When Alya finally spoke again, it was in a voice trembling with emotion that she addressed Marinette.

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry… I thought you didn't like Lila just because you were jealous… I should have… I should have known…"

Lifting her glasses, she briefly passed her hand in front of his eyes.

"I… I apologize to you," she breathed, eyes shining with tears. "And you don't have to forgive me. I… I don't know if I would forgive myself for being so stupid… "

Eyes just as wet, Marinette put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"I forgive you," she told her in a moved voice. "I would be lying to you if I said it didn't hurt that you didn't trust me about Lila, but… on the other hand, I must admit that I don't have the best history when it comes to jealousy." She conceded with a contrite grimace.

"That's not a reason…" Alya retorted weakly.

"Let's say it probably didn't help," Marinette replied. "But do you know why I forgive you so easily?"

As Alya shook her head in vain, her eyes still on her, Marinette smiled weakly.

"Because you've always been there for me," she explained, exerting a light pressure on her friend's shoulder. "Lila had threatened to deprive me of all my friends and -"

"WHAT?" Nino and Alya yelled indignantly.

"She did WHAT?" Added the latter. "Oh, that bitch, I'm going to..."

Alya compulsively squeezed her fingers in front of her, a chilling image of what she would do to her classmate if she was unfortunate enough to be in her hands right now.

"I'm not saying that to upset you," Marinette hastened to intervene. "Really," she insisted, seeing that her friend's anger didn't go away. "What I mean," she went on soothingly, "is that Lila threatened to make me end up alone, but that you are still there, you, Nino, Adrien and all the others. She failed. And whenever she tried to frame me or to discredit me in some way or another, you were always there to seek the truth because you didn't think I could be a bad person," she concludes, smiling softly at her friend.

"Even though I refused to believe you when you told me Lila was behind all of this…" Alya sighed, defeated. "I was always looking for another culprit..."

"But you never let me down, and for me it means a lot," Marinette reassured her.

Alya let out a strangled chuckle, a little too similar to a sob. Then, without any warning, she turned to Marinette and threw herself on her to hug her with all her might. Her shoulders shacked silently, while her friend ran her hands behind her back.

A little embarrassed, Adrien and Nino looked away.

After a while, Alya released her grip around Marinette and cleared her throat to regain her composure. Her eyes were still a little too red and a little too bright, but a resolute expression had taken place on her face.

Adrien had no doubts that she and Marinette would still have long conversations about their relationship, about the trust they had in each other… and about Lila, most likely.

But when Alya's piercing gaze met his, he knew immediately that after the time for regrets had returned the time for questions.

"What happened to Hawkmoth, in the end?" She asked without trying to hide her curiosity. "Why all these mysteries? Why didn't you hand him over to the police? And... What about you? Why did you disappear? Why didn't you say anything? "

Only silence answered her first.

Marinette glanced briefly at Adrien, before turning to her friend again.

"It's… complicated," she eluded, uncomfortable. "But we had our reasons, you can believe us. "

"I don't doubt it," Alya immediately reassured her. "It's just that I… I really don't understand. Hawkmoth terrorized Paris for years. He attacked you directly. He forced you to fight. He even nearly killed you several times! " She exclaimed, before toning it down abruptly as she realized she had raised her voice. "I… I suspect the miraculous don't really fit into the classic legal framework, but still… I don't understand why you allowed him to get out of this without being judged for everything he did."

Marinette spoke again after a brief moment of indecision.

"We didn't do this for him," she explained calmly. "The situation is not that simple, and as I told you, we have our reasons. But I'd rather not tell you more," she added with a sigh." It's not - "

"It's because of me," said Adrien abruptly.

A startled silence followed his statement.

"Adrien?" Nino asked hesitantly.

Ignoring him, Marinette stretched her hand across the table to rest it on her teammate's.

"Are you sure?" She asked him gently.

"Yes. "

A lump in his throat, Adrien turned to his friends.

"We didn't say anything because Hawkmoth… it's - it was… my father," he confessed in a breath.

Alya let out a gasp of horror. Hand in front of her mouth, she stared incredulously at her comrade.

"What… How? Your… your father? "

Nino was as white as a sheet.

"It… It can't be," he stammered, in shock.

"Unfortunately it is," Adrien retorted darkly. "I… I probably should have understood sooner, but…"

He let his sentence die in a downcast silence.

"Adrien immediately warned me when he discovered that… Well, when he understood for his father," Marinette continued, resuming the thread of her partner's explanations. "We know we have to stop him no matter what, but we were very hesitant about what to do with him. The most logical solution would have been to hand him over to the police, but…"

Marinette paused in turn and gave Adrien a moved look.

"… But the scandal would have been terrible, and Adrien would have suffered from it," Alya completed in a whisper.

"Exactly," Marinette confirmed, her eyes still wet. "Finding out that Gabriel was Hawkmoth was already so…"

Fists clenched, Adrien swallowed hard. Any trace of lightness or mischief had now deserted his face, finally revealing the pain he had managed to hide until then.

His drawn features betrayed his moral exhaustion and a bitter fold twisted his mouth.

"I… Part of me wanted to make my father pay for what he had done," he blurted out miserably. " Really. But… I would have paid the consequences too, that's for sure. "

He passed a tired hand over his face and let out a deep sigh.

"If we had publicly denounced my father, I would necessarily have been involved," he said in a tired voice. "I would have been questioned by the police. And by journalists, too," he added immediately. "I would have been asked if I was his accomplice. If not, why hadn't I seen anything. I would have been investigated… I suppose over time the police would have stopped showing interest in me, but the media… "

Shoulders down, Adrien sighed again.

"I grew up surrounded by the media, I know what it's like," he said with a small apologetic smile to Alya's attention. "My father and I are both public figures, this story would have been a blessing for the paparazzi," he continued with a bitter grin. "With my father in prison, it would have been just me… They would never have left me alone. I would have been stalked, harassed… I… I know it's selfish, but I… I didn't want to have to pay for my father's actions," he concluded defeatedly.

"This is a decision we both made," interjected Marinette. "And it is not subject to discussion," she added firmly. "I trust you not to tell anyone." "

The gaze she cast on her friends had the hardness and coldness of steel. It was clear that she would stand against the whole world if anyone dared to harm her teammate.

"No, I understand," Nino replied, raising his hands in front of him in a soothing gesture. "Even though the thought of Gabriel getting away with it without being punished makes me sick."

He spat his name like one spits an insult, drawing an amused chuckle from his best friend.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Adrien retorted with a strange, twisted, unfamiliar smirk. "We have proof of his guilt," he added, pointing in turn to himself and Marinette. "He knows he better be quiet if he doesn't want us to denounce him. "

"Which means that Adrien no longer has to obey him," added Marinette with a satisfied nod.

"Wait, do you mean he knows who you are?" Alya said, shocked. "Who you are, both of you? And besides, what was his goal? " She continued, unable to stop the flood of questions rushing on her lips. "Did he tell you why he wanted your miraculous? And his, did you get it back? And Mayura? Did you find her too? What happened to her? And when you say your dad had better be quiet, what do you mean? Do you blackmail him? "

"Wow! " Adrien exclaimed, raising his hands in a gesture of defence, while Marinette giggled at the avalanche of questions.

A small smile of apology on her lips, Alya fell silent to give her friends time to talk.

"Well, to answer your first question, yes, my father knows who I am," Adrien replied calmly. "And he knows about Marinette. "

Frowning, the girl tried to remember all of her friend's questions.

"We got his and Mayura's miraculous back," she continued thoughtfully. "They are safe. Then, uh… Ah, yes, this blackmail story…"

"We thought about a punishment that we thought was appropriate and he had no choice but to obey us," Adrien explained.

" A punishment? " Alya repeated in a puzzled voice.

"Oh, first of all, it is quite possible that we forced him to anonymously donate a large part of his fortune to associations supporting the victims of akumatization," the young man explained nonchalantly.

Nino let out an impressed whistle.

"Wow, you did extort Hawkmoth? You had to dare! "

"Well, it's his loss," replied his best friend with an evasive shrug.

"But your father's fortune… isn't that your inheritance?" Alya wondered.

"I don't want this money," Adrien retorted. "In addition, I have an account in my own name, into which all my modelling salaries have been paid since I started working. I am not in need. "

"In addition to the donations," Marinette continued, "we forced him to go to a psychologist regularly so that he could reflect on his actions and… uh… become a better person, one day, maybe?" She concludes in an uncertain voice.

She hoped from the bottom of her heart that Gabriel Agreste would learn from his mistakes and become, in a future that she wished near, a man close to the father that Adrien would have deserved.

But there was still a long way to go.

"The man who gave us our miraculous has a friend, Marianne, who knows a lot of people," Adrien continued while his teammate was lost in thought. "She was the one who organized the transfer of the money to the association, ensuring that it would remain anonymous. She also recommended a trusted therapist to us, who was told that my father was Hawkmoth. "

"Well, good luck to them," Nino blurted out with disarming naturalness. "It must not be funny poking around your father's head. "

"I totally agree," Adrien confirmed, as Marinette and Alya nodded.

The young man hesitated for a moment, before resuming his speech abruptly.

The few words he said were short, quick.

Like ripping off a bandage.

"There's Mayura, too. It was Nathalie. His assistant. "

Adrien saw Alya and Nino turn even more pale.

He understood their shock, for having experienced the same terrible realization about two months ago. And yet. Nino and Alya could only have a vague idea of the horror he had felt seeing his world shatter to pieces. Their view of the disaster was only partial, peripheral.

Adrien had been at the epicentre.

But the truth remained, naked and cruel. Two of Adrien's closest relative, his father and the one he almost considered a foster mother, had been the infernal duo that had terrified Paris so much.

He had been betrayed by those same adults who should have protected him.

It was hard to imagine a more bitter and painful conclusion to his glorious heroic career.

"We asked Nathalie to leave Paris," Adrien continued with a curious detachment, as if he was telling a story which would have involved him only from afar. "She went with a humanitarian association in Asia to seek a new meaning in her life. Last I heard, she was helping to develop a school in a rural area of Cambodia. "

Silence hung over the table, as Nino and Alya painfully absorbed all these revelations.

"Okay, Nathalie is gone", finally summed up Nino. "But as far as I know, is your father still around?" "

His face darkened when Adrien agreed with a slight nod of his chin.

"I don't like it," he said without further ado. "I don't like to know that you're still living with him, after everything he's done," he clarified in response to his friend's questioning glance. " I don't like it. I don't like it at all," he repeated, crossing his arms.

Adrien's eyes widened slightly in surprise, as much at Nino's words as at his vehemence. Throat tight, he swivelled in his seat, turning to his best friend to hug him awkwardly.

As Nino hugged him back, Adrien felt a new ball of emotion lodge in his throat.

Fate might have cruelly bestowed him with a distant and evil father, but it had also endowed him with the best of friends. Without the slightest possible doubt.

Adrien released Nino after a few seconds and let out a small fit of cough to regain his composure. He then mechanically scratched the base of his neck as he searched for his words.

"Thank you, Nino," he told him warmly. "But you don't have to worry about that. I haven't been living with my father since I found out he was Hawkmoth. "

The gazes Alya and Nino were brimming with undisguised curiosity.

"Where do you live then?" Alya asked, unable to silence the investigator bubbling inside her any longer.

Eyes sparkling with mischief, Adrien and Marinette exchanged a small smile of connivance before returning their attention to their friends.

"With me," Marinette said nonchalantly.