"Nicolette! Come down here this instant!" A voice called from down stairs.

The girl being referred to, Nicolette, sat on her bed, quietly staring out the window. Her auburn red hair was pulled back into a loose bun, though some strands had escaped the bun already. She wore a gorgeous, low cut blood red gown, the very same one her mother had worn when first trying to seduce Christian. Bright blue orbs peered out at the world while dull red lips smirked at the irony of it all.

Her personal quarters were rather small, though large compared to the other girls. But she held a certain status; the only daughter of Moulin Rouge's famous "Sparkling Diamond", Satine. The famous courtesan had secretly bore a daughter and had kept her in hiding, though she often visited the woman who had kept her safe, though she took care to make sure Nicolette had no idea who her real mother was.

However, once she was old enough to seek out her mother at the age of eighteen, she found that Satine was deceased, she had died only weeks before from consumption. Her first impression was to deny everything, they must be talking about another Satine, but once she saw the tombstone, engraved with Satine's name, it became like a heavy anvil on her heart. As the tears rolled down her cheeks, she noticed that beneath the dates of Satine's birth and death, there was a quote etched into the stone:

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." Christian

Instead of just giving up on finding lost memories of her mother, she went to the Moulin Rouge for the first time. Once she found her way into the courtesan's wing, she searched feverishly for her mother's dressing room, but it had been cleared out except for a picture of Satine and a man she must have loved. But it had been ripped in half and taped back together. Since the background of the picture was the elephant outside, she took the picture and headed for the foot and entered the door, hoping that she would find things that would give her clues of her mother's life.

But her rooms had not been touched. Corsets and Dresses lay everywhere, while jewelry had been strewed among the top of her dresser. The plush bed still glowed the bright red of the comforter her mother had used, the blood stains from her mother's illness still littered the blanket's surface.

As she searched through her mother's things, she felt like someone was watching her. Shaking away that feeling, she continued digging through the mounds of silk and lingerie, as though there was something she knew she was meant to find. Finally at the bottom of one of the drawers, she discovered a letter; It was addressed to two people, Nicolette and Christian. However, before she got a chance to open it, the door to the room swung open to reveal a man with carrot-red hair and beard and dressed in a bright red suit, Harold Ziegler.

"I-I-I'm sorry." Nicolette stammered, looking downward in an attempt to avoid eye contact, but after a few moments of silence, she glanced up fearfully. But to her surprise, Harold only looked curious rather than angry.

"Where might you be from, poppet?" he asked. "And what brings you to the Moulin Rouge?"

"Well,…" she started to say. "I was sent here by Madmoiselle Satine's family to pick up her things."

"Oh?" Ziegler replied, raising an eyebrow. "Mademoiselle Satine had no family. She was abandoned as a child on my door step and I and Marie raised her….You do know that she is dead, correct?"

"Indeed sir, her death was a tragic loss to the entire culture of the Parisian underworld, " Nicolette replied, trying to hide her shock that he would dare be so cold; after all, her mother was one of the best courtesans Moulin House had ever had! The least he could do was show some respect for her memory! "But," she added coldly. "Now that she is gone, you might show her the respect that you never did while she lived."

"How dare you?" he responded, eyes turning a cold glare upon her and folding his arms across his chest. "And who might you be, to tell me all this?"

Nicolette raised her head proudly and looked him straight in the eyes as she replied. "I am Mademoiselle Satine's only child."