Chapter 4

The curtains were open when I woke up at four AM.

I'd pulled them back myself the night before because I didn't need the dark. I needed Paris outside the window — the grey of it before it decided to wake up, the lights on the Seine, the silence that wasn't actually silence. Something outside my own head to push against.

I was already showered. Already dressed. The coffee I'd ordered at four-thirty was going cold on the desk because I'd forgotten it existed.

Three screens in front of me.

Screen one: Damon's press response. I'd been through it four times. I knew which phrases were his and which belonged to his PR firm. I knew which outlets he'd called first because the order told you what he was protecting. He'd hit the financial press before the gossip columns. That was a mistake. It told me the social narrative was where he was soft.

Screen two: wire activity. Nikolai's financial team had eyes on six accounts connected to Damon's structure. Nothing had moved yet. It would.

Screen three: the list.

Forty-one names. Every social contact Damon had spent two years building around me. Friends. Acquaintances. Women I'd had lunch with. Men who'd been at our dinner parties. Ranked by likelihood of use, cross-referenced by what Damon had on each of them versus what he'd simply promised them.

Chloé Renard sat at the top.

I'd put her there the moment I sat down. I didn't need to think about it. Chloé was social and visible and cared more than anything about being in the right rooms with the right people. Damon had spent eighteen months making her feel like she was one of his inner circle. He would use her first because she would genuinely believe she was helping him. That's the kind of person he preferred — the ones who didn't know they were being used, because they never pushed back.

I picked up my cold coffee. Remembered it was cold. Put it down.

Opened a new document. Started drafting.

At 6:12 my phone buzzed.

Petra — Nikolai's head of monitoring, a woman I'd met for approximately ninety seconds the night before — had flagged three wire transfers out of a Luxembourg-adjacent holding account. Small amounts. Structured to stay just below reporting thresholds.

I forwarded the flag to Sebastien with three words: Document and hold.

At 7:40 I ordered fresh coffee and ate half a croissant standing at the window because I hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon and my body had started quietly filing a complaint. Below me Paris was fully awake. Traffic on the bridge. A woman walking a dog on the embankment. Normal life happening in a completely parallel universe to this room.

I thought about my mother for a moment. She'd called twice yesterday and left one voicemail. Just wanted to hear my voice. Didn't need me to explain anything.

I hadn't called back yet. I knew exactly what I would say to her. I just needed one more hour before I could say it without my voice doing something I didn't want it to do.

I went back to the desk.

The story broke at 8:53 AM.

I saw it before Isabelle called because I was already watching the aggregator I knew Damon had a financial relationship with. Quiet arrangement, untraceable, routed through a media consultancy with his money in it. The byline was one I recognized — a journalist who received Damon's placed stories the way some people receive utility bills. Regularly and without surprise.

I read it once. Then again.

Sources close to the Rousseau family express worry over Mireille's erratic behavior in the months leading up to the ceremony. "She hasn't been herself," one friend confided. Those who know her well describe a woman under significant strain — and question whether the events of yesterday were truly as clear-headed as they appeared.

Anonymous. No specifics. Nothing I could legally challenge. Perfectly calibrated to do quiet damage in the back of people's minds.

I had written down this exact framing in Sebastien's office two days ago. Word for word.

I called Isabelle.

One ring. "I saw it," she said.

"It's the Chloé angle. He moved faster than I expected by about eighteen hours. Counter-story needs to go before noon or the framing sets."

"Already drafted. I need one quote from someone who outranks Chloé socially. Not a friend. Someone with institutional weight."

I thought for exactly four seconds.

"Hannelore Beck," I said.

Silence on the line.

"The board member," Isabelle said carefully.

"Call her. Tell her Mireille Rousseau would like to have lunch next week and will be bringing the Lausanne contract proposal." I picked up my jacket from the back of the chair. "She'll give you the quote."

"How do you know she'll—"

"Because Damon has been blocking that contract for two years and she's been watching her position erode because of it. I'm offering her a way back in. She'll have the quote to you inside twenty minutes." I checked my watch. "I'm going to Voss's office. Keep me updated if anything else moves."

I'd been in Nikolai's office once before, briefly, at two in the morning. At that hour everything reduces — smaller, darker, just working surfaces and lamp light.

In daylight it was something else entirely.

Clean in a way that required active decision-making. Not the clean of someone who didn't own things — the clean of someone who had decided exactly what belonged in the space and removed everything else. No photographs. No awards on the walls, though I knew he had them. One painting on the far wall, abstract, dark blue, the kind you buy because you actually like it rather than because it communicates something. A desk that was all surface. Three monitors, two currently running.

The view was Paris in every direction. Grey morning light on rooftops. The city spread out like something he'd assessed and hadn't decided about yet.

He was on a call when I arrived. Standing at the window with his back to the door, speaking in what sounded like Czech. He didn't turn around. He raised two fingers without looking at me — not a wave, just an acknowledgment that I existed and he'd be a moment.

I sat. Opened my laptop. Worked.

He finished the call eleven minutes later. I knew because I'd tracked it without meaning to. I'd been monitoring his reflection in my screen without actively deciding to.

He turned and looked at me sitting in his chair — I'd taken the main chair without thinking, which I registered might have been a statement I hadn't intended to make. He looked at it. Said nothing. Came and sat across from me in the guest chair and picked up his phone.

"Beck agreed to the lunch," he said.

"I know. Isabelle confirmed seven minutes ago."

He set his phone down. "I spoke to Pieter Vande this morning. He'll hold his vote but he wants something."

I already knew what Vande wanted. I had known since before this conversation because I'd spent five years watching Damon manage that board, watching what each member had been denied and exactly why.

"Access to the Lyons facility audit," I said. "He's been trying to get eyes on those numbers for two years. Damon blocked it because there's a liability buried in the Q3 figures — a cash diversion that would have exposed one of the shell structures." I paused. "Let him see it. The liability is already neutralized in the filing Sebastien submitted yesterday morning."

Nikolai didn't answer immediately.

"You knew about the Lyons liability," he said.

"Yes."

"It wasn't in the folder."

"No."

He looked at me. Not annoyed — something more precise than annoyed. The expression he got when he was deciding whether something was a problem or a variable.

"I didn't include it," I said, "because neutralizing it required waiting until I was legally separated from the Rousseau shareholder structure. If I'd flagged it earlier it would have created a disclosure obligation that tipped Damon before we were ready." I held his gaze. "It's neutralized now. Vande gets his audit. He owes us a vote."

Three seconds.

He picked up his phone and called Vande.

I went back to my screen.

At 11:15 Isabelle texted: Beck gave the quote. Running in the 1PM cycle. You're a genius and I resent it.

At 1:47 my monitoring alert flagged a new post on the same aggregator. A follow-up piece. Doubling down on the instability angle with a second anonymous source described only as a former colleague.

Laure.

Damon had moved to Laure faster than I'd expected. Nikolai's team was already working on reaching her — he'd confirmed it the night before. But working on her and getting to her before Damon locked her in were two entirely different things.

I looked across the office. Nikolai was reading something on his second monitor, pen in hand, not writing.

I looked back at my phone.

Then I made a different call first.

Chloé picked up on the third ring with the careful tone of someone who had been waiting for a call they didn't know they were dreading.

"Mireille." Too measured. Too controlled.

"Chloé." I kept my voice warm. Easy. Like the past forty-eight hours were weather neither of us had caused. "I've been meaning to call. I know things have been — a lot. For everyone."

"Are you — how are you?"

"I'm good." I let it land simply, without decoration. "I wanted to reach out because I don't want things to be strange between us. You know how the press blows everything up."

Across the coffee table, Isabelle had gone completely still. She was staring at me with her laptop halfway closed, expression caught somewhere between professional alarm and something else.

"Of course," Chloé said. Slightly relieved. That relief told me everything — she'd already spoken to Damon's people, she'd already done something small and expedient, and she was sitting with the specific discomfort of a person who has made a choice they're not entirely proud of. "Of course, I'm glad you called."

"Let's get coffee this week. Thursday?"

"Thursday — yes. Thursday works."

"Perfect. I'll text you the place."

I ended the call and set the phone on the table.

Isabelle put her laptop down entirely. "What," she said, "are you doing."

"Damon primed her. He told her I'd be unstable. Desperate. He does that before he uses someone — he gives them a version of you that makes them feel like they're just confirming what they already suspected." I picked up my coffee. "The moment I call her sounding like neither of those things, she stops being useful to him. The risk calculation changes the second she hears my voice acting like nothing has happened."

Isabelle looked at me for a long moment.

"You terrify me," she said.

"I know."

The counter-story ran at six.

Two outlets — one business press, one general, both credible, both sourced through Sebastien's network in ways that were clean and untraceable back to me. The framing was careful and deliberate: corporate fraud allegations, documented evidence filed with the court, serious governance concerns raised by board members. A quote from a senior Rousseau Textiles board member — Hannelore Beck, unnamed — calling for full independent investigation.

Not a woman falling apart. Not a jilted bride. A shareholder who found something, documented it, and acted.

By eight the business story had more traction than the morning gossip piece. By nine the gossip piece had been buried under three separate financial journalists picking up the corporate fraud angle and running with it.

Damon's instability narrative wasn't dead. But it had been crowded out before it could calcify.

I was still in Nikolai's conference room when the final edition hit. I read it on my phone. Put the phone face-down. Picked up my pen and crossed three items off the list I'd been running since four AM.

Nikolai was at the other end of the table. He'd been there for two hours — not because we were working on anything together specifically but because we were both working and the conference room had the screens and space we needed and neither of us had suggested moving. His jacket was off. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow. He had a document in front of him and a pen in his hand and he hadn't moved in twenty minutes except to turn a page.

He said, without looking up: "You called Renard yourself."

"Yes."

"That wasn't in the plan we discussed this morning."

"No."

He looked up. "Next time tell me when you're improvising."

I met his eyes. "It worked."

"It worked this time." His voice was completely even. No heat in it, which somehow landed harder than anger would have. "If you make a move I don't know about and it goes wrong, I'm reacting blind. I don't operate blind."

He wasn't wrong. I knew he wasn't wrong. I also knew that if I'd stopped to consult him I'd have lost the window by forty minutes and Chloé would have already been locked in.

"Noted," I said.

He held my gaze for one more second.

Then he went back to his document.

I went back to my list.

Outside the windows Paris was doing what it did at this hour — lights coming on across the skyline, the sky moving from grey to the dark blue that came just before full dark. I could feel him at the other end of the table the way you can feel a source of heat in a room without looking at it. Not warmth exactly. Just the specific awareness of something that has a temperature.

I did not examine that.

I crossed off the last item on the list and opened a new page and started the next one.

At ten-fifteen Nikolai's assistant sent through the morning brief for tomorrow. I read it and flagged two items.

At ten-forty I stood up, gathered my things, and said: "I'll be here at eight."

He said: "Seven-thirty. The Vande call is at eight and I want to brief you before it."

"Seven-thirty," I said.

"The car will pick you up at seven."

He had already gone back to his document.

I left.

In the elevator going down I thought about the call I still hadn't made to my mother. I thought about Damon reading the counter-story somewhere in the city right now — the specific face he would be making. Not anger. Not immediately. A recalibration. A stillness that was always worse than anger because it meant he was already building the next move.

I knew every next move he had.

The car was waiting at the curb. I got in and I called my mother.

She picked up on the first ring.

"Ma chérie." Her voice had been crying and was trying not to show it and was failing completely.

"I'm fine, Maman," I said. "I'm sorry I didn't call sooner."

"Are you safe? Are you somewhere safe?"

"Yes."

She was quiet for a moment. Then: "He was never right for you. I know I said — I was so happy about the wedding, but I always thought—" She stopped. "I should have told you."

I closed my eyes.

"You didn't know," I said. "Neither did I. Not for a long time."

That was the most honest thing I had said all day.

End of Chapter Four