Ariane Moreau Party

POV: Chloe

The gift bag appeared on my desk on a Wednesday morning like it owned the place.

No note, no sender name. Just cream tissue paper folded back with deliberate elegance, revealing fabric that caught the light in a way that made my breath stop.

It’s a limited edition designer dress in the exact shade of dusty rose I had once lingered over in a magazine and immediately closed because wanting things like that felt irresponsible.

I lifted it out with both hands and just stood there. It was my exact size, my perfect size.

Of course it was...

He had measured every inch of me himself, masking it as work while his hands wandered around my body. That sleek bastard, this has been his plan,this is why he’d taken my measurements.

I set the dress down and looked up, instinctively, before I could stop myself. I looked toward the glass wall at the exact direction where he’d shown me his one way glass.

I couldn't see him. I never could, from my side. The entire point of one-way glass was that the surveillance only worked in one direction, and I was always, infuriatingly, on the wrong side of it.

But I knew he was there. Standing in his office, coffee in hand probably, watching my face the way he watched everything about me, studying me. I smiled and went back to admiring my gift, it’s so beautiful.

He would know the exact moment I registered what the dress was worth. He would know when I found the shoes. Italian leather, my exact heel preference, and a matching clutch purse.

He knew my favorite color. He knew my taste. He chose a nude tone so perfectly calibrated to my complexion that I genuinely had to sit down for a moment.

He had apparently spent a huge amount of time and money putting all this together. And the result was sitting on my desk looking so beautiful that I genuinely could not be mad at him right now.

I turned toward his office, toward the exact spot I'd calculated him to be standing, on the other side of the glass I couldn't see through, and I smiled, a real one,

"Thank you," I mouthed, looking directly at him through glass that only went one way.

I hoped he was smiling back, I hated that I hoped that, hated that I wish he’d come here himself, kissed me and handed me this gift.

At the end of the day, he appeared in my doorway and placed a folded piece of paper on my desk. It held a name and a number.

"She'll be your beautician for tomorrow's event," he said.

"She'll contact you in the morning." His eyes were doing the thing they'd been doing increasingly, that warm, almost-dancing quality underneath the composed surface, like he was enjoying himself and only barely bothering to conceal it.

"Thanks Tris." I picked up the paper.

"I'm genuinely stunned by your generosity. The dress, the shoes, now a personal beautician... Are you this generous with all your employees?" I asked teasingly. Something shifted at the corner of his mouth, a smug smile.

"No, cupcake. Just the ones I'm attracted to." I opened my mouth to respond with something suitably deflecting, but he took the opportunity to kiss me, shutting me up.

"You can thank me properly," he added, and his voice had dropped from teasing into something quieter and serious.

"Thank me properly when you accept my proposal and let me back into your heart."

I had no answer for that, and he didn't wait for one. He turned and left, and I sat alone in my office holding a beautician's number, wearing a smile I hadn't given myself permission to have, and absolutely refusing to examine any of it too closely.

The Ariane Moreau banquet occupied a venue designed specifically to make you feel the exact weight of your own ambition.

The interior is so elegant, with vaulted ceilings, light-drenched marble, chandeliers that had probably been insured separately from the building.

Guests moved through the space with the ease of people who had never once in their lives questioned their right to be somewhere.

I belonged...

I had a gold pass in my clutch and a dress that fit like architecture and a beautician who had spent two hours making me look like someone who attended events like this regularly.

I belonged...

I told myself this several times in the car on the way over. By the time I arrived, I almost believed it. I was doing perfectly well, right up until I felt someone looking at me.

Not admiration.

I felt that eyes on me, the kind of attention from someone that has already reached a verdict and is just gathering supporting evidence.

I turned, and she was standing twelve feet away in a red gown that cost more than my monthly salary, dark hair swept up, champagne in hand, and a set of pretty blue eyes that landed on me and went cold with a calculation that made my stomach tighten.

I knew her face...

It took me exactly four seconds to place it, and then it hit me like a physical thing. I recall it like it was yesterday.

The hotel entrance, seven years ago, a woman in red laughing as she pressed herself against Tristan's arm, leaning into him, both disappearing through a revolving door with the comfortable ease of someone who did it regularly.

I had stood on that pavement for a very long time afterward. Then I had gone home and ended everything. It’s her, I would recognize that face anywhere, it has haunted me for seven years.

She spotted me a frowned deeply, fixing me a stern gaze. Then she beckoned on her friends and they walked towards me, an evil glint on their faces.

"How did a filthy low-level designer get through the door?" She asks. Her voice was pitched perfectly, loud enough for the immediate circle to hear, soft enough to maintain the pretense of private observation. She looked around with theatrical puzzlement.

"Did you sneak in through a back entrance?

Someone needs to call security, ‘security!’ I think we have a gate-crasher." She lets out loudly. The heads started turning. The crowd gathering slowly, obviously interested.

I breathed in slowly through my nose. ‘What did Tristan ever see in this woman.’

Whatever it was, it was none of my business. He was my ex. What he did seven years ago, who he did it with, it’s none of my concern.

Big lie!

It was absolutely my concern...

It was eating me alive...

But I was not going to show that.

"I have an invitation, like everyone else here." I said pleasantly,

“Who would give out such an expensive invitation to a low level designer?” she scoffed.

"Low level designer or not?

The fact remains that I have an invitation. Or are you suggesting Ariane Moreau made an error in issuing it?" She hissed, her blue eyes narrowed to slits.

"Show it then. If you dare."

"Show yours first," I said.

"Then I'll show mine." She smirks and produced her card with pride, a red velvet, embossed, unmistakably legitimate. The crowd murmured, several people leaned in to look.

At that moment, my heart did something extremely unhelpful. Because my card looked nothing like hers.

I'd registered this vaguely when Tristan gave it to me and filed it away without examining it too closely, and now, standing in a room full of watching eyes, the thought arrived at full volume

What if she's right?

What if it's fake?

What if this was the actual revenge, not the contract, not the glass wall, but this, humiliating me in front of fifty designers I'd spent years admiring from a respectful and aspirational distance?

No.

I pushed the thought down hard and held it there. He wouldn't go that low.

Whatever complicated, maddening, consuming thing Tristan was, he wouldn't do that.

Something in my chest was completely certain of it. He loves me, even when he was being impossible about it.

I reached into the gold crescent moon clutch. Pulled out my invitation card, and held it up. The gasp moved through the immediate circle like a ripple.

"She has a VIP gold pass."

"Ariane Moreau only issues twelve of those per year..."

"That outranks yours, Ella..."

I watched the color leave Ella's face and then rush back in, hotter and darker than before.

“She has a VIP gold pass,” someone in the crowd exclaimed.

“Madam Ariana Moreau only gives out 12 of those, and she got one with her. She must be a high class designer, higher than you Ella,” they mocked, laughing at her.

“That’s a lie!

She’s a nobody, a low class designer can not get the VIP gold pass while I got a red velvet pass. It’s got to be fake!

Security, check it, it’s fake!” she said, making everyone genuinely curious about my pass.

“Ma’am, we are sorry, but standard procedure demands that we verify your card because these are serious accusations!” the security told me, making me gulp down saliva.

“By all means,” I smiled at them, handing them the card confidently. Something in my heart tells me to trust Tristan, he would never give me a fake card.