Read Chapter 32: The Proposal

The offsite had been Antoine's idea—a two-day retreat at a château in Fontainebleau, ostensibly to reset the team after a month of crisis management. Camille had agreed because the alternative was another week of watching Antoine pace their shared office, muttering about org charts and equity splits. The château's gardens were immaculate, the conference room had adequate Wi-Fi, and for the first time in weeks, AlgoSens felt like a company rather than a pressure cooker.

The first day had gone well. They'd presented the ethics-first roadmap to the full team, walked through the new cohort-based methodology that had saved the health client relationship, and celebrated the news that the Fondation Aube's due diligence had come back clean. No skeletons. No hidden third parties. For one glorious afternoon, Camille had allowed herself to believe that the worst was behind them.

Now it was evening. The team had dispersed to their rooms after a long dinner. Camille stood at the edge of the château's terrace, a glass of wine warming in her hand, watching the sun sink behind the trees. Her phone buzzed with a message from her mother—the third this month, unanswered. She locked the screen without reading it.

"Came to find you." Antoine's voice came from behind her, and she felt his presence before she saw him. He was standing a respectful two feet away, close enough to feel familiar but far enough to respect her space. "You slipped out early."

"The debate about whether to name the new flagship project 'Aube One' or 'Project Lumière' was starting to feel like a hostage negotiation." She turned to face him. "I needed air."

He laughed, that low, warm sound she'd grown to rely on. His hair was slightly disheveled from the afternoon's workshops, and there was a looseness in his shoulders she hadn't seen in months. "You were right, by the way. About Camille and Antoine."

"What about us?"

"Co-CEOs. It's working." He took a step closer, and she felt the familiar flutter of anticipation. "We're better together than we ever were apart."

She wanted to say something witty, something that kept the moment light. But there was a weight in his voice, a shift in his posture that told her this wasn't small talk. This was something else.

"Antoine," she began, but he shook his head.

"I need to tell you something." He set down his glass on the terrace railing, giving her his full attention. "I told my mother about you. About us."

The words landed like a stone in still water. Camille felt the ripples spread through her chest, a cold tightening that had nothing to do with the evening breeze. "You told your mother."

"Yes. She wants to meet you." He smiled, but it faltered when he saw her face. "Camille—this is a good thing. She's been asking about you for weeks. She's excited."

"You told her before talking to me." It came out flatter than she intended, a statement of fact that hung between them like an accusation.

"I thought you'd be happy." He took another step toward her, but she stepped back without meaning to. "I thought we were at that point. You and me, the team, the company—everything is falling into place. I thought this was the natural next step."

"My mother and I don't speak." The confession came out before she could stop it. "We haven't spoken properly in years. She left when I was sixteen, and she never looked back. I don't know what it's like to have a mother who wants to meet the person I'm seeing."

Antoine's expression shifted, softening into something she didn't want to look at. Pity. She could feel his pity like a hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged it off with a sharp gesture.

"I'm not saying that to make you feel bad for me," she said quickly. "I'm saying that to explain why I can't meet yours. Not yet. I'm not ready for that."

"Camille—"

"I mean it." She heard her own voice rising, felt the familiar armor sliding into place. "I'm not ready to sit across a table from someone's mother and pretend that I have any idea how families work. I'm not ready to smile and make conversation and explain what I do for a living while my own mother is sending me messages I never answer."

"So we take it slow." He held up his hands, palms out, the gesture of someone trying to calm a frightened animal. "We don't have to meet her this weekend. I can tell her to wait. I just—I wanted to be transparent with you."

"Transparent." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You wanted to be transparent. Like you were transparent about the CEO offer before you decided to stay? Like you were transparent about drafting the co-CEO structure before you showed it to me?"

He flinched. She saw the hurt flash across his face, and a part of her—the part that had spent years building walls to keep people out—felt a vicious satisfaction. But another part of her, the part she couldn't silence, recoiled at what she'd just done.

"That's not fair," he said quietly. "I pushed your proposal through the board. I fought for you when the press was tearing you apart. I trusted you with the thing I built."

"And I trusted you with mine." Her voice cracked, betraying her. "I trusted you with the parts of me I don't show anyone. And now you want me to meet your mother and pretend that I'm whole. Pretend that I don't spend every holiday alone because I've convinced myself that work is enough. Pretend that I'm not terrified that the moment someone truly sees me, they'll leave."

Antoine was silent for a long moment. The sun had fully set, and the terrace was bathed in a dim blue light that made his features look carved from stone. "I see you," he said finally. "I've seen you through every crisis we've faced. And I'm still here."

"Because you don't have a choice!" She heard herself shouting, felt the words spill out of her like water from a cracked dam. "You're my co-CEO. You can't walk away from me without walking away from everything we've built. You don't get to leave, and that's the only reason you've stayed."

The silence that followed was deafening. She saw his jaw tighten, saw the carefully constructed calm in his face fracture into something raw and wounded. He looked at her for a long moment, and then he picked up his glass, drained it, and set it down with a sharp click.

"I'm going to give you space," he said. His voice was flat, controlled, the voice of a man who had learned to hide his feelings behind professional composure. "We'll talk in the morning."

He walked away, back toward the château, and he didn't look back.

Camille stood alone on the terrace, her heart hammering against her ribs, her hands shaking. She had done exactly what she'd always feared. She had taken the one person who had seen her clearly and pushed him away before he could leave on his own terms. She had sabotaged the only real partnership she'd ever had—not just professionally, but personally.

The wineglass in her hand was empty, though she didn't remember finishing it. She looked down at her phone, still face-down on the railing where she'd left it. A new notification glowed on the screen.

She picked it up, thumb hovering over the lock screen. The message was from Sarah Moreau, the journalist who had been dogging AlgoSens for months. It was time-stamped four minutes ago, and the subject line read: "A courtesy before we publish tomorrow."

Camille read the preview text. Her blood went cold.

*Sources close to the Fondation Aube due diligence indicate that AlgoSens leadership—including co-CEO Camille Laurent—may have misrepresented the timeline of the ethics-first algorithm rollout to secure funding. Internal documents suggest the original launch date was set for Q3, not Q4 as stated in the investment proposal. Our source has provided documentation confirming this discrepancy.*

Camille's breath caught. The due diligence hadn't come back clean. Someone had leaked the original project timeline, and she knew—with a certainty that made her stomach lurch—that there was only one person who could have provided that documentation.

She looked toward the château, where a light had just flicked on in Antoine's room.

The walls were closing in again. And this time, she wasn't sure she could rebuild them.