Read Chapter 15: The Aftermath of the Raid

The office smelled like stale coffee and panic. Camille caught it the moment the elevator doors slid open—the low hum of too many voices in too small a space, the fluorescent buzz of a building that had stopped feeling like home sometime in the last forty-eight hours.

Someone had taped a printout of the *Tech Europa* headline to the glass wall of the reception area: *AlgoSens Raided in Overnight Security Breach—Funding in Jeopardy*. Below it, a second headline from a French trade blog: *Rival Investor Circles as Startup Implodes*.

Jacques stood by the coffee machine, cup in hand, watching employees filter into the central meeting room. He didn't look at her when she walked past. That was worse than if he had.

"Camille." Antoine fell into step beside her, his voice low. He'd traded his jacket for a rumpled sweater, and there was a tension in his jaw she hadn't seen before. "The press got the story within the hour. Someone in the warehouse district tipped them off before we even got home."

"Or someone in this office."

He didn't argue.

The all-hands meeting was a catastrophe. Camille stood at the front of the room, hands flat on the conference table, trying to project a calm she didn't feel. The Sentio roadmap slides she'd prepared were outdated before she'd even opened her laptop. Every question from the engineers and designers was the same, phrased differently: *Is the company dying? Are we next on the chopping block?*

Hugo sat in the back row, arms crossed, a thin smile on his face. He didn't ask anything. He didn't need to.

"Let me be direct," Camille said, killing the projector. "Last night's events were an escalation. The board has been made aware. We are pursuing legal avenues and a full internal audit. But I need every one of you to focus on your work. The health ministry evaluation is still on the calendar, and it matters more than ever."

A woman from QA—Laure, Camille thought her name was—raised a hand. "And what about Antoine? He's still listed as product manager on the org chart, but we heard he's on leave."

The room went quiet.

Camille looked at Antoine. He gave her the faintest nod. She could let him answer, let him defend himself, but she knew what that would cost him. His voice still cracked around the edges when he talked about the spy who'd destroyed his old company. He didn't need to do that in front of forty people.

"Antoine's status is a board matter," she said. "What I can tell you is that I've never had a better partner on a product team, and I intend to make sure the board understands that."

The murmur that followed was softer. Less hostile. She'd bought them a day, maybe two.

The meeting broke apart in twos and threes. Antoine lingered by the window, watching the street below. Camille excused herself and walked to the locker room, needing a moment alone, needing to breathe without a dozen eyes on her.

Her locker was third from the left. She spun the combination, pulled the handle—

The scarf was folded inside.

Not the one she'd brought. That one sat in her bag, still tied to her—a talisman she'd refused to remove. But this was the original red scarf, the one that had hung from her monitor two days ago. It had been washed, folded with the kind of precision that suggested care. Or menace.

She lifted it. A small white card fell out, fluttering to the floor.

*Remember your beginning.*

Camille knelt, picked up the card, and read it twice. The handwriting was elegant, looping, unmistakably feminine. Not Hugo's block capitals. Not Jacques's cramped print. She'd seen this hand before.

In her old office at DataVista, when Françoise had written her a note of encouragement after her first major product launch. The same *f* and *y*, the same ornamental flourish on the capital letters.

Françoise.

Her mentor. The woman who'd given her a chance when no one else would. Who'd taught her to stop apologizing for being the smartest person in the room. Who'd introduced her to Maxime at a conference three years ago, and had seemed almost proud when Camille had joined AlgoSens.

Camille folded the card into her pocket. Her hands were steady, but her thoughts were not.

"Camille?" Antoine's voice from the doorway. He'd followed her. Of course he had.

She turned, scarf still in her hands. "I need to show you something."

They spread the evidence across his desk. The scarf. The note. And on Antoine's laptop, the flagged email he'd been staring at when she walked in—a background check report, generated by an external firm hired by the board before his offer was extended.

"Look at this," Antoine said, pointing to a line item. "Employment verification from my previous startup. It says I left in 2021, citing mutual agreement. But I was there until 2022. I have the contracts."

"So the report is wrong."

"Not wrong. Fabricated." He tapped another line. "And the reference from my old CEO. She wrote me a glowing letter. This one calls me 'difficult to work with' and 'prone to adversarial dynamics.' Same company, completely opposite description."

Camille sat down across from him. "Who commissioned the report?"

"The board, via a third-party HR consultancy." He looked up at her. "But the consultancy was paid by a Luxembourg shell company."

The same shell company that owned the warehouse. The same shell company that linked to Lucas.

"They've been building a case against you for weeks," she said. "Maybe months. Before you even started."

"Someone wanted me to fail here. Wanted the board to have a reason to cut me loose without a scandal." He laughed, hollow. "I thought I was being paranoid. I thought it was all in my head, because of what happened before."

"Antoine." She waited until he met her eyes. "It wasn't in your head. And it's not only about you."

She told him about the scarf. About the handwriting. About Françoise.

He listened without interrupting. When she finished, he leaned back, running a hand through his hair. "Your mentor. Former mentor."

"I haven't spoken to her in two years. She sent me a Christmas card last December." Camille pulled out her phone, scrolling to the photo she'd taken of the card before she'd recycled it. There it was—the same looping hand. *Season's greetings, Camille. Remember your beginning.*

"Could she be the one who's been watching you?"

"I don't know." The words cost her more than she'd admit. "She's the reason I'm in this industry. She vouched for me when I had nothing. If she's part of this—if she's been working with Lucas—"

"Then we have a second problem."

They were both quiet for a long moment. Somewhere down the hall, a printer churned out pages. The building hummed with the ghost of forty worried employees.

"Come with me," Antoine said. He stood, grabbing his jacket.

"Where?"

"The roof."

The stairs were steep and unlit past the fifth floor. Camille followed him up by sound alone—his footsteps, the scrape of his hand on the railing. When they emerged onto the rooftop, the city spread out before them in a wash of amber and gray. Notre-Dame glowed in the distance. The Eiffel Tower blinked its slow, indifferent rhythm.

"I used to come up here when I needed to think," Antoine said, settling on the parapet. "I hadn't even realized I'd stopped."

Camille sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. The scarf was still in her hand. She wrapped it around her wrist, feeling its weight.

"Françoise taught me to code," she said, voice soft. "Not the syntax—the confidence. She used to tell me that I was the only person in the room who believed I didn't belong there. And she was right. I was always waiting to be found out."

"Still are."

She looked at him. "What?"

"I see it," he said. "The way you double-check your own decisions. The way you apologize for ideas before you've even shared them. The way you defend everyone around you like it's a full-time job, when the person you're most afraid of letting down is yourself."

She should have been angry. Instead, she felt something crack open in her chest, something she'd held shut for years.

"I told you about that spy," he said. "The one I vouched for. Do you know why I trusted him?"

"Why?"

"Because he reminded me of you." Antoine's voice was barely audible over the breeze. "He believed in things. He spoke with conviction. He made me feel less alone."

"And he destroyed your company."

"And he destroyed my company." He met her gaze. "I've spent two years telling myself I can't afford to trust anyone who reminds me of him. But here's the thing, Camille—you showed me I was wrong."

She didn't reach for him. Neither did he. But something settled between them in the silence—a bridge, fragile but real, spanning the decades of wariness they'd each built.

"So what do we do?" she asked.

Antoine looked out at the city. "Lucas knows we're onto him. He made that clear. But he's also getting sloppy—leaving us a trail, letting the lawyer find us. He wants a response. He wants us to panic."

"Then we don't panic."

"No." He turned to her, a ghost of a smile on his face. "We go to him. Directly. Tomorrow. We ask him what he actually wants."

"If he answers."

"Then we make him answer."

Camille nodded. The scarf tightened around her wrist like a promise. She was done waiting to be found out. She was done hiding her beginning.

It was time to become the one doing the finding.

Below them, the office lights burned. Somewhere in the city, Lucas was sleep, confident in his game. And Françoise—Françoise was still a question without an answer.

But for the first time in weeks, Camille felt the ground solid under her feet. Whatever came next, she wouldn't face it alone.