Meanwhile, the older Cavalcanti had gone back to his real life, not as some high-ranking officer, but as a regular at the gambling tables in a resort town. He'd blown through every cent of the travel money he'd been given, treating it like payment for the acting gig where he'd pretended to be Andrea's father.
When he left, Andrea inherited all the forged documents that "proved" he was the son of some fancy Marquis and Marchioness. Now he was loose in Parisian high society, which had a weird habit of accepting foreigners at face value. They didn't care who you really were, only who you claimed to be. And honestly? The bar was pretty low for a young foreign guy in Paris. Speak decent French, look good, know how to gamble, and most importantly, have cash to spend. They were definitely more forgiving of foreigners than their own people.
