Read Chapter 5: The President's Debt

The call came through the wall like a bad omen.

Camille had only meant to duck into the storage room beside Moreau's office to grab fresh tape from the shelves, but the president's voice carried through the thin plaster—sharp, clipped, the tone of a man speaking to someone he didn't want to be speaking to.

"No, Aubert, you don't understand. I said *June*. The money will be there by June."

She froze, fingers hovering over the boxes of athletic tape.

A pause. Then Moreau again, quieter now, but no less tense. "The club is not for sale. It never was. But if you push me on this, you'll get nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing."

Camille pressed herself against the wall, tape box clutched to her chest like a shield. She knew she shouldn't be listening. Every instinct told her to move, to walk away, to pretend she'd heard nothing. But her feet wouldn't cooperate.

"You think I'm bluffing?" Moreau's voice cracked with desperation. "The investors are lined up. The stadium renovation is already— *No*, you listen to me. I have a season to finish. I have a team to keep whole. And when the money comes through, you'll get exactly what I owe you. Not a centime more."

A long silence. Then, so low she barely caught it: "Then yes. If it comes to that, you can have the club. But it won't come to that."

The sound of a phone slamming onto a desk. Camille heard footsteps approaching the door. She scrambled backward, but not fast enough. The door swung open and Moreau stood there, face flushed, tie loosened, looking like a man who'd just swallowed glass.

Their eyes met.

For a heartbeat, neither moved. Then Moreau's expression shifted—from shock to calculation, the mask sliding back into place. He was taller than she remembered. Imposing. When he spoke, his voice was smooth as oil.

"Camille. I didn't realize you were still here."

"The tape," she said, holding up the box. "We're almost out on the treatment table."

He glanced at the box, then at her face, reading it the way a card player reads a table. "And how long were you standing there?"

She could lie. Should lie. But something in her rebelled at the thought—that careful, practiced dishonesty that had driven her from Paris in the first place.

"Long enough," she said.

Moreau's jaw tightened. He stepped closer, and she caught the scent of expensive cologne and cheap anxiety. "Then you understand, I'm sure, that what you just heard is a private matter between me and a business associate. A matter that becomes *your* problem if it leaves this room."

"Who's Marcel Aubert?"

Moreau's eyes widened—a crack in the armor. He quickly recovered, but the damage was done. "No one," he said. "No one you need to concern yourself with."

"He said he'd own the club by June. That doesn't sound like no one."

"Camille." His voice dropped to a whisper, intimate as a threat. "You're a physiotherapist. Good one, by all accounts. But there are a hundred physiotherapists who would kill for your position, and you're standing in my office with a secret that doesn't belong to you. Let me be clear: if you breathe a word of this to anyone—anyone—you'll not only lose your job. You'll lose your credentials in this city. In this country." He paused. "Do we understand each other?"

The tape box felt slippery in her hands. "I understand that you just threatened me."

"I understand that you just overheard something that could destroy this club if it got out. So yes. We understand each other."

He stepped back, smoothing his tie. When he spoke again, it was almost kind. "Go home, Camille. Get some rest. Tomorrow, we focus on Julien and the season ahead. The rest—it never happened."

She didn't remember leaving. One moment she was in the storage room doorway, the next she was in the parking lot, the evening air cool against her overheated skin. She dropped the tape box into her bag and walked—no, stumbled—toward her car, hands shaking as she unlocked the door.

The drive home was a blur. Apartment buildings. Café terraces filled with laughing people who had no idea that the president of their beloved rugby club was drowning in debt, that a man named Marcel Aubert could own the whole thing by summer.

When she finally reached her flat, she didn't bother turning on the lights. She sat on the couch in the dark, phone in her hand, thumb hovering over Julien's contact.

She could tell him. They'd started building something—this strange, fragile trust between them. But tell him what? That his boss was in financial trouble? That was club politics, not Julien's concern. And the other part—the part about them maybe being family—that was so vast and terrifying she couldn't begin to unpack it tonight.

Instead, she scrolled to her mother's number.

Élise Roussel. The name on her screen. The name in Julien's emergency contacts.

Her mother answered on the third ring, her voice warm and distracted. "Camille! Sweetheart, it's late. Is everything alright?"

"Fine," Camille said. "Just—I wanted to ask you something."

"Of course. Anything."

A question sat on her tongue, heavy as stone. *Did you have another child? A son, before me? Did you leave him behind?*

But the words wouldn't come. They'd never come, not once in thirty-two years, because Camille had never had reason to ask them before.

"Actually, it can wait," she said. "I'll call you this weekend."

"Are you sure? You sound tired."

"I am." She closed her eyes. "I'll be fine, Maman. Talk soon."

She hung up before she could change her mind. Then she sat in the silence of her apartment and considered the life she'd built here—the flat, the job, the careful distance from Paris. All of it had seemed like a fresh start. Now it felt like quicksand.

She could quit. Walk into Moreau's office tomorrow and resign. Let the secret burn in her chest until it became just another scar she carried alone.

But quit to do what? Go back to Paris? She'd burned those bridges. Applied to clinics in Marseille, Nice, Montpellier—all rejected. This job was the only one that had wanted her. And now she knew the cost of it.

Her phone buzzed. A message from Julien.

*You free tomorrow? I want to show you something. Away from all this.*

She stared at the words. Away from all this. Away from the club, the mirrors, the secrets. Away from Moreau's threats and Aubert's deadline and the letter in the kit bag she still hadn't opened.

*Yes*, she wrote back. *But it has to be early. Before Moreau notices I'm gone.*

A pause. Then: *5 a.m. I'll pick you up. Trust me.*

She almost laughed. Trust. That was the problem, wasn't it? She didn't know who to trust anymore. Moreau wanted her silent. Julien wanted her present. Her mother wanted her distant. And somewhere in the middle of it all was a truth she was afraid to uncover.

She typed: *5 a.m. Don't be late.*

She felt his smile through the screen. *Never. Goodnight, Camille.*

Goodnight. As if tomorrow would bring clarity. As if anything about this situation were simple.

She set her phone down and stared at the ceiling, replaying Moreau's words. *Do we understand each other?*

All she understood was that she was trapped—between the president and his debts, between Julien and his ghosts, between a mother who wasn't answering questions and a brother she'd never known she had.

And dawn was four hours away.