Read Chapter 22: The Journalist's Price

Camille had expected Sarah Moreau’s office to feel like a war room—papers stacked like barricades, sticky notes on every surface, the air thick with deadline. Instead, it was a glass box overlooking the Seine, white and minimal, with a single orchid on the desk and the journalist herself dressed in a charcoal blazer that probably cost more than Camille’s rent.

“You’re late,” Sarah said, not looking up from her tablet.

“I had to make sure I wasn’t followed.”

Sarah’s mouth twitched. “Paranoid. I like it.” She gestured to the chair across from her desk. “Sit. Tell me why I should burn my source network for you.”

Camille sat, keeping her back straight. She’d rehearsed this on the walk over. “You contacted me first. You smell a story about the fabricated metric. But that’s the appetizer. The main course is Lucas Fournier, and he’s been feeding the ministry lies that could sink a product that actually helps people.”

“And you’re the whistleblower.” Sarah set the tablet down, folding her hands. “Forgive me if I’m skeptical. You’re the one who faked the number. That’s not a whistleblower profile, Camille. That’s a liability.”

“I’m the one who can prove it wasn’t my idea.”

“Hugo’s hire. The timing. The pressure.” Sarah nodded slowly. “I have the timeline. I don’t have the documents.”

“I’ll give them to you.”

“Original documents.” Sarah’s gaze sharpened. “Not screenshots. Not your summary of what you think happened. Original, dated, verifiable files. You’re a product lead. You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t get them.”

Camille felt the weight of the USB in her pocket, the one they’d cleaned with Antoine. But that was Maxime’s code. What Sarah wanted was paper. Or whatever passed for it now.

“I can build a data room,” Camille said. “Hugo’s offer letter. His salary bump. The IP logs from the server where the metric was altered. Everything ties to Lucas.”

Sarah leaned back in her chair, studying Camille with an expression she couldn’t read. For a long moment, the only sound was the hum of the ventilation and the distant river traffic.

“You want something,” Sarah said finally.

“A second piece. Not now—but when Sentio launches, if we get the health contract, you write about the product. What it can do. The people it helps. You frame this not as a startup scandal, but as a story about a good thing nearly killed by a bad man.”

“You want PR control.”

“I want balance. If all the ministry sees is the scandal, they kill the contract. Then the story is just another tech implosion. But if they see what we’re actually building—and that it survived Lucas’s sabotage—that’s a better story for you too.”

Sarah smiled, slow and cold. “You’re asking me to be your marketing department.”

“I’m asking you to be a journalist who tells the whole story, not just the juicy part.”

The silence stretched. Camille felt the email in her pocket burn—Lucas’s message, the threat, the deadline. Thursday. She had forty hours.

“Fine,” Sarah said. “But I take original documents. Meaning no fabrication, no redactions, no ‘don’t use this yet.’ You give me the raw material, and I decide what the story is. If your product deserves a redemption arc, I’ll write it. But that’s my call.”

Camille nodded. “Then we have an agreement.”

“I expect the data room by tomorrow morning.”

Camille stood, but Sarah raised a hand. “One more thing. I know you’re holding something back. I built my career on watching people like you—smart, cornered, desperate. Don’t lie to me, and I won’t bury you. Deal?”

“Deal,” Camille said, and she meant it. For the first time in days, she felt like she was building something instead of defending against collapse.

---

Antoine met her in the AlgoSens server room, the only place they could work without eyes. The room was cold, lit by a single blue strip of emergency lighting, and smelled of ozone and old cardboard.

“Sarah agreed.” Camille set her bag on the metal rack. “She wants originals.”

Antoine was already hunched over a terminal, his fingers moving at speed. “I pulled the IP logs from the night the metric was altered. There are three accesses from outside the building, all of them routed through a VPN in Luxembourg. But VPNs leave traces.” He hit a key, and a map bloomed on the screen. “The clean traffic routes through a relay in Frankfurt, but there’s a leak—a handshake failure that reveals the origin server.”

Camille leaned in. “Where is it?”

“The IP resolves to a building on Rue de la Boétie.” Antoine looked up. “That’s Lucas’s office. His private consultancy. The man didn’t even bother to use a different coffee shop.”

“It’s a direct thread from his server to our system.” Camille’s pulse quickened. “That’s the smoking gun. If we timestamp it with Hugo’s offer letter, that’s the chain Sarah needs.”

“Already compiling.” Antoine’s voice was quiet. “Camille, I want you to know something. If this goes wrong—if Lucas retaliates before the story breaks—I want you to know that I don’t regret a single day of working with you.”

Camille’s throat tightened. She opened her mouth to respond, but her phone buzzed in her pocket. A message from Théo.

*I need to talk. Now. Not on the phone. Where are you?*

She showed Antoine the screen. His face went pale.

“Théo has been with us since the beginning,” Camille said slowly. “His loyalty has never been in question.”

“You’re thinking about Jacques.”

“Jacques was a friend. Théo is my second-in-command. If he’s compromised too—” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Send him the address of the café downstairs. Public place. It gives us safety.”

Camille typed the message and hit send. She looked at Antoine. “Whatever he says, we don’t react until we have proof.”

“We always have proof.” Antoine tapped the terminal. “That’s the difference between us and Lucas.”

---

Théo arrived at the café ten minutes later, looking like a man who hadn’t slept in a week. His shirt was untucked, his hair unwashed, and he ordered a coffee he didn’t drink.

Camille sat across from him. Antoine stood by the door, ostensibly checking his phone, but his body was angled toward them like a guard.

“I need to say something,” Théo said. His voice cracked. “And I need you to hear all of it before you throw me out.”

Camille waited.

“Lucas hired me eighteen months ago. Six months before the product review. He told me it was a safeguard—that he wanted someone inside to make sure the project didn’t go sideways. He said you were brilliant but unstable, that you needed oversight.” Théo swallowed. “I believed him. I thought I was helping the company.”

“What did he ask you to do?” Camille’s voice was flat.

“Report on your progress. Flag any vulnerabilities. And then—” Théo’s eyes dropped. “It was me who planted the evidence that framed Antoine. The fake email chain that made him look like he was leaking to competitors. I didn’t know what it was for at the time. Lucas said it was a bluff, a way to keep Antoine in check. I only realized later that he was building a case to fire him.”

Camille’s hands were still. She could feel Antoine’s eyes on her, even from across the room.

“Why are you telling me now?” she asked.

Théo looked up. Tears glazed his eyes. “Because I found out what he did to you. The fabrication. The threat to expose you. He’s not protecting the company. He’s gutting it. He’s leaving a trail of broken people—Maxime, Jacques, you, Antoine—and I don’t want my name on that wreckage.”

“Proof,” Camille said. “I need proof.”

Théo reached into his pocket and slid his phone across the table. A voice memo was queued on the screen, timestamped three days ago.

“Lucas met Hugo in his office,” Théo said. “I kept my phone in my bag, recording. I didn’t know I was doing it at the time—I was trying to check my schedule—but the audio caught everything. They talk about the layoffs. Who to keep, who to cut. They talk about you.”

Camille pressed play. A tinny, echoing voice filled the café—Lucas, unmistakable: *“Camille is a liability, but we can’t fire her without triggering the contract review. We need her to resign. Make it look voluntary. If she doesn’t take the deal by Thursday, we go public with the metric and let the ministry shred her.”*

Hugo’s voice, softer: *“And the layoffs?”*

*“Thirty percent. Start with Théo. He knows too much. We clean house before the audit.”*

Camille stopped the recording. Théo’s face was pale again.

“You erased yourself,” she said slowly. “You were on the cut list, and you came to me instead of going to Lucas to bargain.”

“Lucas doesn’t bargain.” Théo wiped his eyes. “He collects leverage. I didn’t want to be in his folder anymore.”

Camille reached across the table and pulled the phone toward her. She looked at Théo—young, exhausted, terrified, and finally honest.

“Then you’re with us now,” she said. “And we use this.”

She transferred the file to her own phone. Antoine crossed the room, looked at the screen, and exhaled.

“He planned to cut Théo,” Antoine said. “But he also called you a liability to the contract. That’s interference in a regulated procurement process. That’s not just fraud. That’s a federal matter.”

Camille looked between them. For the first time in weeks, she felt something close to hope.

“We have the IP logs. We have the recording. We have Hugo’s hire.” She met Antoine’s eyes. “We build the data room tonight. Tomorrow morning, Sarah files.”

“And Lucas?” Théo asked.

Camille’s jaw tightened.

“He has a board seat,” she said. “But not for long.”