Read Chapter 13: The Taste of Betrayal

The cutting sat in its glass terrarium on the lab bench, a fragile green promise under the grow lights. Camille had checked it four times since sunrise. Each time, she told herself it was the plant she was watching. Not the man across the room.

Alexandre had his back to her, phone pressed to his ear, voice low. She’d caught only fragments—*“the structure is holding,”* *“she doesn’t suspect,”* *“we need more time.”*

Her hand stilled on the terrarium lid.

He laughed softly. Not at something funny. The way you laugh when you’re reassuring someone. When you’re lying to them, or for them.

Camille had spent ten years in laboratories learning to trust her nose above all else. Right now, her instincts were screaming.

She crossed the room silently, barefoot on the cool stone. He didn’t hear her until she was close enough to read the screen over his shoulder.

The contact name burned into her retinas: **Thibault Maurel.**

Her breath caught.

Alexandre turned, saw her face, and went pale. His thumb moved to end the call, but she snatched the phone from his hand before he could.

“Who else?” Her voice was ice. “Who else have you been reporting to?”

“Camille, let me explain.”

“Explain what? That you’ve been feeding information to the man who’s trying to destroy my family’s house?” She held the phone up like evidence at a trial. “Thibault. The same Thibault whose scent is gaining traction in every boutique from Paris to Milan. That Thibault?”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“Then what is it?” She threw the phone onto the bench. It skittered across the steel and clattered to the floor. Neither of them moved to retrieve it. “Tell me. Tell me what it looks like from where you’re standing.”

Alexandre ran a hand through his hair, a gesture she’d come to recognize as his tell for discomfort. She’d catalogued his tells over the past weeks. That was the problem. She’d started reading him like a formula, like he was worth understanding.

“I was hired to do a job,” he said slowly. “Two jobs, actually. The board wanted me to assess whether Roussel could be saved. Thibault wanted me to assess whether it could be bought.”

Camille felt the floor shift beneath her.

“I was a strategist. My job was to evaluate both outcomes. The company succeeds, Thibault loses interest and moves on. The company fails, Thibault acquires the assets at a discount, and I get a percentage.”

“You were playing both sides.”

“I was doing my job.” His jaw tightened. “That was before I knew about my father. Before I knew what Marcel did to him. Before I knew you.”

“And now?” She heard the crack in her own voice and hated it. “Now that you know, what are you?”

He stepped toward her. She stepped back.

“I switched sides, Camille. I don’t know when it happened, exactly. Maybe the night we built the two-layer accord. Maybe the afternoon in Odette’s atelier when you held that rosebud like it was a living thing and I realized you would die before you let it go.” His voice dropped. “I told Thibault we were hitting dead ends. I told him the formula was lost for good. I’ve been feeding him false progress reports for two weeks.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“You’re supposed to ask yourself one question.” He held her gaze. “If I was still working for Thibault, why would I have brought you to my father’s land? Why would I have shown you his letter? Why would I have risked everything to help you find a rose that, if it exists, would destroy Thibault’s entire strategy?”

She wanted to believe him. That was the worst part. She wanted to believe him so badly that she could taste it, bitter and sweet, like a note that shouldn’t work but does.

“You told me your father died searching for the missing ingredient.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “You told me he was obsessed with Marcel’s work. You used his death to get close to me. How do I know any of that was real?”

Alexandre’s face twisted. For a moment, he looked like a man who’d been struck. Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, worn at the creases, yellowed with age.

“This is the original letter from my father. Not the copy I showed you.” He held it out. “Read the last paragraph. The one I didn’t show you.”

She didn’t take it.

“Read it,” he said again. “Please.”

Camille took the paper. Her hands were steady, a small mercy. She unfolded it and read.

*“If you ever find yourself in Grasse, working with the Roussel family, know this: there is a granddaughter. I saw her once, when she was a child, running through the rose fields with her grandmother. She has the gift. If you meet her, tell her the roses remember. Tell her Étienne Maurel loved the same flowers her grandfather destroyed. Tell her—his greatest crime was not stealing the rose. It was letting it die.”*

Camille looked up. Her vision blurred.

“You’re a Maurel,” she said. Not a question.

“My father changed his name when he left Grasse. He wanted to escape the family shame.” Alexandre’s voice was raw. “He never escaped it. He spent his whole life trying to undo what Marcel did, and it killed him.”

“And you?” she asked. “What are you trying to undo?”

He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m trying to undo what I was hired to do. I’m trying to choose the right side.”

“You already chose,” she said, and the paper trembled in her hands. “Thibault may be your cousin. But your father—” her voice broke. “Your father was in love with my grandmother’s work. With my family’s craft. And you buried that to work against us.”

“I didn’t—Camille, I didn’t know about any of this when I took the job. I found out about my father’s connection to Marcel the same week I met you. I’ve been trying to piece it together ever since.”

“And every step of the way, you’ve been sending messages to my enemy.”

“I’ve been protecting you from him.” He stepped closer. She didn’t move back this time. “Thibault knows you have the rosebud. He knows about Marcel’s hidden formula. He has people watching this lab. Do you understand what I’ve done to keep him from moving on you directly?”

“You’ve made yourself useful to him.”

“I’ve made myself his eyes on the inside. So I could blind him when the moment came.”

The distance between them was a single breath now. She could smell him—sandalwood, clean sweat, and beneath it, the faint trace of the two-layer accord they’d built together, the one that had felt like the beginning of something real.

“I want to believe you,” she said. Her voice was barely audible. “But every time I trust you, I find out there’s another version of the truth you’ve been keeping from me.”

“There’s nothing else,” he said. “I swear it.”

“That’s what I believed yesterday.” She stepped around him, grabbed her bag, and walked toward the door. “Today, I don’t know what to believe.”

She paused at the threshold, not looking back.

“The cutting stays with me. The rosebud stays with me. You can tell Thibault whatever you want about my progress—it’s true enough. I don’t know how to make that rose grow. And I don’t know how to trust a man whose name I just learned after I already trusted him with everything.”

She left him standing alone in the lab, the folded letter still in her hand, his father’s words echoing between them like a ghost that refused to be laid to rest.