Montreal is a city thriving in the shadows, where sin isn’t hidden—it’s worn like silk, stitched into the fabric of everyday life. The rich buy silence, the poor buy time, and in the middle of it all, crime runs on old money and older grudges.

For years, the city belonged to its monsters.

But today?

Today, the Midnights are dead.

Their masks, once symbols of hope and fear alike, now lie discarded—one ripped off in disgrace, the other left behind by a woman who has chosen to rise again with a new name and purpose.

Madame Minuit is no more.

But Le Renard Noir?

She’s just getting started.

My name is Laura Locke. I used to be his sidekick. His partner. His fiancée. I thought we were building something together—a crusade, a future. I was wrong.

Jean-Claude Bellrose—Monsieur Minuit—was a liar. A traitor. A puppet dancing on mafia strings while pretending to be the city’s dark knight. And I? I was the fool who believed in him.

Not anymore.

Now the mask I wear is mine alone. Designed not by a man who wanted to shape me in his image, but by a woman who believed I could shape my own. A woman from Toronto who wore orange and hunted monsters.

She called herself The Vulpes.

And she reminded me who I really was.

Together, we didn’t just expose Jean.

We ended him.

We took everything he had—his legacy, his lies, his leverage—and turned it into a smoking crater of evidence and headlines. Cameras caught him where we needed them to. Witnesses saw what they were meant to see. And when the RCMP cuffed him and dragged him into the back of that cruiser, the mask came off in more ways than one.

He looked small.

Not because he’d been beaten—but because he’d been outfoxed.

Now I sit at my desk, the city still breathing beneath my window, and I write this as a warning—and a promise.

Montreal is still corrupt. Still carved up by mobsters and bikers, still bleeding from wounds no one dares name out loud. But there’s a new kind of vigilante in the shadows now. One who knows the difference between justice and vengeance. One who has nothing left to lose and everything to fight for.

And as the dust settles, the world starts to notice.

The media have gone wild.

Headlines scream across every front pages:

“Former Hero Exposed as Mob Enforcer!”
“Can We Trust Masked vigilantes?”
“Madame Minuit: The Midnight We Deserved?”

Yeah.

It’s a circus.

And I’m the one standing in the spotlight, pretending not to see the fire I helped start.

Reporters want quotes. Editors want exclusives. Everyone wants to know what Laura Locke, former fiancée of Jean-Claude Bellrose, really knew.

And all I can do is keep playing the part—the grieving partner, blindsided by betrayal.

It’s not hard.

Vulpes and I did our homework. We scrubbed every file, doctored every photo, built enough distance between Madame Minuit and Laura Locke to fool even the best of them. No fingerprints. No masks. No leaks.

The lies come easier than I thought they would.

Maybe because a part of me believes them.

I’m not Madame Minuit. Not anymore.

When they ask if I knew he was a vigilante?

I pause. Look thoughtful. Give a carefully measured sigh.

“In retrospect,” I say, “I don’t know if I ever really knew him at all.”

And that’s the truth.

Or close enough to it.

I let the world fill in the blanks.

Some say I’m a victim. Some say I’m a liar. Some say I was brave to walk away from it all.

Let them argue.

Let the circus spin.

Because while the world is busy pointing fingers, I’m getting stronger. Smarter. Sharper.

Le Renard Noir isn’t here to make headlines.

She’s here to make sure no one like Jean ever fools this city again.

And when the spotlight moves on?

I’ll still be in the shadows.

Right where I belong.

As for Coraline—the Vermilion Vulpes, the Victorious Vulpine Vigilante—she’s headed back home to Toronto. Her city needs her just as much as mine needs me.

But not before I got the chance to pull her into a hug.

It wasn’t for show.

It wasn’t strategy.

It was the least I owed her—for believing in me, for fighting beside me, for helping me become something stronger than I ever thought I could be.

A friend.

An ally.

And maybe, someday… something more.

The strangest part of it all though, what neither I nor Coraline expected?

Jean didn’t try to expose me.

Didn’t say a word about the real identity of his partner. Not to the police. Not to the press. Not even in whispered rumors from his cell.

And that silence... it haunts me.

A part of me wants to believe it’s some shred of the man I once loved. That maybe, buried under the betrayal and lies, there’s still a trace of the Jean who wanted to fight injustice, who believed in something greater than himself before the darkness swallowed him whole.

But the more logical part of me—the journalist, the fighter, the woman who now wears her own mask—knows better.

That silence?

It isn’t guilt.

It’s possession.

Jean isn’t keeping my secret out of mercy.

He’s keeping it because he doesn’t want anyone else taking revenge on me.

Or on Vulpes.

He wants that for himself.

Even as they lock him away, even as the headlines fade and the city turns its attention elsewhere—I can feel it. He’s plotting. Calculating.

Waiting.

Because monsters don’t die just because the lights come on.

They wait in the dark.

But here’s the thing Jean never understood.

So do foxes.

And if he comes back?

We’ll be ready.

They used to call me Madame Minuit.

Now?

You can call me Le Renard Noir.

And I’m already stirring the pot.

Rumors are spreading. Whispers in alleyways and underworld haunts. They say Montreal and Toronto both have a crime-fighting fox now. Some claim we’re the same person—that the fox moves like a ghost, slipping between cities, appearing wherever criminals dare to crawl from the cracks.

Others say Le Renard Noir is Vulpes’ shadow—risen from betrayal like black magic.

A few tabloids even whisper about a Society of Foxes—a hidden network spreading across Canada, stealing from lawbreakers and exposing them to the light.

Me?

I’m happy to let them believe whatever superstitious nonsense they like.

Let them imagine phantoms in the night.

Let them wonder how many of us are out there.

Let them fear Le Renard Noir.

Let them fear that she and Vulpes are more than just women in masks.

Let them fear that we are something else entirely—

A reckoning.

As for me and Coraline?

I think both of us feel a little less alone now in the mission we’ve chosen.

We’re planning to share intel, train together, watch each other’s backs when it counts. A network, maybe. A friendship, definitely.

And beyond the masks?

Well… once I feel a little less emotionally raw—once I’ve patched over the holes Jean left behind—Laura Locke might just ask Coraline Penrose out for coffee the next time I see her.

And it won’t be for anything professional.

But that’s later.

For now, I’ve got a city that needs shaking up. Shadows that need dragging into the light. A new name, a new identity, still carving itself into the soul of Montreal.

I am Le Renard Noir, Montreal’s foxy French femme fatale.

I mean—why not?

If Vulpes gets to be called the Victorious Vulpine Vigilante, then I’ll wear my title with pride too.

Bonne nuit…

Et bonne chance.

***

My name is Coraline Penrose.

Lawyer. Trust fund kid. Toronto rich girl, if you believe the headlines.

But that’s just the surface.

I’m also the Vulpes—a thief, a vigilante, a fox prowling the steel canyons of the city I call home.

I went to Montreal to hunt a hitman.

I left with something I never expected: a friend.

This life—this double life—I always told myself it would be a lonely one. That there was no room for connection, for anyone who could see both sides of me: Coraline and the Vulpes. I kept those parts separate, because I thought I had to. Because blending them felt dangerous.

But then came Laura Locke.

She’s not the first to know the truth—John does too—but John’s in the shadows. Tech support. Logistics. He’s my lifeline behind the screen, not beside me in the fight.

Laura is different.

Smart. Driven. Brave. Beautiful.

If she hadn’t just had her heart shattered, I think I would’ve asked her out for coffee—not the kind that ends with intel, but the kind that ends with fingers brushing and maybe something more. Women like her… they only come along once in a lifetime.

But for now, I’ll take her friendship.

Her alliance.

Her trust.

Together, we’re going to tighten the net around organized crime and supervillainy across central Canada. Two foxes in two cities—sharing intel, backing each other up, fighting from the shadows.

I never thought I’d have a team.

Now I do.

And I’m lucky for it.

But as I fly home, the wind slicing across my visor and the skyline of Toronto pulling me back in, I find my thoughts drifting.

To Alice Little.

To Wonderland.

To Michael Macentyre—the monster who wore a human face and used love like a leash to control someone good. To break her. Twist her. Hurt her.

And I think about Jean.

Not because they’re the same.

But because they rhyme.

A part of me wanted to really hurt Jean. Wanted to make him feel what it’s like to be used, lied to, betrayed by someone you loved. I had to stop myself from going too far.

Because this wasn’t just about justice.

It was about pattern recognition.

I’ve seen too many good hearts get crushed under the weight of manipulative people who believe love is ownership.

I was done letting them win, I didn’t want to see someone suffer like Alice did. Laura didn’t deserve that, no one does. So yeah I did enjoy beating him, breaking, making sure a bastard got what was coming to him.

So maybe I’m not just a thief. Not just a vigilante. Not just a shadow that stalks the wicked.

Maybe I’m something more.

A protector.

An avenger.

A fox who hunts the monsters hiding in human skin.

And when they come crawling out of the dark, looking for the next victim.

I’ll be waiting.

***

Jean-Claude Bellrose sat alone in his cell, the gray of his prison uniform matching the washed-out walls that boxed him in. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Not visibly.

But inside?

He was a storm.

Rage. Jealousy. Spite.

It all simmered beneath the surface, coiling tighter with each passing hour.

She stole my Laura.

She corrupted her. Turned her against me.

Everything I did—I did for us. For Laura. For Montreal.

His fists clenched slowly, the knuckles bone-white.

And then the Vulpes came along. Stuck her snout where it didn’t belong. She ruined it. Ruined us. Ruined the life I bled for—shed sweat, blood, and years to build!

His breathing stayed level, but his eyes burned holes into the concrete.

I will get out of here, Vulpes.

I will find you.

And when I do?

His lips curled into something twisted. Not a smile. A promise.

I’ll make you pay. I’ll make you bleed.

And when I’m done… all that’ll be left of the fox is roadkill.

Painted across the Toronto concrete.