Read Chapter 30: The Victor's Spoils

The rooftop of AlgoSens had never seen so many people. Someone had dragged every plant from the interior atrium upstairs, and the potted ferns swayed like an unlikely jungle against the balustrade. String lights crisscrossed overhead—Camille suspected Élodie had requisitioned them from a wedding supply store—and the Eiffel Tower stood beyond the rooftops, gold against the deepening blue of the June evening.

A cheer went up as Antoine emerged from the stairwell door carrying two bottles of champagne. He worked the corks loose with practiced ease, and the foam arced over the crowd. Somewhere near the back, a Junior engineer shouted something about the funding round, and the cheer went up again, louder this time.

Camille stood at the edge of it all, a glass of barely-touched wine in her hand. Her shoulders ached from a week of lawyers and contracts. But the ache was of the good kind—the kind that came from carrying something heavy for a long time and finally setting it down.

Élodie appeared at her elbow, holding a plate of miniature pastries. “You're not celebrating.”

“I'm watching.”

“Same thing, if you're French.” Élodie nudged her. “Go. Talk to your people. They survived you.”

Camille laughed, a short sound that surprised her. “They survived me, or they survived despite me?”

“Both,” Élodie said, and headed off toward the champagne.

Camille watched her go. Then she looked across the rooftop and found Antoine. He stood in a small circle of engineers, head tilted, listening. He had loosened his tie. She had never seen Antoine with a loosened tie. It gave him a slightly imperfect air that she found, suddenly, hard to look away from.

He caught her gaze. He didn't wave. He didn't call her over. He just excused himself from the circle and crossed the roof toward her, weaving around a knot of employees who were attempting to photograph the Eiffel Tower against the darkening sky.

“You should say something,” he said, stopping beside her.

“I said everything at the press conference.”

“That was to the world. This is to us.”

She considered that. Then she climbed onto a low concrete planter, gripping the edge for balance. The movement drew attention. Faces turned. Someone killed the music.

“I won't give a speech,” she called out. “Short version. We almost lost this company three times in two months. Twice to a man who was quietly committing fraud, and once to my own arrogance.”

The crowd went quiet. She heard someone inhale sharply.

“The arrogance part is true,” she said. “I faked a metric because I believed I knew better. What happened after that wasn't just luck. It was Antoine refusing to let me fail. And it was all of you, every one of you, refusing to walk away from a company that was bleeding attention and money.”

She looked down. Antoine was watching her with an unreadable expression.

“So we're not celebrating a funding round tonight,” she said. “We're celebrating that we're still here. And that we're going to do the work—the ethical work—even when it's slower, even when it's harder. Because that's the only kind of work that counts.”

The silence stretched. Then someone at the back—perhaps the same Junior engineer—started applauding. The sound spread, crested, and Camille felt the heat rise to her cheeks. She stepped down from the planter, wobbling just slightly. Antoine's hand came out to steady her elbow, and he let go quickly.

The music resumed. The murmur of conversation rebuilt itself around them.

“Co-founder speech,” Antoine said, a small smile at the corner of his mouth. “Seven out of ten.”

“What did I lose points for?”

“No mention of the champagne.”

She laughed. The tension she'd been carrying all week seemed to finally uncurl from her chest.

They drifted to the far corner of the rooftop, where the balustrade overlooked the rooftops of the Seventh Arrondissement. The Eiffel Tower's lights had just come up, bright against the violet sky. A breeze carried the faint smell of hot metal and flowers.

“I got a call last week,” Antoine said. “Before the funding news broke.”

Camille turned to him. Something in his tone had shifted. “What kind of call?”

“Recruiter. Said a company in Lyon—industrial software, very large, very boring—is looking for a CEO. They'd heard my name through the insurance settlement story. Thought the scandal-adjacent profile made me an interesting candidate.”

“Antoine. That's…” She didn't know what it was. Huge, maybe. Transformative. An exit.

“I told them no,” he said.

“Why?”

He was quiet for a moment, looking at the tower. A plane blinked past, low over the rooftops.

“Because I don't want to run a boring company in Lyon,” he said. “I want to build something that matters. With people I trust. On terms that are clear.”

He turned to face her. The string lights had caught in his eyes.

“I want to stay,” he said. “But not as your second-in-command. And not as your partner in some unclear arrangement where the structure changes every time we hit a crisis. I want to stay as co-CEO. Equal founder. Equal voice. We're past the point where you get to be the only one holding the vision.”

Camille opened her mouth. Closed it. The words hung between them.

Her first instinct was to find the flaw in it. Co-CEO arrangements were fragile. Unclear authority lines confused teams. She had fought too hard for the clarity of her own position to give half of it away.

But Antoine had fought harder.

He had stayed when she lied. He had carried the engineering team when she was drowning in her own fabricated numbers. He had walked into a police station with her and told the truth about Lucas. He had taken the insurance windfall from his own betrayal and poured it into the company's future.

“I don't deserve you,” she said quietly.

“That's not what I asked.”

“I know.” She looked down at her glass. The wine had gone warm. “Co-CEO isn't just a title change. It's a different structure. Different reports. Different metrics. It would mean renegotiating the board's expectations of us.”

“I know,” he said. “I've already drafted the proposal. You can review it Monday.”

She laughed. “Of course you did.”

“I'm an engineer. I solve problems.”

“You solve problems the engineer way. By pretending the human side doesn't require a spec document.”

He smiled, and something in the smile cracked his careful composure. “The human side keeps failing me,” he said. “The last person I trusted with everything waited until I was out of the country to dismantle me. I'd rather have a clean organizational chart than another silent abandonment.”

Camille felt the words land in her chest. She understood the shape of them. She had her own version of that fear, and it had driven her to lie, to control, to hold the reins until her hands bled.

“You're not going to get a clean chart,” she said. “We're building a new thing together. It's going to be messy. We're going to disagree. I'm going to say things in meetings and immediately regret them. You're going to make perfectly reasonable points and I'm going to feel threatened by them anyway.”

“That's a bold projection.”

“I've been in therapy,” she said. “I know myself.”

He laughed. It was a full sound, warm, and it surprised her because she didn't think she'd ever heard him laugh that way.

“So,” he said. “Co-CEO? Or do you need more time to run a cost-benefit analysis?”

She could hear the risk in his voice, the lowered guard. He had put everything on the table—not just his professional future, but something more fragile.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes to co-CEO, or yes to the cost-benefit analysis?”

“Yes to both. The proposal goes to a vote at the next board meeting. I'll sign it. But I'm warning you now, I'm territorial about the product roadmap.”

“Good. Because I'm territorial about the engineering culture.”

“Then we'll both be insufferable.”

“We already are,” he said.

The Eiffel Tower began to sparkle. At the far end of the rooftop, someone whooped. The tower glittered against the black sky, a cascade of light that seemed to wash over the entire city.

Camille watched it, and she was aware, acutely, of Antoine beside her. His nearness had a weight to it now. She felt the shift in her own body, the new awareness of his hand resting on the balustrade, inches from hers.

He turned toward her. The sparkle from the tower was still running through his eyes. He leaned in, a slow movement, unguarded. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin.

She put a hand on his chest, gently, and he stopped immediately.

“Just that slowly?” he asked, with no hurt in his voice, only a gentle question.

“We're partners first,” she said. “That matters. I lied about numbers, Antoine. I've been lying to myself for years about what I need from people. I don't want to rush the parts that need to be real.”

He considered her for a long moment. Then he nodded, and the smile that came across his face was patient. “Then we'll lead the company together first,” he said. “The rest can wait.”

The tower's sparkle faded. The night eased back in around them.

They stood in the quiet corner, looking out at the city, side by side. Below, the life of AlgoSens swirled on—laughter, music, the clink of glasses. The scandal had not sunk the company. The lies had not destroyed her. In an unlikely miracle of honesty and stubbornness, they had built something stronger.

Camille felt a strange and unfamiliar thing rise in her chest.

It took her a moment to recognize it. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt it without effort, without fear attached.

Trust.