it possible. Thus, Lila had concluded, the kind of untraceable money that she would one day need definitely existed. She just had to find out what it was.
And so she had done some research.
Once upon a time, she’d learned, there had been things called ‘bearer bonds.’ These were slips of paper issued by a government which were functionally the same as an equivalent wad of cash; i.e., a bearer bond for one million euros was equivalent to a million one-euro coins. Bearer bonds were also untraceable just like cash was; if a policeman found one on the street, there was no way to know where it had come from or who had used it. And so bearer bonds became a common method of paying for illegal things without leaving a record. After a few scandals governments had finally cracked down and gotten rid of bearer bonds, but there were still rich people who wanted untraceable money, and so after a few years ‘eurobonds’ had been invented to fill the gap.
As far as Lila could tell, the only different between eurobonds and bearer bonds was the word ‘euro.’ But that didn't matter to her. Like bearer bonds, eurobonds were untraceable money; unlike them, eurobonds could still be legally bought and used in France. They would suit her purposes just fine.
Upon arriving in Paris, Lila had looked up places where physical eurobonds could be obtained, and she’d noted one location that seemed to be very popular with nouveau riche idiots who liked to flash huge amounts of physical currency. That made this particular bank the kind of place where people, including young people with massive fortunes gained by becoming Youtube stars, rappers, or teen actors, withdrew huge sums of money for no other reason than to show off on Instagram or throw gigantic parties that ended in visits by paramedics and policemen. And so, once Lila finished in the library, she biked over to that institution and approached the nearest teller. “I need to grab some eurobonds,” she drawled, doing her best to sound like just another dumb ultrarich kid looking for the most fun way to light millions of euros on fire. “Where should I enter my account information?”
The guy pointed at a terminal and Lila quickly entered the passwords and login information for the Delacroix account, as well as her request to withdraw everything in the form of eurobonds. She then returned to the counter and watched the teller look down at his computer. “All the passwords and account numbers check out, Ms. Delacroix,” he said. “If I could just see a photo ID issued by the government or an accredited banking institution to doubly-confirm your identity, then I’ll get you your eurobonds.”
“Of course,” said Lila. She handed him the bank ID card with her picture and Delacroix’s name. “Here.”
She smiled to herself as the teller looked over the ID card. This was why she couldn’t have bought eurobonds with money straight from Adrien’s account; there would have been no way for her to get a physical ID card for that account and she would have been busted. Worse, if she’d been dumb enough to try that, her attempt to withdraw money and subsequent admission that she had no presentable identification would trigger an immediate alert in the system. If Adrien or the police found out about the alert they could gain access to the bank’s security cameras within a couple hours, see Lila trying to steal the money, and have her arrested. But now the money was being taken out of Delacroix’s account, not Adrien’s, and Lila had all the ‘identification’ she needed to access it. No living person would be alerted to the withdrawal, and by the time Adrien knew he’d been robbed, the security footage—which was only stored for a day or two so that police could look at it in case of a robbery—would long since have been recycled.
“Everything seems to be in order,” said the teller at last. He went to the back for a few minutes and returned holding a sheaf of eurobonds. “Here you go. Be careful; these are like cash in that they’re untraceable, so if you lose them or get them stolen, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to recover the money.”
“Understood,” Lila said as she took the eurobonds from the teller. “I’ll make sure to watch out for thieves.”
And so she walked out of the institution with a small wad of eurobonds that was worth a large fortune.
Finally, Lila had to get the money into an account she herself owned. Wiring the eurobonds into one of her legitimate accounts would be easy, but it needed to be an account the French police wouldn’t find; even though the eurobonds were totally untraceable, Lila still couldn’t risk having the police go through her accounts and find one with almost fifty million euros. That would raise questions. What she needed was an account they couldn’t easily get it, such as a foreign account.
Fortunately, she’d built the ark before the rain. More specifically, among the various accounts she’d set up over the past few years was one that was just what she needed.
During a brief two-month period when her mother had been transferred to a Swiss embassy, Lila had opened a bank account there. Granted, Swiss bank accounts weren’t what the movies made them seem like; this was literally just a regular bank account that happened to be located in Switzerland. The important point, however, was that once Lila had opened the account and added a minimum balance, she had recorded the account information and passwords in her poetry book, then never accessed the account again. In all her time since, including her entire state in France, she hadn’t touched it once.
And that meant there was no way for the French authorities to know it existed, even if they checked her computer or her Internet history. Yes, if they contacted that specific bank in Switzerland they could find out, but they would never know to do that and it wasn’t like they would spam the whole world asking ‘does anybody know of any bank accounts belonging to a Miss Lila Rossi?’ just on Adrien’s say-so. If she could get her money into that Swiss account without people knowing it was her doing the transfer, they would never be able to connect the money or account back to her.
All Lila had to do was bike across town one more time, this time to a place that let her wire money, and then send the eurobonds to her account in Switzerland. She did so, and as she left, she felt a glow of satisfaction.
“I did it,” she murmured in a smug voice. “I’m a multimillionaire. Thanks, Adrien, for being so kind to me. For not exposing my lies.” She giggled. “I really appreciate it.”
And then she raced back home, where she ripped out the pages in her poetry notebook that had the passwords for Adrien’s and Delacroix’s accounts. Even though it was incredibly unlike someone would read those pages and detect the passwords, she wanted to be safe, so she shredded those pages along with her ‘Delacroix’ bank ID with her mother’s shredder and then ‘helpfully’ delivered the basket of shreds down to the embassy’s excellent incinerator. (One never knew when diplomatic relations might collapse and an embassy would need to hurriedly destroy its codebooks before it was seized by forces from its host country, so a good incinerator was a prerequisite for any diplomatic institution). When that was done, she brought the basket back upstairs, freshened up, and then flopped down on her bed.
“I did it,” she said. “And I got away with it.”
A smile spread across her face, and she felt nothing but bliss.
When Friday evening rolled around, and indeed at the very moment that Lila was sitting next to her mother on their train to southern France and mentally counting her money, Adrien was entering Le Grand Paris’s main dining room and preparing for what he was certain would be a very good time.
All things considered, he thought, he was feeling better than he had expected. Yes, his father was still in jail, and yes, Nathalie was still missing. But he was about to make great progress on both those points, he was sure, because he was about to get Marinette back on his side. She’d help him help his father, and then they could use their powers to look for Nathalie together.
The one issue, the single fly in the ointment, was that when he’d gone patrolling as Chat Noir he hadn’t been able to find Ladybug. She wasn’t answering her phone either, and when he went by the bakery she didn’t seem to be home. (In fact, the bakery now seemed to be deserted; Alya had tried going there to talk to Marinette but had reported the place was locked up tight.) But Adrien figured that was just Marinette hiding from the press for a bit. Once that was resolved, he’d be able to talk to her, and then his bugaboo would be happy again in both identities.
“Adrien!” called Alya, waving him down from a large table near the back. Adrien went over to her and found the rest of the class there too, except for Marinette, Lila, Chloe, and Juleka. “Glad you made it!”
“Me too,” said Adrien. “I understand Lila’s got some kind of special announcement for us that she thinks will help smooth things over for Marinette.”
“Marinette is coming, right?” Alix said. “It’s getting kind of weird how she’s avoiding us. And it’s causing people to talk.”
“She’s coming,” Alya insisted. “I actually had to run the message through Luka, of all people, but when I told him that the class had something really important to say, he said he’d tell her and then later he told me she’d be here.” She rolled her eyes. “This is getting annoying. I’m trying to be patient with her, but we’re running out of time.”
“For what?” Nino asked.
Alya turned to him. “Ladybug’s giving an interview to Nadja Chamack tomorrow. The TV’s been playing ads for it all day. Now, I know she knows I need to get an exclusive before she does interviews with anyone else, meaning we’ve got to get that interview tonight so we can beat Nadja to the punch.” She sighed. “I don’t know why she’s pushing it so late. But as long as we get it done, everything will be fine, and I know she won’t let me down. She’s a great friend.”
“Maybe she’s just still wiped out from that battle,” Nathaniel suggested.
“That can’t be it,” said Ivan. “I had to go into Mendeleiev’s class to get a book I forgot, and I saw her with Kagami and Luka, and a few others from that class: Aurore, Mireille, Jean, and Ondine. She was laughing and looked like she was having a great time. She’s definitely perked back up.”
“What did she say to you?” Nino asked.
Ivan shrugged. “She didn’t react to me at first. Then I said hi, and she said hello back, but it was like she was talking to a stranger. It was weird.”
Meanwhile, Kim had turned to Alix. “Talk?” he asked. “Talk about what?”
Alix shrugged. “She’s a hero, so if she’s avoiding us, then people think we’re villains, I guess. People are saying she must have a reason for transferring classes and ignoring us.” She frowned. “The coach of my roller derby team took me aside and said he might have to bench me if the rumors keep up. Something about bringing the team into disrepute.”
“That’s awful!” said Rose.
“Marinette will talk to him and straighten it out,” said Alya. “After all, even if she was mad at us for some reason, I know she wouldn’t want other people to punish us. We all know how forgiving she is.”
“Speaking of punishments,” said Nino. “Adrien, dude, are you okay? They aren’t being too hard on you, are they?”
Adrien sighed. “The press is annoying, and the protesters are even worse.” The mob seemed to have grown each day, and the outer walls of the Agreste manor were now covered with graffiti. “But as for the authorities, so far I’ve barely heard from them. The police have searched the place a few times, and so did a team of prosecutors from the government. They didn’t bother me, though. I just stayed in my room and didn’t talk to them.”
“Where’s Juleka?” Max asked Rose.
The blonde shrugged. “I don’t know. She called me and said she wasn’t feeling well.”
“Here comes Marinette!” whispered Nathaniel, cutting everyone else off.
Everyone turned to see Marinette entering the ballroom. She was dressed normally, which made her stick out in the fancy ballroom. Behind her were Kagami and Luka, and also Chloe for some reason.
“What is Chloe doing here?” Alya asked as the four approach. “Chloe, if we wanted a bully, we would have invited you.”
“Yeah,” said Kim. “This whole thing is for Marinette. You’ll just ruin it. Go away.”
“If Chloe goes, I go,” said Marinette in the same detached, disinterested voice the class was coming to be familiar with. It was the only one she used when speaking to them.
“Fine,” said Alya at last. “We’ve got seats over here.”
The quartet sat down, with Chloe seeming more awkward and self-conscious than usual. Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Marinette asked, “What did you want to say to me?”
“It was what Lila wanted to say,” Adrien said. “But she’s not here yet.”
Nino checked his watch. “She’s running a little late, actually.”
“Ah.” Marinette leaned back. “You trusted her.”
Alya groaned. “Come on, girl, this isn’t the time for old grudges.”
Adrien sighed to himself. “I’ll call her. I know her number.” He dialed her cellphone, making sure to put the phone on speaker so everyone would be able to hear Lila’s answer.
But the response he got was, “This number is no longer in service.”
Everyone stared. Then Adrien said, “Don’t worry. I have her mother’s landline at the embassy. I called it two days ago and confirmed that it works.” He dialed that, and this time someone picked up. “Hello?” he began. “I need to talk to Mrs. Rossi.”
“I’m sorry,” came the response. “Mrs. Rossi was transferred to another position. Her last day was yesterday. She’s no longer in Paris.”
Marinette was visibly fighting to suppress a bitter smile. Kagami and Luka weren’t even doing that; Kagami snorted, and Luka rolled his eyes. Adrien scowled and said, “Then tell me where she is.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said the voice. “She left because her daughter was judged to be in danger from Hawkmoth. To prevent the possibility of him attacking her, we’re keeping her new location a secret.”
“Look, I’m a close friend of hers,” Adrien said. “My name’s Adrien; you can see us together on all her social media pages. Her Facebook has a hundred pictures of us hanging out. Even if her mom took her away, she would want to—“
“Wait, Adrien as in Adrien Agreste? Hawkmoth’s kid?” The voice grew stern. “In that case, I definitely can’t give you any information. Goodbye.” And then she hung up.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Alya said. “Lila specifically said she’d explain everything here. She promised!”
Marinette looked at her steadily but said nothing. Alya hesitated, then turned to Adrien. “Do you have another way to reach her?”
Adrien shook his head. “The landline was the other way.” Inwardly, he was thinking of options. He could chase her down at Chat Noir, or he could just contact the police if Lila really did just take his money and run. Or—
Then Adrien saw the butler, Jean-Something, approach Chloe and whisper in her ear. She froze, then gave Adrien a look that was surprised and, somehow, disappointed. “Adrien,” she began, “did you know your father had a suite permanently rented here?”
“Sure,” said Adrien, surprised by the non-sequitur. “That way when international buyers showed up he’d have a nice place to put them that wasn’t in the mansion itself.”
“Makes sense,” mused Kim. “He wouldn’t want some important buyer walking in on him when he was being Evil Butterfly Guy.”
Adrien shot a glare at Kim, then returned his focus to Chloe. “Why?”
“He paid the bill for that weekly,” said Chloe. “Now that he’s in jail and can’t authorize payments from his regular funds, the money was to be automatically deducted from some kind of emergency account he’d set up for situations like this. But Jean just told me we have to release the suite, because the account ran out of money.”
Adrien shook his head. “Impossible. That account has fifty million euros. I checked it earlier this week, and I’ve only taken out sixty thousand since then.”
“What on Earth do you need sixty grand for?” Nino asked.
Adrien shrugged. “Most of it went to pay my bodyguard. Then…” He paused, not wanting to admit to having given Lila ten thousand euros just before she fled town. “I had an expense,” he added lamely. “But there should still be more than forty-nine million euros there.”
Chloe shook her head. “Jean called your bank. He says all your money was apparently transferred to another account on Tuesday.” She leaned forwards. “Did you do something?”
“What? No! I didn’t do anything on Tuesday!” Adrien insisted, acutely aware that everyone was staring at him. “The last time I checked my account was before then on Monday, when I accessed it. I was with…”
And then it hit him.
“Lila!” he gasped. “She must have stolen the rest!” He clenched a fist. “She lied to me and robbed me!”
Alya shook her head. “Get serious, Adrien. That can’t be it. We know that Lila doesn’t lie.”
And Marinette burst into laughter.